NYT 10:18
LAT 8:50
BG 7:32
Reagle 6:51
CS 3:06*
Patrick Berry's New York Times crossword, "Double Break Point"
Theme: At the break point between two words, the first word's final letter gets doubled and scoots over to the second word. A few examples:
There are nine theme entries in all. That long central Down answer, LIBERAL-MINDED (29D: [Tolerant of other opinions]), is not part of the theme, though it does intersect three theme answers.
Weirdest (i.e., least familiar) answer: RAHAB, or 91A: [Prostitute who protected Israelite spies, in Joshua].
Notable clues and answers in the fill:
That's all for tonight. See you Sunday morning!
Updated Sunday morning:
Merl Reagle's syndicated crossword, "Fashion Plate"
Merl's theme this week is "food items that contain words that are related to clothing (items of apparel, fabrics, clothing fasteners, parts of clothing), clued with the word fashionable." For example:
This theme feels too sprawlingly loose to me. FRENCH SILK needs to be followed by the word "pie" to be a food. BLUEBONNET isn't food, it's a brand name of margarine. The vague "things you can wear/things that are used to make things you wear/things that are used as fasteners on things you wear/a pocket" concept doesn't have much punch.
No hitches in the fill. I did not know that 13D: ARBOGAST was the name of [The detective in "Psycho"], but the crossings were more familiar. I could see people getting snagged by the B, which crosses 23A: Victor BORGE, [Great Dane by the piano].
Weird ones: 117A: [999 follower, perhaps] is OOO (but really 000, with zeroes), if you're looking at a three-digit dial that's going to flip back to 000 after it reaches 999. 103D: E NOTE usually gets clued as the not-in-my-parlance "e-note," an electronic note. Here, it's [Part of a C major chord]. Do music people call the musical note E the "E note"?
Dan Naddor's syndicated Los Angeles Times crossword, "Subliminal Messages"
The theme is fake advertising slogans in which the name of an apt company is embedded"
The cross-referencing made the puzzle a little slower to unravel, I thought. There are some tough answers (obscure ARTEL, 21D: [Soviet cooperative]) and clues (80D: [Lesser of two evils, metaphorically] for FRYING PAN, as in "out of the frying pan and into the fire"), but no real trouble zones.
Interesting way to massage the "embedded word" gimmick into a sensible theme with a purpose. The idea of "subliminal advertising" ties the company names to appropriate slogans, so there's no randomness to the embeds. I did a little Googling afterwards to see if these were actual slogans—if ad agencies had actually persuaded corporations to go with the embedded-name approach—but the two I looked up weren't real slogans used by those firms.
Tyler Hinman's CrosSynergy/Washington Post "Sunday Challenge"
Yay! Tyler made this puzzle a couple years ago but Will Shortz wasn't keen on 1-Across. I liked the puzzle then (the * is because my solving time was assisted by the previous go-round) so I'm glad to see it's been published now. 1-Across had been completely unfamiliar to me, but I enjoyed learning it. [LSU cheer that includes a punny French spelling] is "GEAUX TIGERS," playing on "go." What's not to love about a bilingual sports pun? Kudos to the Louisianans who came up with that one.
The grid's chockablock with interesting fill. Such as:
Surprised to see the double A grades in EASY A'S and [An A often boosts it (abbr.)] as the clue for GPA. Never heard of AL RITZ, 3D: [Part of an old comedy trio, with his brothers Harry and Jimmy].
Gotta run now—hope to find time for the Boston Globe puzzle this afternoon.
Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon's Boston Globe crossword, "U and U Alone"
The theme entries—five grid-spanning 21-letter fake headlines—all contain no vowel other than U:
I like the intersecting Simpson clues. 86A: ITO is [Simpson judge] and 78D: [Sax-honking Simpson] is LISA. 65D goes with trivia, [World found by Herschel], to clue URANUS. My kid gets a kick out of inquiring, "How big is Uranus?" When I answer that it's surprisingly light considering that it's larger than Neptune (but less dense), he collapses into giggles.
December 05, 2009
Sunday, 12/6/09
November 26, 2009
Friday, 11/27/09
NYT (PG)
LAT (PG)
CS (Janie)
WSJ (Sam, separate post)
CHE 4:14 (joon, paper)
BEQ 5:33 (joon, across lite)
Hi, everybody! PuzzleGirl here continuing the Thanksgiving Weekend Potluck here at the Crossword Fiend. Amy is off somewhere without internet access which, seriously. I don't even like to talk about it. It must be what hell is like. Our electricity was out yesterday for about three hours and all I can say is Thank God For My iPhone. Not sure I would have survived without it.
Ed Sessa's New York Times crossword puzzle
So what do we have going on today? Well, this week's Friday themeless NYT is pretty fun. I finished it in a little over half an hour, but just knew there was something wrong up there in the NE corner. The doctor's name [DENTON] was somewhere waaaay back in my brain, but when it made it all the way up to the front of my brain it was spelled Dennon. Which made 11D look like it was going to be SNAP-something for [Fasten with a click], right? Perfectly reasonable! But then ... it didn't work. So I tried enable, because an E in that spot seemed okay even though it gave me an artist named Libpi, who is, unfortunately, equally as known to me as Fra Filippo LIPPI. So 11D went from SNAP ON to ENABLE to the finally correct STAPLE. What else did I have trouble with up there? IDA seemed like a good name for a county in Idaho and since there was nothing resembling ARISTOS at 8A [British V.I.P.'s, to Brits], the I seemed perfectly fine to me.
