Newsday 8:13 with one blank (bookmark this link for free puzzle access)
NYT 7:18*
LAT 3:05
CS untimed
*Yes, the applet says 7:30. I'm not including the 12 seconds it took to communicate with the server.
My kid's school field trip was to see a Polish movie, "The Magic Tree," at the Chicago International Children's Film Festival. The movie's director, Andrzej Maleszka, was there for a long Q&A with the kids. No, I did not ask him if Eugene Maleska was any relation.
Robert Wolfe's New York Times crossword
This puzzle has run afoul of...something. I enjoyed one answer: 28A: [Johnny Depp title role] clues ED WOOD, and that movie was a hoot. (Okay, two answers: Also TRAVOLTA, 4D: [He played a governor in "Primary Colors"].) But there's a big danger in making 58-word crosswords, and that danger is that the fill's quality will be sorely compromised in order to get the challenging interlock to work. Structurally, this grid is bound to give some solvers fits—if you don't get solid footholds in the NW and SE quadrants, only 26A and 28A are going to feed you any help from the rest of the puzzle.
I have groused before about what I call "roll your own" words: words with tacked-on endings or prefixes providing handy (for the constructor) letters to fill in space. Here, 15 answers have an S added to the end. One of 'em includes an -ER, too: SNEERERS, or 48A: [Disdainful bunch]. It's gettable, sure, but hardly anyone is using this particular form of sneer. There are also a couple -EDs and an -EST, and don't get me started on the -ERs. SERENER is bland but OK, FISHIER is decent, but MARRER? 38D: [Graffitist, e.g.] is a MARRER? The MARRER and his friends the SNEERERS have marred this grid. Then there's TERRENE, or 50A: [Earthly], which my dictionary labels archaic, and the wow-I-can't-believe-it's-in-the-dictionary-as-an-"also"-spelling INDORSED (7D: [Supported: Var.])—this one the dictionary calls dated. Throw in your ESTERS and ORRIS OIL, your DENATURE and AIR MOTOR, and you've got an abundance of fill that doesn't do anything to engage me.
All right, let's roll through some clues and answers:
• 15A. GANTRIES are [Spanning frameworks]. Not a word in my daily vocab.
• 17A. [Upstate New York town where I.B.M. was founded] is ENDICOTT. Does everyone know this tidbit? Am I the only one who didn't?
• 18A. HEAVEN is a [Good resting place?]. I don't care for clues presenting religious tenets, even with the question mark.
• 23A. HUSSARS were [Brilliantly dressed cavalrymen]. Camo is probably a little more practical on the battlefield, no? Dictionary says hussars were 15th-century Hungarian "light horsemen," so the term predates Prussia, which I always pair it with in my head in the category of "old European things with USS in them."
• 41A. [Axial skeleton parts] are STERNA, plural of sternum, your breastbone. "Axial" because it's in the middle of your body? I was first thinking of SPINES with an S plural rather than a word with a Latin plural.
• 46A. An AIR MOTOR is a [Pneumatic power producer]. There are things called air motors?
• 50A. KALES are [Mustard family members]. My family has a long-standing feud with the Mustard family. The feud dates back generations, to when Colonel Mustard shot my great-great-granduncle in the back...in the conservatory.
• 5D. [Like the 2 in "x squared"] seems like a long way to go for SUPERIOR. Do mathy types call it SUPERIOR, what I call superscript?
• 12D. It really is time to retire the fleet of SSTS from the crossword puzzle. [They had adjustable noses] is as good a clue as you're going to get for this answer, but it still doesn't fix the fact that the answer is here. It's in too many puzzles.
• 14D. SENTA is clued as [Wagnerian hero]. Austrian actress Senta Berger needs a better agent so she can get all the SENTA clues. I just Googled her, and she looks great for 68 but was a stunner in her younger days. (I kinda thought she was in the same category as Pola Negri and Perle Mesta, long-dead crosswordese people. But no! Not so old at all.)
• 15D. Ooh, I don't think I like the GEISHA clue. [Companion abroad]? I also have deep reservations about the geisha tradition. Women spending hours to look a certain way and devoting their working hours to entertaining men? Eesh.
• 25D. This one's weird. SHOE STORE is clued as an [Establishment with many horns]. My son and I went to a good indie shoe store with a large staff of experienced salespeople, but there can't have been that many shoehorns in the entire place. (The guy did use one on my son, though.) Most shoe stores these days pretty much leave the work to the customer, and I don't think they make a point of stocking shoehorns for our use.
• 29A. WATER OAK is a [Tree of Southeastern swamplands]. I don't spend much time in Southeastern swamps.
• 37D. I wanted the [Unrequited lover of legend] to be DAPHNE, since the ****NE fit. It's ELAINE. Which legend is this? Whom was she pining for?
• 39D. [It may be under enamel] clues a coat of PRIMER under enamel paint, not the dentin under your tooth enamel.
So often, a low-word-count puzzle just makes me wish the constructor had instead strived for the liveliest, most colorful and interesting fill. I'm sure the 58-worders have their fans, but I'm not one of them. (Exception: Well, Patrick Berry can pull off the holy grail: low word count with lively fill.)
Updated Saturday morning:
Tony Orbach's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Witchcraft"—Janie's review
What a happy Halloween Tony has made this. (Wicked) "Witchcraft" is filled with a variety of wordplay in the four theme entries (this would be the "trick" part), plus bonus fill and non-theme fill that is loaded with high-scorin' Scrabble letters (all of which makes for a very nice "treat"). First, the tricks, which take all-things-ordinary and transform them into all-things-occult:
• 16A. Add a letter. [Like cookies at a witch's fundraiser?] which would be not oven-baked, but COVEN-BAKED, a coven being an "assembly of witches." Some definitions specify 13 witches. Think there's any significance in that?...
• 26A. Change a letter. [People who can sniff out a witch's concoction?] are the olfactorily-gifted POTION DETECTORS. Sensors that can register a witch's activity would be motion detectors.
• 43A. "Sounds like." [Announcement at a witch's market?] is "SPELL IN AISLE TWO!" Announcement in your market (in the aftermath of the marinara display's descent to the floor, say...): "Spill in Aisle Two!" (I was also thinking that spell might have been the way the word special sounded over a muffled p.a. system...)
