Saturday, 12/5/09

Newsday 9:51
NYT 5:26
LAT 3:51
CS untimed

Bonus puzzle: Caleb Madison's Bard Bulletin crossword, "A Swift Response." It's a 19x19 to accommodate the theme, and if you've been plugged into pop culture this fall, you'll dig it. (Link is for a Java applet; here's an Across Lite link.)

Brad Wilber's New York Times crossword

Would you look at all the cool answers in here? Tyler Hinman was just saying on Twitter that "68 is the sweet spot for themelesses" because "68 is where you start to get the eye-pop factor without resorting to obscurities." Brad's 72-word grid may not have so much in the way of eye-pop, but the fill's highlights (and the twistiest clues) do offer brain-pop. To wit:

• 1A. [Modern campaign element] is the ROBOCALL. If only robocalls were limited to political candidates.
• 30A. The SHVG in the middle of BUSH V. GORE looks bizarre. This is, of course, the [2000 Supreme Court case hinging on the 14th Amendment].
  
• 42A. GROUP HUG! Clued gruesomely as [Corporate retreat closer, perhaps].
  
• 56D. [They work to maintain their faculties] clues college DEANS.
  
• 65A. I always love to see the word AKIMBO, which is [One way to stand], with your hands on your hips.
• 68A. [Producer of a piercing look], fictionally speaking, is X-RAY EYES.
• 1D. REST UP, or [Recharge], is a solid phrase. Kinda looks like RE-STUP since multi-word crossword answers lack word spaces.
• 7D. LET IT BE is a [1970 hit documentary] and the Beatles hit song.
• 8D. The late, very great LES PAUL is clued as the ["Vaya Con Dios" hitmaker, 1953]. You know a guitarist is serious about his art if he shatters his arm in a car crash and, when the doctors say the elbow will be fixed in one position after surgery, instructs them to give him a permanent guitar-playing angle to his arm.
• 9D. TORI, plural of "torus," was just clued in relation to doughnuts, I think in the LAT crossword. Here they're [Bagels, e.g.].
• 32D. Great mislead in the clue. The [Model featured in "Little Miss Sunshine"] is the VW BUS the family drove, not a fashion model.
• 34D. BART is a simple little answer. The trivia clue is [TV character who says "I didn't think it was physically possible, but this both sucks and blows"]. I am of the generation that uses "suck" as a synonym for "stink" without regard for any oral sex connotations the slangy usage may have had earlier.
• 37D. OKEY-DOKE! ["You got it"].
• 38D. DECREPIT's clued with [Condemnable?] because a decrepit building might be condemned.
• 44D. The UV INDEX is another terrific entry, [It drops to 0 after sundown].

If you know your Greek roots/medical terminology, you can piece together what achromotrichia is even if you've never seen the word before (as I had not). 49D: [Start developing achromotrichia] clues GO GRAY, as in hair.

I wasn't as pleased with the EX-YANKEE and OXHIDE (though I like the Scrabbly letters). Crosswordese EELY ENE AGAR, meh. The Italian word GLI is not so well-known, I think—61A: [Los : Spanish :: ___ : Italian]. Speaking of Italy, MODENA is the [Maserati headquarters city] and where that yummy balsamic vinegar comes from, SBARRO is a poor [Alternative to Uno Chicago Grill], and LIRA is the [Old capital of 36-Across] (meaning the old unit of currency used in Modena).

Overall, good stuff. I do like a 72-worder if it's packed with goodies the way this puzzle is.

Updated Saturday morning:

Stella Daily & Bruce Venzke's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Getting Active"—Janie's review

Apparently, yesterday's sloth machines yield to today's exercise regimen. In a four-step process to shake off the lethargy and get movin', we:

•17A. SIT FOR A PORTRAIT [Have one's picture painted].

•26A. STAND ON CEREMONY [Follow protocol to the letter].

•48A. WALK ON EGGSHELLS [Proceed gingerly]. This one's my fave clue/fill combo.

•63A. RUN INTERFERENCE [One way to block defenders, in football].

There is nothing BLAH [Ho-hum] about that fill. It's fresh, lively and long–four 15s for a generous 60 squares of theme fill.

While, on the whole, the "straight-forward" school of cluing prevails, there's some nice non-theme fill as well. You can almost hear that BRAZEN GUFFAW clued as [Full of chutzpah] and [Hearty chuckle] respectively; or the person who SCREAMS [Hits the high note, in a way]–though one might also associate screams (the noun) with the sounds heard in the INFERNO [Dante's and Virgil's destination in literature]; or that "CLANG!" [Sound in "The Trolley Song"].

Progressive references to time can be seen in YEARS [What birthday candles represent] and LIFE [Birth to death] and EON (which I'd not thought of as such but which can refer to a) [Geologic time unit]. If you fervently created objects with ROPE [Macramé medium] at some time in your life, chances are you're of a certain age. Or if you baked your own granola, or rolled your own...candles...

[Stick in one's ___ ] CRAW is an almost quaint phrase these days, but I like it still. The craw is the stomach (of an animal) and the phrase is used to describe the way it feels when you just can't easily dismiss something that's bothering you; it causes resentment; it rankles. That would be an exaggeration of how I felt on encountering crosswordese SNEE, SPEE and TRON all in the same puzzle–but I also took pleasure in the way the first two rhyme with ONE G, TREE and NO TV. Cluing RNS as [They work with MDs] did not go unnoticed, btw. Or unappreciated.

Kyle Dolan's Los Angeles Times crossword

I suspect this is the constructor's major newspaper crossword debut. If so, congratulations!

The puzzle's got an unusual grid, with two vertical 15s constituting a mini-theme: 6D, 9D: The mini-theme includes 6D: GREEN-COLLAR JOBS, or [Work in the environmental sector], and 9D: CARBON FOOTPRINT, or [Environmental impact factor]. Timely, since the international summit on climate change is coming up in Copenhagen this month.

Things that caught my eye:

• 13A. [Wild Asian equine] (ONAGER). Bonus points because this is an anagram of Orange.
• 14A. ISABELLA is, among other things, a ["Measure for Measure" heroine]. Speaking of Shakespeare plays, I just received an e-mail newsletter alerting me to a community theater production, Comedy of Error. (Just one? Sure, in these recessionary times, who can afford more?)
• 17A. ["Receiving poorly," to a CBer[ (TEN-ONE). I know "10-4, good buddy," but not "10-1." Remember the '70s, when a song about CB radios could be a runaway hit?
• How about some deep-sea diving? 35D: [Sea named for its seaweed] (SARGASSO) crosses 39A: [Watery expanse] (SEA). (Not many people love cross-referenced clues, but SARGASSO's clue could've referenced 39A rather than including the word "sea.") What's in the sea? 20A: [Shockers in the deep] (EELS).
• Favorite fill, narrative style: The CLASS CLOWN got into trouble for throwing his PB AND J at the NINJAS, who fought back throwing stars crafted from BASMATI. The clown was sent to the principal, who declared him a LOST SOUL.
• 31A: [What it takes?] is TWO. To do what? To tango, to fight over the remote control, or move a sofa upstairs.
• 1D: [Possible source of unwanted feedback, for short] (HOT MIC). Short for "hot microphone." This answer, in combination with the name in the byline, leads me to suspect today's construct is under age 35.
• 3D: [Trattoria order?] (MANGIA). "MANGIA" is Italian for the imperative, "Eat!"
• 33D: [Big name in oil filters] (FRAM). Lame answer on its own merits, but it made me think of an Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Armstrong duet on "The Frim Fram Sauce," and that makes me happy.

Merle Baker's Newsday "Saturday Stumper"

(PDF solution here.)

This one seemed a little more obliquely clued than the other recent Stumpers I've done. Among the clues I struggled with were these:

• 1A. [One of Maryland's state symbols] is the CALICO CAT. I was thinking state flower, tree, bird, gem, and seafood. Maryland has too many state symbols. The state sport is jousting. Apparently they like the calico because its colors—orange, black, and white—are shared by the Baltimore oriole and the state butterfly.
• 17A. [Unlikely Phi Betes] are B STUDENTS. Straight As will get you into Phi Beta Kappa more easily.
• 19A. BEES, not ANTS, are the [Symbols of industry].
• 27A. [Bonding agents?] are PARENTS. Eh, that clue reaches too far.
• 35A. [Fruit favored by Jefferson] is the GHERKIN. Who doesn't love gherkin pie?
• 39A. STAGERS are [Home-sale aides].
• 58A. [Party snacks] clues EDAMS. Really? Pfft. Next party I host, I'm putting out a bowl of Edam cheese wheels. Potato chips and Edams, that's it.
• 1D. [Sort of driver] is a CABBY. I prefer the "cabbie" spelling.
• 5D. Took a while to remember a 3-letter first name for a female dancer of yore. CYD Charisse is [Fred's partner in "Silk Stockings"].
• 7D. [Food processors] are the CANNERS who put your gherkins into jars.
• 9D. [It's often spoken into microphones] clues "TESTING...testing...one, two three."
• 12D. WATER SKIS are [Skimming gear].
• 33D. [Frequent fast-food giveaways] are...GLASSWARE? Wait, didn't that pretty much stop in the '70s? I was just talking about this last weekend with my husband, but thought it was more of a gas station giveaway, the drinking glasses with cartoon characters or sports team logos on them. Have you seen a fast-food joint giving out glasses in the last 10 or 20 years?
• 44D. [Upgrade one's alarm] clues REWIRE. If you say so.
• 52A. TARES, the verb: [Computes net weight].

