NYT 23:39
BG 28:08
Reagle 19:31
LAT 20:58
CS 31:35
Team Orange weekend coverage continues. Now, from our Seattle bureau, here's Sam Donaldson.
Happy Sunday, everyone. Orange and her DSL-like solving times will reclaim the throne tomorrow, but today you get the analysis of a dial-up solver for the Sunday crosswords.
Will Nediger's New York Times Crossword, "Cued Up"
As a solver, I'm easy to please. I love wacky, envelope-pushing Krozel-esque puzzles as much as the next guy, but honestly, if you give me a simple theme and execute it really well, I'm just as happy. Today's NYT is a fine example: a simple letter-addition theme that is elegant and enjoyable. Nediger inserts a "QU" somewhere inside seven common phrases and then clues the wackiness that results. Behold the delights that unfold:
I have a feeling that QUEASY RIDER was the GERM [Starting point] for this puzzle, but there are so many other good ones here that I can't be sure. Engineering fresh fill around so many Qs is not easy, but Nediger's grid has lots of good stuff. And it appears we're only a "J" shy of a pangram in this grid, for those who care about such things. Highlights include: PLAN A, the [Primary stratagem]; MINI-GOLF, clued as [It may feature a windmill]; BEAVIS, the [TV character often seen in a Metallica T-shirt]; MIST OVER, or [Get fogged up]; UNDIES, clued somewhat deceptively as [Drawers, e.g.]; and BOB SAGET, the [Narrator of "How I Met Your Mother"] and a prominent figure in the movie, "The Aristocrats." Trust me, you'll never look at Bob Saget the same way again after you see that movie (or as much of it as you can stomach, anyway). I loved it, but I have a high tolerance for offensive material.
Those who, like me, enjoy proper names in their puzzles had more than Bob Saget and Beavis on which to feast. There was the Hindu god VISHNU (the clue tells us [Krishna is one of his avatars]), ["Tamerlane" dramatist Nicholas] ROWE, Tom SNYDER of "The Tomorrow Show," the poet James Whitcomb RILEY crossing Mets general manager OMAR Minaya, and Iranian supreme leader ALI Khamenei, among others.
I fell into a few traps, but few of them bogged me down for a long time. I tried NO-HITTER and PERFECT GAME for the [Pitcher's feat] until I came to ONE-HITTER. Then I tried AMOEBA for [One surrounded by cell walls] before tumbling to INMATE. The "A" at the insersection of Pierre de FERMAT, the [French mathematician who pioneered in the theory of probability], and ["Jour de Fete" star, director, and writer] Jacques TATI, was a total guess. Others may have had a hard time in that area too if they did not know CERT, the [Legal writ, in brief] that's short for certiorari. I also had a hard time with the clue for NOUN, [It may be declined]. Apparently, when you change a noun to distinguish the singular from the plural, you "decline" it. Huh, go figure.
Henry Hook's Boston Globe Crossword, "Address Book"
Hook subjects seven different terms commonly found in physical addresses to a little wordplay. Some of the results are stellar; others are a bit--get ready--pedestrian.
Check out how Hook manages to place one theme entry directly atop another in both the NW and SE! If a mere mortal attempted this, the fill would be compromised beyond belief. Hook is one of, what, a handful of constructors that can make this look easy? Sure, each of the corners features some less-than-stellar fill: a partial name (!) (LEE DE-Forest, the inventor of the vacuum tube), a partial chorus (the [Kiddie-song ending] EIO, the last 60% of Old McDonald's "E-I-E-I-O"), a strange French word (INCONNUS) clued as [Strangers, in Strasbourg], and LAFEU, the small-fries role of an [Old lord in "All's Well That Ends Well"], come readily to mind. But the rest of those corners were, I think, entirely legit.
There is much to love in this grid. [Scout master?] is a fun clue for TONTO (Scout:Tonto :: Silver:Lone Ranger). Other fun clues included [Some like it hot] for TEA, [First word of "Kokomo"] for ARUBA, and [Take a ride?] for HIJACK. Today's confession = I plunked down OH SHEILA, the [1985 Ready for the World hit song], without a single crossing to help. One need not be proud of everything buried in one's mind. Look for it on YouTube and you'll know my shame.
I struggled mostly in the far east section of the grid. I nearly got a migraine from IGRAINE, [King Arthur's mother], and it did not help to be unfamiliar with the [Lupin of whodunits], ARSENE. Any time I see the name "Lupin" I think of the Harry Potter novels. The [Pacific republic] of NAURU required every single crossing to get, and even then I was unsure whether I had it right. Below all of that, you had to grapple with four intersecting proper names, BARA, BELA, JEREZ, and JOLENE. I was lucky to know three of the four (only Jerez eluded me), but other solvers may have hit a wall here. The only other entry to stay hidden for a long time was PONIARD, the [Thin-bladed dagger].
Finally, if I had a vote, I would nominate the clue for MASON-DIXON, [Their line was in real estate], for a 2009 Oryx. That's just a thing of beauty. OK, so far Oryxes have only been given to entire crosswords and not to individual fill or clues, but if the Oscars can award supporting cast members separately and expand the Best Picture field from five to ten films, there should be some room to give special recognition to great clues that almost single-handedly make the solving experience a delight.
Merl Reagle's Syndicated Crossword, "The Furry Thought of You"
Reagle proves once again that when it comes to puns, he is the cat's meow. This puzzle offers seven purr-fect phrases with a feline touch. Okay, retract your claws--I'll leave the cat puns to the master.
Despite the relatively quick solving time (for me), there were some thorny entries that slowed me down. I don't think I have ever seen VIANDS, a supply of [Food], and it didn't help that it intersected with ODALISQUE, a [Harem girl]. Fortunately I was familiar enough with YAQUI, an [Indian of Sonora, Mex.]. If not, that corner might have become unsolvable. Nearby sit Nabisco's UNEEDA biscuits from 1898. Biscuits from 1898? Merl, seriously - uneeda clean out your pantry. Up in the north, INGLE, the [Brit's fireplace], didn't make me tingle, but all of the crossings were fair. In the SE, TOY SALES, the [Post-Christmas events], struck me as a little forced.
The hardest intersection for me was where PULI, the [Hungarian sheepdog], met [Actress Joanne] DRU. Part of the problem was that I was sure "POUNCING PAW" was supposed to be "BOUNCING PAW," and BULI seemed just as right to me as PULI. And for some reason, I wanted the [Cheery word?] to be TAH instead of RAH. I was thinking "Ta-Ta," as in "Cheerio, chap." Then I was sure it was AAH, since the second letter in Joanne's name just had to be a vowel. And c'mon, a cheery person would be inclined to say "aah," right? Now that I write this out, of course, I see how silly that is, but in the heat of the solve I can get pretty stubborn with myself.
Always happy to see MR. BILL, the [Victimized clay guy on "SNL" reruns], and ERNST, [007 foe's first name]. Blofeld, Ernst Blofeld. And how appropriate for this puzzle that Blofeld was often featured with a white cat in his arms. Even though I tend to prefer dogs to cats (I have a mild allergy to cat fur and I find most cats a little aloof), I had a good time with this puzzle. And it didn't make me itch.
WARNING: If you have not yet completed today's NYT puzzle, this part of the posting will make reference to that puzzle so STOP RIGHT NOW (or skip to the CrosSynergy discussion below).