More trouble spots for me include the NW where I had DOGS instead of BOGS for [Things near Baskerville Hall]. Obviously, thinking "The Hound of the Baskervilles," right? And I can never remember how to spell [1950s-'60s NBC host] Jack PAAR's name. I've convinced myself that it's the more "normal" Parr, so I get it wrong every time. I have the same problem with Ryan O'Neal and Tatum O'Neal. I know how Shaquille O'Neal spells his name so every time I'm faced with Ryan or Tatum, I can never remember whether it's the same as Shaq or different. (The only reason I got it right this time is that I looked it up.)
I like all three of the long answers: A WING AND A PRAYER for [Hope born of desperation] is awesome. A LEG TO STAND ON for [Justifiable basis for one's position] is typically only referred to in the negative, right? As in "He doesn't have a leg to stand on." And TURKEY LEFTOVERS for [Post-Thanksgiving fare]? Let's just say I'm totally looking forward to those tomorrow!
Also enjoyed seeing LOW MAN as a figurative figure on a totem pole, and colloquial phrases like LET 'ER RIP ["O.K. ... go!"] are always welcome.
Dan Naddor's syndicated Los Angeles Times crossword
Ya know, there have been times when I've thought to myself "This puzzle has an old-timey feel to it." Well, today is definitely one of those times. This one is chock full of puns on things from, well, centuries ago! Looks like Dan finally decided to go medieval on us!
- 17A: Medieval commuter between Dover and Calais? (CHANNEL SERF [surf]).
- 22A: Medieval castle owner's view? (BARON [barren] LANDSCAPE).
- 34A: Manages medieval real estate holdings? (MINDS ONE'S MANORS [manners]).
- 46A: Medieval lord's efforts? (FEUDAL [futile] ATTEMPTS).
- 53A: Weapons for medieval warriors? (KNIGHT [night] CLUBS).
Not a lot really jumped out at me on this one, but that's probably because I'm in a turkey coma and it's late. So I'll just mention a few things and then get my butt to bed.
- I've never heard of Jack OAKIE [Jack of "The Great Dictator"] and am going to guess that's age-related.
- KENYA is a [Country known for its distance runners]. Have any of you read the new book about the Indian tribe in Mexico that runs barefoot? I think it's called Born to Run. Ah yes, here it is. I haven't read it yet, but it looks pretty interesting. One of the main points the book makes is that the worst thing a runner can do is buy expensive, overly engineered running shoes. If you're interested in running, check it out.
- I know how much people love to see rappers in the grid, and today we get two! NAS ["Thugz Mansion" rapper] and DIDDY [Bad Boy Records founder, as he's now known]. I will never — ne-Ever — understand why he wants to be known as DIDDY. Just doesn't make sense to me.
- And, finally, I'll leave you with this musical interlude. Hope you enjoy it. [Cereal bit] = FLAKE.
Tyler Hinman's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Internal Dialogue"—Janie's review
Taking the cruciverbal baton from Patrick, Tyler continues with another puzzle that has the puzzle's key concept word embedded in the theme phrases. Yesterday we had multiple opportunities to eat; today, as we learn at 37A., we have several ways to SPEAK [A synonym for it can be found inside this puzzle's four longest entries]. By way of an "internal" word for "dialogue," we can chat, talk, jaw or yak. And here's how it's done:• 17A. PITCH A TENT [Set up camp]. I like the way chat spans the three words of the phrase.
• 23A. "MORTAL KOMBAT" [Violent video game franchise that debuted in 1992]. Wanna guess what I've never played?... This game is available, btw, through SEGA [Company that released the unsuccessful Saturn and Dreamcast consoles]. Gamers probably knew this, but it was news to me that not only is there a "Superman" video game, but there's also "'Mortal Kombat' vs. DC Universe" in which Superman is a featured player—which I mention because of the [Comics character with a secret identity]/CLARK KENT combo that's also in the puzzle. I do like the skillful way Tyler uses fill skewed to younger solvers within well-tried theme ideas. Same goes for:
• 46A. NINJA WARRIOR [Japanese TV import involving obstacle courses]. If you say so. It is for real (you can even watch full episodes on line), the base phrase is solid, of course, and at least I have heard of "The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."
• 57A. "GO FLY A KITE!" ["Buzz off!"]. See 17A. for why this one also appeals.
Though it's not in infinitive form, as I read it, we also get a bonus with SEZ [Utters, informally], first person singular of say...
I was surprised to see SOWN clued as [Placed, as seeds]. When I think of something being "placed," I see it being done in an orderly way—and often seeds are "placed" very carefully in the ground or in containers. But when they're sown, they're scattered or strewn, no?
And I have to wonder if there's an "anger management" issue being hinted at as a sub-theme. After all, the grid presents us with TIRADE [Angry outburst] which crosses RIOT ACT [It's read to a misbehaving child] (please, oh please read the kid a fairy tale instead!). Additionally, there's [Gets in a lather] for RILES and [Battling] for AT IT. (I was actually relieved to see EAT AT clued not in connection with annoyance but quite directly as [Go to, as a restaurant].) What's the source of the anger? Sometimes we direct it at ourselves when we [Mess up], or ERR; sometimes it's directed at others, like the pitcher who [Messes up on the mound], or BALKS.