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Tuesday, 11/17/09

Jonesin' 3:59
NYT 3:40
LAT 2:35
CS untimed

Caleb Madison's newest Bard Bulletin crossword is available now in Across Lite, at the Crossword Fiend forum's "Island of Lost Puzzles." It'll be online in Java applet form later this week. Enjoy!

John Farmer's New York Times crossword

Structurally, this is an unusual puzzle. The theme entries are 10 (or 14)-letter doubled entities criss-crossing in two 5 (or 7)-letter halves that intersect in the middle, and these are found in the four corners and in the middle of the grid. The letters in those central intersections spell out RINGO. Here's how it plays out:

• 16A. [WIth 2-Down, group with the only James Bond theme to hit #1] is DURAN DURAN.
• 18A. [WIth 10-Down, flashy jewelry] is BLING-BLING.
• 39A. "TWINKLE, TWINKLE" is [With 25-Down, start of a nighttime nursery rhyme]. It's not just the start of the rhyme/song as a partial entry—we often call it "Twinkle, Twinkle" without adding the "Little Star" part, don't we?
• 61A. [With 60-Down, #1 hit of 1969] is "SUGAR, SUGAR." The Archies?
• 64A. [With 54-Down, intro to a joke] is "KNOCK, KNOCK."
• 52D. RINGO Starr is the [Rock star whose name is spelled out by the middle letters of 16-, 18-, 39-, 61- and 64-Across].

Okay, John: Please fill us in. What drew you to playing with crossword conventions in this way? Was there a compelling thematic reason to have the middle letters spell out RINGO, or could you have just as easily gone with another 5-letter word? How many iterations did you go through while working on this puzzle?

Okay, fellow solvers: Is it just me, or was this puzzle of Wednesday difficulty for you, too? Here are the tougher spots:

• WIGAN?!? 40D: [City near Manchester]—Wiggin' out about that one? Me, too. If you didn't know that RIGEL is the name of that 46A: [Bright double star in Orion], you were sunk here.
• 53A. The SKUA is an [Arctic seabird]. Remember this one with the AUK, ERN(E), and TERN.
• 12A. OCULI are [Eyelike windows]. I prefer auriculi, the ear-shaped windows.
• 21A. [International alliance] didn't shout ENTENTE to me, so I worked the crossings instead.
• 34A. I kinda wanted the [A.P. transmission] to be a WIRE STORY, but it's a WIRE PHOTO. On Twitter, you can follow the APStyleBook or, for a more irreverent take on writing and editing, there's Fake AP Stylebook. Sample: "Avoid using 'gadzooks,' lest your monocle pop out and land in your jar of mustache wax."
• 47A. [Japanese prime minister Taro] ASO puts me in mind of taro chips.
• 59A. The weird "I MEAN NO" is clued as an [Emphatic refusal].

Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "You Want Fries With That?"

This week's Jonesin' theme is unusual French fry toppings or dips, beyond ketchup and malt vinegar and my son's preference, barbecue sauce. Me, I want a dash of sea salt flakes and a little ketchup. Other options:

• 17A. [Garnish that some upscale fries at Chicago restaurant mk are served with] is TRUFFLE CREAM.
• 26A. [Ingredient served with fries and brown gravy in the Canadian dish poutine] clues CHEESE CURDS. The gravy ruins poutine for me. Not a gravy fan. As for CHEESE CURDS, I like 'em breaded and deep-fried, à la the Upper Midwest. Mmm, hot cheddar goodness.
• 40A. MAYONNAISE is the [Condiment most often used by the Dutch with their fries]. Mac, is this true?
• 56A. I don't quite understand how this one works. CHICKEN SOUP is a [Seasoning option for fries at the Japanese fast food restaurant First Kitchen]. Wet or powdered soup?
• 67A. WENDY'S FROSTY is the [Fast food dessert that some kids insist on dipping their fries in].

Freshest answers in the fill:

• The FAR LEFT is an [Ultraliberal's place on the political spectrum].
• The GEEK SQUAD is the [Tech support subsidiary of Best Buy].
• Good gravy (a nonsequitur for me)! Crosswordese ARLO gives way to his last name for a change. GUTHRIE is clued as ["Alice's Restaurant" singer Arlo].
• The F-TEST is an [Analysis named after statistician Sir Ronald Fisher]. I've heard of Fisher's exact test, too. Someone else named the F-test after Fisher.
• GLAM ROCK is the [Genre for Gary Glitter].
• SIA is clued as ["The Girl You Lost to Cocaine" singer]. Who? Sia Furler is an Australian pop singer.
• [MSNBC anchor Monica] NOVOTNY is not anyone I'd heard of. I'm not a big consumer of cable news. What I see from across the health club once a week is pretty much it.

Updated Tuesday morning:

Patrick Jordan's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Cart Game"—Janie's review

This "cart" game deals out three fresh phrases and one familiar name whose first word can be followed not by cart but by its synonym WAGON, as is made clear at 69A. [Word that can follow the starts of...]:

• 20A. STATION BREAK [Spot for a commercial] → station wagon. Here's a Hudson classic from the '40s. Are station wagons even made today or is it all-SUV-all-the-time? (Remember, this question comes from someone who lives in Manhattan and doesn't own a car. And the last time I did, it was a VW Beetle... that got great mileage!)
• 35A. CHUCK NORRIS ["The Delta Force" star] → chuckwagon. Here's an interesting backgrounder on this mobile food wagon that first came into being in the American West, in the mid-1860s. And here's a picture of one from the 1920s.
• 42A. COVERED DISH [Potluck dinner contribution] → covered wagon, the 19th century version of a station wagon? If you were crossing the Great Plains, your belongings were likely to be packed inside.
• 59A. WELCOME SIGHT [Glimpse of something pleasing] → Welcome Wagon. You and your covered wagon would not have been greeted by one on your arrival in, say, Oregon, but Wiki tells us that "the company was founded in 1928, by Thomas Briggs in Memphis, Tennessee. At that time, Welcome Wagon 'hostesses' would visit new homeowners with a gift basket containing samples, coupons, and advertising from contributing businesses. These home visits continued for over 50 years until 1998, when changing demographics meant few homeowners would be at home when representatives called." I never realized there was an actual company with this name—that that's where the phrase (apparently) came from. And it's still around—on the internet, these days.

There's a lot of good fill and cluing throughout to make this a solid kind of puzzle. For instance, there's a mid-Eastern mini-theme by way of [Palestinian leader Yasir] ARAFAT, ARABS [Jordanian majority], OMANI [Muscat resident] and KURD [Certain Turk or Syrian].

There are also a pair of hirsute creatures—one diminutive, the other... probably not. The former is the EWOK [Forest-dwelling Jedi ally]; the latter, the YETI [Hairy Himalayan humanoid]. Oh—and I nearly forgot a reference to a third creature (a certifiably real one this time) with [Cat's coat] and FUR.

About to be late? You might not be if you [Hotfooted it] RAN. If someone were doing a play-by-play, she might even say, "There he is, and he RACES IN [Enters hurriedly]!"

Other TREATS (they're not only [Halloween handouts]) include SPLOTCH [Irregular stain], because it's a great word to get your mouth around; TABASCO [McIlhenny Company sauce], because it's hot stuff; VAN clued as [Part of Mayflower's fleet], because that's a fleet of moving vans and not ocean-going ships bearing Pilgrims...; BOTOX [Wrinkle-reducing treatment], because I just like that "X"; THREE for its thought-inducing clue [Line count of a haiku]; and the homophonic crossing of SITE MAP [Table of contents on the Internet] with WELCOME SIGHT.

Finally, whether by design or chance, there's that whole assonant SE corner. Look at it: STEEP [Like a canyon's sides], DEEP [Low-bottomed] (like that canyon, no doubt) and THREE. Plus the eye-rhyme that EPEE [Olympics rapier] lends, and the true rhyme of the bottom-central PEEP [Hatchery sound]. Nice touch!

Bruce Venzke's Los Angeles Times crossword

The four theme entries end with words that can substitute for BUNCH: a VACANT LOT, SEATTLE SLEW, IMPERIAL TON, and RIVER RAFT. Two of the theme answers have 9 letters, so it was a little distracting to have an 8-letter non-theme answer, NO BIGGIE, also end with a word connoting largeness.

The theme square count is 45, which is not small but also not too dense. So I was surprised by the amount of answers that can fit the category of crosswordese (words seen more often in crosswords than in the wild). Consider BRAE, IRANI, SMOTE crossing EMOTE, the OAS, AGER and APED, ANON, E'EN, MOUE, APSE, and G-MAN. Plus a prefix (ACRO), abbreviations (APR, ABA, NET WT, TMI), partials (ALL OR, A CHIP, a single NANU, PRIORI), and a bizarre plural (MA'AMS). These outweighed the theme and the zip of MR. FIX-IT for me.

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Tuesday, 11/10/09

Jonesin' 3:57
NYT 2:50
LAT 2:30
CS untimed

Uh, yeah, hi. I haven't done the puzzle yet because it's about to come out but I am about to leave to take a friend to a late-night MRI appointment (they have those!), and I just got home from the vaccination clinic (2.5-hour wait). Gah!