Peter Wentz's Los Angeles Times Crossword, "Right on Cue"
Oh no! Two newspapers have come to the party in the same outfit! A constructor's second-worse nightmare! (The worst, I think, would be seeing a paper run the same theme just a few days before your puzzle is scheduled to appear in a different paper.) I feel badly for both Will and Peter. I can't help but compare the two puzzles, just as Us Weekly does with its "Who Wore It Best?" feature. The good news in all of this is that the two puzzles were sufficiently distinct that I enjoyed them both. Don't make me pick one, a la "Sophie's Choice." I can love them both equally.
In this puzzle, Wentz *ahem* adds a "QU" to the start of seven common phrases and then clues the wackiness that results. Unlike the Nediger puzzle, all of the "QU"s this time come at the front. In that regard, the theme entries here are a little tighter. Fortunately, only one of the theme entries in Wentz's puzzle overlaps with those from Nediger's puzzle:
So yes, the puzzles wore the same outfit, but they had different accessories, and that often makes all the difference. Some of my favorite entries in Wentz's version included ABOVE ZERO, BYZANTIUM, HOLD TIGHT, JAM UP, TEPIDNESS, BLOT OUT, QUICHES, DR. KATZ, SILK TIES, and, of course, FREE FALLIN', the classic [1989 Tom Petty hit]. Wentz scored a pangram with the fill, but some of it felt a bit strained. Google verifies that AGENDA BOOK is a valid enough term, I suppose, but it still kinda hurts my eyes and ears. NOT VALID, clued as [Like an expired license], also made me wince. I think most of us would say "invalid" instead of "not valid," and I'm not sure many solvers want a rather arbitrary "not" thrown in before most ADJS [Fast and furious, e.g.: Abbr.]. And UNLAX [Chill out, slangily]? Really? Chillax, sure, but unlax? I think that will bug me until I "untire" to bed tonight.
I would have thought that my second experience with the same theme would have resulted in a noticeably shorter solving time, but such was not the case (in my glacial world, two-and-a-half minutes ain't much faster). Despite the overlapping theme, the only noticeable overlap in the fill comes in the SW of both grids: 112D in Wentz's grid, QBS, is the same as 113D in Nediger's grid. The clue for HOLD TIGHT, [2008 Harlan Coben thriller], slowed me down more than would have a direct clue like [Clutch firmly]. I wanted BAJA for BAHA, [Island band The ___ Men], but I finally figured it out once the crossing [Old Testament prophet] HOSEA fell. Even that proved a little elusive since I had FEAT instead of GEST as the [Daring exploit]. I was also mired at the instersection of LA PLATA, the [City near Buenos Aires], and BRETON, the [Celtic language spoken in France]. Apparently I am not very cosmopolitan. It's true: I have never ventured outside of North America. I've seen much of Canada, the States, and Mexico, but nothing beyond. Even Sarah Palin has seen Russia, albeit from a distance. And yet I finished second to President Obama in voting for the Nobel Peace Prize (we had identical accomplishments, but he photographs better). (It's important to make offsetting political jokes whenever possible.)
Bob Klahn’s freestyle CrosSynergy “Sunday Challenge”
Go figure - my slowest time comes not with the 21x Sunday-sized puzzles but the innocuous little 15x freestyle offering from the master of deception, Bob Klahn. I felt like an IGNORAMUS [Ding-a-ling] throughout much of the solve, but I'm proud to have survived and I admire the construction a great deal. This 70-worder offers four triple-stacked 9s and a grid full of fun entries and knotty clues. In no particular order, here are my ten favorites:
A really terrific grid and clues that worked to mire me in the ooze of stuck for a long time. The SE was especially deadly. I have seen the SAMPAN before (it's a [Mat-roofed, flat-bottomed boat]) but it felt completely foreign to me during the solve. The clue for ADAGE, [Sampler sentence], still eludes me, so anyone who wants to help me out should please explain in the comments. I had never heard of Roger Ebert's book, "I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie," so the clue for HATED left me empty. And I couldn't figure out AMORY, ["The Proper Bostonians" writer Cleveland]. Even with the first three letters of these words in place from the crossing downs, I was befuddled for a long time. The NW corner also took a while, but once I figured out that the LLAMA was the [Animal on Peru's coat of arms], the rest fell fairly quickly.
Roger Ebert may have hated, hated, hated some movie, but I liked, liked, liked this puzzle even though it nearly defeated me. Thank you, Sir Klahn. May I have another?
My Trip to Atlanta
Before I hand the baton back to Orange, allow me to share a slightly off-topic anecdote that readers of this blog will appreciate. In my job I am lucky (?) enough to travel around the country a fair amount for various conferences. I am a slave to my frequent flyer miles, so I almost always fly on the same airline when I can (I won't mention the name of the airline, but it seems to have an awfully high number of flights to Anchorage, Juneau, and Fairbanks). Anyway, one of the first things I often do after taking my seat on a plane is to pull out the airline's magazine and see if it has crosswords. Sure enough, my frequent-flyer airline has a 23x puzzle every month, but I'm pretty sure the grid and the clues are computer-generated because it's never much fun and the clues violate many of the standard clue conventions.
But earlier this month I had to fly on a partner airline (and for reasons that will soon be apparent, I have no problem disclosing that this partner airline was Delta). When I checked the back of Delta's Sky Magazine, I discovered that they run an old NYT 15x crossword and a couple of Sudoku puzzles. I was pleased to see that Delta sprung for a good puzzle, so I pulled out my trusty solving pencil (aka The Death Wand) and set to work. When I read the clue for 1-Across, I actually dropped the Death Wand. It was my debut puzzle from October 2008! Sure enough, my name was printed alongside the grid near the fold. I have only had two puzzles in the NYT (so far - there are some in the queue), so the odds of this happening are, by my precise computations, remote. I was completely floored. For the first time ever, I took the magazine off the plane with me.
By the way, at one point I needed to stand during the flight and stretch my legs (it was a long flight to Atlanta). Rather than stay by my seat near the front, I decided to walk to the back of the cabin just so I could see whether anyone was working the puzzle. It has always been my white whale - I have never seen someone actually solving one of my puzzles (not that I have had many of them out there to see people solve, mind you, but still). I saw two people working the Sudoku puzzles and no one working the crossword. Sigh. But that's just a small hiccup in what was otherwise the coolest flight I have taken in years.
Well, that's the story. Again, I thought that if anyone would appreciate the thrill I had it would be this group. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.
November 28, 2009
Sunday, 11/29/09
November 17, 2009
Wednesday, 11/18/09
BEQ 6:58
NYT 4:35
Onion 4:29
CS untimed (J)/3:44 (A)
LAT 3:14
Paula Gamache's New York Times crossword
This keeps happening—my kid has a hard time falling asleep, and in the effort to set a good example for him, I get so dang sleepy that when I rouse myself to do the NYT crossword, I'm not at full speed. The wheels did not spin at their usual clip, and stray typos find their way into the grid more easily than they find their way out. I had "CAN O?" ([Childish plea], CAN I) crossing OCHABOD ([Washington Irving's Crane], ICHABOD), and didn't see it until the grid was filled. Then when I fixed that, my grid was still wrong—BOY TOT/RET instead of BOY TOY ([Young stud])/REY ([Palacio resident]). Adjacent-key typos, my nemesis today.
The theme hinges on a poker phrase, which is something I often find alienating. The [Five-card draw variation] and hint to the theme answers is JACKS TO OPEN, but man, I was stuck on the last letter. (See? Tired.) "JACK STOOPER?" I asked myself. The other four theme entries begin with words that can follow an opening JACK:
• 17A. HAMMER THROW is an [Olympic track-and-field event]. Jackhammer.