• 59A. Add a letter. Ooh, good—another one, and this time [Witch's mobile sound systems?] yields up BROOM BOXES. No mere boom boxes for our gal!
In addition to the theme-fill itself, the "treats" also include bonus theme-fill: BREW, clued as [Cauldron contents, perhaps] and which harkens back to potion, that "witch's concoction" in the clue at 26A; SKELETON for [Halloween costume]; and how perfect is this?, "BOO!" [Interjection heard on Halloween] as the very last of the Down fill. Nice.
Then there're all those lively words with the scrabbly letters, like:
• JOKE [One-liner], which shares that "J" with, and whose meaning relates to, JAPED [Made fun of]; JEDI ["Star Wars" knight], too;
• ZILCH [Zip], which is synonymous with [Zero] NONE and which shares a "Z" with ZONK [Nod off, with "out"];
• KUMAR (who went to the White Castle with Harold), PECK [Little kiss] sharing its "K" with CLINK [Lockup], and LOCKET [Keepsake holder];
• AVERSION [Strong dislike]; and
• IN-BOX [E-mail receptacle] (though I confess I was surprised to see this word in the same puzzle with broom boxes...).
And just because I enjoyed them in the puzzle, let me also point out "SPLAT!" as the [Sound of dropped ice cream] and [Former U.K. airline] BOAC, British Overseas Airways Corporation (sometimes a/k/a "Better on a Camel"...), which will always be associated in my mind with the opening lyric of the Beatles' "Back in the U.S.S.R."
Nothin' remotely BLAH [Boring] about a puzzle with this kinda fill. This one has a real [Zing]/KICK to it!
Orange/Amy back on the clock. I've seen the Harold & Kumar movies and yet my first impulse was to have Harold & MAUDE Go to White Castle. Who among us wouldn't want to see that movie?
Sam Donaldson's Los Angeles Times crossword
This easy themeless sat in stark contrast to the NYT today. As I was saying at L.A. Crossword Confidential, I'm partial to grids with four quadrants of stacked, longish answers. This one's got just two such quadrants, but they have quad-stacked 9s rather than the standard triple-stacked fill. The puzzle combines lively and fresh words and phrases with a lot of ordinary fill, which stands in contrast to the Saturday NYT crossword, which had lots of uncommon but not exciting fill. Sure, TESTS and EMOTE are pretty boring words, but I'll take them over this MARRER business. Ideally, of course, a themeless/freestyle puzzle will be packed with juicy stuff, low on the MARRERs, and full of tricky clues for the ordinary words. The L.A. Times puzzle has been laboring under a push for easier clues, so we haven't got the tricky clues today. But soon, maybe!
Highlights:
• 1A: War and more (CARD GAMES). I didn't see that one coming. Even with GAMES in place, I was still thinking of actual war.
• 15A: Strain (OVEREXERT). I like the X, but wish it had been put to better use—the crossing is the partial AXE TO.
• 17A: Place with trays (CAFETERIA). Super-easy clue, no?
• 32A: Cosmetic surgeries (NOSE JOBS). Again, easy clue—but crispy crossword entry.
• 40A: Sherry, often (APERITIF). OK, this is my cue to look up this word, and probably not for the first time. Turning to the dictionary...aperient, "(chiefly of a drug) used to prevent constipation"...wait, just, a little further...here it is. Apéritif is from a French word which draws on the Latin aperire, "to open." You drink it before you eat to whet your appetite. You eat an appetizer for the same reason, purportedly, but the two ap— words are unrelated. Appetite stems from Latin words meaning "desire for/seek after." Not that anyone asked, but I think sherry is gross.
• Here's the nutty Star Wars zone. 47A: Film that's out of order? is a PREQUEL, while 13D: End of a pentamerous serial is PART V. If you're lucky, that is, PART V is the end of the series. Crazy George Lucas went for VI.
• 53A: Seeking advancement at any cost (ON THE MAKE). I almost went with ON THE TAKE, but TAKE has another home in this puzzle.
• 60A: Eastern Canadian province grouping, with "the" (MARITIMES). I'll bet the people near Canada's Pacific coast wish they could be called the Maritimes, too. The Maritime Provinces are Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. How many of you have been to any of those? I've hit Ontario and British Columbia and that's it.
• 62A: Smithsonian collection (AMERICANA). Hey! I went to the National Museum of American History for my first time this summer. A C-3P0 costume is Americana, you know. Don't believe that Tattooine hype. There is no museum of Tattooineana.
• 4D: Cologne crowd? (DREI). "Two's company, but three's a crowd."
• 9D: Child actor's chauffeur? (STAGE MOM). Alternatively, a virtual mother who's going to the party alone is a STAG E-MOM.
• 11D: Tolerates teasing gracefully (TAKES A JOKE). See? This could also have been MAKES A JOKE, though that would be a fairly flat answer, and ON THE MAKE could've been ON THE TAKE. I find that the most of the time when someone says "Can't you take a joke?"—really, that person was being a jerk and the jokee should not be expected to "take a joke."
• 27D: Unwavering (FOUR-SQUARE). Not a term I use. Isn't "four square" also a playground game using a ball?
• 38D: One with immunity (DIPLOMAT). I blew my son's mind when I told him that people with diplomatic plates on their cars can probably get away with parking illegally.
Newsday "Saturday Stumper" by Anna Stiga, a.k.a. Stan Newman
(PDF solution here.)
Don't freak out when Newsday.com invites you to pay for access when you look for this puzzle—just bookmark Stan's site and get the puzzle there. Stan's page loads faster than Newsday's busy site did, too. Win-win.
I had no idea which vowel belonged in the 54A/50D crossing. [Personal-finance guru Dolan] turns out to be DARIA, but for all I knew it was a less common DORIA or something. SAO is clued as [Neptune moon discovered in '02] and I, for one, do not follow the news about small moons orbiting distant planets. There are certainly less esoteric ways of clueing SAO.
Likes:
• The TEMPURA/TEMPERA crossing. Don't care for TEMPURA's clue, [Seafood serving], being reused for BISQUE. TEMPERA's a [Type of paint].
• A LA MODE is clued as [Apple-pie order] but involves actual apple pie and not the idiom "in apple-pie order," meaning "tidy."
• MR. SLATE is [Fred Flintstone's boss]. Took a zillion crossings for me to remember his name. What better to draw a blank on than SLATE?