Go ahead and discuss amongst yourselves for the time being. It's Tuesday. How mystifying can a Tuesday theme be, anyway?

Updated Tuesday morning:

Bruce Venzke & Stella Daily's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Assorted Searches"—Janie's review

Last Tuesday, Doug Peterson gave us a puzzle entitled "Search Party." Bruce and Stella look to have developed the idea Doug set in motion. Now where the connection between today's title and today's theme fill is concerned, what ya sees is what ya gets: four theme phrases, each describing the object of a different search. The variety and range of quests, however, makes for some very fresh fill, and there's a nice SENSE of PLAY in the non-theme fill as well. Cue up The Coasters' "Searchin'" as you, too, go looking for the:

• 17A. [Object of a Ponce de León search] FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH.
• 26A. [Object of an eHarmony.com search] PERFECT MATCH. Finian's Rainbow is enjoying a well-reviewed revival on Broadway right now, and in that Burton Lane/Yip Harburg score, our heroine Sharon explains in song that in matters of the heart, she'd been well-advised to "look to the rainbow" and then "follow the fella who follows a dream." Ah, for the days before the internet!
• 48A. [Object of a Sir Lancelot search] THE HOLY GRAIL. Wait—ya mean?...I thought that was the object of a Monty Python search!
• 63A. [Object of many a hopeful machine inventor's search] PERPETUAL MOTION. Hopeful—and deluded...

Bruce and Stella do name a lot of names right at the top of their puzzle: EDIE McClurg, GENA Rowlands, Mos DEF, Dr. PHIL, OONA (O'Neill) Chaplin, and Burt LAHR [...of "The Wizard of Oz"] (the score of which was written by our pal Yip Harburg with Harold Arlen). But they also give us several fill combinations that can be nicely tied together in a sub-theme kinda way. For instance, there's a [Quaint exclamation] for EGAD, and also a [Quaintly polite response], YES'M. Also quaint to my ear (and totally charming), is [Have a crush on, to a Brit], for FANCY. In baseball, if you [Overthrow, for one], you commit an ERROR. An error of a different sort is a TYPO, as demonstrated in [Thsi clue has one]. If it's more than that—a word that's wrong or a sentence that can be cut, say—the offending text may be marked DELE [Editor's "take it out"].

[Do-___ ] RE-MI is the way many a singer will warm up, tune up the voice. TUNE-UPS, though are also [Car maintenance requirements]. Benzoyl peroxide treats ACNE; ACME is [Wile E. Coyote's favorite catalogue company. IGNITES is a word for [Sets ablaze]; when something's [Going out, as a fire], it's DYING.

I liked the misdirection of [Stuff in blue books?] for SMUT. And you thought this was a reference to your college EXAM booklet. Then again, maybe the stuff in your exam books was smut... (You know—for your History of Porn class...) STIR is but one of the many great words for another great word, [Hoosegow]. Clink, pokey, cooler, coop, jug, can. Colorful language for a place where "grey" is the new everything, and the only kind of companionship might be a CHIA PET...

Alan Arbesfeld's' New York Times crossword

Okay! I'm only 12 hours behind schedule. Why, I'll be caught up in no time. Maybe.

Eh, I don't love this puzzle. The theme entries are five phrases that begin with the words TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN, which apparently is a a line associated with WOODY /ALLEN. First, I do not like Woody Allen. Second, never would've thought he was connected to that line. Two non-theme answers are stacked with the first and last theme answers and are the same length, which is not optimal. And then there are a zillion two-word answers littering the grid, along with a three-word, 9-letter phrase clued as a partial. Two short answers (TONY, EDIE Falco) are tied to THE SOPRANOS, but why? The THE is part of the Woody Allen theme. It's distracting to shift the focus to The Sopranos.

The glut of two-word answers includes SIC 'EM crossing SIT ON and IN AWE, SAW IN, partial Q AS, I'LL DRY, and I LIED. None is particularly juicy.

As for the theme entries themselves, I like THE SOPRANOS, MONEY LAUNDERING, and AND I LOVE HER, but TAKE PLACE is flat and RUN SCARED, well, I don't like it as much as those others.

I'm short on time this morning too, so...moving on!

Donna Levin's Los Angeles Times crossword

Lovely early-week puzzle from Donna. DRIVE at 68A ties everything together: The four longest Across answers begin with "___ drive" words. FLASH IN THE PAN, SEX EDUCATION, LINE ITEM VETO, and TEST BAN TREATY point towards the lively "drive" phrases flash drive (the itty bitty USB gadget that's so handy for transporting files, and that holds a gazillion more bytes than diskettes ever did), sex drive (hey-o!), line drive (baseball term), and test drive (we fell in love with our 9.5-year-old VW on the test drive when it took a sharp curve fast).

Highlights in the fill include ROUND TRIP ([There and back]), MOON RIVER ([Song with the lyric "I'm crossing you in style"]), VISHNU ([Four-armed Hindu deity]), and HIPSTER ([cool cat]). Overall, smooth stuff.

Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Home Slice"

Matt's theme is bread puns:

• 17A. [Bready agreement?] is YOU GOT THAT WHITE ("you got that right"). Except there's no inherent "agreement" in YOU GOT THAT WHITE. That's merely identifying that the white bread has been gotten. How about clueing this as a [Wonder lover's question?]?
• 32A. [Bready folk singing group?] is PITA, PAUL AND MARY (Peter, Paul and Mary). Cute.
• 42A. [Bready magic act?] clues SIEGFRIED AND RYE (Siegfriend and Roy). Cute.
• 60A. [Bready phrase after a double take?] is HEY, WHEAT A MINUTE ('hey, wait a minute"). This one has no surface sense at all. Boo!

Highlights:

• TAX DOLLARS are clued via [They're "at work" when talking about public projects]. I am most appreciative of the economic stimulus road resurfacing. My car is grateful for smooth roads replacing horribly pot-holed streets.
• ERIC BLAIR is the [Author who went by the pseudonym George Orwell].
• THE PLAYER is that [1992 Robert Altman satire of Hollywood execs].
• GRUB and [Vittles] have the same variety of slangy vibe to them.

Mystery TV answer #1 (because my son's too old for preschooler TV shows): LAN is clued ["Ni Hao, Kai-___" (Nickelodeon cartoon)]. I know the "local area network" sort of LAN, but needed every crossing for this one.

Mystery TV answer #2 (but inferrable): "I PIE" is the ["Good Eats" episode title where Alton Brown discusses lemon meringue]. I like Alton Brown's goofy-yet-practical sensibility.

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Tuesday, 10/20/09

Jonesin' 5:46
NYT 2:57
LAT 2:36
CS untimed

Gary Cee's New York Times crossword

Wouldn't it be great if some of Gary Cee's relatives became wildly famous? Finally, constructors could clue CEE as something other than the pretty-much-only-in-crosswords spelled-out form of the letter C. Then we need to work on finding the Ess family and spurring them to greatness.

The theme is explained by SHIFT GEARS: In each of the other four theme entries, the letters of GEARS are scrambled up into non-words that are buried within longer phrases. SHIFTing GEARS could also mean that each letter would shift over one space, but that's not what happens here. The [View from the Oval Office] is the ROSE GARDEN. Hey, look! It's Popeye creator E.C. Segar, lurking on the White House lawn! CHIVAS REGAL (in which the final A could be circled instead of the other A) is a [Premium Scotch whiskey] brand. OLD-TIMERS GAME is an [Event featuring sports stars of yesteryear]; I'll take the puzzle's word for it that this is an actual thing. The final scramble is in SAUSAGE ROLL, or [Pastry sold at pizzerias].

What I liked:

• 50D. TOFFEE gets a weird clue: [Chewy coating for an apple]. Naw, that's caramel. TOFFEE is delightful, but I haven't ever seen a toffee apple. If I did, mind you, I would pay good money for it. Num. Toffeeeee.
• 15A. [Dame who's a hoot] is Dame EDNA Everage. The most hoot-associated of all the EDNAs who show up in crosswords, for sure.
• The combination of the CAT ([Litter box visitor]) and FETAL ([Like an unborn baby's position]) reminds me of these little fetuses made of polyfleece and stuffed with catnip.
• 12D. Nobody loves a plural first name answer, but CARLAS goes au courant when clued as [France's Bruni-Sarkozy and others].
• 22D. The ORANGE is a [Tropicana fruit]. Technically, I'm more of a Copacabana girl.

I wasn't so fond of the abbreviations (ORIG. DEPS., Athens airport code ATH, ASST. D.A., LT. GEN.) and partials (A BITE, A PAR, ARE UP) but overall, a solid Tuesday presentation.

Updated Tuesday morning:

Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy/Washington Post Puzzle, "Foodies"—Janie's review

Well this was one surprisingly odd solve. And I'm not sure I mean that in the kindest possible way. Martin's finely crafted puzzles ordinarily delight me; today's left me confounded. The theme is very straight-forward: food last-names of four high-profile types from different walks of life. They are:

• 17A. CONDOLEEZZA RICE [She preceded Hillary Clinton]. A great and scrabbly name, to be sure—15 letters, too. But she appeared as theme fill just less than two weeks ago (also clued in connection with H.C.), which kinda diminishes the impact of her appearance today. Sorry, Condi...
• 24A. KEVIN BACON ["Loverboy" star]. Star and director. A project the whole family looks to have been involved with. Until today, never heard of it...
• 46A. HALLE BERRY ["Catwoman" star].
• 59A. "MEADOWLARK" LEMON [Basketball's "Clown Prince"]. He was new to me, too, but not the Harlem Globetrotters, whom he played for.