• 30A. FROST/NIXON is a [Play and film about a noted 1977 series of interviews]. Jack Frost, nose-nipper. FROST/NIXON is a great-looking answer, isn't it?
• 36A. [Loosely woven cotton fabric] is CHEESECLOTH. Monterey Jack cheese is often called Jack cheese.
• 44A. [Indoor dipole antenna, colloquially] clues RABBIT EARS. Jackrabbit. If you're like me, you always see "rabbi tears" (and "superb owl" for that NFL game).
Ten quick clues:
• 27A. ROTI means [Roasted, in Rouen].
• 35A. DEICE a plane to [Make ready for winter flight].
• 57A. NOOSES are [Causes of some untimely ends]. That's dark.
• 2D. HIALEAH, Florida, is a [Historic racetrack site]. Is it no longer so?
• 3D. ARMAGNAC is an [Eau de vie from Gascony].
• 11D. MAALOX completes ["___ moment" (ad catchphrase)]. Oprah does not lay claim to the Maalox moment.
• 22D. An ARIETTA is a [Short opera piece].
• 25A. Ford MODEL A'S were [1903-04 cars sold only in red].
• 39D. HOUSE PET is a [Collar wearer, often]. Kinda wanted this to be PRIEST.
•42D, 63D. [Roll call response] is PRESENT in, perhaps, a classroom, and NAY in a legislature.
Updated Wednesday morning:
Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Go Ahead, Shoot!"—Janie's review
I'm happy to say today's title has nothing to do with firearms, in case that's what you were thinking. That imperative is also something you might say when you want you listener to tell you something. Or ask you something. Today it's the latter, and the colorful theme phrases all start with a word that also describes a particular kind of query. The phrases are unified, too, by the clue and fill at 63A., [Objection elicitor, and what the first words of 17-, 26-, and 47-Across could be doing]—and that would be LEADING QUESTION, and LEADING "QUESTION." The additional questions in question are:
• 17A. Trick question, by way of TRICK OF THE TRADE [Professional's shortcut].
• 26A. Burning question, from BURNING RUBBER [Peeling out].
• 47A. Loaded question, which comes to us from the great phrase LOADED FOR BEAR [Livid]. Never heard the expression before and love making its acquaintance. It sure has a lotta character.
So, too, does the cluing, which keeps the play in "wordplay." F'rinstance, the sequential linked-pair [Absent animation] for the lovely LANGUID and [Animation still] for the oft-seen noun CEL. Not only do we get the repeated word in the clues, but something that's "still" is also "absent animation." So we get some double-play action here.
Then we get both [Coiled choker] right next to [Coiled coif], or a BOA beside a BUN. With vocabulary that shows up as often in puzzles as these words, it really is refreshing to have cluing that shortchanges the solving process. Like [Undying dying words] for ET TU, or [Promise at the table] for OLEO (where "Promise" is the brand-name noun and not a verb), or [Net sales?] for E-TAIL (where "net" is short for "internet" and not the opposite of "gross"), or the lengthy but lyrical [Where to house cows once they browse] for BARN.
Other combos that appealed (by no means exhaustive): [Short pants?] for TROU (think about it...), [The same partner] for ONE (ditto), and [Concluding letters for proof reader] for Q.E.D. That's the reader of a mathematical proof and the letters stand for quod erat demonstrandum meaning "which was to be demonstrated."
Fave crossing today: SCHWA [Stress-free sound symbol] (ə) and "SH-H!" [The sound of "Silence!"]. If I omitted your faves, by all means: speak up! ([Ladies in wooly cotes] EWES, anyone?)
Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword
As usual on Wednesdays and Saturdays, this writeup is drawn from my L.A. Crossword Confidential post.
The theme could be called "Barflies"—Six famous people's last names form new phrases or compound words with BAR. Here are the theme answers:
• 18A: [*"Seven Year Ache" country singer] (ROSANNE CASH). My high-school reunion had a cash bar.
• 20A: [*"All I Wanna Do" singer] (SHERYL CROW). Crowbar. I just reviewed (for work) another puzzle with a theme of female vocalists that included both CASH and CROW, so I couldn't help expecting the other theme entries to follow suit. Nope! In that other puzzle, I changed the clue to include this song instead of some other song I'd never heard of. Good call, right?
• 32A: [*Longtime "American Bandstand" host] (DICK CLARK). The Clark Bar is, well...is it as good as a Butterfinger? I do like me a Butterfinger bar, and I ate all the minis my kid got for Halloween.
• 45A: [*Notable member of The Second City improv group] (JOHN CANDY). The Clark Bar is a candy bar. Rex Parker feels it's redundant to have both generic CANDY BAR and specific CLARK BAR in this theme. My feeling is that you can never have too much chocolate, and that Rex's suggestion (in the comments at L.A.C.C.) that Barbara Hershey and the fictional Veronica Mars could have joined Dick Clark is a good one (if only the word lengths matched up—and if only there were a famous person with the surname Snickers).
• 59A: [*French writer who befriended Chopin] (GEORGE SAND). Don't ground your boat on a sandbar. This is the only theme person who's more high culture than pop culture.
• 63A: [*"The Mark of Zorro" star (1940)] (TYRONE POWER). A Power Bar is one of those horrible things I never eat. I hear people like them.
• 65A: [Happy hour site, and word that can follow each last name in the answers to starred clues] (BAR).
With 63 theme squares, you expect to tolerate a few "blah" entries in the fill. I dunno. This one felt a little heavier on "blah" than usual for a Dan Naddor puzzle: L-DOPA, UTA, L.I.U., ENID, ADE, ADJ., K.P.H., the weird ANC. (Short for "ancient"? Not the much more famous African National Congress?), MAU, SEP., and TRAC are the sort of answers a constructor isn't striving to use, just ends up using to make the fill work.
Highlights:
• 42A: [Bette's "Divine" nickname] (MISS M).
• 50A: [Time-share units] (CONDOS). Hey! Plenty of us city-dwellers live in condos year-round. Are the suburbanites unaware of this? Is it the New Yorkers who ruin everything, by "buying apartments" rather than "renting apartments"/"buying condos"?
• 10D: [Bach work] (TOCCATA). I don't know classical music much, but this answer always makes me think of veal. (Piccata.) Which I don't eat.
• 21D: Gibraltar landmark (ROCK). This gave me a chance to include a photo of Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson in my L.A.C.C. post. He sure was cute in that Disney movie, Game Plan.
• 30D: [King Arthur's meeting spot] (ROUND TABLE). This is where King Arthur hung out with Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley, at the Algonquin.
• 43D: [Chat idly: Var.] (SHMOOZE). I prefer the schmooze spelling.
• 46D: [Official emergency status] (CODE RED). My kitchen was at code red last week. It's down to the standard code orange now.
Tyler Hinman's Onion A.V. Club crossword
Tyler's theme is "potentially disastrous neighbor"s, #1 through #5: Your MOTHER-IN-LAW (I'd be fine with mine living nearby, honest), a smelly RENDERING PLANT (I would move), a SEX-CRAZED COUPLE (I highly recommend hearing loss so you won't hear them), a CRYSTAL METH LAB (eek), and PUNK ROCKERS (hey, it's fine so long as they're not rehearsing at home).