My suggestion? "Breathe in green; breathe out blue." Listen to music that soothes you, like maybe an OPERA [Diva's setting] or a single ARIA [Diva's highlight]; make like a tourist and visit a museum. MoMA, perhaps? Yes, it's an [N.Y.C. attraction...] but it's not only [...for aesthetes] (thinking here of the negative connotation of the word).
Oh—and thanks for (the) MEMORY/[Something's that's banked?]. Some days mine seems to be double-locked in a seriously subterranean vault.
Did you know CINC? It's clued as [Prez] and I needed to look this one up. It's an acronym not unlike POTUS (President of the United States). Except this time the letters stand for Commander in Chief. Oh—and on the topic of acronyms, I smiled to see FIAT [Italian carmaker that recently partnered with Chrysler]. Seems those letters have come to stand for Fix It Again, Tony...
Ed Sessa's Chronicle of Higher Education puzzle, "Natural Progression
happy day after thanksgiving, everyone. joon here with the lowdown on two more puzzles today. we get a double dose of ed sessa today, as he pairs his clever subtly-themed NYT with a nice CHE puzzle whose theme is a "natural progression" given by the puzzle's seven circled three-letter answers. it's a word latter from APE (14a, [Beginning of a natural progression]) to MAN (70a, [End of the natural progression]). the word ladder goes APE -> APT -> AFT -> OFT -> OAT -> MAT -> MAN, but the five words in the middle are all embedded in longer entries:
- to [Change with the times] is ADAPT.
- [Glider's booster] is an UPDRAFT.
- a [Marshmallow], metaphorically, is a SOFTY. i like this word, but i think i'd normally spell it SOFTIE.
- [Thick breakfast] is OATMEAL. this is the only one where the embedded word is etymologically related to the longer entry. i didn't really mind, though.
- my favorite of the theme clues was [Stick in a book] for MATCH. great misdirection there! not only does it sound like a verb, but you don't normally think "matchbook" when you see "book."
brendan goes asymmetric with this 64-word themeless, resulting in very smooth fill for such a low word count. i liked CALLED IT, ["As I predicted"], best, but overall the fill was more notable for lack of crap than for brendan's usual pizzazz. there were some pained inflections, of which my least favorite was REMELT, and a couple of abbreviations i didn't like (NAV for navy being the worst), but it's really quite clean for a grid this demanding. clue of the year nominee: [Pass the bar, perhaps] for TEETOTAL. loved it! i also liked how the miami HEAT, clued as [2006 NBA champs], are opposite in the grid from WADES, or [Gets cold feet?]. anybody who watched the 2006 NBA finals knows that dwyane WADE (we really need to get his crazy first name into more puzzles) carried the HEAT to the title that year with an insanely dominant postseason.
November 17, 2009
Wednesday, 11/18/09
BEQ 6:58
NYT 4:35
Onion 4:29
CS untimed (J)/3:44 (A)
LAT 3:14
Paula Gamache's New York Times crossword
This keeps happening—my kid has a hard time falling asleep, and in the effort to set a good example for him, I get so dang sleepy that when I rouse myself to do the NYT crossword, I'm not at full speed. The wheels did not spin at their usual clip, and stray typos find their way into the grid more easily than they find their way out. I had "CAN O?" ([Childish plea], CAN I) crossing OCHABOD ([Washington Irving's Crane], ICHABOD), and didn't see it until the grid was filled. Then when I fixed that, my grid was still wrong—BOY TOT/RET instead of BOY TOY ([Young stud])/REY ([Palacio resident]). Adjacent-key typos, my nemesis today.
The theme hinges on a poker phrase, which is something I often find alienating. The [Five-card draw variation] and hint to the theme answers is JACKS TO OPEN, but man, I was stuck on the last letter. (See? Tired.) "JACK STOOPER?" I asked myself. The other four theme entries begin with words that can follow an opening JACK:
• 17A. HAMMER THROW is an [Olympic track-and-field event]. Jackhammer.
• 30A. FROST/NIXON is a [Play and film about a noted 1977 series of interviews]. Jack Frost, nose-nipper. FROST/NIXON is a great-looking answer, isn't it?
• 36A. [Loosely woven cotton fabric] is CHEESECLOTH. Monterey Jack cheese is often called Jack cheese.
• 44A. [Indoor dipole antenna, colloquially] clues RABBIT EARS. Jackrabbit. If you're like me, you always see "rabbi tears" (and "superb owl" for that NFL game).
Ten quick clues:
• 27A. ROTI means [Roasted, in Rouen].
• 35A. DEICE a plane to [Make ready for winter flight].
• 57A. NOOSES are [Causes of some untimely ends]. That's dark.
• 2D. HIALEAH, Florida, is a [Historic racetrack site]. Is it no longer so?
• 3D. ARMAGNAC is an [Eau de vie from Gascony].
• 11D. MAALOX completes ["___ moment" (ad catchphrase)]. Oprah does not lay claim to the Maalox moment.
• 22D. An ARIETTA is a [Short opera piece].
• 25A. Ford MODEL A'S were [1903-04 cars sold only in red].
• 39D. HOUSE PET is a [Collar wearer, often]. Kinda wanted this to be PRIEST.
•42D, 63D. [Roll call response] is PRESENT in, perhaps, a classroom, and NAY in a legislature.