"What's her problem? What's wrong with the theme?" Everybody's reasonably well-known; and yes, all of the surnames are foods—but not in any way that adds coherence to the theme as a whole. Or in any combination that sounds palatable. I kept hoping for something that would tie these disparate ingredients together, and did have a modicum of success finding recipes combining rice and bacon, e.g., or rice and lemon, or wheatberry, rice and lemon. But it shouldn't take a scavenger hunt to try to synthesize the elements of the theme. So that's my problem.

That said, I did appreciate the amount of (what I see as) theme-related bonus fill. In a puzzle about food, we get [Twinge], which takes us to PANG, which leads me to think of "hunger pang." What does a hungry person do to attend to that pang? In an ideal world, s/he [Chows down]/EATS. Perhaps some BRIE [French cheese]—and shares with an AMIE [French friend]. [Then there's MAPLE clued as [Syrup flavor], conjuring up blueberry pancakes topped with maple syrup. Meadowlark Lemon comes into play once again, this time as a [Drink garnish], or PEEL. And how is all of this served up? Why, it's [Easy ___ ] AS PIE (not to be confused with AS PER [In accordance with]).

I think I'd have preferred seeing "THE SWAN" (a tv show I'd never heard of...) clued in connection with mythology's Leda or the Molnar play rather than the poorly-rated [Fox reality TV series of 2004], which one viewer described as "a shrieking abomination of a show." Well, I suppose the pairing does have some kitsch value...

Several clue/fill combos I did like include: [Winter coat?]/SNOW (for the wordplay), [Poise]/APLOMB (because aplomb is a great word, being tied in as it is with plummet and plumb line), and [Brought forth, as a memory]/EVOKED (this combo has a nice, poetic feel). The puzzle isn't without its merits. The theme as executed today, however, simply isn't not one of them. Imoo, of course.

Bruce Venzke's Los Angeles Times crossword

Did you ever notice that the entry **TSUP can be completed with two permutations of the same pair of letters? I filled in CATSUP before seeing the clue, [Acts bratty], indicating ACTS UP.

The theme entries are clued with [Suffering writer's block]: If you are COMING UP EMPTY, FRESH OUT OF IDEAS, and DRAWING A BLANK, your creative endeavors may not be progressing well. These woes can strike crossword bloggers, too. A few highlights:

• ARMY MULE is a [Military mascot]. Like its fellow lively 8s TOP-NOTCH and EATS DIRT (and the less exciting INDEBTED), ARMY MULE hooks two theme entries together.
• 10-Down PASTA is a [Carbo-loader's choice] and Dr. ATKINS was the [Diet guru who wouldn't have recommended 10-Down]. Mmm, carbs.

Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Mixed Reviews"

Was this puzzle uncommonly tough for a Jonesin' or was I just sleepy last night when I solved it? I was too tired to blog the crossword by the time I finished it. The theme is movie titles clued by their anagrams, in the guise of what a reviewer might've said. I'm fond of anagrams, but when the answers aren't familiar and the clues don't give much away (other than which letters are in the answer, in some order), it's tough. I've heard of 2.5 out of the five movies:

• 17A. I know there've been a few Madea movies by Tyler Perry, but MADEA GOES TO JAIL? Not ringing a bell. The clue is [Review #1: "I, a male? A good jest."]. The MADEA part was signaled by the clue (Madea is Tyler Perry in drag), but the JAIL portion? I had no idea.
• 23A. [Review #2: "Filmy ennui, sir."] clues MY LIFE IN RUINS. No idea what this movie is.
• 36A. [Review #3: "O, burn!"] clues BRUNO, this year's Sacha Baron Cohen movie.
• 43A. ["Review #4: 'Dat the 'S.N.L.' fool?"] points towards the Will Ferrell (ex-SNLer) movie, LAND OF THE LOST
• 53A. [Review #5: "Re-perks, eyes mist"] relays zero information about the movie. Lemme look up MY SISTER'S KEEPER. Oh, it's that one. Tearjerker about a girl conceived to serve as a tissue donor for her ill sister. OK, the clue does provide salient information. The title made me think it was a horror movie for some reason.

I see a couple dictionaries telling me that blowsy and blowzy work for 39D: [Unkempt], but BLOUSY...isn't that a casual word describing anything that blouses out like a blouse?

I knew 27D: [___-1 ("Ghostbusters" vehicle)] right off the bat—my son plays the Ghostbusters video game and tells me about ECTO-1.

Not a fan of the answer Y KEY. 24D is clued [You can't type "you" without it]. The Y KEY? Boo! I don't want to see 25 other _KEY answers popping up in crosswords.

Took me a while to summon up CLORETS, the 40D: [Breath mints brand since 1951]. No wonder: Wikipedia tells me "It is widely available in South America, the Middle East and South East Asia. The largest markets for Clorets are in Mexico, Thailand, Egypt and Japan." I haven't seen CLORETS in years.

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Sunday, 10/18/09

NYT 8:33
Reagle 8:08
BG 7:57
LAT 6:40
CS 4:37
NYT second Sunday cryptic crossword tba (PDF available via this "Print this week’s variety puzzle" link on Jim Horne's blog's sidebar—I'm guessing the link is updated weekly to provide the latest puzzle. Also available in Across Lite, but only if you're in the post about this puzzle, where you might see spoilers if you're not careful. This is nuts: the Premium Puzzles webpage doesn't include this puzzle. I guess the NYT is too rinky-dink an operation to put the puzzle where people expect to find it?)

Just last weekend, I wrote "Did you know MR. T is now a [Tormenting voice on some GPS devices]? Poor guy, always typecast. Why wasn't he cast opposite Jack Nicholson in The Bucket List? Where is his romantic comedy career?" I can't tell you how delighted I was to discover in the (incredibly showy) closing credits of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs that it was Mr. T who played the heroic cop/dad in hot pants. Cute movie. Anna Faris was good as the female lead.

Liz Gorski's New York Times crossword, "Ahead of the Curve"

What a tour de force crossword. It marks the this week's 50th anniversary of THE SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM / MUSEUM, which was the FINAL MAJOR WORK OF / FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT. The building has a NONTRADITIONAL / SPIRAL SHAPE, mimicked by the spiral pattern in the crossword grid. But that's not all: There are also nine artists' names in the grid, each clued with the title of his work of art in the Guggenheim. They go from 1-Across—MANET, ["Before the Mirror"]—down to ARP at 112-Down, ["Head and Shell"]. I have no idea if the painters' names reflect the pictures' locations in the museum.

The spiral grid may well make this puzzle have more 3-letter words than any other puzzle this decade (...I have no idea if that's true), but there are also lovely stacks with 9-, 10-, and 11-letter answers. Highlights in the nonthematic fill:

• 94A. An EDDY is a [Water swirl]. Appropriate for the swirling grid, no?
• 36D. HOT TAMALES are [Good lookers].
• 47A. [One who works on a grand scale?] is a PIANO TUNER. Also musical: the SOPRANOS right above this answer ([2000s TV family]).
• 27A. The SANTA ANA is a [California wind]. Nice to see this go beyond [Santa ___]/ANA.
• 110A. NATALIE WOOD was a ["Rebel Without a Cause" actress]. 39D: SISSY SPACEK is the [Player of one of the women in Robert Altman's "3 Women"].
• 89D. BAUHAUS, another art/architecture term, is clued as a [School popular in the 1920s].
• 42D. FABERGE is a [Jewelry firm since 1842]. Gotta love a Fabergé egg.
• 108A. Mystifying until all the crossings pulled it together, "'DEED I DO" is a [Jazz standard whose title is repeatedly sung after "Honey..."].
• 99A. I like the fancy clue for SPOUSE: [Clytemnestra, to Agamemnon].

It's getting late and I need to throw this post up, so I'll leave off here.

Merl Reagle's syndicated crossword, "Vowel Play"

I'll give this theme points for originality. The theme entries are phrases with three-letter abbreviations in them, those TLAs being formed by excising the vowels from the words that were originally in the full phrase:

• 21A. [Additive advice?] is WATCH YOUR STP. STP is a motor oil additive, something like that, and STP is step minus its vowel.
• 27A. [Where to hear songs with subliminal messages?] is ULTERIOR MTV (motive).
• 41A. [Two things not to mess with in the Old West?] are THE LONE RANGER AND TNT (Tonto).
• 57A. THE VCR OF WAKEFIELD (Vicar) is a [Way-ahead-of-its-time novel of 1766?].
• 70A. The Continental Divide turns into THE CONTINENTAL DVD, or [Certain airline's in-flight movie?].
• 87A. [Old ABC series about a paramedic?] is HANGIN' WITH MISTER CPR (Hangin' With Mr. Cooper]. Omigod, I used to watch that show! I forgot all about it. Gotta dock Merl a couple style points for the substitution of MISTER for Mr., though.
• 104A. [Top two sellers at the Trail Mix Deli?] are NUTS AND BLTS (bolts).
• 111A. [Banned Britney Spears song?] clues "OOPS, DDT AGAIN" ("Oops, I Did It Again").