• TWADDLE, or [Horsefeathers], is a great word.
• ["...the Flying Trapeze" guy] is LEOTARD.
• Who's the best athlete? PELE is [IOC's Athlete of the Century], while Muhammad ALI is [SI's Athlete of the Century]. Did you see the Flip Wilson–as–Geraldine clip with Muhammad Ali that Rex posted at L.A. Crossword Confidential the other day? Funny stuff, and Ali was such a cutie in his younger days.
Dislikes:
• EATEN AT is clued as [Annoyed]. "This puzzle has eaten at me"?
• I like SPATULA, but the clue, [Kitchen blender], feels off to me.
Neutral zone of clues I needed lots of crossings to get:
• [Toon teen in an '89 film] is ARIEL, the Little Mermaid. Never saw it.
• [Five-petal flower] is SEDUM. There are others with five petals, I'm sure.
• [Quarters with buttons] are PUP TENTS. They have buttons? Google tells me the old military pup tents buttoned together...up to World War II. We need to know 1930s tent technology now?
• [Huckleberry's father] is his PAP. Don't be dissing him, now. We don't want any pap smears here.
October 30, 2009
Saturday, 10/31/09
October 02, 2009
Saturday, 10/3/09
Newsday 10:11
NYT 5:24
LAT 3:00
CS untimed (double-Doug!)
NYT diagramless tba
Doug Peterson's New York Times crossword
Did you know that COMEDIAN fits perfectly into the space for 15A: [Stand-up guy]? And yet the answer is FUNNYMAN, but I had the last letter in place so I promptly filled in COMEDIAN. Thank goodness for psychopaths behaving AMORALLY or it would've taken me longer to see the error in my ways. And thank goodness for the NYT's difficulty level remaining intact as an American treasure—I did the Saturday LAT puzzle just before this one, and it's a travesty how easy it was.
Lots of good stuff and hardly any junk in this grid. What's good? This:
You know, I thought this puzzle rolled in on the easier end of the Saturday spectrum, but I'm seeing longer-than-expected times on the applet and the widget in my sidebar. Deadly crossings? Tough clues? Traps? What gives?
"Birdhouse in Your Soul".
Updated Saturday morning:
Doug Peterson's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Concealed Weapons"—Janie's review
You may recall that Monday's puzzle was "C & W" (by Paula Gamache), in which the words of the theme-phrases began with the title letters, and in which one of those theme-phrases was CONCEALED WEAPON. This last puzzle of the week goes one better by literally embedding the word arm, as in 57A. THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS [Constitutional guarantee...] in three more 15-letter phrases. And they just happen to be:
One "K" shy of a pangram, this puzzle is filled with lively, Scrabbly fill. Some of my faves include:
Was amused to see SUES right next to ARTE in the grid. While the former has been clued as [Brings actions against] and the latter as ["Laugh-In" regular Johnson], I was reminded that Alan Sues was also one of the regular (if perhaps less memorable) Laugh-In cast members.
Also smiled at the sequential, echoing clues [Newsman Newman]/EDWIN and [New, to Juan]/NUEVO.
Before I "AM-SCRAY!" (I do enjoy the slangy, ig-pay atin-Lay imperative), let me point out that ["Gunsmoke" star James] ARNESS always carried a weapon (if not necessarily a concealed one), and whether at the card table (where he would [Take from the deck]) or on the streets of Dodge City, might have uttered another imperative: "DRAW!"
Orange here. Imagine my surprise when it was nearly 9:30 when I woke up. That set the lackadaisical pace for my morning, in which I've made breakfast and downloaded a couple software updates but done no crosswords or blogging yet. I did the L.A. Times puzzle last night, so I'll start with that before moving on to the Newsday "Stumper" and Patrick Blindauer's NYT diagramless.
Bruce Venzke and Stella Daily's Los Angeles Times crossword
I can't help wondering if themeless (or, as Matt Gaffney wants to call 'em, "freestyle") crossword constructors are going to be hesitant to submit their creations to the L.A. Times knowing that the clues are likely to be gutted to Tuesday difficulty. I had complained last year when some Newsday "Saturday Stumpers" were hitting the 4-minute range and not stumping me at all—and now the L.A. Times themelesses are closer to the 3-minute mark. I just e-mailed a vague Tribune e-mail address (consumerservices@tribune.com) this morning to ask TMS to provide L.A. Times crosswords that appeal to solvers at all skill levels again, and not just easy puzzles.
Here's some of what I said in my L.A. Crossword Confidential post:
It's loaded with 15-letter answers—a triple-stack in the middle embraced by pairs of 15s above and below. They're all clued straightforwardly, as are the shorter answers. Not a single question-marked clue in the bunch! (And it's almost certain that Stella and Bruce originally wrote tougher clues for the puzzle.) Here are the big entries:
In the fill, there was a karate BROWN BELT with a clue that worked OK for BLACK BELT. Despite putting in that half-wrong answer early on, I still finished this puzzle in 3 minutes flat. That ain't right!
Stan Newman's alter ego Anna Stiga's Newsday "Saturday Stumper"
(PDF solution here.)
I may have spent half of my solving time trying to make sense out of the upper left corner of this puzzle. I hated it. It was patently unfair. I was tempted to Google the [Musical with Billy Joel songs] or [Sugar ___ (Monroe in "Some Like It Hot")], both of which I was blanking on. And then I figured out that [Pay back] was AVENGE and that [Yellow] must be GUTLESS (in another part of the puzzle, it's CRAVEN) and eventually everything fell into place (MOVIN' OUT, Sugar KANE). I kept thinking that 1A: [They go up in a plane] had something to do with airplanes (blame the [Fighter heroes], AVIATORS and AIR ACES, for that), but a plane is also a wood-shop tool that scrapes up SHAVINGS. Other clues in that corner that held me back but finally yielded: [Reveals, with "out"] is SMOKES, [Something paid] is HOMAGE, [Gave extra info on] is NOTATED. I ended up liking this quadrant of the puzzle best—lots of mental stretching and bending required to get to the intended meanings of the clues.
Time to put the blog away and play a geography board game with my kid. I may or may not get to the diagramless before tomorrow.