Updated Wednesday morning:
Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Go Ahead, Shoot!"—Janie's review
I'm happy to say today's title has nothing to do with firearms, in case that's what you were thinking. That imperative is also something you might say when you want you listener to tell you something. Or ask you something. Today it's the latter, and the colorful theme phrases all start with a word that also describes a particular kind of query. The phrases are unified, too, by the clue and fill at 63A., [Objection elicitor, and what the first words of 17-, 26-, and 47-Across could be doing]—and that would be LEADING QUESTION, and LEADING "QUESTION." The additional questions in question are:
• 17A. Trick question, by way of TRICK OF THE TRADE [Professional's shortcut].
• 26A. Burning question, from BURNING RUBBER [Peeling out].
• 47A. Loaded question, which comes to us from the great phrase LOADED FOR BEAR [Livid]. Never heard the expression before and love making its acquaintance. It sure has a lotta character.
So, too, does the cluing, which keeps the play in "wordplay." F'rinstance, the sequential linked-pair [Absent animation] for the lovely LANGUID and [Animation still] for the oft-seen noun CEL. Not only do we get the repeated word in the clues, but something that's "still" is also "absent animation." So we get some double-play action here.
Then we get both [Coiled choker] right next to [Coiled coif], or a BOA beside a BUN. With vocabulary that shows up as often in puzzles as these words, it really is refreshing to have cluing that shortchanges the solving process. Like [Undying dying words] for ET TU, or [Promise at the table] for OLEO (where "Promise" is the brand-name noun and not a verb), or [Net sales?] for E-TAIL (where "net" is short for "internet" and not the opposite of "gross"), or the lengthy but lyrical [Where to house cows once they browse] for BARN.
Other combos that appealed (by no means exhaustive): [Short pants?] for TROU (think about it...), [The same partner] for ONE (ditto), and [Concluding letters for proof reader] for Q.E.D. That's the reader of a mathematical proof and the letters stand for quod erat demonstrandum meaning "which was to be demonstrated."
Fave crossing today: SCHWA [Stress-free sound symbol] (ə) and "SH-H!" [The sound of "Silence!"]. If I omitted your faves, by all means: speak up! ([Ladies in wooly cotes] EWES, anyone?)
Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword
As usual on Wednesdays and Saturdays, this writeup is drawn from my L.A. Crossword Confidential post.
The theme could be called "Barflies"—Six famous people's last names form new phrases or compound words with BAR. Here are the theme answers:
• 18A: [*"Seven Year Ache" country singer] (ROSANNE CASH). My high-school reunion had a cash bar.
• 20A: [*"All I Wanna Do" singer] (SHERYL CROW). Crowbar. I just reviewed (for work) another puzzle with a theme of female vocalists that included both CASH and CROW, so I couldn't help expecting the other theme entries to follow suit. Nope! In that other puzzle, I changed the clue to include this song instead of some other song I'd never heard of. Good call, right?
• 32A: [*Longtime "American Bandstand" host] (DICK CLARK). The Clark Bar is, well...is it as good as a Butterfinger? I do like me a Butterfinger bar, and I ate all the minis my kid got for Halloween.
• 45A: [*Notable member of The Second City improv group] (JOHN CANDY). The Clark Bar is a candy bar. Rex Parker feels it's redundant to have both generic CANDY BAR and specific CLARK BAR in this theme. My feeling is that you can never have too much chocolate, and that Rex's suggestion (in the comments at L.A.C.C.) that Barbara Hershey and the fictional Veronica Mars could have joined Dick Clark is a good one (if only the word lengths matched up—and if only there were a famous person with the surname Snickers).
• 59A: [*French writer who befriended Chopin] (GEORGE SAND). Don't ground your boat on a sandbar. This is the only theme person who's more high culture than pop culture.
• 63A: [*"The Mark of Zorro" star (1940)] (TYRONE POWER). A Power Bar is one of those horrible things I never eat. I hear people like them.
• 65A: [Happy hour site, and word that can follow each last name in the answers to starred clues] (BAR).
With 63 theme squares, you expect to tolerate a few "blah" entries in the fill. I dunno. This one felt a little heavier on "blah" than usual for a Dan Naddor puzzle: L-DOPA, UTA, L.I.U., ENID, ADE, ADJ., K.P.H., the weird ANC. (Short for "ancient"? Not the much more famous African National Congress?), MAU, SEP., and TRAC are the sort of answers a constructor isn't striving to use, just ends up using to make the fill work.
Highlights:
• 42A: [Bette's "Divine" nickname] (MISS M).
• 50A: [Time-share units] (CONDOS). Hey! Plenty of us city-dwellers live in condos year-round. Are the suburbanites unaware of this? Is it the New Yorkers who ruin everything, by "buying apartments" rather than "renting apartments"/"buying condos"?
• 10D: [Bach work] (TOCCATA). I don't know classical music much, but this answer always makes me think of veal. (Piccata.) Which I don't eat.
• 21D: Gibraltar landmark (ROCK). This gave me a chance to include a photo of Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson in my L.A.C.C. post. He sure was cute in that Disney movie, Game Plan.
• 30D: [King Arthur's meeting spot] (ROUND TABLE). This is where King Arthur hung out with Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley, at the Algonquin.
• 43D: [Chat idly: Var.] (SHMOOZE). I prefer the schmooze spelling.
• 46D: [Official emergency status] (CODE RED). My kitchen was at code red last week. It's down to the standard code orange now.