Favorite clues/answers:
• 6A. KITES are [Some quadrilaterals].
• 14A. I like the German in the clue [Unterwasser vessel], but it makes me want the answer to be U-BOOT instead of U-BOAT.
• 56A. COLD gets clued in a sporting sense: [Not shooting well]. Basketball, not guns, right?
• 2D. The ABO blood grouping system is a [System that helps you determine if someone's your type].
• 13D. [Animal that hisses], 5 letters, ends with E...SNAKE? Try a GOOSE.
• 27D. [Back], adverbially, clues IN REPLY. "In reply," of course, is the adverbial form of the adjective "in rep."
• 42A. Hey! Fresh ELBA clue: [Porto Azzurro's place].
• 60D. The NFL is [Ochocinco's org.]. His number, of course, is 85. What would your Spanish number name be?
I thought [Iranian city, or its river] would be QOM rather than QUM, but there's no unterwasser O-BOAT. Did you know the city—a holy city and a center of learning for Shiites—can also be spelled KUM?
Updated Wednesday evening:
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Letter Rip"
The theme involves ripping a letter into two, but it's hard to visualize this in Across Lite or if you print your answers in capital letters. The breakage involves lowercase letter strokes:
• 18A. [Huge scissors?] are the BIG clIPPER. See how a lowercase cl, when squished together, looks like a lowercase d? The Big Dipper is the original, pre-ripping phrase.
• 20A. Double Dutch is a jump-rope game. DOUBLE clUTCH is clued as [Extremely reliable under pressure?]. Not too familiar with clutch as an adjective. Is that a sports usage?
• 38A. [Cornfield bunched together?] is CROP clUSTER (crop duster).
• 55A. [Starting up a digital stopwatch?] is LOADING clOCK (loading dock).
• 59A. [Muhammad Ali?] is BOXING clAY. Excellent combination of the Boxing Day holiday that people in other countries may celebrate after Christmas and boxer Muhammad Ali's birth name, Cassius Clay. I didn't love the rest of the theme, but I'm glad it built up to this one. If this one had come first, the rest would've felt like a letdown.
Brendan labeled this one medium difficulty, but it smacked me like a hard puzzle. Toughest spots for me:
• [Snatch beneficiary] is a DELT, or deltoid muscle.
• TEN CC is the British rock band at 39D. Boo! It's 10cc, just as U2 is not spelled U-TWO. I don't recall "I'm Not in Love" at all, but "The Things We Do for Love"? Oh, yeah.
• My Star Wars-fu is down. The scoundrel in 21A is LANDO Calrissian. I barely remember the movie he was most prominent in, so I tried JANGO Fett first.
• That 1D-2D-3D group of two-word phrases that we don't see much of in crossword grids.
• At 56A, wanted [Athlete's handlers: Abbr.] to be MGRS or MGMT instead of AGTS. Abbreviations that only save one or two letters are dumb. (See also Jun., Jul.)
• The answer for [Knocker holder] is incorrect. It should be DDCUP, not DCUP.
November 06, 2009
Saturday, 11/7/09
Newsday 8:26
NYT 7:02
LAT 4:05
CS untimed (J)/ 3:57 (A)
Bob Klahn's New York Times crossword
I had just finished drafting my L.A. Crossword Confidential post for Saturday when I checked Twitter and saw this from Rex Parker: "Sat. puzzle = KLAHN! Holy crap. I'd forgotten what it feels like to be brutalized by a puzzle." Bob Klahn does tend to brutalize his NYT solvers. The skewed clues you see in his CrosSynergy puzzles get sharpened to a razor's edge in the Times, and the fill's packed with not-your-usual-stuff, so you get material like this:
• 5D. SPANG means [Squarely], as in "I looked 'im spang in the eye."
• 10A. [Landlocked Muslim land], 4 letters...Iran, Iraq? No, MALI, over in Africa.
• 15A. Only-in-crosswords-now old-time movie cowboy Lash LARUE is clued as [Cheyenne Kid portrayer]. Anyone get this off the clue by knowing it rather than thinking "that sounds like an old Western thing, maybe it's that LARUE guy"?
• 23A. FROTHY like whipped cream? No, [Insubstantial]. You gotta eat a lot of whipped cream for the frothiness to reach the level of substantial.
• 24A. [Appeal from a diplomat] is DÉMARCHE. I have to look this one up in the dictionary..."a political step or initiative." Didn't know that. Also Frenchy: 28A: REGLE, [En ___ (by the rules: Fr.)].
• 26A. The YAZOO is a [Mississippi river named by La Salle]. I tried YAHOO first.
• 27A. [Local operation?] clues UNION SHOP, as in the union local.
• 34A. [Base of a column] isn't architectural, it's the SUM at the bottom of a column of numbers being added. I totally grasped what the clue wanted.
• 37A. [As different as night and day, e.g.] is a CLICHÉ. Hope you didn't spend much time trying to think of a 6-letter word for "opposite."
• 41A. I'd rather have ODALISQUE clued via the Ingres painting than as [Harem slave].
• 43A. [A slew] sounds singular but clues the plural RAFTS.
• 53A. SOFIA, Bulgaria, is the [World capital at the foot of Mount Vitosha]. Never heard of Mount Vitosha before.
• 52A/55A. Good gravy, two entries given over to [lead female role in TV's "Peter Gunn"], which was before my time/aside from my inclination: EDIE HART.
• 2D. [Dancer in a suite] is crosswordese ANITRA. I'll assume this relates to Grieg's Peer Gynt. In a similar category, we have 7D: ARIADNE, [Strauss heroine from classical myth].
• 3D. Israeli writer AMOS OZ wrote Black Box and My Michael years ago. More recently, he's ["A Tale of Love and Darkness" author, 2003].
• 4D. Of all the ways to clue SENATOR, they go with ["Damn Yankees" chorister]?
• 5D. SLATY is an adjective derived from slate. [Dull blue-gray]. Wouldn't you rather call it slate blue than SLATY? Of course you would.
• 6D. PALE is clued as [Cadaverous]. Hey! That's my complexion you're talking about here.
• 8D. [Cores] are NUCLEI. When I had the CLE in place, I was at a loss for what **CLES word meant cores.
• 11D. [Not likely to go with the flow], quite literally: AT ANCHOR.
• 13D. [Doughty] means INTREPID. Got this off the I near the end.
• 21D. [Low finish?] is SHOESHINE. Got this off the first two or three letters. Did anyone watch Parks & Recreation last night, with the shoeshine love triangle?
• 22D. NANCY DREW! She looks terrific in the grid. ["The Bungalow Mystery" solver] is your clue.
• 32D. I briefly wondered if this was about amazon.com: [The first complete navigation of the Amazon was in search of this]. EL DORADO.
• 33D. Trivia! TIA MARIA is a [Liqueur reputedly named for a noblewoman's chambermaid].
• 39D. Why did it take me that long to tease out LUCIFER for ["Doctor Faustus" character]?
• 42A. Wanted TAI CHI and I CHING before the crossings coaxed out QI GONG, the [Chinese meditative practice].
• 44D. [Casting option] in flyfishing is FLY ROD.
• 45D. I totally guessed on the [Four-note chord]. I know there's a triad, so I gambled on TETRAD for four.
• 51D. Holy schnikes, [Flagitious]? It means VILE, criminal, villainous. The word dates back to Late Middle English.