September 04, 2009
Saturday, 9/5/09
NYT 4:29 the second time around, untimed the first time
LAT untimed, but it fell smoothly
Newsday untimed, with some snarls
CS untimed (J)
Mike Nothnagel's New York Times crossword
Mike's puzzle was originally the finals puzzle at the Lollapuzzoola tournament a couple weeks ago. I test-solved it aboard an airplane, untimed because my only watch is my cell phone and phones must be turned off during flight. Brian Cimmet, the cohost of Lollapuzzoola, was looking for a tough finals puzzle, so I suggested a few spots that might need toughening up. Aw, I'm disappointed that the genus and species of brine shrimp (Artemia salina) didn't make it into the SEA MONKEY clue, per my suggestion. (15D: [Pet for which you can buy an Aqua-Leash] is harder than the original, at least.) I haven't compared the Lolla final version with the NYT version, so I don't know if there were (m)any changes.
I wouldn't have used the "play against the clock" option on the applet if I'd remembered that the puzzle was one I'd seen before, but the margaritas, they kept me from remembering. Ah, well. Still, Mike's fill and clues were worth another go-round.
Favorite clues and answers:
Updated Saturday morning:
Randall J. Hartman's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Tuckered Out"—Janie's review
Randy may complain of fatigue, and even though the first words of each of the three theme-phrases begin with a synonym for that condition—really, to judge from the fill today, there's little evidence of it at all. Take a look:
Lotta names in the mix today. The gents are: (H.) ROSS Perot, Nicola TESLA, RON Howard, Don IMUS, PETER Ueberroth, Ernest or Julio GALLO and Patrick EWING; the ladies: EDIE Falco, ANNE Hathaway, AMY Adams and ["Cheers" barmaid], the snarky and super CARLA Tortelli.
Other strong fill would include: RANCOR; TAPIRS, those unusual-looking [South American mammals] (that are darned cute in the baby-stage); EXUDE and OXIDE; CURFEW and CUT MAN [Figure in a boxing ring]. That last one conjures up Clint Eastwood ("the best cut man in the business"), Morgan Freeman and Hillary Swank in the rip-yer-heart-out Million Dollar Baby.
Places where I needed the crosses to keep me on track bring me back to our friend AXIOM, where my first thought was adage; [Stratagem]—that's plan, right? Nupe, more like the wily WILE; [Copies] are CLONES today and not mimics; and those [..."knock-knock" jokes]? They're PUNNY, not corny. (Well, they're corny, too—but that's another story!)
Doug Peterson's Los Angeles Times crossword
Fun puzzle, but definitely on the easy side for a Saturday. The morning is racing on without me, so let me do a quick copy-and-paste excerpt from L.A. Crossword Confidential with the crossword's highlights:
Newsday "Saturday Stumper" by "Anna Stiga," aka Stan Newman
(PDF solution here.)
If you like to compare your solving times with mine, boy, you're fresh out of luck today. Maybe tomorrow!
The last corner I was able to work through was the northwest one. The three toughest clues for me in that quadrant were [Powerless people of fiction] for MUGGLES, the non-wizard people in the Harry Potter universe); [Knighted actor] Peter USTINOV, who does not have a very British Isles surname, so he was a surprise there; and [Name meaning "I am faithful"], which brought people name FIDEL to mind but not dog name FIDO, the answer.
The upper right corner is topped by QADHAFI, the [African Union chairman elected in 2009], the guy whose name can be transliterated in about 10 different spellings. He's above "YA THINK?"—a [Jocular "Really?"]. Moving towards the puzzle's midsection, we hit BOO BIRD, or [No fan of the home team]. Who uses that term?
Dropping down to the lower left, LEN is a [Spy novelist's prename]. Len...Len...Deighton? Yeah, that's the guy. I started with IAN Fleming. I didn't know that it was the YEW TREE that was [Wordsworth's "pride of Lorton Vale"]. Oak, elm, ash...so many trees to choose from.
In the final quadrant, I started with FATCATS instead of TOMCATS for [Garfield et al.]. [Like moles] uses the two-syllable mole, the MEXICAN sauce made with chocolate. P.W. BOTHA, that unsavory [ANC opponent] who ruled South Africa as a staunch proponent of apartheid, balances QADHAFI's North Africa geographically.
July 31, 2009
Saturday, 8/1
Newsday just under 11 minutes
NYT 6:30
LAT 4:11
CS 12:27 (J—paper)/3:47 (A—Across Lite)
Martin Ashwood-Smith's New York Times crossword
Remember Roberto Duran's famous plea, "¡No mas!"? Based on the early returns (i.e., the applet times posted thus far), I suspect more than a few people have been feeling rather "¡No mas, M.A.S.!" about this puzzle. Interesting and tough fill, a hearty batch of challenging clues, several easy traps to fall into, and some crazy crossings? That's a recipe for an arduous solving experience. What a great-looking grid, though, eh? Look at that diagonal swath of white space sprawling across the middle of the puzzle.
First up, the Tar Pits of Traps and Tricky Crossings:
That was some hardcore Saturday stickiness, wasn't it?
Moving along to regular ol' tough Saturday clues without, perhaps, that extra touch of evil the aforementioned bits had, we have these:
I would be remiss if I didn't mention a few other things I liked:
You know, looking back at this grid, I see that the northwest and southeast corners don't have much interplay with the rest of the puzzle. If you aren't hitting a couple quick gimmes in each corner, that could make it an arduous task to work your way into those sections. I didn't personally feel attacked by that, but I recognize that it's the sort of grid that can frustrate too many people. But it's still pretty...
Updated Saturday morning:
Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Cool Bin"—Janie's review
If you don't enjoy a good pun (or three), this puzzle is not for you. On the other hand, if you're like me and take high pleasure in this low form of humor, this one's for you! Bob has given us three phrases, each containing a word that has the letter sequence "oa" in it, and changed it to a word with the "oo" phoneme in its place. The "cool bin" in the title, was once a "coal bin." Get it? Good. Then get a load of the great clue/fill combos we get with:
How else did I love this puzzle? Let me count some of the more outstanding ways. For starters, there's the particular range of names, including: actors JOHN HURT, Robin WILLIAMS, Christina RICCI, and Lash LA RUE; conductor Seiji OZAWA; author ENID Blyton; athletes OLGA Korbut, OTTO Graham and Jim THORPE; Old and New Testament reps ISAIAH and JUDAS; distiller HIRAM Walker; and Emperor HIROHITO.
