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?
November 06, 2009
Saturday, 11/7/09
May 10, 2008
Saturday, 5/10
Newsday 7:11
LAT 6:35
NYT 4:41
CS 3:48
Advance notice (not late notice, but redundant advance notice): On Saturday, I'll be out when the Sunday NYT crossword is released and won't be back 'til late. Concert! The Police! Then Sunday morning and afternoon will be booked with Mother's Day activities. So the blogging this weekend may be...tardy and lackadaisical. Guest bloggers would be another way to go, but I suspect my usual cadre of scintillating guest writers also have busy weekends ahead.
The Saturday New York Times crossword by Karen Tracey struck me as markedly easier than the Friday puzzle. Was that your experience as well? It seems like an odd-looking grid for Karen, with shorter entries ringing the grid and hemming in the swaths of white space. The middle of the grid, with two 7-letter answers bracketed by 4s, isn't typical. But the fill and clues? Ten kinds of fun. I kept encountering entries that made me smile, nice surprises.
In the southwest quadrant, [It's just north of Nauru] sounded like a clue for a wickedly out-there geography answer (one of Karen's trademarks), but the answer was just the EQUATOR. Not a crazy-sounding place name, no, but it does have a Q, so it fits right in. The Q is shared by SEAQUAKE, a [Source of some big waves].
In the center, the EXIT ROW that's [Preferred seating, for many] surprised me by being plane seating and not in a theater or stadium (note the appearance of an X). It crossed YAHTZEE, a [Classic game with 13 categories]—with a Z. EXIT ROW's X was also the end of JOHN KNOX, [16th-century founder of Scottish Presbyterianism]; he adds a J and K to the Scrabbly accounting of this puzzle. (Also from Scotland: NAES, or [Caledonian contradictions].) EXIT ROW's E also began another X entry, EXULTANT, or [More than happy]. (ECSTATIC would also fit there, but would have reduced the X factor by 1.)
In the upper left section, there's another Z in OZONE HOLE, an [Antarctic environmental concern], crossing COZEN, or [Gull].
In the opposite corner, I saw the clue [Indie rock band whose name is Spanish for "I have it"] and said to myself, "So that's what YO LA TENGO means!" Then I proceeded to put that 57-Across answer in the space for 60-Across beneath it. You can imagine what that did to the crossings—gah. Soon enough, I figured out what I'd done and put back the intersectiing answers I'd wiped out. YO LA TENGO is a terrific entry—fresh, poppy, and good at teaching introductory Spanish.
Here are the other parts I liked a lot:
Updated:
Today's themed CrosSynergy puzzle comes from the atelier of Bob Klahn. The "Ear Drops" theme features four phrases that have dropped an EAR. [Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms?] are THE THREE B'S (The Three Bears), but I could swear we called them "the three B's" back in my school days. [Dark red cherries?] are BING FRUIT (bearing); really, aren't bing cherries one of the highlights of summer? [Truman's regal digs?] manipulates Hearst Castle into HST Castle (Harry S Truman); a little bit of a twist on the theme, to change a word into initials. [Upon sitting down to eat?] is JUST AS I FED (feared). Favorite clues: [Homespun home] for spider WEB; [Age follower?] for BEAUTY; [All wound up] for both TENSE and ON EDGE; and ["Crikey!"] for EGADS.
The other Bob of crosswords, Bob Peoples, constructed the LA Times puzzle. I have a headache, so I'm not in a very bloggy mood. Herewith, a list of some noteworthy clues/answers:
My favorite answer in Dan Stark's Newsday "Saturday Stumper" happens to be the first one I started to fill in—KALAHARI, the [Bushmen's habitat]. That's the sort of entry a constructor doesn't just back into—versus, say, ASSESSED in the opposite corner, which has those S's that make it easy to find fill that works with it. By and large, the fill is ordinary words, with many short clues that obscure the answers—the Newsday Saturday style. For example, [Floors] for AMAZES, [Tenor] for DRIFT, [Means] for AGENT, and [Sets] for TVS. Those are essentially impossible to Google—you can dig through every dictionary definition of the clue and maybe hit on the right answer, but for the most part you're on your own. I rather liked the two longer trivia clues for common short answers: ["Oxford in the Vacation" byline] tells you, I'm guessing, the name of an essay by ELIA, and [Joliet discovery of 1669] is Lake ERIE. Another trivia factoid: Clint EASTWOOD was the [Thalberg Award recipient of '95] at the Oscars. Favorite clues, with a mislead: [Self starter] for HIM; [Diamond rarity] for NO-HITTER; [One on the house] for a ROOFER; and [Mayo is found here] for EIRE, home of the County Mayo.