Klahn's puzzles do tend to make solvers gnash their teeth, pull their hair, rend their garments, and curse his name. How was it for you? Was it spang flagitious? I liked it and my teeth, hair, and garments are intact.
Updated Saturday morning (and no, you're not seeing double—yet...):
Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Y Not"—Janie's review
This is a great puzzle to end the solving week with. The familiar drop-a-letter theme (you won't find the letter "Y" where you're used to seeing it) yields fill and cluing of the first order, and the remainder of the grid delights in equal measure. As regular solvers of the CS puzzle know (and regular puzzle-solvers as a group know), our constructor is NO SLOUCH, a far more than [Fairly capable one]. As a result, the SHINE [Twinkle] factor today couldn't be higher. Starting with the theme fill, there's:
• 17A. "ISN'T IT A PIT?" [Guess when asked what one calls where the orchestra plays?]. Whether your taste runs to Gershwin, a non-SITAR-playing Harrison or Clapton (covering Harrison), there's an "Isn't It a Pity?" for you.
• 21A. STAG PART [Antler?]. Did you catch The Hangover? If you think that was an outrageous depiction of the stag party rite, do check out some of the traditions in other parts of the world.
• 33A and 35A. THREE TO / GET READ [...the fine print, the riot act, ad your palm?]. Elvis—whose [...early...albums] appeared in MONO)—explains it all in "Blue Suede Shoes"... Love this one, because of the specificity of the clue and for the way the fill-pair crosses the grid at center.
• 51A. DUCK DECO [Design scheme on display at Donald's domicile?]. That's one very funny concept, but with those "V"-like flight formations, maybe it's not such a stretch. The FAQs of this duck decoy site should clarify your "'why-a-duck-' decoy?" questions.
• 55A. PEACE TREAT [Reward for ending the war?]. While this one doesn't go as amusingly far afield as its theme-mates, a peace treaty really is a peace treat.
A word (or three) about construction elements in the grid before looking at the rest of the puzzle. Note: the way 17A overlaps 21A with three letters (ditto 51A and 55A); the triple columns of eight in the NW and SE corners, and the triples of six in the NE and SW; and the complete absence of the letter "Y" in the grid as a whole. "Y Not" indeed, and in this way, a kissin' cousin to Patrick Blindauer's 10/26 "What's Eating U?"
Bob has also unified the puzzle in his inimitable cluing style. There are some 15 alliterative clues which raise the "wit" level of both lively and everyday fill. Some faves include:
• [Cauldron concoction contributor] for NEWT ( think of "the Scottish play"...);
• [Role for Reeve or Reeves] for KENT (a/k/a "Superman," so that'd be George Reeve or Christopher Reeves);
• [Show shamelessly] for FLAUNT;
• [Priggish pronouncements] for TUTS (which might be heard in response to something RIBALD [Bawdy]); and
• [Banshee's bailiwick] for EIRE, whose first "E" was the last letter to go as I solved. That crossing with EOCENE [Epoch in which modern mammals emerged] was tough for me.
Then, Bob has included seven "sequential" clue pairs—where there's a word in the first that's repeated (usually to different effect) in the second. Again, this tends to up the ante on even familiar three- and four-letter fill. Among the best are:
• [Friendly start?] for the oft-seen ECO- and [Big start?] for BANG. No, not exactly as in the "Big Bang theory," but as in the idiomatic expression "start with a bang." When you want to grab the attention of your audience, it's a good idea to give 'em something they'll remember, so start with a bang. That's the kind of "big start" this clue is talking about. This one's twisty, and I like it!
• [Diamond clubs] for BATS (so that's the baseball "diamond") and [Its birthstone is the diamond (abbr.)] for APR (where "diamond" is literally the gem).
• ["One Piece] AT A [Time" (1976 Johnny Cash hit)] and [50 Cent piece] for RAP SONG. The Cash song makes me laugh; the 50 Cent material doesn't...
Finally, some random fill and clues that are more than pleasing:
• the cross of TRIP [Junket] and TREK [Space odyssey];
• [Drawing room session?]/ART CLASS;
• [Cold Italian coneful]/GELATO;
• [Capital place to talk Turkey]/ANKARA;
• [Blow the suds off (your suds)]/BEHEAD (one superb combo!); and, because it's that time of the year, the colorful
• [Pyramid-shaped ornamentals that turn bright red in autumn]/PIN OAKS (at left...).
See how much more playful Klahn's clues are in a CrosSynergy puzzle?
Weird but true: Last night I had a wee spoonful taste of some sweet corn/honey GELATO with NUBS ([Kernels]) of corn in it. Vegetables in ice cream is...not where I'm at.
Bob Peoples' Los Angeles Times crossword
Full write-up over at L.A. Crossword Confidential. Excerpts:
This puzzle mostly left me cold, though I enjoyed the retro '90s oomph of 42D: EUROPOP clued as [Ace of Base genre]. A few of the answers crossing it are just insane, though:
• 41A: [Tiny white ovum] (ANT EGG). Uh, ick.
• 48A: [Iberian river] (DOURO). Okay, I have been paying attention to our Crosswordese Rivers of Europe my whole life, and this one? Is not ringing a bell.
• 52A: [Noilly __: vermouth brand] (PRAT). Pratfall, yes. Noilly Prat? Not ringing a bell.
Other unusual inclusions:
• 15A: [Bridge bid, briefly] (THREE NO). Three? No. What? I've seen ONENO as desperation fill in other crosswords, but now THREENO is taking up even more space. Is this totally legit bridge-speak or desperation fill?
• 17A: [Old Meccan governors] (SHARIFS). If you're in my generation, you know SHARIF from The Clash's "Rock the Casbah" perhaps even more than via Omar Sharif. Omar would know THREE NO, wouldn't he?
• 32A: [Shrub with clusters of blue flowers] (HYSSOP). A much prettier word than anything that sounds like "hiccup" has a right to be.
• 4D: [Three times, in Rx's] (TER). Meh. Doctors never write this on a prescription. They'll write tid, short for ter in die, Latin for "three times a day." But they're just not going to spell out TER.
Doug Peterson's Newsday "Saturday Stumper"
(PDF solution here.)
Anyone else find this one tougher than the Klahn NYT? My main trouble spots:
• 36D. [Road debut of 1908] is the Ford MODEL T.
• 1A. [Minor mistakes] aren't SLIPUPS or BOOBOOS but BOBBLES.
• 16A. [Screenwriter?] clues E-MAILER. Don't care for E-MAILER as fill. E-MAILED, yes. (See also 14D: TRYSTER, [Romeo or Juliet].)
• 17A. [Rectangular cell] is a NINE-VOLT BATTERY.
• 31A. [Hang over] is MENACE. Not EXTEND, nope. Not even close.
• 32A. [Expedient course] clues POLICY. Not every POLICY is expedient. Some are convoluted or ill-advised or require a tremendous waste of effort.
• 36A. [Makes fast] clues MOORS, as in mooring a boat. Took forever to piece together, even with most of the crossings,
• 41A. ["Canale" crosser] is an Italian bridge, or PONTE.
• 44A. [Western star] is the sheriff's BADGE.
• 8D. [Cats' beats] are BEBOPS. That can be pluralized? I thought of ALLEYS first, and then STOOPS with a few crossings.
• 10D. [Palm product] is a DATE, the fruit from a palm tree. Not the Palm TREO.
• 13D. [Ben Affleck's birthplace] is BERKELEY, California, and not Boston? Who knew?