Tyler Hinman's Onion A.V. Club crossword
Tyler's theme is "potentially disastrous neighbor"s, #1 through #5: Your MOTHER-IN-LAW (I'd be fine with mine living nearby, honest), a smelly RENDERING PLANT (I would move), a SEX-CRAZED COUPLE (I highly recommend hearing loss so you won't hear them), a CRYSTAL METH LAB (eek), and PUNK ROCKERS (hey, it's fine so long as they're not rehearsing at home).
Favorite clues/answers:
• 6A. KITES are [Some quadrilaterals].
• 14A. I like the German in the clue [Unterwasser vessel], but it makes me want the answer to be U-BOOT instead of U-BOAT.
• 56A. COLD gets clued in a sporting sense: [Not shooting well]. Basketball, not guns, right?
• 2D. The ABO blood grouping system is a [System that helps you determine if someone's your type].
• 13D. [Animal that hisses], 5 letters, ends with E...SNAKE? Try a GOOSE.
• 27D. [Back], adverbially, clues IN REPLY. "In reply," of course, is the adverbial form of the adjective "in rep."
• 42A. Hey! Fresh ELBA clue: [Porto Azzurro's place].
• 60D. The NFL is [Ochocinco's org.]. His number, of course, is 85. What would your Spanish number name be?
I thought [Iranian city, or its river] would be QOM rather than QUM, but there's no unterwasser O-BOAT. Did you know the city—a holy city and a center of learning for Shiites—can also be spelled KUM?
Updated Wednesday evening:
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Letter Rip"
The theme involves ripping a letter into two, but it's hard to visualize this in Across Lite or if you print your answers in capital letters. The breakage involves lowercase letter strokes:
• 18A. [Huge scissors?] are the BIG clIPPER. See how a lowercase cl, when squished together, looks like a lowercase d? The Big Dipper is the original, pre-ripping phrase.
• 20A. Double Dutch is a jump-rope game. DOUBLE clUTCH is clued as [Extremely reliable under pressure?]. Not too familiar with clutch as an adjective. Is that a sports usage?
• 38A. [Cornfield bunched together?] is CROP clUSTER (crop duster).
• 55A. [Starting up a digital stopwatch?] is LOADING clOCK (loading dock).
• 59A. [Muhammad Ali?] is BOXING clAY. Excellent combination of the Boxing Day holiday that people in other countries may celebrate after Christmas and boxer Muhammad Ali's birth name, Cassius Clay. I didn't love the rest of the theme, but I'm glad it built up to this one. If this one had come first, the rest would've felt like a letdown.
Brendan labeled this one medium difficulty, but it smacked me like a hard puzzle. Toughest spots for me:
• [Snatch beneficiary] is a DELT, or deltoid muscle.
• TEN CC is the British rock band at 39D. Boo! It's 10cc, just as U2 is not spelled U-TWO. I don't recall "I'm Not in Love" at all, but "The Things We Do for Love"? Oh, yeah.
• My Star Wars-fu is down. The scoundrel in 21A is LANDO Calrissian. I barely remember the movie he was most prominent in, so I tried JANGO Fett first.
• That 1D-2D-3D group of two-word phrases that we don't see much of in crossword grids.
• At 56A, wanted [Athlete's handlers: Abbr.] to be MGRS or MGMT instead of AGTS. Abbreviations that only save one or two letters are dumb. (See also Jun., Jul.)
• The answer for [Knocker holder] is incorrect. It should be DDCUP, not DCUP.
November 12, 2009
Friday, 11/13/09
NYT 5:57
BEQ 5:37
LAT 4:14
CHE 3:50
CS untimed
WSJ 8:07
Dana Motley's New York Times crossword
It's been a couple years since the last Dana Motley puzzle. You know what her themelesses are notable for? Rather than going with grids with longish stacked answers, triple-stacked 15s, or corner blocks filled with 7s, she spreads her long fill all around. Rumor has it such a grid is easier to fill than the stack-heavy ones are. One good thing about them from a solving standpoint is that the longer answers serve as bridges between the puzzle's various zones, so you can extend some footholds if you get a few long entries early on.
That said, there are some insanely tough clues here. For example, 1D: [Port near Ogre]. Ogre, it turns out, is a Latvian town of 26,000 that is ridiculously new for a European city, dating back only to 1928. And "Ogre" doesn't shout "must be Latvian" to most of us. The answer is RIGA, but that's a roundabout way to approach it. Speaking of place names that start with O, OSHKOSH is the 39A: [Seat of Winnebago County], Wisconsin—but there are counties by that name in Illinois and Iowa, too. OHIO is clued by way of being 59A: [Title locale in a Leonard Bernstein song where "life was so cozy"]. I relied on the crossings for all three of these. The other geo answer, ANGOLA (48D: [Cabinda is an exclave of it]), is the only place name the clue helped me to get.
Highlights in the fill:
• 17A. [Big wheels, often] clues GAS GUZZLER. Crossword clues more often use "big wheel" to mean a boss, so I like the change.
• 26A. Okay, this clue didn't help me much at all. [Funshine, Grumpy or Love-a-lot] is a CARE BEAR. Good answer, goofball clue that I am the wrong age to know.
• 60A. ACROPHOBIA is the [Source of high anxiety?]. Fear of heights, of course.
• 3D. [She's identified with a cause] clues POSTER GIRL.
• 18D. ZYDECO is a [Grammy category starting in 2007]. I saw Queen Ida and the Bon Temps Zydeco Band in college.