November 16, 2007
Saturday, 11/17
Newsday 7:05
NYT 6:04
LAT 5:18
CS 3:09
Brad Wilber's New York Times puzzle makes me glad my college "History of Modern India" class took a field trip to see A Passage to India. The first letter of the [Character on trial in "A Passage to India"] crosses a foreign currency, [100 centimes, in Haiti]. At first I had MR AZIZ, but it needed to be DR AZIZ crossing the GOURDE (hey, GOURME looks equally plausible if you blank out knowledge of lesser-known currencies). Plenty of other tough stuff here, too, and some phrases that didn't ring any bells at all. For example, [Keen of vision] is LYNX-EYED? Sure enough, it's right there in the dictionary, but I don't think I've encountered the phrase before. ANGEL PIE is a [Lemony meringue concoction]? Never heard of it (here's a recipe). What's this GRAND CANAL ([Its banks are lined with nearly 200 palaces]? Ah, the Grand Canal of Venice. ["Giuliani: Nasty Man" author] means ED KOCH? The book came out in 1999, so there's a Giuliani combover on the cover. TESTACY is a word ([Willful state?])? It means "the condition of being testate. COLEUS plants ([Mint-family plants with bright-colored leaves and blue flowers]) have blue flowers? I knew about the multicolored leaves, but not the flowers. There's a SHIH ["___ Ching" (classic book of Chinese poetry)]? Never heard of that, either. NEI means ["In the," in Italy]? And there's a French phrase, "ici ET LA," meaning "here and there"?
Clues and answers I liked: [Presidents Adams, Fillmore, and Taft] were UNITARIANS. A [Rolls roller] is a TYRE; I like this because a British cryptic I'm working on this week used "American band" to mean TIRE. FELICITOUS, CRAZY HORSE, OXYGEN BARS, and IPOD NANO are the more show-offy entries. ORANGEY is clued as [Like a bad spray-on tan]—the Go Fug Yourself blog illustrates what they call tanorexia here. I love BUBBLER being clued as [Drinking fountain]; this is one of those insane regionalisms that is mostly heard in Wisconsin these days. ANACIN gets into the action: [Its ads once showed hammers inside the head]. (Alas, I could not find a video showing that—but here's another retro Anacin commercial.) How do you feel about ONE OR TWO as an entry ([Not many])? I'm torn. I think I like it, but I could be mistaken. I don't like BLATS ([Makes a raucous noise]), not because the cluing is off or the word's illegitimate but simply because it's a hideous word. Maybe partly because Blatta and Blattella are cockroach genera.
Updated:
Randall Hartman's got a cute CrosSynergy puzzle today—"Spreading the Gospel in Hollywood" includes four actors named MATTHEW (PERRY), MARK (HAMILL), LUKE (WILSON), and JOHN (TRAVOLTA).
The day's other themeless puzzles didn't do much for me. Bob Peoples' LA Times puzzle crossed an old college coach whose name I forgot with a phrase I've never heard—[Hall of Fame coach Hank of Oklahoma State] is Hank IBA (I'm more familiar with Mike Gundy, the ranting "I'm a man! I'm 40!" OSU coach who's a YouTube hit). That B fills in ON THE BEAM, or [Going along well]. Also from the land of sports, golfers use the term HOT PUTTER? A clue like [One might help you win, in golf slang] doesn't help me one bit. In the mini-theme, NASCAR DAD ([Working-class parent]) is opposite ALPHA MOMS ([High-achieving parent]), and again, the latter isn't a phrase I'm familiar with. It also sounds like class war in the crossword. [20th century conductor ___ Mata] is EDUARDO...hmm, nope, don't recognize that name, either. At least I've seen OTOMI ([Mexican language or people]) in a couple previous crosswords. I did like how [Looking over one's shoulder, maybe] evokes nervousness rather than driving IN REVERSE, and the mislead of [Gut feeling] for AGITA (anyone thinking HUNCH rather than heartburn?).