The VCR and DDT answers made me laugh. Merl probably has a higher yield of laughs per puzzle than any other constructor (though the pun haters will replace the laughs with groans—and probably get more groans per puzzle with Merl than with anyone else).

How about five other clues? REEFER isn't just a joint or a jacket; it's also 53A: [Chilly rail car] whose name derives from "refrigerator." 6A: [Leeward Island] takes us to BORA BORA. ANTIDOTE is clued as 82D: [Toxic avenger]; cute! SPECIAL K breakfast cereal is a 86D: [Rival of Total]; this answer recently had a druggy clue in one of Brendan Quigley's puzzles. We've got a French three-fer; 42D: [Sceaux student] is ELEVE, 43D: [___ de triomphe] is L'ARC, and 68D: [1980s tennis star Jose-Louis] CLERC is really...not very well known. Make it a four-fer: GALOPS are 36A: [France's old dances], too. No, five: UNE is 107A: [Antoine's "a"]. Shall we dock Merl another point for having ELEV. and ELEVE in the same grid?

Henry Hook's Boston Globe crossword, "Color Scheme" (in Across Lite)

Hang on, this puzzle has the wrong title! It should be "UPS" because the theme is brown: Eight long phrases include shades of brown. We have CHOCOLATE LABRADOR, SIENNA MILLER, DUN AND BRADSTREET, ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S TOPAZ, I'D LIKE TO PROPOSE A TOAST, COFFEE TABLE BOOKS, THE GREAT SEAL, and the unlikely pair of DAN BROWN AND AMY TAN. Odd little big theme, isn't it? CHOCOLATE means brown here, whereas the other theme entries aren't using their brown hues as colors. Isn't TOPAZ more golden yellow than brown? Is there an overriding scheme here beyond "they're all shades of brown"? I dunno, this one leaves me wishing for more.

Alan Arbesfeld's syndicated Los Angeles Times crossword, "The Ultimate Sandwich"

When my husband makes the Ultimate Sandwich for our son, here's how it goes: He stacks two pieces of bread in the toaster oven, toasting one side and keeping the other soft and crumb-retardant. Then comes the dual slathering on the crunchy sides: peanut butter and jelly. Next, a smattering of chocolate chips, which get melty on the toast. Then it's smooshed together and served with a cold glass of milk.

In this puzzle, "The Ultimate Sandwich" refers to the ultimate degree, the NTH degree, that's sandwiched inside each theme entry. For example, ANCIENT HISTORY, or [Course covering the Roman Empire, perhaps], and MOUNT HOLYOKE, [One of the Seven Sisters colleges]. The eight theme answers are straight phrases clued straightforwardly. The whole venture seemed rather dry—no grand swaths of stacked fill, no super-colorful answers, no humor in the theme, and easy clues overall having little bite. 1-Across set the tone: [Place to surf] clues THE NET, which feels about 10 years out of date as common parlance. Go ahead and Google it—the first hits are for the 1995 movie by that name.

Updated Sunday morning:

Bruce Venzke and Stella Daily's CrosSynergy/Washington Post "Sunday Challenge"

I like to see constructors stretch and try their hand at low-word-count puzzles, but sometimes they run afoul of my Patrick Berry Rule: If you're not Patrick Berry and you dip down to 64 words (or less), the odds are high that the fill will contain too many "roll your own" words with prefixes and suffixes that feel clunky.

Let's start with what I liked. Cool grid design, with 6s, 7s, and 8s stacked up the wazoo. The full name DORIS DAY ([Calamity Jane portrayer, in 1953]) is nice, and MT. ARARAT ([Resting place in Gen.]) kept me guessing until the crossings finally made it clear it began with MT. "Resting place" x 6 letters = ARARAT as a gimme, but with 8 I was thinking unknown burial site in the Bible. FUNK is clued as ["The ___ of forty thousand years" ("Thriller" lyric)]—just saw the trailer last night for Michael Jackson's rehearsal concert movie and it actually looks entertaining.

In the "roll your own" category, alas, there is more. Two odd jobbers: some DICERS ([Cooks, at times]) and a ROAMER ([Footloose one]). MADDISH is clued as [A little crazy], and no, I've neither used nor encountered this word before. Also in the fill: ROILING, ALERTLY, RESTOCK (though this word is rock-solid), EERINESS, PEERED (ordinary but undistinguished), and UNSTOP (this one's also rock-solid). There are a few verb + preposition phrases, and some oddball phrases like DEAR ONE ([Close friend, e.g.]) and ON A LEAD ([Way to walk one's dog]).

Unless it's a dance term, I say no to SALSA DIP—this one keeps showing up in crosswords but sounds awkward every time. Constructors, is this phrase in your database?

I had no idea what the [Swelling on a bird's beak] was—it's CERE. I'll bet Trip and Al and Ellen knew that one, but I didn't remember it from the heyday of crosswordese (Eugene Maleska, R.I.P.).

I've said it before and I'll say it again: A themeless puzzle with a much higher word count is usually so much more entertaining than a low-word-count creation (unless you're Patrick Berry or a handful of others). I can marvel at a technical achievement, sure, but first and foremost I want to be entertained and challenged.

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Saturday, 10/3/09

Newsday 10:11
NYT 5:24
LAT 3:00
CS untimed (double-Doug!)
NYT diagramless tba

Doug Peterson's New York Times crossword

Did you know that COMEDIAN fits perfectly into the space for 15A: [Stand-up guy]? And yet the answer is FUNNYMAN, but I had the last letter in place so I promptly filled in COMEDIAN. Thank goodness for psychopaths behaving AMORALLY or it would've taken me longer to see the error in my ways. And thank goodness for the NYT's difficulty level remaining intact as an American treasure—I did the Saturday LAT puzzle just before this one, and it's a travesty how easy it was.

Lots of good stuff and hardly any junk in this grid. What's good? This:

• 9A. [Rey Juan Carlos's home] is ESPAÑA. Yes, "home" is in English, but "rey" is Spanish ("king") to signal the Spanish answer. What better word to display in Spanish than Spain?
  
• 16A. [It holds its liquor] clues a FLAGON. Gotta love words that have been with us since the late Middle English days.
  
• 17A. OLD-GROWTH FOREST constitutes [Much of Redwood National Forest]. New growth is lovely, but there's no replacement for old-growth unless you've got a couple hundred years to wait.
  
• 27A. "PLEASE," [When repeated, start of a Beatles title]—that's "Please Please Me." You dallied with Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da in your head, didn't you?
  
• 31A. [Sandwich, Edam, or Champagne] is a TOPONYM, or place name. The sammich, cheese, and swill take their names, directly or not, from those places.
  
• 40A. MR. MOTO is the [Secret agent created by a 1938 Pulitzer winner], John P. Marquand. The answer makes me think of "Mr. Roboto." I can't help it. I came of age in the '80s.
  
• 46A. CAEN was the [Setting of William the Conqueror's castle], which (a) I did not know and (b) tells me Caen is old.
  
• 48A. ERIK Estrada has been passed over yet again, this time for [Finnish composer Bergman]. Hey, that name is not Finnish. He should be Eriikk Berggamakko.
  
• 51A. [Fixation] clues BEE IN ONE'S BONNET, which takes me straight to the They Might Be Giants song
  "Birdhouse in Your Soul".
  
• 1D. [It keeps you grounded] isn't about electricity or humility but rather, gravity: G-FORCE. Thank god the clue isn't about that small rodent Disney movie my kid didn't want to see this summer.
  
• 4D. Who knew ANGST was an [Existential topic for Heidegger]?
  
• 5D. Wait-wait-wait. TYRE is [Home to a Shakespearean prince]? Which one? Pericles, Prince of Tyre, written at least in part by Shakespeare, they say.
  
• 11D. [3, 4 or 5, but rarely 6] is a good clue for PAR in golf.
  
• 27D. PEÑA is clued as [Elizabeth of "Lone Star," 1996]. If you've never seen the movie, get it from Netflix. It's excellent.
  
• 30D. Wow, did I get stuck on [Source of a body piercing?]. It's TORO, as in a bull in Spain that might gore someone. Friend of mine works as a body piercer so I got distracted by thinking of him.
  
• 31D. [Where to get croquetas] is at a TAPAS BAR. Yum.
  
• 42D. I had the beginning letter of the [Leader called "the Great"] so I filled in POMPEY. It's czar PETER I.
  
• 48D. Gotta love a mislead like ["And Winter Came..." artist]. "Artist"? Singer. ENYA. D'oh!
  
• 53D. SEI, Italian for "six," is the [Number of legs on un insetto]. Cute!
  

You know, I thought this puzzle rolled in on the easier end of the Saturday spectrum, but I'm seeing longer-than-expected times on the applet and the widget in my sidebar. Deadly crossings? Tough clues? Traps? What gives?

Updated Saturday morning:

Doug Peterson's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Concealed Weapons"—Janie's review

You may recall that Monday's puzzle was "C & W" (by Paula Gamache), in which the words of the theme-phrases began with the title letters, and in which one of those theme-phrases was CONCEALED WEAPON. This last puzzle of the week goes one better by literally embedding the word arm, as in 57A. THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS [Constitutional guarantee...] in three more 15-letter phrases. And they just happen to be:

• 17A. BRONZE STAR METAL [Military decoration for valor]. Not only do I like this phrase, but there's some truth in the advertising here. People in the military do carry arms. Which are sometimes concealed. The phrase stands in striking contrast to the next place where a concealed weapon apparently may be found:
• 26A. ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT [Organized campaign for peace]. Yikes. How's that for irony? Is there something Doug knows that we don't? The final phrase isn't associated with the military or its opponents, but brings back the advertising phrase we've all come to know:
• 43A. CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? [Cell phone user's query]. (Using arms against the person who came up with this phrase is not an option...)