• 22D. WELCHERS, another spelling of welshers, are [Debt disregarders, slangily]. My dictionary says the word's origin is unknown, so don't get your knickers in a twist defending the morality of the Welsh people.
• 24D. ABSINTHE is the [Potent stuff called "the green fairy"]. I knew ABSINTHE was green, but not that it had this nickname.
• 30D. BOOSTER BOX is an [Item-concealing shoplifting aid]. Never heard of this one.
Other favorite clues:
• 10A. [Top or bottom, in baseball] clues a HALF of an inning. Here's why the clue makes me laugh.
• 38D. [1/768 gallon] is a TEASPOON. Remind me to tell this one to my kid.
• 50D. [One may give facts about acts] clues EMCEE. I was thinking of acts that are passed by Congress rather than entertainment acts introduced by an EMCEE.
Quibbles:
• 16A. [Stick out in a restaurant?] clues OLEO. Out where? On the table? I have never seen a stick of margarine on a restaurant table. Out in the restaurant kitchen? Boo to the clue.
• 21A. [American goldfinch] clues YELLOWBIRD or YELLOW BIRD. It is a small yellow bird. Wikipedia redirects yellowbird to the yellow warbler. Is this answer meant to be a specific bird name or just the description of a bird of a certain color? Because as a generic phrase, it's not good fill. It needs to be a specific term for something.
• 44A. [Opposite of me, in Munich] is SIE, which means "she," "they," or (when capitalized) the formal "you." I'd argue that "me" does not have an opposite, per se, and surely not an opposite with three distinct meanings. Ulrich or Zulema, back me up here.
• 53D. [Worrier's words] are "OH, ME"? Who says that? Anyone you know? "Oh, me, oh, my," sure. "Oh, my," of course. But not OH ME or AH ME, which keep showing up in crosswords. I have just consulted my husband about the utility of OH ME and AH ME and he said "no [bleep]ing way." It's fill like this that turns off newbies, isn't it? More so than OLEO? Maybe it's a tie.
Clues that may stymie:
• 6A. [Watch things, briefly] are LCDS. Meh.
• 29A. A spherical GLOBE of the earth is a [Meridian shower] in that it shows the location of the meridian and the equator.
• 47A. [Was an accountant?] clues NARRATED, as in "gave an accounting of a tale." Not wild about this clue.
• 56A. [NFL'er Olsen or Toler] clues GREG. Who? Husband tells me G. Olsen plays for the Bears.
• 67A. [They're applied to some backs] clues WAXES. As in the wax that's used to strip out body hair?
• 5D. [Sch. whose sports teams are the Violets] is NYU. Really? Did not know that. I like it. Violets are closely related to pansies. Pretty flowers.
• 7D. [Kale kin] is COLLARD, as in collard greens. Looks weird without "greens" appended to it.
• 27D. ["Dawson's Creek" role] is PACEY. Except that here, we need ANDIE. Who? Not one of the core four characters, ANDIE was played by Meredith Monroe, who played a 16-year-old when she was 30. Now, that's just silly. Andie MacDowell wants her clue back.
• 28D. [Chloe in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," e.g.] is an AUNT.
• 43D. [Dog for logs] is an ANDIRON. Not familiar with this use of "dog."
• 57D. EINE is a basic German word, one of the ways of saying "a." ["Nosferatu, ___ Symphonie des Grauens"] is missing its EINE.
Overall, I think this was harder than the usual Friday puzzle. And you?
Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword
The theme is "add an R to words that end with GE":
• RADAR RANGER is a [Park official who tickets speeding bears?]. Radar range is not familiar to me, but the Amana Radarange is.
• [Smallest allowable bet?] might be the MINIMUM WAGER. Minimum wage is certainly familiar.
• [Steals a plumbing supply?] clues TAKES THE PLUNGER. I'd clue that as [Steals a plumber's helper?] or [Steals a bathroom tool?] or something—I think of "plumbing supply" as being pipes and valves.
• [San Fernando creator of fake van Goghs?] could be a VALLEY FORGER. Speaking Valleyspeak, no doubt. "Grody to the max!"
• [Burrowing creature cited for excellence?] is MERIT BADGER. Brendan Quigley just had MERIT BADGE in a recent cigarette-themed puzzle.
Weirdest long fill: [Stereotypical pratfall cause] clues BANANA SKIN. SKIN?!? Not BANANA PEEL? Who calls it a BANANA SKIN? Not me.
James Sajdak's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Produce Literature"
This week's CHE theme is works of literature with fruit in their titles. To accommodate two 15s and and two 16s, the grid's stretched a little taller. The books are THE CHERRY ORCHARD, A RAISIN IN THE SUN, THE GOLDEN APPLES, and THE GRAPES OF WRATH.
Favorite clues/answers:
• LARRUP means [Thrash].
• RICE CHEX is an [Ingredient in a certain party mix]. Would someone remind me to buy Rice Chex?
• ALLAH is a [Word spoken when reciting the shahada]. What's that? It's this, the ritual declaration of belief in Islam. (See also SALAAMS, [Respectful greetings].
• [Audacity] and MOXIE are more or less synonymous.
• [One with a heart of stone?] is a DRUPE. Apt for a puzzle with this theme—DRUPEs are stone fruit, like peaches, plums, and cherries. (See also: PEAR, [Popular compote fruit].
• DOORMAT is an [Overly unassertive person]. Not to be confused with a doorman (which differs by one letter).
• [Trooper on the highway, e.g.] is an ISUZU, as in the Isuzu Trooper SUV.