Merle Baker's Newsday Saturday Stumper was also a fairly dry venture. The triple stack of 15-letter answers in the middle were slow to reveal themselves to me. ABLE TO TAKE A JOKE, TOLD IN OPEN COURT, and CRYSTAL DETECTOR didn't resonate for me as interesting or zippy phrases. One of the Down answers, ON A DOWNER, sounds like more of an adverbial phrase to me, but here, it's clued with the adjective, [Gloomy]. Does that sound right to you? I can't hear it being used that way. "The team's season ended on a downer," yes; "I am on a downer," no. Explanation, anyone? New botanical term I learned: STOLONS are [Botanist's runners]. [Big brother player] hints vaguely at Orwell, but the answer's TONY DOW, who played Beaver Cleaver's big brother. I like the vagueness of [Mainers, e.g.] for YANKEES.
October 26, 2007
Saturday, 10/27
NYT 6:47
Newsday 6:06
LAT 5:34
CS 3:22
The Saturday New York Times crossword this week is from the atelier of Brendan Emmett Quigley. It's one thing to encounter an obscure name of a place or person and be stumped—but to have a 15-letter answer with a sensible clue like [Classic laugh-inducing parlor game with writing or illustrations] be utterly unknown is weird. Maybe you've all heard of EXQUISITE CORPSE, but I hadn't—if you're wondering what it's all about, Wikipedia's got a zillion links. That entry's sandwiched between two other 15s in the middle of the grid: COUNT ONE'S LOSSES, which seems like it's not quite an in-the-language phrase, and the READING RAILROAD we all know from Monopoly. Is "count one's losses" a phrase that emerged out of a mild mangling of "cut one's losses" and became about taking stock rather than minimizing damage?
Moving along to other clues, other answers: MARK CUBAN pops in at 1-Across, with a clue that reads [Billionaire sports entrepreneur who heads HDNet]; no idea what that means, as I know him as the Dallas Mavericks owner and the guy who was on some reality TV show giving away money or hiring someone Apprentice-style. (Speaking of pro basketball, [Court stuff] means DUNK here.) [Case made for a shooter] made me thing of guns and marbles (I think the only people who still play marbles are the magical ones who live in Crosswordtopia, with their agates and taws and immies, always talking about UTA Hagen—who, by the way, [played Martha in Broadway's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"]), but the answer was CAMERA BAG. Whaddaya know? ROILY ([Agitated]) is in my dictionary, with reference to turbulent water. Anyone ever read [Dr. Seuss's "Too Many ___"] DAVES? I like to follow marathon action, so I liked HAILE clued as [Marathon runner Gebrselassie]; he's broken 25 world records and is damned fast. (Plus, his name ends with Lassie.) AOL is the [Name for Quantum Computer Services since '89]; I had no idea. There are a pair of 5-letter entries without vowels: NSYNC and RSVP'D. TOMATO RED is [What green might ripen into]; fair enough. Wait, RAMEN is a [Far East bowlful]? I dunno, it seems pretty Midwestern to me. Is it popular on all the continents, I wonder? And what [Some religious fundamentalists] did you think of? I started out with the Shakers and their fundamental wood furniture instead of SHIITES. Guess what? A [Connecticut city on the Naugatuck] is ANSONIA. Who wrote "The Mischievous Dog"? 'Twas AESOP (though I was willing to give the credit to Joseph Alsop instead.) More literature: GODOT is [One who's waited upon]—the other day I saw a car with a GODOT vanity plate and wished I could have been stuck in traffic behind it. "Let's go." "We can't." "Why not?" "We're waiting for Godot." C'mon, that's way funnier than [Ecuador's southernmost coastal province], EL ORO.
All righty, that's enough rambling for tonight.
Updated:
A busy day for la familia Naranja! We arose early and cabbed it downtown and to the Bridgehouse Museum where Michigan Avenue crosses the Chicago River. We got to see the bascule trunnion bridge open up and witness the giant gears spinning beneath the bridge. Then we raced the sailboats upriver (or is it downriver? Hard to know in a river that's had its direction of flow reversed by engineers) as the Wabash, State, Dearborn, Clark, LaSalle, Wells, and Franklin Street bridges lifted. The Wells Street bridge is cool because it's got two-way car, pedestrian, and El traffic on it—when the bridge is opened all the way, the train tracks heading steeply upwards look like part of a fearsome rollercoaster. After the bridge adventures, we took the El up tp the North Side's mini-Chinatown and walked over to Pumpkinpalooza at a neighborhood park. Whew! Lotta walking today.