One of my favorite crosses is HIROHITO with MOJITO [Rum-and-mint cocktail...]. Because it's an almond-flavored liqueur, I'd always thought AMARETTO meant "almond." In fact the word for "almond" in Italian is mandoria (which gets me thinking of mandelbrot...), though Amaretto may be distilled from bitter almonds—whence the clue [Liqueur that's Italian for "rather bitter"]. All of which is a PROLIX [Long-winded] way of getting to my point, which is that I also love seeing potable AMARETTO by HIROHITO's side also being crossed by potable MOJITO.
And since I've mentioned it, let me add that the SE column made by PROLIX, APOGEE and PETARD is a beauty. Nice, too, the way ARMY sits atop BASE in the SW—and the way that crossing herpetological pair SNAKY and SLITHERY falls in between.
Some fave clues include:
No doubt, I've excluded your fave(s). SUNLIT, anyone? In that case, do speak up. I think we can agree, though, that once again, Bob has made something EPIC of this compact 15x15 form.
Newsday "Saturday Stumper" by Anna Stiga, a.k.a. "Stan again," a.k.a. Stanley Newman
(PDF solution here.)
Nothing too deadly, but nothing too delightful either. I didn't push to go as fast as I could this time. Here are some answers that did not come quite as readily as the others:
Barry Silk's Los Angeles Times crossword
My full writeup, including a LEIF Garrett video, is over at L.A. Crossword Confidential.
I don't know about this puzzle. Usually I enjoy Barry's puzzles quite a bit, but this one didn't do it for me. Maybe I was just tired yesterday when I did it. Or maybe it's that crosswords with this sort of grid—tons of seven-letter answers but not much in the Really Cool Long Answers department—seldom delight me. When Saturday rolls around, dang it, I want Really Cool Long Answers. I want a JOE BAZOOKA more than BETTERS, PETTIER, and AIRIEST, y'know? The fill was pretty Scrabbly (a pangram to boot), but outside of REYKJAVIK and SPECIAL K, the Scrabbly letters weren't put to splashy use. A Z and an X in close proximity sounds awesome, but the TAX-FREE CZARINA? Eh.
I will almost certainly like Barry's next creation much more. He's got the chops to do cool stuff, but this wasn't among my Silken favorites.
July 03, 2009
Saturday, 7/4
NYT 5:20
LAT 4:00
Newsday untimed
CS 7:20 (J―paper)
Happy Fourth of July!
Peter A. Collins and Joe Krozel's New York Times crossword
When a holiday lands on a Saturday, every now and then we get a commemorative themed Saturday puzzle. Peter and Joe's puzzle is anchored by INDEPENDENCE DAY running down at 7D, clued as the [Highest-grossing film of 1996], crossed by three related 15s: THE UNITED STATES is not just a country but also the [Fastest ocean liner ever in a transatlantic crossing (3 days, 12 hours, 12 minutes)]. The STARS AND STRIPES is what we call the U.S. flag and the name of a military newspaper, clued as [Private reading?], as in the newspaper read by privates in the Army. [Patriotic display] is the RED, WHITE, AND BLUE—and I didn't need the clue to fill that one in with a few crossings in place. The word count's just 70, so with unrelated 15s, this could be a themeless grid. I enjoyed this puzzle quite a bit.
Seven highlights before I hit the sack:
• 15A. MONGO is the [Planet ruled by Ming the Merciless in "Flash Gordon"]. I half watched the movie with my son last year. Ridiculously cheesy!
• 33A. [Copy cats?] is a verb phrase. If you imitate kitties, you might PURR.
• 49A. To [Bellyache] is to KVETCH. You know what the kvetchers cry, don't you? They cry "oy vey.'
• 58A. ROD STEIGER looks great in the puzzle. [Oscar-winning portrayer of Police Chief Bill Gillespie, 1967] is his clue. In the Heat of the Night opposite Sidney Poitier, no?
• 31D. [Star of India and others] are SAPPHIRES.
• 34D. [It may make people jump to a conclusion] clues a SACK RACE.
• 35D. [Broke a court rule] in basketball is TRAVELED.
Updated Saturday morning:
Randolph Ross's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Space Exploration"―Janie's review
While we don't have "Stars and Stripes Forever" on this Independence Day, Randy has provided a celestial array (with one star anyway). The beginning of each of the five theme-related phrases (in 61 letters of theme-fill) names a heavenly body.
I've not yet seen the movie (it's on my library dvd-list), but (the trailer of) Fight Club came to mind when I saw ACTS OUT beside RULE ONE [Most important guideline] (both of which appear to be CS debuts). Remember? "Welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club!" That's one rule one ya wanna take very seriously!
Oh―and I'm wondering how many times NICOLAS [Cage on film] appears in the same puzzle as his aunt TALIA [Shire in show business]. Anyway, it's nice to see them paired here.
The cluing throughout was fairly straightforward, but not without some highpoints. I liked seeing familiar ASEA clued as [Between ports] which gives me a strong visual. Also liked ESTS for [Ballpark figs.]. Nice misdirection there, as often-as-not the fill is MGRS. So we're in the metaphorical ballpark today with an abbreviation for estimates and not in [your favorite stadium here] with the team's managers.
I felt there was something off in the cluing of ARMBAND. While there's precedent for [Symbol worn on a sleeve] as a crossword clue, darned if I could find support for it in the dictionary. Looking through most of the Onelook.com listings, I consistently came up with some variation of "band/piece of cloth worn around the arm for decoration/as identification or to indicate mourning/protest." The clue suggested emblem to me―which is one letter shy of course―the sort that folks in the military display. Or Scouts for that matter.
Before parting, will add that I enjoyed seeing the meeting of MA'AM and MESSRS in the northeast corner. Enjoy a happy, safe and glorious Fourth, all!
Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword
There's much to admire in this themed, 15x16, 73-word holiday crossword. Tons of good fill, clever clues, the works. See what I had to say over at L.A. Crossword Confidential. Between a foot injury, a nascent cold, and sleeping in this morning, I find I lack the pep to blog this puzzle a second time. But it's a good puzzle! If you haven't done it, you ought to make time for it.
Updated Saturday afternoon:
"Anna Stiga" or Stan Newman's Newsday "Saturday Stumper"
(PDF solution here.)