October 26, 2009
Tuesday, 10/27/09
Jonesin' 3:45
NYT 2:58
LAT 2:48
CS untimed
Chuck Deodene's New York Times crossword
This constructor has a weird pattern of NYT bylines. Several puzzles a year through the '90s, one in 2001, two in fall '07, and now two in the second half of this month. If he's cranking out more puzzles like today's, then dang it, the flow should keep going now. The theme is the old-fashioned cheer, the components of which I know more from crossword fill than from any real-life cheerleading: "Rah, rah, sis-boom-bah!" Has this phrase been exclaimed unironically in the last 30 years? Doubtful. But that goofy little phrase pops up in consecutive circled squares in various lively answers.
• 17A. The first RAH is in TETRAHEDRON, a [Solid with four triangular faces]. It's a pyramid but with a triangular base rather than the square one seen in Egypt.
• 25A. The [Chief of staff in the Obama White House] is RAHM EMANUEL, with RAH #2. Rahm's kids go to school near me. I'll bet my internist knows him because her kids go to the same school.
• 35A. GENESIS is the [Start of the Bible]. SIS!
• 37A. The BOOMERS are the [Post-WW II demographic, informally]. BOOM!
• 49A. A [High muck-a-muck] is a GRAND POO-BAH. I prefer other spellings: muckety-muck and pooh-bah. The cheer ends with a non-Scroogean BAH. (See also 46D: [Jacob whose ghost appears to Scrooge], MARLEY.)
• 57A. CHEERLEADER ties it all together as the [Shouter of this puzzle's circled sounds].
I'm fond of any number of answers in the fill. My top 10:
• 47D. BOTERO! [Fernando ___, painter of plump figures], is also a sculptor. That's his work at the Besthoff Sculpture Garden in New Orleans. We love us some Botero. We use "Boteri" as the plural of "Botero artwork."
• 34D. LOWBALL is [Like an offer that's under actual value.
• 29D. The DEEP END is the [Part of a pool for diving].
• 50D. "PSHAW!" means ["Nonsense!"].
• 31A. TIPSY is clued as [Midway between sober and drunk]. The word is as fun as the feeling.
• 22D. [Riddles] are ENIGMAS.
• 37D/47A. How can I resist the BLOB/BOOB combo? One is a [1958 sci-fi classic, with "The"] and the other is an [Idiot].
• 12D. We've seen ITUNES in the puzzle plenty in recent years, but I like the [Online music mart] clue because it somehow made me think of K-Tel.
• 8D. Mmm, MORSEL. Tasty [Tiny bit to eat]. I refer, of course, to Trader Joe's miniature peanut butter cups, about twice the size of a regular chocolate chip.
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "2 Funny: i'z in ur crosswurd, makin u solv"
The title evokes LOLcats because the theme entries have an LOL inserted into them. Some people think LOLcats are dumb. Some people don't understand the appeal at all. And some of us like them and may even speak in LOLcats from time to time. "Ur doin it rong!" we say here at home. "O hai," we say. Mind you, there is no actual LOLcats-like content in this puzzle, just the intrusive LOLs:
• 18A. "Grade A" becomes GRADE LOLA, or [Rate Jennifer Lopez's newest alter ego?]. I'm sorry, did she come up with something post-"Jenny from the block"? I wasn't aware. Did you know that "lola" is a Filipino word for "grandma"? My son loves his lola and lolo.
• 24A. Today is "CALL LOLITA' DAY, or [Time to phone your nearest Nabokov character]. "Call it a day" means to stop doing something for the day.
• 38A. [Got lazy for the sake of worship?] clues LOLLED TO BELIEVE ("led to believe"). Nice crossing this with BLESSED BE, or [Wiccan salutation].
• 49A, 59A. [Kojak's bootleg British porn title?] might be SEX, LOLLIES, AND VIDEOTAPE. We call 'em suckers or lollipops on this side of the ocean.
Holy cats! There's a new ELON clue! 69A is clued [Actor Gold of the Fox series "Stacked"]. Oh, wait—that's the Pamela Anderson bookstore show that lasted less than one season. ELON Gold is also a comedian and writer, but he needs to get cracking if he's going to be a viable alternative to the North Carolina university in our crosswords.
Gotta love the IG NOBEL Prizes, the 26D: [Yearly parody prize awarded at Harvard]. This year's winners are a good batch, particularly the Physics team who explained why pregnant women do not tip over.
Fred Jackson III's Los Angeles Times crossword
Alas, the grid is not wide enough to accommodate BEI MIR BIST DO SCHÖN, just four other beginning with words (or a syllable, in one instance) that sound like BEI:
• 20A. BY THE SAME TOKEN means [Furthermore]. Who has these tokens? Anyone? Curious phrase. Completely familiar, but odd now that I'm thinking about it.
• 33A. BYE BYE BIRDIE is the [1961 Tony-winning musical inspired by Elvis being drafted]. The hair from his in-the-army-now haircut just sold at auction for 15 grand.
• 43A. The BICENTENNIAL was the [7/4/1976 celebration]. I turned 10 that summer, and I loved my red, white, and blue shorts and halter top outfit. I do not currently own any outfits that evoke the U.S. flag.
• 59A. "BUY NOW, PAY LATER" is a [Retail store financing come-on].
This is an easy enough puzzle, but I got off to a need-the-crossings start with 1-Across. The [One-person boat] isn't a KAYAK? No, it's a SKIFF. I don't think I knew skiffs were one-person boats. Maybe because they aren't strictly that—c.f. Three Men in a Boat. Hmm.
Gotta love punctuation. The COMMA is 8D: [Cause for a pause].
34D: [Netanyahu of Israel, familiarly] clues BIBI, Benjamin Netanyahu's nickname. Remember the Letterman Top Ten list of ways to mispronounce "Bibi Netanyahu" back on June 4, 1996? My favorites were Yahu Netanbibi, Betty Needs a Yoo-Hoo, and Boutros Boutros Yahu.
Updated Tuesday morning:
Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Who Needs Friends?"—Janie's review
Today we have a four-part Klahn quip-puzzle—by way of none other than Paul Newman. Bob's title is a twist on the old (rhetorical-type) query, "With friends like you, who needs enemies?" The Newman rejoinder?
• 17A. IF YOU DON'T
• 30A. HAVE ENEMIES,
• 48A. YOU DON'T HAVE
• 63A. CHARACTER.
Newman sure had character, but it's hard for me to imagine that he had enemies. (Still, I do know what he's talking about; I suspect he'd have said the same thing about wrinkles...)
And this puzzle (like all the good ones) has character, too, in the sense of personality—which it gets from its vivid cluing and fill. I particularly like the phrasal (and phrase) combos: WEIGH IN [Add one's two cents], SWEAR AT [Shower curses on], "I MEAN IT!" ["All kidding aside!"], "IT'S EASY!" ["Piece of cake!"], and TAKE A NAP [Recharge one's batteries].
Bob's also provided some sweet sequential clue pairs: the paradoxically worded [It'll fly if it's ironclad] for ALIBI and [It flies on Saturdays only in emergencies] for Israeli airline EL AL; and the delightful double-bill [Where Bill met Hillary] for YALE and [Bill with Hamilton] for TEN.