Back to crosswords:
In Daniel Stark's Newsday puzzle, some clues were good, hard, or good 'n' hard: [Stored, as chestnuts] for STABLED, chestnuts being chestnut-colored horses; [Franchise] for VOTE; [Capitol feature] for PORTICO; [Literally "little pan"] for PATELLA (I did not know that!); [Resistance reducer] for SIEGE (reducing political resistance rather than having anything to do with electrical current); and [Place for slides] for LAB (persumably glass slides to view under the microscope and not, say, water slides).
Highlights in Bob Peoples' LA Times themeless: TRANS AM clued as cheesy pop culture ([KITT of "Knight Rider" was one]); HOME ICE clued as [Edge for some skaters]; [Pinch] for SOUPCON; THAT'LL DO clued as ["I've seen enough"] rather than ["___, pig" (memorable line from Babe]; TIME WARP ([Fictional portal])—and we just heard the Rocky Horror Picture Show song, Time Warp, over at Pumpkinpalooza; and [Half a sleepless night?] for TOSSING (the other part being turning).Thomas Schier's Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Triple Plays," concocts phrases with three N's in a row. I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as an INN NUTRITIONIST or JOHN GLENN NOVELS. Anyone know if there's a significance to the NNN trigram?
Edited to note: Tom Schier left a comment saying:
The "Triple Play" crossword which featured NNN was not constructed by me. The CrosSynergy files show that it was constructed by Martin Ashwood-Smith. I don't understand how my name was attributed to this crossword!
August 17, 2007
Saturday, 8/18
NYT 5:15
LAT 5:14
Newsday 5:03
CS 3:25
(updated at 9:15 a.m. Saturday)
Last night, my husband and I watched Hot Fuzz, the British cop action/comedy starring the guys who were in Shaun of the Dead, the British zombie action/comedy. It was indeed quite funny. One bit towards the movie's beginning centers on a cryptic crossword. The star cop, Nicholas Angel, has been transferred to a small village. He's checking into a quaint hotel, and the proprietor behind the counter suddenly spits out, "Fascist!" Angel's taken aback, but she explains that it's the answer to 7-Across (or Down?) in the crossword she's doing. He corrects her, that the clue's looking for FASCISM with an M. They continue the check-in transaction, and then he bites out a "Hag!" What? He explains that's the answer she needs for 12-Down. It's a captivating exchange, of course.
Across the Atlantic we have our American crosswords, including Jim Page's New York Times puzzle. This themeless creation has a relatively low 64 words, so we can expect a few "roll your own" words that are seldom used, crafted by tacking on a prefix or suffix. For example, PRECOLOR, PERTER, RECARVE, and the plurals LEIFS and BORONS. This particular puzzle also has an editorial vibe to it, with EDITS, clued as [Applies polish to?]; DELETES, hiding behind the wonderfully easy-to-misinterpret [Strikes]; and STET (raise your hand if you suspected that [Galley countermand] had something to do with oars). And GRAF could have been clued in its newspaper-editing sense rather than [1988 tennis Grand Slam winner] Steffi.
Today's Magical Mystery Answers (i.e., things I didn't know): [Actress Pataky] is ELSA Pataky, the Spanish actress who was in Snakes on a Plane, which nobody I know saw. [Conductor Segerstam and novelist Enger] are LEIFS (hm, I only know Leif Garrett and Leif Ericson). [Some bygone roadsters] smacks of the Roaring Twenties, but the cars in question are just DATSUNS. [Face with stone] is REVET (you can read up on revetments here). [Waite ___, Hall-of-Fame Yankees pitcher] is HOYT; was Waite Hoyt ever white-hot? Why on earth is ALOE clued as a [Fragrant heartwood]? Because of the agarwood tree, also known as aloe wood or, in the Old Testament, aloes. The [Old washday choice] DUZ was before my time.