I did this one a quadrant at a time, starting with the lower right corner, moving up to the upper right, filling in the lower left, and trudging through the upper right last. While the only famous [Jan. honoree] is Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., it took forever to figure out what combination of his name and titles would fit together there. I call foul on DR. M. L. KING, JR., which looks cool in the grid with its 90% consonants, but doesn't at all sound like a common way to refer to King. It Googles OK but...meh.
JOB LOT isn't so familiar to me. It's a [Large quantity] and a solid in-the-dictionary term. I had the J for a long time before coming up with RAGTOPS (not HUBCAPS!) for [Auto parts] helped jostle things loose in that section.
Favorite clues and answers:
• [His fiction inspired "Airplane!"] clues Arthur HAILEY, who wrote Airport, which spawned several '70s disaster movies, which Airplane! then spoofed.
• IRA LEVIN, author of Rosemary's Baby, gets this clue: [Stephen King called him "the Swiss watchmaker"].
• A plain ol' LENS is [One of your contacts].
• When I had ODI* for [He wears a yellow coat and pants], I paused to question whether this was cartoon dog ODIE (yes) or Norse god ODIN (no).
• [Something Spooner might have "flung out"]...hmm, it's probably a spoonerism involving "hung out," so what's something that starts with FL that can be hung out and that becomes another word when the FL turns into an H? Flag —> HAG.
• JUDGE JUDY! Great answer. She's a [Non-nonsense arbiter] on TV.
• Trivia! [His "Time" cover featured seven syringes] kept me guessing for a long time. Turns out it's polio vaccine developer Jonas SALK. With S***, I briefly contemplated SOSA.
October 03, 2008
Saturday, 10/4
Newsday 7:48
NYT 6:34
LAT 4:20
CS 3:15
(updated at 10:30 p.m. Saturday)
Would you look at that? Matt Ginsberg's New York Times crossword is a 68-word puzzle, so it must be themeless—except that three 13-letter answers spell out [an Einstein quote that holds true when solving clever crosswords]. That quote splits up into these three chunks: IMAGINATION IS / MORE IMPORTANT / THAN KNOWLEDGE. I've never heard the quote, and my typing was all bollixed up tonight, and I took the wrong road for 32-Down, so this puzzle didn't feel very easy. I had the R from STRESS ([Type A problem]), so I figured [One might refuse to shake hands] meant a variant spelling, GERMPHOBE. That's not a word, turns out. The answer is a SORE LOSER.
There are some fun clue pairs here. [Rover's watcher] is NASA, while [Rover's reward] is a doggie TREAT. Two answers share the clue [Burning]: RED HOT and URGENT. (I made a wrong turn with ARDENT there.) [R.S.V.P., e.g.: Abbr.] is an ANS. (answer), while [R.S.V.P. facilitator: Abbr.] is an SAE (self-addressed envelope).
The clues I liked best are these:
Other answers I was fond of are NARCISSUS, a specific [Self-absorbed individual]; chicken NUGGETS; and ON PATROL, or [Making the rounds], because I so enjoyed the SpongeBob episode in which he sings "I'm on patro-o-ol." Things I hadn't known:
Updated:
Robert Wolfe's themeless LA Times crossword puzzle was a bit easier than other recent Saturday LA Times offerings. Here's some of what it contained:
Tom Schier's CrosSynergy crossword, "Directional Humor," spells out a quip with zero Google hits, so I suspect the quip's of Schier's own devising. The [Comedian's quip] is "A STRAIGHT LINE IS / THE / SHORTEST / DISTANCE / BETWEEN TWO JOKES." That THE segment breaks the symmetry of the theme layout, but that's remedied by placing GAG, or [Comedian's offering, such as this puzzle's quip], opposite THE in the grid. The first three answers I filled in, 1- and 2-Down and 1-Across, were SPAS, WASP, and SWAPS, so for a moment I envisioned a puzzle filled in with only the letters found in those answers—but no. That wouldn't work. Who knew an INGATE was a [Molten metal channel]? Not I. The [Long-armed ape] or ORANG appears in both this puzzle and today's LAT.
Updated Saturday night:
Stan Newman's alter ego, Anna Stiga, constructed this week's Newsday "Saturday Stumper." It's got 72 words, the max for a themeless puzzle, so it's got pretty smooth fill. The difficulty arises in the clues, not the answers. (Complete solution grid is here in PDF form.) It's late, so allow me to intermingle my favorite clues and answers with some tough stuff:
May 30, 2008
Saturday, 5/31
Newsday 40-some minutes, with liberal Googling
NYT 9:15
LAT 6:34
CS 2:24
Ach, headache. (Pre-crossword.)
You know how 1-Across can set the tone for a crossword puzzle? Robert Wolfe's New York Times crossword has an odd phrase there: [Porky] clues FAT AS A HOG. If you're like me, you had PIG there and eventually changed it to get crossings to work; if you're like me, you then Googled "fat as a hog" to see if it's an in-the-language phrase. Er, it's not. At least not in the internet age. Just 921 Google hits this evening—compare that to the 34,200 hits that misspelled Gremany gets. The adjectival THREE-TON, [Like some adult hippos], also clunked. Here's the rest of the rundown in list form, starting with the Acrosses:
Moving along to the Downs:
Updated:
Well! Time flies when you go out for Blackberry Bliss Cakes for brunch and then shopping for summer clothes. It was hard to summon up the urge to shop for sleeveless when the lakeside temperatures were limited to the upper 50s.
That Newsday "Saturday Stumper" by Stan Newman (writing as Anna Stiga, "Stan again") was a killer. It's definitely in contention for the year's toughest crossword, what with taking me a good 40 to 45 minutes in a couple solving sessions and at least 10 different Google searches. I know it took Byron Walden a fourth as long as it took me, but that's still a considerable amount of time for a solver of his caliber. I can't say I enjoyed the puzzle, though. It felt largely obscure and oblique rather than twisty and clever. [Richard Burton subject] is ALI BABA? Apparently it's this guy, an explorer, and not the actor. [It's usually played sitting down] is BASS SAX—never knew there were saxes besides the tenor and alto. [Declination declaration] means "WHAT DO YOU MEAN, WE?" Er, okay. [Mary Collins, familiarly] is BO DEREK; you know how many other Mary Collinses come up ahead of her in Google? [Resort founded by Chet Huntley] is BIG SKY? So what? And a [Beef by-product] is OLEO OIL? (a) That's not remotely a lively answer. (b) It's sneaky because oleomargarine/oleo is a vegetable oil product. (c) It's not a fun sneaky. ["Princess Bride" name] is CARY because Cary Elwes is an actor in it. Now, that seems like a weird way to clue that. So, tell me—what was your experience with the Stumper this week?