Basketball fans probably got NBA [Where the Suns might beat the Heat (abbr.)] without too much difficulty, but how about [Hoop skirts?]? This is one terrific clue for NETS and gave me a fine "AHA!" For SNL fans, there's both TINA FEY and Will FERRELL; and for those more inclined to classic writers there's CONGREVE ["Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast" poet William] and Anton CHEKHOV [Russian master of the modern short story]. Both of these gents, btw, are also renowned for their contributions to dramatic literature as well. (A PLAY is a [Thing onstage], of course, but today the correct fill is PROP.) Oh—and on the subject of music, there's SHANIA ["I'm Gonna Getcha Good!" singer Twain] and "ADIA" [Top-five Sarah McLachlan hit...].
The grid, if you didn't notice is distinguished by those triple columns of sevens in each of the four corners, where we encounter such fill as ELF-LIKE, BEST BET, SYMPTOM and HORRIFY.
Finally, my fave clue/fill combos today include:
• ["South Park" kid with a two-part head]/IKE;
• [Spots for shots]/ARM;
• [Boobs, boors, and bozos]/OAFS; and
• [Past prince, perhaps]/FROG.
October 10, 2009
Sunday, 10/11/09
Reagle 8:56
NYT 8:17
LAT 8:01
BG 6:09
CS 4:55
Hello! Have you seen the post below this one, above the Saturday post? Jeffrey Krasnick, a.k.a. Crosscan, is the newest addition to the Crossword Fiend team. He'll be writing about Matt Gaffney's 21x21 crosswords at the Daily Beast website. The puzzles come out on Fridays, so sometime after that each week, Jeffrey will blog 'em. These Sunday-sized puzzles are a bit easier than the Sunday NYT.
Randolph Ross's New York Times crossword, "Author! Author!"
I feel like I've seen that puzzle title before. The theme doesn't feel familiar, but the title does. Hmm.
The theme includes 24 authors paired up in 12 theme entries. Each author's last name doubles as a word of some kind, and the two names together, when read aloud, sound like a phrase of variable familiarity. Sometimes the word and name are spelled the same and sometimes they're not, so the theme feels like a bit more of a hodgepodge than usual. Here are your writers:
The lack of consistency in this theme drove me bonkers. You know there are a dozen constructors sitting there grumbling, "My puzzle got rejected for a minor inconsistency and this one passed muster?"
On the plus side, I didn't run into any troublesome crossings. Again on the down side, some of the fill wasn't working for me either. For example, UNTACKS (12D: [Removes from a bulletin board]), "I STINK" (53A: [Admission of ineptitude]) OLD SOUL clued as 86D: [King Cole, e.g.] (I'd like it if clued with relation to the first definition here, but it feels like a 7-letter partial applied to Old King Cole), TAP-TAP (51D: [Typist's sound]), and AKU (56D: [When repeated, a Thor Heyerdahl title]). AKU? Ah, no.
But 65A tried to make amends with me: [Drop ___ (start to strip)] clues TROU. I think we could have dispensed with the parenthetical, don't you?
Updated Sunday morning, after whiling away a couple hours watching the Chicago Marathon from the warm environs of the living room because of below-freezing temps:
Merl Reagle's syndicated crossword, "The Full Name Game"
This theme is just weird. It's not at all intuitive for me. A hodgepodge of famous names (All men? Meh) that sort of sound like all or part of one to three words in various phrases get swapped in in lieu of the usual words, and the clue has no allusion to the specific celebrity in the answer. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to including these particular phrases or names, though. The theme plays out like this:
Among the tougher clues and/or iffier fill, we have these:
So I've done two Sunday puzzles and enjoyed zero themes so far. Maybe I'll like the next one better. Stay tuned!
Dan Naddor's syndicated Los Angeles Times crossword, "Why, Yes!"
The theme relies on sound changes: take a word with an "oo" or "oor" sound (to a Midwesterner, they're not quite the same) and incorporate a "Y" sound to change the word into one with a "yoo/yoor" sound. Like so:
Okay, this theme is all right. It wasn't all intuitive for me and it wasn't really funny, but I give the theme points for consistency. The variety of ways the "yoo" sound is spelled is cool, too: IO, U x2, UGH, UE x2, EU, IEU, EAU, and JO. Minus 10 points for including both the ORANT clue (39A: [Praying figure]) and PRAYERS (98D: [Mass communications?]), but plus 5 points for the 98D clue. Highlights in the fill include "I'M BEAT," DEAR ABBY, LIL KIM, LA BAMBA, and MUD PIES.
Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon's Boston Globe crossword (in Across Lite), "Great Rivals"
A year ago, this theme would have been most vexing for me. But last month, I spell-checked the name of every player in Brendan Quigley's upcoming Red Sox and Yankees word search books, so filling in a theme of MVPs from the archrival Yankees and Red Sox MVPs was child's play. DUSTIN PEDROIA, JIMMIE FOXX, and FRED LYNN were not names I'd have gotten before, though crosswords and popular culture (Ken Burns!) taught me TED WILLIAMS, BABE RUTH, MICKEY MANTLE, JOE DIMAGGIO, ROGER MARIS, ROGER CLEMENS, and ALEX RODRIGUEZ. Don't ask me which ones played for which team. Until I looked up Pedroia this morning, I thought the entire theme was Yankee MVPs and that seemed gutsy for a Boston crossword. Consulting with my husband, I see that the left side of the grid has the Red Sox players and the right has the Yankees. Isn't that a nice touch? There's a hearty smattering of other baseball fill throughout the grid—I count about 25 outside the theme.
If you're a baseball fan, particularly on the East Coast but not rooting for the Mets, this puzzle ought to delight you. If anyone wants to load up a puzzle with Orioles and Cardinals players, I'm ready for those too, thanks to Brendan recruiting me to proof those sports puzzle books. Hurry—do it now, before I forget. I think I've already forgotten the football players from this summer's batch of proofreading.
Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy/Washington Post "Sunday Challenge"
As you'd expect from a themeless Klahn puzzle, a great many of the clues play with language and prod you to open your mind to multiple (and unexpected) meanings of words. Top 20 clues for trickiness and wordplay:
1. 17A. AUTOMOBILE TIRES are clued with [They might be biased]. The first impulse is to think of people who might be biased.
2. 21A. [You can take his word for it] clues ROGET of thesaurus fame, not an honest person whoses word is trustworthy.
3. 33A. [Stopper that should work with almost any plug] isn't about plumbing. If you look down the list of definitions for plug, eventually you reach "informal: a tired or old horse." "WHOA" is the command that even an old horse should be able to follow.
4. 36A. [Electrician's mantra?] clues OHM, a unit of electrical resistance that sounds like the classic mantra, "om."
5. 44A. [Inks, or clinks] clues PENS in two ways: (a) If you ink your signature, you pen it (write it). (b) The clink and the pen are slang for "prison."
6, 7. 18A, 49A. [It's a steal] clues the crime of THEFT, while if you're [Caught stealing] in baseball, you're OUT.
8. 64A. [Union requirement?] isn't about labor unions—it's a MARRIAGE LICENSE.
9, 10. 1D, 5D. The [Ailurophobe's cry] is "SCAT, cat!" but this has nothing to do with [Beat it!]—the latter clues a TOM-TOM that you might beat.
11, 12. 8D, 9D. To [Rain hard] is to PELT and [Hard rain] falls as ICE. These are actually easier than the usual paired clues that rely on different senses of the same words.
13. 26D. This was the last thing I figured out. [Fashion plates?] are fine CHINA plates.
14. 27D. [Roast, perhaps] clues HONOR. If you roast a celebrity, you're honoring their career (but often humiliating them through humor at the same time]. With the HON** in place, I had honey-roasted turkey on my mind.