Favorite clues: [Who's a critic?] for EVERYONE; [Thighs may be displayed in it] for both EROTICA and the icky MEAT CASE; [It rises in the Black Forest] for DANUBE (mmm, Black Forest cake...); [Less like a yo-yo] for SANER; [Writ introduction?] for HABEAS; plain ol' [Out] for OBSOLETE; and the "Huh?" clue of [So as to avoid being shot] for OFF CAMERA. An AEROBAT is a [Blue Angels member], and this weekend is Chicago's big Air and Water Show, featuring the Air Force Thunderbirds (really, is there any difference between the two groups?). I'd like to thank the zillion crosswords of yore that clued MATA or HARI with reference to the Greta Garbo role, since it made the 8-letter [1932 Garbo title role] come to mind quickly. Other answers I liked: CRUSTACEA ([Water fleas, barnacles, etc.]), SAMISEN ([Banjolike Japanese instrument]), Dirty Harry CALLAHAN ([Eastwood played him in five films]). Wait, did someone say CRUSTACEA? That's my cue to provide a giant isopod link. Why? Why not?
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Bob Peoples made today's themeless LA Times crossword. Plenty of goodies in here. [Banquet offering] is a brand-name TV DINNER, and [Square fare] is RAVIOLI. Speaking of brand names, there's also SUE Bee, a [Big name in honey], the [Hyundai model] ELANTRA, and CONICAL, clued as [Like Hershey's Kisses]. A SLED is a [Follower of dogs], which are also alluded to in [Regulation involving boxers] (LEASH LAW). Educational geography: the ZUIDER ZEE is [Literally, Dutch for "southern sea"]. LIMEADE is clued as [Tart quaff], while [Tart] clues MORDANT; isn't a mordant quaff refreshing? [Minor party candidate, often] is SPOILER (Nader!). [Charm] is about the most innocuous clue possible for FETISH. Who is ["Before You Sleep" novelist Ullmann]? LINN Ullmann is Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman's daughter; she turned out to be a terrible actress so she went into journalism and eventually fiction writing. Favorite entries: THE BLOB, [Film whose tagline ends "Nothing can stop it!"]; DEA AGENT, [Crack operative?]; and IMCLONE, [Drug company whose stock was the subject of Martha Stewart's conviction].
Merle Baker's 68-word themeless puzzle in Newsday wasn't too hard, wasn't too easy. Favorite clues and/or answers: [1 in 21] for UNITS DIGIT; the [Parish officer] called a BEADLE, because it's a silly-sounding title; [They're on stage at the Grammys] for STATUETTES; [Sound sound] (verb + adjective) for TALK SENSE; the verb [Contests] for LITIGATES; HOT SEATS and HOME RUN. [Play up] is the clue for UNDERSCORE. If you play something down, are you overscoring it? Speaking of overscoring, there's a neighborhood restaurant near me that has a front window packed with hand-lettered signs, one of which actually overscores a word for emphasis. (I think it's also painted in italics.) That sign's almost as awe-inspiring as the place that offers a "2 hot dog's with frie's" meal.
Mel Rosen's CrosSynergy crossword hides three SEAs with short names (RED, DEAD, ARAL) within the trio of theme entries. The puzzle contains a lot of names: ATLI, King of the Huns; Elvis ARON Presley; ALDEN and MURINE and HALAS and NAST and STEEN. ATLI, I think, is a name I learned via crosswords. I wasn't familiar with one of the theme entries: [Recipient's name and delivery details, on a business letter] is INSIDE ADDRESS? Ah, it's merely the address above "Dear ___" and below your own address or masthead. Never knew that had an official name!
April 20, 2007
Saturday, 4/21
Newsday 11:15
NYT 7:05
LAT 7:02
CS 3:25
All right, it's on the late side, and I've not yet begun to blog about Byron Walden's Saturday NYT, so let's move swiftly here. Structurally, there's a quartet of triple-stacked 9's spinning around a central 15 that's embraced by a split THEATER OF / THE ABSURD. I took a college English class on "Plays and Antiplays," reading Ionesco and Stoppard and that ilk of absurdist writers. Good stuff, that. The northwest corner goes colloquial with LOST STEAM (a past-tense verb phrase that doesn't end with -ED, because this puzzle wants to be hard and not give away word endings other than a few -S plurals) and "YOU BETTER!" Who knew the TIBIA would be something that [connects to the deltoid ligament], what with the deltoid muscle being at the other end of the body? Yesterday, TATE was a lowbrow TV reference, but today, it's [English poet laureate of 1692-1715], Nahum TATE. The STUTZ Bearcat came from an Indianapolis company and was based on a 1911 Indy car. [Had a cow?] is an "eww" clue for ATE; who the heck eats the whole cow? [They fight to the finish] means MORTAL FOES, who send us to the northeast corner with a little TOPSPIN.