One "K" shy of a pangram, this puzzle is filled with lively, Scrabbly fill. Some of my faves include:

• SIZE TWO/[Runway model's specification, perhaps]. Too thin!!!
• The crossing of the eminently listenable [Jason with the 2008 hit "I'm Yours"]/ MRAZ (whom I'd never heard of [living under a rock as I sometimes do...]) with ZEALOTS, and of AZTEC with ZORRO
• YAPHET/[Actor Kotto of "Alien"] and also Homicide: Life on the Streets
• JIU-JITSU/[Japanese martial art]
• And for those "V"s, even AVAIL, ALIVE and VASSAR—where the female student body may run the gamut from VAMP/[Coquette] to the young woman who's described as PRIM/[Rigidly formal]. No matter where the student lies on the spectrum, she'll still have to find the time to PORE OVER her books. Ditto her male classmates.

Was amused to see SUES right next to ARTE in the grid. While the former has been clued as [Brings actions against] and the latter as ["Laugh-In" regular Johnson], I was reminded that Alan Sues was also one of the regular (if perhaps less memorable) Laugh-In cast members.

Also smiled at the sequential, echoing clues [Newsman Newman]/EDWIN and [New, to Juan]/NUEVO.

Before I "AM-SCRAY!" (I do enjoy the slangy, ig-pay atin-Lay imperative), let me point out that ["Gunsmoke" star James] ARNESS always carried a weapon (if not necessarily a concealed one), and whether at the card table (where he would [Take from the deck]) or on the streets of Dodge City, might have uttered another imperative: "DRAW!"

Orange here. Imagine my surprise when it was nearly 9:30 when I woke up. That set the lackadaisical pace for my morning, in which I've made breakfast and downloaded a couple software updates but done no crosswords or blogging yet. I did the L.A. Times puzzle last night, so I'll start with that before moving on to the Newsday "Stumper" and Patrick Blindauer's NYT diagramless.

Bruce Venzke and Stella Daily's Los Angeles Times crossword

I can't help wondering if themeless (or, as Matt Gaffney wants to call 'em, "freestyle") crossword constructors are going to be hesitant to submit their creations to the L.A. Times knowing that the clues are likely to be gutted to Tuesday difficulty. I had complained last year when some Newsday "Saturday Stumpers" were hitting the 4-minute range and not stumping me at all—and now the L.A. Times themelesses are closer to the 3-minute mark. I just e-mailed a vague Tribune e-mail address (consumerservices@tribune.com) this morning to ask TMS to provide L.A. Times crosswords that appeal to solvers at all skill levels again, and not just easy puzzles.

Here's some of what I said in my L.A. Crossword Confidential post:

It's loaded with 15-letter answers—a triple-stack in the middle embraced by pairs of 15s above and below. They're all clued straightforwardly, as are the shorter answers. Not a single question-marked clue in the bunch! (And it's almost certain that Stella and Bruce originally wrote tougher clues for the puzzle.) Here are the big entries:

• 14A: "This can't be true!" ("YOU'RE NOT SERIOUS!"). I prefer the McEnroesque "You cannot be serious!"
  
• 17A: 25-Across's WWII command (EUROPEAN THEATER). Who is 25A? DDE, or WWII general who became pres.—Dwight D. Eisenhower.
  
• 31A: Scorned notion (HARE-BRAINED IDEA). The Hare and Rabbit Anti-Defamation League prefers the term bird-brained.
  
• 37A: Oil and vinegar concoction (ITALIAN DRESSING). Make the vinegar balsamic, please. My kid, he'll eat anything if there's balsamic vinegar on it.
  
• 38A: "Back off!" ("DON'T GET TOO CLOSE!").
  
• 55A: Title guy asked to "play a song for me," in a Byrds hit (MR. TAMBOURINE MAN). I...honestly don't think I know this song. Really.
  
• 57A: Cause of many traveling delays (AIRPORT SECURITY). The TSA line is excellent for training people to be obedient sheep who dare not question authority, isn't it?
  

In the fill, there was a karate BROWN BELT with a clue that worked OK for BLACK BELT. Despite putting in that half-wrong answer early on, I still finished this puzzle in 3 minutes flat. That ain't right!

Stan Newman's alter ego Anna Stiga's Newsday "Saturday Stumper"

(PDF solution here.)

I may have spent half of my solving time trying to make sense out of the upper left corner of this puzzle. I hated it. It was patently unfair. I was tempted to Google the [Musical with Billy Joel songs] or [Sugar ___ (Monroe in "Some Like It Hot")], both of which I was blanking on. And then I figured out that [Pay back] was AVENGE and that [Yellow] must be GUTLESS (in another part of the puzzle, it's CRAVEN) and eventually everything fell into place (MOVIN' OUT, Sugar KANE). I kept thinking that 1A: [They go up in a plane] had something to do with airplanes (blame the [Fighter heroes], AVIATORS and AIR ACES, for that), but a plane is also a wood-shop tool that scrapes up SHAVINGS. Other clues in that corner that held me back but finally yielded: [Reveals, with "out"] is SMOKES, [Something paid] is HOMAGE, [Gave extra info on] is NOTATED. I ended up liking this quadrant of the puzzle best—lots of mental stretching and bending required to get to the intended meanings of the clues.

Time to put the blog away and play a geography board game with my kid. I may or may not get to the diagramless before tomorrow.

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Friday, 10/2/09

NYT 5:10
CHE 4:46
LAT 3:17
CS untimed
BEQ it's a long story
WSJ 6:44

Check out the previous post for a link to Patrick Blindauer's new crossword project (and a free puzzle of Fridayish difficulty).

Brad Wilber's New York Times crossword

Brad WIlber's back with a six-pack of 11s and a six-pack of 10s in a smooth crossword. The highlights...in a bit. A thunderstorm's worrying my son at the moment. Back soon.

Okay, then. Favorite fill and clues:

• 17A. PENN STATION [Its clock was featured in the 1945 film "The Clock"].
  
• 27A. J.M. BARRIE was a [Best-selling children's author who became a baronet].
  
• 35A. One [Diagnosis facilitator] is an MRI SCAN. Feels like we say "CT scan" and "CAT scan" but just "MRI," no scan, doesn't it?
  
• 37A. PRISONS are [Where people do stretches], not a YOGA MAT. "In stir" means "in prison," but CAUSED A STIR (1A: [Rabble-roused]) is unrelated.
  
• 48A. TREPAN is a [Mine shaft drill], sure, if you say so. It's also a hole saw used to cut a hole in the skull back in the day. Surgeons used to treat various ailments with trephination. "I need this like I need a hole in the head" probably had different connotations a couple hundred years ago.
  
• 51A, 16A. Star Wars geek alert: ANI (Anakin Skywalker) is a [Boyhood nickname in "The Phantom Menace"], while OOLA was Princess Leia's ["Return of the Jedi" dancing girl] alter ego in the movie that demonstrated that George Lucas panders to young men.
  
• 61A. I dunno about this clue: EMPIRE WAIST is a [Dress style that appears to lengthen the body]? Sure, but it also makes a lot of women look suspiciously pregnant.
  
• 63A. Did you know that DAMN YANKEES was a [Modern retelling of the Faust legend]? I did not. Musical theater and I have little common ground.
  
• 12D. [Actress Katharine Ross's actor-husband] is SAM ELLIOTT. I could picture the giant mustache, but blanked on his last name and started out with SAM HOUSTON.
  
• 27D. My favorite entry today is JUMP THE GUN, or [Be too hasty].
  
• 29D. BLIND ALLEY is also excellent. [It leads nowhere].
  
• 36D, 39A. If you gotta have a couple Star Wars clues, you'd better have some wine. [Chardonnay alternative] is SOAVE, and it crosses PINOT, a [Wine option] that comes in black and gray options (pinot noir, the red, and pinot grigio or gris, the white).
  
• 59D. [Be undefeated against, in sports lingo] is OWN. PWN is a closely related concept.
  

Less familiar things in this puzzle:

• 15A. AUTO-REVERSE is a [Tape deck convenience]. It's called that? Is that when the tape player flips from the A side to the B side without making you pop the tape out, or is that auto-rewinding when it reaches the end?
  
• 22A. [Ones maturing quickly, for short] is T-BILLS. I was thinking of fruit and adolescents.
  
• 4D. ["Tempest," for one] is a SONATA. No idea whose SONATA it might be. Google tells me it's Beethoven. Do you know where he was born? If you know your composers' birthplaces (countries), try this Sporcle.com quiz.
  
• 6D. [Comerica Park team, on scoreboards] is DET (roit). I don't even know what business Comerica is in.
  
• 7D. I've only seen an episode or two of Nip/Tuck, so I didn't know AVA was ["Nip/Tuck" character Moore].
  
• 10D. [A couple of words after the race] clues IS ON, as in "the race is on." This answer/clue combo kinda stinks, doesn't it?
  