15. 31D. The rhyming pair [Sandal, or scandal?] clues THONG. Thongs are flip-flops as well as the buttcheek-baring bikini bottoms we are sure to see on TV during coverage of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio. Thongs aren't scandalous there, are they?
16, 17. 51D, 52D. One [Belt item] is a TOOL, while multiple [Belt items] constitute AMMO.
18. 59D. [Shrink rap?] plays on shrink-wrap but clues "I SEE," the conversational "rap" your therapist might say.
Okay, that's 18 out of the 20. Let's find two more.
19. 37A. [Noisy rooters?] are OINKERS because...pigs root around with their snouts and they oink when they're noisy? I'm not sure why there's a question mark in this clue. I'd understand the question mark's purpose if another clue in this puzzle used "rooter" to mean "one who cheers for a team."
20. 15A. [It may have several chips in it] sounds electronic, doesn't it? It clues CHOCOLATE COOKIE. If you ask me, a chocolate chip cookie is not a "chocolate cookie," and a "chocolate cookie" contains chocolate chips only if it's a "chocolate chocolate chip cookie." Your cookie-related argot may vary.
October 04, 2009
Monday, 10/5/09
BEQ 5:27
NYT 2:44
LAT 2:24
CS untimed
Plus, new crossword links!
This afternoon I had a chance to try out puzzles from a few new online sources. You can find links in the sidebar ("Crossword Links") henceforth.
First up, Matt Gaffney's weekly 21x21 puzzle at the Daily Beast. I did this weekend's "Octoberfest" in 8:00, so it's right there in Sunday NYT difficulty land and meets the Gaffney standard of excellence. (No spoilers—don't want to get in the way of your fun, folks!) I appreciate that Matt was able to add an Across Lite download, too.
T Campbell is publishing a crossword every weekday at Ubercross, with PDF and Java applet options. The fill tends towards the Onion/BEQesque or beyond. In the "Heroic Origins" puzzle, for instance, the late DJ AM is an answer, and the answer to ["Tough ___"] is TITTY. If that doesn't scare you off, check it out. For me, "Heroic Origins" took 5:20, so it's at a Thursday/Friday NYT level of difficulty. The constructor reports "Next week's puzzles will celebrate seven-letter words, a certain punctuation mark, an astronomical discovery, a set of upcoming TV nuptials, and a city with a lot to celebrate."
Teen constructor Caleb Madison is making a monthly online crossword for his school newspaper, the Bard Bulletin. The first two are posted already, and they're not school-specific so anyone can solve them.
Mark Feldman's New York Times crossword
The theme is a tad outdated. RIGHT ON THE MONEY is [Exactly...or where to find 17-, 25-, 43- and 57-Across?]. The other theme entries are the names of the men shown on large denominations of U.S. currency. These bills haven't been printed in years but, lending currency (!) to the theme, Wikipedia tells us "as of May 30, 2009, there were only 336 of the $10,000 bills in circulation; 342 remaining $5,000 bills; and 165,372 $1,000 bills still being used." Where's mine??
WILLIAM MCKINLEY is on the 17A: [$500], JAMES MADISON on the 25A: [$5,000], my beloved SALMON P. CHASE on the 43A: [$10,000], and GROVER CLEVELAND on the 57A: [$1,000].
I've got one quibble about a clue/fill duplication: SNORE is clued as 49D: [Cause unrest?], while NO REST is 45D [What the weary get, it's said]. In the crosswordese category, we're shooting 1D: [Fancy marbles] with our TAWS. Do those of you who sail use UNRIG, or is that more of a ship word? The clue is 48D: [Strip, as a ship]. Then there's the variant spelling of 4D: [Ice house: Var.], or UGLI. I mean, IGLU. Igloo comes from the Inuit word iglu, so if English had any sense at all, IGLU would be the standard spelling and igloo would be the goofy-looking variant.
Things I like: 5D: [Stocky] clues THICK-SET, which amuses me because one of my Facebook acquaintances was described thus in writing (and he's not thick-set). 14A: [Cry of exasperation] is AARGH, which is in fact the dictionary-approved spelling of the exclamation. And who doesn't love the MACARENA, that 38D: [Dance craze of the '90s]? Here's the video you may remember. You know what's wrong with that video? Zero hot men. A bunch of women in spandex and two men in baggy dark suits? Feh.
If you find the usual batch of easy Monday puzzles aren't keeping you occupied, try out the puzzle sites linked above, and remember that Brendan Quigley's blog usually has "Themeless Monday."
Updated Monday morning:
Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Vowel Play"—Janie's review
No foul play in this "Vowel Play," but a healthy amount wordplay, in both the theme fill (and clues) and in the non-theme fill (and clues). Bob gives us five theme-entries, each of which begins "B*G"—with that asterisk standing in for A, E, I, O or U. Not only does he cycle through these vowels in sequence, but he's gone beyond the initial three-letters to make certain they appear in words of five letters and longer. "WHEE!" ["This ride is a joy!"] and gives us:
There are several wittily crafted, sequential clue pairs that are worthy of attention. I point them out because they demonstrate what can be done to enliven the solving experience. The fill itself isn't the most sparkling. But the presentation sure is and that (as I've no doubt said before...) goes a long way in my book. See for yourself:
Then there are the clues and fill that give us neat nuggets of information, like the fact that GRAHAM was the first name of [Whole-wheat cracker creator Sylvester]. Did you know that? News to me. Ditto the E-BOAT, a [WWII German torpedo craft]. Nor did I know anything about the BEE and its being the [Waggle dance performer]. (I wonder if Fred and Ginger ever tried to emulate nature on the dance floor like that...) And it's been some time indeed since I gave any thought to GUMMO, [The fifth Marx brother]—but at least I'd heard of him! Real name, Milton.
Two nice misdirects come to us via [Like lots of unplanned-for plants] for WEEDY, where "lots" may be substituted with "acres" (for example) but not with "tons" (because then the correct fill, referring to "plants," would have to be WEEDS); and [Refrain from singing about farm animals?] for "E-I-E-I-O!" where "refrain" is a noun and not a verb.
"ONE TO GO!"/["Nearly done!"] ties in nicely with "HANG ON..."/["Wait a minute..."]; and simply adding to the beauty of the [Eclectic mix] OLIO that is today's non-theme fill, here's a shout-out, too, to EGGHEAD [Walking encyclopedia] and LION CUB [Diminutive den denizen]. Awww.
Billie Truitt's Los Angeles Times crossword
A simple theme, easy clues, accessible fill—exactly what you expect on a Monday. The theme entries are all "S__ AND S__" phrases: SUGAR AND SPICE, [What little girls are made of, so it's said]; SAFE AND SOUND, [Out of harm's way]; SOUP AND SALAD, a [Light lunch]; and SHORT AND SWEET, [Pleasantly concise].
37-Down is annoying: [Phone caller's "Bet you don't recognize my voice!"] is GUESS WHO. It's not that the clue or answer is annoying—it's that anyone who calls you and makes you guess who they are is a real PAIN (["Royal" nuisance].
Is this write-up "pleasantly concise"? I hope so.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Monday"
I can't believe I still couldn't pin down 44A: [2001 John Goodman/Billy Crystal film] even when I had MONSTER in place. MONSTERS, INC.! Of course. Used to watch that a lot with my kid, and yet I could only think of Monsters Ball, Coen brothers movies, and Throw Momma From the Train.
What else?