That corner gives us the YUPPIE FLU (which sounds like a rather disdainful way to refer to chronic fatigue syndrome) and the TEEN CROWD (raise your hand if you opted for TEENAGERS first) with that BOFFO company, APPLE / INC. [Recourse?] was misleading because the obsolete verb meaning is "to return or recur," but it's really a noun, and VEER is a verb; but if you veer off, you're setting a new course and thereby...re-coursing?
Taking the HARD ACT TO FOLLOW train to the southwest quadrant, what have we got? [Trevanian's peak] is the EIGER; why? I had to Google this to find out. Trevanian is a one-name pen name for the guy who wrote The Eiger Sanction. I like how HAIRSTYLE (clued as [A cut above?]...as opposed to a cut below) is next to THE BUSHES—puts me in mind of Chia heads. And on the other side of HAIRSTYLE is ERGONOMIC, which is made of three shorter words, two of which are used in crosswords fairly often (ERG and ONO, working without a MIC). Two tough clues for short answers here: [It may be pumped] for FUEL and [Help line?] for CUE. That L in FUEL crosses BROTHEL, clued as a [Toulouse-Lautrec hangout].
Dropping down to the lower right, I've never heard of the Sinatra album A MAN ALONE, but I [Forsooth], love "YEA, VERILY." Huzzah! Rounding things out, we've got a clue a six-year-old could get, [___ Pass (Candy Land shortcut)] for GUMDROP. Like a gumdrop, this puzzle is sweet, awfully chewy, and sticks to your mental teeth (if not your mental ribs) for a while. Dentists may advise against such things, but crossword bloggers applaud such crosswords.
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Note to self: Don't do the Newsday Saturday Stumper when you're up past your bedtime and have been fighting sleep. Is recipe for a beating. This weekend's Saturday Stumper is by Anna Stiga ("Stan again" Newman), and it killed me. I doubt it was really 50% harder than Byron's NYT—if you've done both, how did your experiences compare?
Bob Peoples' LA Times puzzle and my brain were not on the same wavelength—the clues didn't resonate and entertain me. (Ah, well.) It's got a huge mini-theme, with two partly rhyming synonymous groups (15 letters apiece) joined by an 11-letter phrase that's something they might say. Although how often do the talking-head pundits actually say "IN MY OPINION"? I don't think they score rhetorical points by framing their remarks as their opinion rather than the opinion everyone else should have.
February 10, 2007
Saturday, 2/10
NYT 7:43
Newsday 4:31
LAT 4:26
CS 3:15
Bob Peoples is one of the constructors whose themeless creations I find the most challenging, and his Saturday NYT bears that out. Plenty of uncommon fill, meaning solvers are less likely to have their limbic brain bits think of those answers. Plenty of entries with alternatives that fit the same space. Plenty of devious clues. Mix 'em all together and what do you get? I GOT THE SHAFT. The trickiest clues, IMO (clued as ["I think," succinctly]), were: [Top in a certain contest] for WET T-SHIRT (raise your hand if you thought "top" was a verb and tried to get OUT-something to work); [Task to focus on] for EYE EXAM; [Glen Gray's "Casa ___ Stomp"] for LOMA; [It has a cap in the kitchen] for MOREL mushroom; [Oppressive measure that helped spark the French Revolution] for SALT TAX (I'm not up on my French history); [Artist on the cover of a 1969 Life magazine] for PETER MAX; and [One of the five major circles of latitude] for ANTARCTIC. Oddball fill included TELEG (abbrev. for telegram or telegraphy, presumably, clued as [Wire: Abbr.]); EXIM ([___ Bank, U.S. loan guarantor]); and BRA PADS ([Ones doing push-ups?]). [Bothered] set a trap; the answer's IN A STIR, but IN A SNIT and IN A STEW also fit (I was leaning toward the SNIT). I liked GO OFFLINE, SMIRCH, the WAR ROOM, and I HEAR YA. And here's a sampling of paintings by Berthe MORISOT, whose name aptly crosses the French phrase, BONS AMIS.
Daniel Stark's Newsday Saturday Stumper was markedly easier than the NYT. The LA Times puzzle by Stella Daily and Bruce Venzke has a fun mini-theme (YO ADRIAN and STALLONE), six 15-letter entries (five of which I really liked), which helped ease the challenge level. Paula Gamache turns the letter A into gold in her CrosSynergy puzzle, "The Midas Touch."