• Indy [500 letters?] are STP.
Who is this? [Field of White?] clues STYLE, but I can't think of a relevant person in fashion/style named White.
Updated Friday morning:
Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle,"Inland Seas"—Janie's review
In the world of cryptic puzzles, they're known as "hidden answers." These are the words that can be found by looking at the last letters of one word and joining them with the first letters of the next one. Today Martin's theme fill gives us two such examples and one in which the word in question (see title...) falls within another in its entirety. The beauty of this particular construction is that in each case, the "inland sea" occupies the seventh, eighth and ninth squares of the row it appears in. And there's a little bonus fill as well. The three places you'll find those hidden bodies of water are within:
• 17A. IS THIS SEAT TAKEN? [Moviegoer's question].
• 35A. PROPOSE A TOAST [Raise one's glass].
• 54A. JAPANESE ANEMONE [Showy garden plant of the buttercup family]. Attractive to members of the APHID [Garden pest] family, too, I fear. Today's IRISES are not clued botanically, but anatomically as [Pigmented eye parts]. Durn!
And bonus fill:
• 33D. SEA [Word in the center of all three long entries]. This one's intentional. Just in case the key element ELUDED [Gave the slip to] you... This one (I suspect), sitting right next to it, is not:
• 31D. SEAMS [Clothes lines?] Hmmm. Sure wish there'd been a way to avoid using this word...
Elsewhere, there's a healthy amount of longer fill, clued in a very straightforward way, so it's not too difficult to complete the grid—even with the likes of ROAST PIG [Luau food], MOUTHWASH [Listerine, for one] and ANACONDAS [Jungle crushers]. If they're on the loose, you might want to set out some SNARES [Game keepers?]. Ouch.
There's a little computer mini-theme going on in the Texas portion of the grid with EXE [Computer file suffix] adjacent to USER [Computer operator], which shares its "U" with
URL [Web browser entry].
But my fave combo today? No, not NESTLÉ [Crunch maker] or ORIOLE [Baltimore player], but TWO for [Tango requirement]. Sing out, Dean. Nowhere in this clip, however will you see a tango... Here you definitely will!
Elizabeth Gorski's Wall Street Journal crossword, "For Your Inner Child"
Wow, really? New York City has a PULASKI DAY PARADE? I had no idea. It's a government and school holiday here in Chicago, but I didn't know NYC celebrated Casimir Pulaski at all.
That and the other theme entries contain an "inner child," or KID. I'm not crazy about the theme answers, which don't feel all that natural to me. KHAKI DRESS? KABUKI DANCE, not drama? CHICKEN TERIYAKI DINNER, not steak and not lunch? What I like better is the long non-theme fill:
• 46A. SEX ORGANS are [Features of anatomically correct dolls]. People have 'em, too.
• 80A. WHACK JOBS are [Nutters].
• 92A. SAY PLEASE is a [Reminder from Mom]. I'm more circumspect than that. I say "Psst, did you tell her..." and then my KID says "please" or "thank you."
• 126A. [They may be dusted] clues CRIMES SCENES. Not, you'll note, my bookshelves and furniture.
• 4D. I like the SCULPTURE clue: [It might be a bust]. Indeed.
• 82D. Full name! JOHN DEREK [was married to Ursula Andress and Linda Evans]. Also, notably, to Bo Derek, but that would kinda give the answer away.
Most unusual fill: 30D: TUK, [Barbados musical style]. That one's new to me. I have seen FELLAH (54A: [Egyptian peasant]) before, but quite seldom.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "The Final Four"
The theme is the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, right? SUDDEN DEATH, FEAST OR FAMINE, ENOS SLAUGHTER, and THE ART OF WAR? Apparently not: They're Conquest, War, Famine, and Death, no Slaughter. So it's just four things that can be "final" in terms of your life?
I didn't care for I'M BAD, the [Little devil's observation], right at 1-Across. Had no idea an IN-RUN was a [Ski-jump feature]. Thought the commonest phrase was PUB CRAWLS, not BAR CRAWLS—haven't seen the latter. Grumbled at the clue [Last year that was a palindrome, in Roman numerals] for MMII, Roman for the Arabic number 2002. Does the word palindrome really apply to numbers? And oh, crap, now we're expected to know the names of Mad Men characters even though a vast majority of Americans do not watch the show?
I had some crazy typing today, so GRITH (GIRTH!) put an R in a Roman numeral, and MICS (MISC!) put the S in OFF-SCREEN (OFF-CAMERA!). D'oh. It's one of those mornings.
Highlights:
• AL LEWIS, Grandpa Munster, is the gubernatorial candidate at 25D.
• [Shock preventer: Abbr.] clues EMT. Took a while to make sense out of this: paramedics try to prevent you from going into shock.
• [Epic ___] FAIL.
• [Puzzler Trip] PAYNE! Howdy, Trip of Triple Play Puzzles fame.
November 03, 2009
Wednesday, 11/4
BEQ 5:30
NYT 10:15 (PG)/4:11 (A)
Onion 4:09
LAT 2:43
CS untimed
Hi, everyone. PuzzleGirl here covering for Orange who is not feeling well At All. Poor thing! I'll check in with her in the morning and see how she's doing, but you might be stuck with me all day. Hey, it could be worse. I'm just going to do a quick write-up to get things started and then you all can have at it in the comments.