• 11D. I just figured out what this clue meant. [People may ask you to do this] means People magazine. I got RENEW as the answer, but without realizing it was People, not small-p people.
  
• 28D. [1941 Jimmy Dorsey chart-topper] is MARIA ELENA.
  

Pretty much a standard Friday level of difficulty, no? Just enough challenge without being too easy or too hard.

Updated Friday morning:

Stella Daily & Bruce Venzke's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle,"Hello Kitty"—Janie's review

I confess. That image at the left is the "Hello Kitty" I was secretly hoping for. Still, Stella and Bruce do a fine job giving us four phrases and one name whose first word can follow "kitty," thus producing a whole new phrase. And there's lots of fine non-theme as well to keep this puzzle lively. First things first:

• 17A. Kitty + LITTERBUGS [Careless trash-tossers] → kitty litter. A good thing to have (in quantity...) if there's a kitty or a full-grown cat in the house.
• 28A. Kitty + HAWK ONE'S WARES [Sell aggressively] → Kitty Hawk. This would be the site of the Wright brothers' first "controlled powered" airplane flights in 1903.
• 47A. Kitty + CORNER GROCERY [Mom-and-pop business, often] → kitty-corner. Or cater-corner. Regardless, it means "in a diagonal position."
• 64A. Kitty + CAT STEVENS [Singer now called Yusuf Islam] → kitty cat. This is the adorable creature that will necessitate the purchase of kitty litter (see 17A).

In the non-theme department, as promised, there are some real beauts, most notably those symmetrical tens: LOVERS' LANE [Place for makeout sessions] and WISECRACKS [Wit-filled words]. It seems to me that another [Place for makeout sessions] might be that divine DIVAN [Place to recline]. And although RED has been clued as [Visibly embarrassed], I was taken with the "D" it shares with DIVAN, and keep seeing the fill as RED DIVAN.

That DIVAN really is a multifunctional piece, too. For anyone who TIRES [Runs out of gas], what could be better? Hopefully SLEEP [Ambien user's goal] will come easily, but if not, well, "better living through chemistry" is a phrase that comes to mind...

Back to WISECRACKS. I usually think of these as being more flip than "wit-filled"—but sometimes flip remarks can also be witty. Someone who cracks wise or even [Delivers a sassy retort] is someone who ZINGS. Cyrano de Bergerac would be a classic example of someone who could deliver the wittiest of zingers. Some of these quotes may serve to illustrate.

On the topic of language, there's also [Colorful language, sometimes] for SLANG (e.g., that [Total bore]/SNOOZE combo)—preceded by its complementary clue [Colorful card game] for UNO and the reminder of its bright, primary(-ish) color-wheel playing cards. Then there's the tricky language we find in some of the cluing: [Plies the needle]? That's SEWS. [Creates a chair, perhaps]? ENDOWS. Clever. I think my favorite clues, though, are [Bride's handful] for NOSEGAY (anyone else first think IN-LAWS?) and the almost redundant sounding [Tiny time unit, for short] for NSEC. Don't ask why, I just find that one "cute."

Janie, NSEC isn't "cute"! It's insistently "meh," in fact.

Jack McInturff's Los Angeles Times crossword

The theme entries change second words that start with R- into CR- words. The first one I filled in was 27A: PUNK CROCK, or [Small-time hood's pottery?], where "punk rock" and "punk crock" sound quite similar, so I figured the others would also have first words ending with the "k" sound. 'Twas not to be. The others are 20A: MILITARY CRANK ([Grouch in the army?]—I prefer my grouches in trash cans on Sesame Street), 36A: HEAT CRASH ([Accident in a qualifying race?]), 47A: HEAD CREST ([Family insignia for designer Edith?]), and 54A: EXCHANGE CRATE ([Jalopy used as a trade-in?]). I love "jalopy."

An olio of other stuff:

• 39D. [Refinery gases] are ETHENES, which crosses the EDER (64A: River near Kassel, Germany]). Both entries are entirely lacking in zip.
  
• 12D. You can pluralize that? IRONIES are [Many O. Henry endings].
  
• 4D. UNLINK is [Separate, as chain parts]. Would've been good to change that to a satellite UPLINK crossing A POP crossing MAG, though I do like 1D: MUG ([Morning container]).
  
• 6D. Least appealing clue: [Congeal, as blood] for CLOT.

Gary Steinmehl's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Round Table"

Yay! The CHE puzzle bearing today's date is on the Chronicle's website today! (Link at top of post.) Get this: A themed Friday puzzle that made me think. With the New York Sun's disappearance a year ago and the easing up of the L.A. Times crossword, Steinmehl's puzzle was a welcome Friday-morning find.

The theme features people from the Algonquin Round Table—Dorothy PARKER, Robert BENCHLEY, Edna FERBER, and Robert SHERWOOD sit around the edges of the big circle of circled squares, which aptly spell out THE VICIOUS CIRCLE.

Tough fill abounds. HETAERA is a [Courtesan of ancient Greece]. HENAN is the [Chinese province that was the center of the Shang dynasty]. Poet James THOMSON is clued as ["Rule Brittania" lyricist James], but the title is flubbed in the clue—it's punctuated and spelled like this: Rule, Britannia! (That's the work, of course, composed by crosswordese composer ARNE.) Spanish missionary, old-time actress VERNA Bloom, [Sea-lily appendages] with the cloud name CIRRI—there's plenty of challenging fill and clues in this puzzle.

Randolph Ross's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Puzzle 5.O"

Each theme entry has five Os in it (and no other vowels, save Y), but some of them aren't "in the language" phrases that merit their appearance in a crossword grid. HOOK OR CROOK? Without the "by" before each noun, what is this? BOWL OF DOG FOOD? NOT FOOLPROOF? GO ON TOO LONG? I say "no, no, no, no, no" to those four. Much better are SHOOP SHOOP SONG, VOODOO DOLL, DOOR TO DOOR, and the BOOK OF MORMON. I'm torn on "BOY, OH BOY, OH BOY" and "BLOODY GOOD SHOW." The latter Googles up OK, but it makes me think of bloody show and mucus plugs.

The solving experience was further dampened by fill like REWEAR, SHOERS and a FLAYER, NO ONE'S, SNEERY, NON-PROS, and assorted abbreviations. I just didn't find the entertainment I was hoping for. Oh, well.

Updated Friday afternoon:

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Sorry, Wrong Number: Nope, not nouns"

Okay, I've gotta quit trying Brendan's easy puzzles with Down clues only. The combination of fill that isn't the same ol', same ol' and twisty clues means that holy cats, the puzzle is no fun with just the Downs. I ended up using some Acrosses to iron things out. If you don't know JA RULE's oeuvre and MCQ and STIED and WOWIE don't come readily to mind as possibilities, you're probably not going to be happy working off of half the clues.

Yesterday, Brendan gathered theme material via Twitter and Facebook crowdsourcing, asking people to think of verbs that look like violations of irregular plurals. E.g., loaves of bread vs. the verb loafs. But...the theme entries are clued as straightforward verb phrases, so the ties that bind the theme are largely absent from the puzzle itself. The puzzle's subtitle is "Nope, not nouns," but the theme clues have absolutely nothing to do with the nouns. So what we have here is a "huh, these words all share a halfway interesting trait, that they could double as incorrect plurals, except that they're used correctly as verbs so that's beside the point" theme.

Who is this [Feminist Russell] named DORA? Dora Black married Bertrand Russell. She supported birth control back in the 1920s, was polyamorous, and was a peace activist. Good to know.

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Wednesday, 9/23/09

Trip Payne's "Themeless Challenger #6" 8:08
Onion 5:12
NYT 3:27
LAT 3:03
CS untimed
BEQ 11:50 (Downs only)

Jonathan Gersch's New York Times crossword

The applet's buggy tonight, so I can't swear my Across Lite solution is correct.

We get a history lesson in today's puzzle. Wikipedia tells me that it was September 11, 1609—just a hair over 400 years ago—that Hudson reached New York by boat. Can you imagine his surprise when he sailed up the Hudson River for the first time? "Dude! This river has the same name as me!"

The theme entries give you the details:

• 1A, 69A. [Ship of 55-Across] is the HALF MOON, which I half-knew only because I'd half-learned that from N.Y. Sun crosswords. The ship was also called Halve Maen in Dutch, thanks to the Dutch East India Company's general Dutchiness.
  
• 18A. The DISCOVERY is the [Aptly named ship on a later voyage of 55-Across].
  
• 20A. His intended shortcut route to Asia was through the ARCTIC OCEAN, a [Body of water sailed in by 55-Across].
  
• 26A. [Like most of the voyages of 55-Across] clues TRANSATLANTIC. It's that transarctic voyage that's a doozy.
  
• 46A. NEW YORK HARBOR is given a cross-reference clue, [See 55-Across]. Tired of all the 55-Across cross-references yet?
  
• 55A. Oh, here he is, at long last: HENRY HUDSON, the [Explorer who sailed into 46-Across in 1609].
  
• 61A. [55-Across's destination when returning to Europe] was AMSTERDAM. Probably liked the legal pot, right?
  
• 67A, 8A. This two-part answer is in reverse order. The SPICE TRADE is clued as the [business of 55-Across's backers], the aforementioned Dutch East India Company.
  