Lynn Lempel's LA Times crossword, in contrast, had a bunch of clues with pleasing little "aha" moments when I deciphered them. To wit: [Canal problem] is EARACHE; [Hit the bottom?] is SPANKED; [Where one might be held up?] is a SEESAW; [Head of the line?] of royal succession is SIRE; [Place between Virginia and Tennessee?] refers to the Monopoly board and ST. JAMES Place; [AA or AAA] is an ORG., or organization (also small bra cup sizes, battery sizes, and minor league baseball levels); and [One living off the land?] is a SEAMAN on the water. Other favorite fill includes BYGONES, NOT MUCH TO LOOK AT, GETS DOWN and [Parties], and the Nike SWOOSH.
Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy crossword, "You Tubes," is a bit easier than most CrosSynergy offerings, which is fine with me given the Newsday beating. The theme entries begin with words that can precede tube: PICTURE POSTCARD is a [Tourist's memento], and picture tube is part of a non-flatscreen TV. Test tubes link to TEST MARKETING, or [New product sales offering]. And tire innertubes join INNER MONGOLIA, or [Region of northeast China].
April 04, 2008
Saturday, 4/5
Newsday 9:05 (in the Newsday applet)
NYT 5:35
LAT tba
CS tba
I liked Rich Norris's Saturday New York Times crossword. The three 10-letter answers stacked across the upper left corner start all with adjectives—SHORT STRAW, MEDIUM RARE, and TALL...no, wait...IRON MAIDEN. I couldn't believe that last one—an early '80s music clue ([Band with the 1982 platinum album "The Number of the Beast"]) I needed a bunch of crossings to get. Metal is not my genre. All righty, let's get straight to the business of the trickiest clues:
- [Not a very good drawing] is a SHORT STRAW.
- [A little red] means MEDIUM RARE (hmm, maybe OIL PAINT shouldn't be clued as [Medium in a tube], even though they're different senses of the word?).
- The [View from the back seat?] is the NAPE of the neck of someone sitting in the front seat.
- The vague [Certain code] is TAX LAW; April 15 is 10 days off—if you haven't filed your tax return yet, get a move on!).
- [Get ready to take off] means STRAP IN, as a pilot or airline passenger might do, while [Connecting flight] involves STAIRS rather than air travel.
- [When Arbor Day is observed: Abbr.] is SPR, short for spring, rather than APR, short for April.
- The seemingly plural [Recent developments] is the LATEST.
- [The other shoe, e.g.] is a MATE, not just something that's expected to drop.
- [Bean product?] is a BRAINCHILD.
- [Upsetting types] are DARK HORSES in the race.
- [Twist things] is the plural noun, RINDS (as in "a twist of lemon") and not a verb, while [Saves, e.g.] is a baseball STAT and not a verb ending in S.
- The vague [Test] is a TRIAL RUN.
- [It's hard to do this barefoot] is WATERSKI, but my first thought was TAPDANCE.
- [Fountain requests] are WISHES when you throw a coin in, and not soda fountain orders.
- A [Standard] is a YARDSTICK you measure something against.
These ones are "just the facts, ma'am" clues—straightforward factual clues you may or may not know the answers to, many of 'em interesting:
- [Da capo ___ (Baroque piece)] is filled in by ARIA (solo singer plus instruments).
- The [River past the ruins of Nineveh] is the TIGRIS; across the river from Nineveh is Mosul, Iraq.
- A [10th-century exile from Iceland] is ERIC THE RED.
- [Bygone New York daily, with "the"] is HERALD.
- From the land of math and science, we have RADIXES ([Base numbers, in math]) and TRIVALENT ([Like some chromium and arsenic]).
- DEPAUL University's team are [The Blue Demons of the N.C.A.A. Big East], and I can't believe I waited for crossings to reveal...my parents' alma mater.
- Lake TITICACA is the [Two-part lake connected by the Strait of Tiquina], and it's everybody's favorite body of water from Trivial Pursuit.
- [1996 Emmy-winning role for Alan Rickman] is RASPUTIN; totally forgot this, though I feel like I saw part of it on TV a couple years ago.
[Question answerer] is a POLLEE—I don't recall seeing the word before, but it is a valid noun derived from the verb poll. My eyeballs want this to transfigure itself into actress and director Sarah POLLEY or POLLEN, but then we'd lose the DARK HORSES.
The first name of [Choreographer Lubovitch] is LAR—this is the second time I've seen his name and I hadn't remembered him, so it was time to read up. He's a couple weeks younger than my mom (like her, born in Chicago), founded his own dance troupe in '68, and choreographs ballets, Broadway shows, and ice-dancing routines. Maybe I'll remember the name now.
I don't get why [Thai relative] is VIET. According to the Wikipedia articles on those languages, they're in different language groups, and the countries are separated by Laos and Cambodia. Is this clue akin to cluing ITALIAN as [German relative] because they're both European? I await enlightenment.
Updated:
Barry Silk's LA Times crossword has a lot of good stuff in it, but alas, I am running out of blogging time this morning (the subsequent paragraphs were written first). Favorite bits: [Dutch for "hidden river"] for SCHUYLKILL (crazy letter sequence + Dutch etymology = winner); IRAQ is followed by IRANIAN OIL ([Japan and China are its biggest importers]); [Mass transit unit] is both a TROLLEY CAR ("Clang, clang!" It's Mister Rogers' Neighborhood!) and a TRAM; [Settler, sometimes] is a CREDITOR; [Capital east of Bangor] is HALIFAX, Nova Scotia; [Where pa'anga are spent] is TONGA; and Christina AGUILERA ([2000 Best New Artist Grammy winner] crosses EGG SALAD ([Sandwich spread]), which amuses me for some reason.