Did I count wrong, or are there really 84 theme squares in this puzzle? That's a huge amount of theme material. The short fill is fairly standard, nothing special but also not remotely as compromised as it could be given the thematic density. I will call this puzzle a success.

And then there's the cute HOAX/COAX crossing ([Bigfoot photo, e.g.] and [Say "Pretty please?," say]), plus a smattering of cool longish fill. Do you know what the singular of TSONGAS ([1992 presidential aspirant Paul]) is? Two Paul TSONGAS, one Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. (One's Greek-American, the other's Congolese-French.) The colloquial "SO THERE!" is clued with ["Told ya!"], and a HOODLUM is a [Tough] with a tough clue that looks like an adjective rather than a noun.

Trip Payne's "Themeless Challenger #6"

Trip has posted a new puzzle at Triple Play Puzzles—a 21x21 themeless puzzle. No spoilers in this write-up because I figure few of you have seen the puzzle yet. But you should! Just follow the link at the very top of this post and scroll down to the Sept. 22 addition; the crossword's available in both Across Lite and PDF.

I don't tend to love the structural record-breaker puzzles because all too often the pursuit of a record becomes more important than the solver's enjoyment. Trip reports that "this puzzle ties the record for fewest black squares in a 21x21 puzzle, with just 51," and the result is triple-stacked 13s and 9s hooked up to stair-stepping swaths of 7s. Sounds like a recipe for crapola fill, right? Wrong. Most of the longer answers are super colorful entries, and there was only one answer (21A) I found utterly unfamiliar. My only quibble with this puzzle is that Trip calls it "difficult" and I found it much more pliable than I expected.

Keep 'em coming, Trip! I loved this crossword.

(Thanks to Tuning Spork for the heads-up in comments on a previous post.)

Updated Wednesday morning:

Donna S. Levin's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Artistic License"—Janie's review

From Donna's atelier comes a shout out to the fine arts—the kind you're likely to hang on the wall. The first word of each of the lively theme-phrases is a word associated with the artist's world:

• 17A. PAINT THE TOWN RED [Go on a spree]. This grid-spanner would quite literally be the most vivid of the theme-fill as well.
• 27A. CANVAS TOTE BAG [Ecofriendly shopping sack]. I love that some grocery stores are now deducting the cost of shopping bags if you bring (and use...) your own.
• 44A. MODEL AIRPLANE [Hobby shop purchase]. Right below that fill is VISE [Carpenter's clamp]. Bringing the two together, under "Specialty Vises," there's a description at this linked site of a "Model Maker's Vise."
• 56A. STUDIO APARTMENT [One-room abode]. Another 15-letter phrase—and a reminder of my digs for my first 20-some years in NYC...

Before looking at some of the nifty fill tie-ins, I want to note some nifty clue/fill combos:

• [Tried to get a seat] does not refer to a game of Musical Chairs. This is what our local politicos did at the primaries Tuesday a week ago. They RAN for office.
• Then there's that [Cream puff in the batter's box]. No. This does not refer to a snack to be shared by the team. This is the player who's felt to be an EASY OUT.
• [Miss in Maui, perhaps] is not a verb phrase. The Hawaiian word for a young woman (or wife; or surfer...) is WAHINE.
• [It's almost always found at a tilt] does not refer to something that is not level. A tilt is also a jousting match and what'll ya find there? A knight on horseback with his LANCE. Although as you'll see from this statue, that lance was very likely to be held at a tilt...at the tilt.

Now, perhaps I'm taking some artistic license of my own (for a change...), but it seems to me it's not just painting that Donna gives attention to today. There are other arts as well: drama, the spoken and written word, photography, dance. If you [Emulate Cicero] and ORATE—or if you're a vocalist or you ACT [Tread the boards]—you need a good set of PIPES, i.e, a good [Voice, slangily]. (Btw, where board-treading is concerned, Mark Twain and Bret Harte WROTE the play ["Ah] SIN, and Karel Čapek wrote R.U.R.) A PHOTO OP gives shutterbugs the chance to do their best, whether that op is scheduled (like a [PR event...] or serendipitous. Oh, yes—Donna also includes the dance world by way of PLIÉ [Ballet bend]. Though his medium for his dance portraits was so often pastel, here is a link to "La classe de danse," a Degas masterpiece in oil set in the dance studio.

The other set of fill tie-ins work off of the lovely BROKE BREAD [Dined, quaintly]. What's on the table? Well, it's loaded with vitamins (and not to everyone's taste...), but there's SWISS CHARD [Leafy vegetable in the beet family], that SPEAR [Asparagus unit], and BLINI [Putin's pancakes]. Another meal entry is SEDER [Paschal feast]. But forget the bread. Here you'll break matzoh. (p.s. I like the way BROKAW crosses broke bread; and in the name of ecumenicism, do note that in the grid, POPE [Bishop of Rome] sits UPON PEW [Basilica bench].)

Two more things: notice how the underworld has grown. Today we see both POSSE [Homey's entourage] and CAPO, name for a Mafia [Underboss]. Far less (potentially) threatening (though probably just as political in its own way...) are the (Benevolent and Protective Order of) Elks—or the B.P.O.E. Those'd be the [Lodge letters].

Bruce Venzke and Stella Daily's Los Angeles Times crossword



Today's L.A. Crossword Confidential writeup is by me. Ergo, edited excerpts!

Four phrases begin with words that mean "healthy"
It took me a while to see what the theme was here. That was complicated a tad by the Across eight-letter answers, which looked like they could be part of the theme—SOB STORY and LOUSED UP are just good fill, though, not theme entries.

Theme answers:

• 17A: [Hydration from underground] (WELL WATER).
  
• 29A: [Thunder on a radio show, e.g.] (SOUND EFFECT).
  
• 45A: [In a rage] (FIT TO BE TIED).
  
• 61A: [House majority leader of the early 1970s] (HALE BOGGS). He died in '72, when I was six. I wasn't following congressional politics much at that age.
  

What else have we got here?

• In the "Make up your mind already" category, we have battling pronouncements: "I'M READY!" (21A: ["All set!"]) and "I'M LATE" (56A: [White Rabbit's cry]).
  
• 40A: [Undiversified, as a farm] clues the adjective ONE-CROP. I like to use that metaphorically. "This relationship is so ONE-CROP. I feel stifled."
  
• 69A: [Not tagged in time] (SAFE). As in the baseball call.
  
• 67A: [Cousins of hamlets] (TOWNS). Hmm, I wonder if Bruce and Stella originally had a trickier clue such as [Hamlets' cousins]. I like clues that fool you by playing with capital letters—small-h hamlet is a town, while big-H Hamlet is the moody Dane.
  
• 1D: [Dog's dogs?] (PAWS). I don't think I've ever once said "My dogs are barking" to mean "my feet are tired," but I know it's a common enough phrase. Cute clue.
  
• 9D: [Payment from a contestant] (ENTRY FEE). Hey, if you're planning to attend this winter's American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, you should be aware that the dates have changed: February 19-21, 2010.
  
• 43D: [Tie settlers, for short] (OTS). Meaning overtimes that settle a tied game. Anyone try to understand this clue as being about pioneer-type settlers?
  

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Machine Shop: A very P.C. puzzle"

This puzzle was labeled "easy" so I decided to work it with just the Down clues. Big mistake! It's not easy enough for that. It took me 50% longer than Trip's themeless 21x21. Cute theme, which it took me forever to suss out. I was thinking of industrial machines, and the CRAFT at the end of one theme entry didn't dissuade me from that theory. The theme answers all begin with computer brands: H.P. LOVECRAFT (hey-o, shout-out to Al Sanders' job!), APPLE PIE ORDER, DELL MAGAZINES (which I had as the mystifying DOLL MAGAZINES for a while, what with not reading the Across clues), and GATEWAY DRUG.

REUBENS is clued as [Sandwiches with corned beef, sauerkraut and Swiss cheese] rather than with reference to Paul Reubens, who has a new Twitter feed. It's not entertaining yet. Give it time. Or just follow my Twitter feed instead: OrangeXW.

26D was a fun one to figure out without the Acrosses. [Flair], *I****...hmm...why not fill three of those blanks with Z? PIZAZZ is always good. That reminds me of Matt Gaffney's Kaidoku book, where thinking of common letters is invariably the wrong approach because he's snuck the uncommon ones in a zillion times instead. If you like Kaidoku (a.k.a. code crosswords), check out Alex Boisvert's blog for puzzles from Alex, Matt, and assorted guests.

Tyler Hinman's Onion A.V. Club crossword

Tyler riffs on FANTASY FOOTBALL by redefining four football terms as if they pertained to fantasy/role-playing sorts of video games. That is not the sort of theme that's going to resonate strongly with me, is it? No, it is not.

What else is in this puzzle? CHARISMA is clued as a [Pick-up artist's asset]. Eww, "pick-up artists." Read about the abhorrent underpinnings of the PUA philosophy.

BASENJI is a cool-looking word. It's a breed of [Dog that can't bark]. There's some standard crossword fill, more sports (DPS, RESEED, UTES, LAY IN, NET, CLE), pop culture, Shakespeare, a good mix of stuff. Favorite clues: [Runner?] for POL(itician), [See stars, perhaps?] for LOOK UP; and [Without dissent, phallocentrically] for TO A MAN. The puzzles Ben Tausig edits or creates seem much more likely than the daily newspaper puzzles to allude to sexist language via clueing—I love that!

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