Eww, I don't care for the Newsday crossword applet one bit. I did the "Saturday Stumper" by Stan Newman (writing as "Anna Stiga") on it, which I never do, and when you start in the middle of a word and reach the end...it just leaves you there. I like to be delivered promptly to the first blank square from the beginning of the word. And using the arrow key to change directions also moved me one square over in the new direction, which I'm not used to. Moreover, in my browser, not every clue was entirely visible, so the ROLEX clue was [BusinessWeek's #1 brand in ']. So! Next time, I will wait as long as it takes for the printer to function before I give up and use that applet. EASY RAWLINS looks terrific in the grid, but ["Cinnamon Kiss" hero] didn't tap anything I know. [Ilene and Rosanna, to Strait] are the EX'S in the George Strait song, "All My Ex's Live in Texas" (I know it only from crosswords). [Coke product] is TAR, from dirty industrial settings, and not TAB soda. The surprise [Romance language] is ARAGONESE...which I do not speak. [Fixin' to] means GONNA. I got DIVESTURE ([Shedding]), but prefer divestiture. As always in the themeless Newsdays, there are some vague short clues, such as [Flights] for AIR TRAVEL—not stairs, flights of fancy, lams, wine flights, or anything to do with birds, but any of those would be a plausible interpretation of the clue.
Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy crossword, "Set Piece," is Monday-easy. The three theme entries have the same clue, [SET]. Set is one of those words with a zillion dictionary definitions and multiple etymologies—two theme answers relate to verb definition 1 and noun definition 9 for set with an Old English derivation; a set of items or a musician's set come from the Latin secta instead. The third theme entry is Set, the EVIL EGYPTIAN GOD. According to this, it sounds like he wasn't so evil—just the victim of a smear campaign.
March 05, 2008
Missed weekend puzzles (not from the ACPT)
Sat. Newsday 14:55
Sun. CS 4:16
Sun. WaPo 7:15
Sun. PI (I don't remember the time)
Sun. BG 8:08
Sun. LAT 10:25
Henry Hook's Boston Globe online crossword, "Contain Yourself," is well worth the trip back to Sunday to download it. The 10 theme entries are words or phrases that include the letters IN in the middle somewhere, and can be split into three-word "___ in ___" phrases. The theme was really funny as these things go—[STY(IDOL)LISH] is a HERO IN CHIC (heroin chic). Heroin chic is not the sort of phrase that pops up much in crosswords! Brainwash becomes BRA IN WASH, and there's more undergarment action with MART IN SHORT. There's also a fresh MUFF IN TOP. Two fun names in the theme—Howard Stern's radio sidekick ROB IN QUIVERS and DUST IN DIAMOND, the guy who played the inimitable Screech on Saved by the Bell.
One of the weekend's themeless puzzles I missed doing until today is Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge." It's sort of a spidery grid, with tentacles of grid spinning out from the center anchored by three vertical 15s. Plenty of fresh fill. Now, why clue OPA as [FDR measure] when [Mutter's vater] or [Göttingen gramps] is there for the taking? Didn't we all take at least a year of German? No?
Liz Gorski's Washington Post puzzle, "TV Foodies," added a word to TV show titles to make up things like NYPD BLUEBERRIES, TIC TAC DOUGHNUTS, and VERONICA MARS BARS. Yummy theme! V. good fill, too.
I solved Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle, "The Five-Picture Deal," a couple weeks ago when it was available on Merl's website and somebody raved about it at the NYT forum. (I think I'll stick to using the Puzzle Pointers/Cruciverb/Ephraim's Puzzle Pointers links rather than getting puzzles on some other schedule at Merl's site. Don't want to run the risk of having none left for a given weekend!) So there's a STALLONE theme, a bunch of Sylvester Stallone movie titles that can mostly be clued as words or phrases (e.g., CLIFFHANGER and COPLAND mean things outside of cinema). The five unchecked squares in the middle are a fictional Stallone movie that could exist if Hollywood wanted Stallone to make more 5-letter movies that have several letters in common: CROAK shares four letters with ROCKY and COBRA, and three with RAMBO, for instance. Kind of a weird endgame, emerging from Merl's fevered wordplay brain rather than reality. Merl waited 16 years for Stallone to make another sequel that was actually entitled RAMBO so this theme could come together with titles rather than characters.
In his syndicated Sunday LA Times crossword, "A Little Bit Off," Dan Naddor drops ITY from the end of a word in a phrase and reclues accordingly. Thus, someone fatally addicted to knickknacks might be said to be DYING OF CURIOS (curiosity). I still haven't caught up on last weekend's missed sleep, so I got really woozy by the time I started this puzzle (and it's not even 7 p.m. yet!). Three puzzles this evening were OK, but the fourth has pushed me beyond my reserves. The Newsday Saturday Stumper will have to wait until after I've had dinner and tried to wake up...maybe tomorrow.
Updated with Newsday:
Stan Newman crafted last weekend's Newsday "Saturday Stumper" under the fake name Anna Stiga. (From here on out, I'm going to imagine that male constructors using female pseudonyms actually wear drag while they're constructing those puzzles. I think of Rich Norris's Lila Cherry as a sweet old lady with cotton-candy hair, a cardigan, and sensible Naturalizer shoes.) Back to the crossword: Crikey! That was hard. So many vague or obscure or oblique clues (but not many funny ones), but in the end, I have to say that everything's fair. I know HOLLAND, of course, but it was a [County of the Holy Roman Empire]? Did not know that. The ["Yes, I'm a Witch" artist] and ["Inside Las Vegas" artist] crossing in the middle—very familiar names, but those aren't remotely their most famous works (YOKO ONO, MARIO PUZO). [A, in a way] is Morse code DOT DASH. [Ensemble's home]? I was too clever to think it was a theater. So I went with DRESSER, only it turned out to be ARMOIRE. [Downing Street dessert] wanted a specific British desssert, I thought, but it turned out to be the general AFTERS. What the hell is a SKID PAD? It's a [Test-track area], apparently. [Polish servings] are the non-S plural, PIEROGI (yum!), but it took forever to suss that out. [Uncle's relative] is not kinfolk, but rather, I GIVE UP. I swear I've seen this clue or something very like it before, an yet it stumped me again. Others have griped before that SALSA DIP is redundant and nobody says the DIP part; but you can make a dip with salsa as one ingredient. Cool crossing between ON VIDEO and TV STAND. This puzzle is definitely in contention for toughest themeless crossword of 2008. Constructors and editors, can you top this one?