Ricky Ini Liu's New York Times crossword
I haven't had to work this hard to figure out a theme in a loooong time. I had No Idea what was going on. I solved in AcrossLite and when I was done, I opened up a text document and typed each theme answer out so I could look at all of them together. I noticed the Os, but thought maybe they needed to be dropped? TRI-CEREAL? Is that a thing? MEN COMICS? Maybe you need to add a W to the beginning to make WOMEN COMICS? ??? I also noticed what felt like a ton of Zs in the grid and wondered if that had something to do with the theme. I was really confused is what I'm saying. Turns out the manipulating that needs to be done is for one of the Os in each theme answer to be changed to an X. So TRIO CEREAL in the grid is a nod to that silly rabbit with his Trix Cereal. OENOPHOBIC was changed from xenophobic. (That seems kind of random.) Other theme answers include:
It all seems so simple now. Sigh.
Updated Wednesday morning:
Will Johnston's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Yard Work—Janie's review
It's autumn. If you live in a northern climate zone, it's time to get your yard ready for winter. If you live in a southern zone, you probably do this all year long. In today's puzzle, Will comes up with four activities to put on your "to do" list (no matter where you live), each of which appears as the first word in the four theme-phrases. Ready to do some work? You're going to:
•17A. Cut the grass, by way of CUT AND DRIED [Formulaic]. Hmm. We just saw this phrase as theme-fill last Wednesday in Paula Gamache's "He's No Gentleman"...
•11D. Trim the hedges, courtesy of TRIM THE TREE [Prepare for Santa, in a way]. This one's confusing. It's the only verbal theme-phrase and the base meaning needs the Christmas context so that we read "trim" as decorate and not tidy/cut. The word tree in the fill is also problematic as there may be trees in the yard. Why not TRIM AND TONE [Popular health-club workout?] or something nautical rather than botanical like "TRIM THE SAIL" [Request of Michael?]? Something that isn't UNCLEAR [Hazy], please.
•25D. Edge the lawn, via EDGE OF NIGHT [Soap opera with 7,420 episodes, with "The"]. Last seen on 12/28/84, it aired for 29 years...
•53A. Prune the bushes, compliments of PRUNE DANISH.
"EGAD!" [Quaint outburst], after all that work, you might want to MUNCH [Chew (on)] something. You might even want a prune danish. Or, depending on the weather, I s'pose, GELATI [Italian desserts] or FLANS [Caramel-topped desserts], and maybe some MINT JULEPS [Derby Day quaffs] to wash 'em all down. Or not...
As was the case with yesterday's puzzle, I found that I enjoyed the non-theme fill considerably more than the theme-fill. To borrow from the puzzle (but not to be SASSY [Impertinent]), it's simply less cut and dried.
Using the fill, I like that I can tie together the idiomatic BAD RAPS [Unjust judgments, slangily] with reasons some folks earn 'em. "She's the SPOTTIEST [Most erratic] employee when it comes to clocking in. Sure, she's always around at TEN A.M. [Coffee break time, for some], but when she goes back to the selling floor, face it: she's [Unambitious to the max] SHIFTLESS! Except for the paycheck, she probably RUES [Regrets] the day she ever walked in here..." I also like the way [...to the max] does not deliver an adjective ending in "-est." Sneaky. Good.
I like the crossing of EGG [It can be scrambled] and EGGAR [Actress Samantha of "Walk, don't Run"]. The "alphabet soup" fill is also nice with T-BARS [Ski tows], MR. T ["I Pity the Fool" star] and B-GIRL [Female hip-hopper]. I almost added A-BEAM to the list, but that word's ABEAM [At right angles to the keel]. Oops... Among today's SIDE ISSUES [Incidental topics] is the B-Girl Scholarship available at St. Paul, MN's McNally Smith College of Music. For some aspiring performer or musicologist, this is very cool and probably GODSENT news [Very timely, as an unexpected blessing].
I'm willing to bet that [Skater Sonja] HENIE wore a LEOTARD [Acrobat's attire] on more than one occasion; and even that a RUSTLER [Range thief] might dare to show up at a RODEO [Cowpoke competition]. Do you suppose there are many yoga-practitioners among the cowboy population? And if so, what are their MANTRAS [Meditation intonations]? Can't say for sure, but I do imagine their favorite song of these yoga-practicing cowpokes would be "Om, Om on the Range"...
Did somebody say "yoga"? I just read this on Twitter: "i've been doing some reading. turns out, the bhagavad gita never mentions yoga pants."
Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword
I refer you to my L.A. Crossword Confidential post for my thoughts on this puzzle.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Wednesday"
The last square to fall was the D in MONARDA, [Perennial family that includes bee balm and horsemint]. Say what?
Top fill, top clues:
• BABY FAT is [Children's coat?]. Lively entry.
• USED CAR is a Ford [Focus that might be a little off]. My mom bought a Focus about 8 or 9 years ago when there was a new model and regretted it—now she drives a tried-and-true Toyota Corolla with fewer repair needs.
• "RIUNITE on ice, that's nice." Is ["America's All-Time Favorite Italian Wine"] still available, or did it vanish by the '80s?
• ROSIE the Robot? [She works for Mr. J], J for Jetson.
• WOWED 'EM is nice.
• [Cabbage from the Far East] is YEN, "cabbage" being slang for "money."
• "THE TWIST," good song, good fill.
• [Run off] clues XEROX. Wasn't expecting that. Erased ESSEX, in fact, because I figured the beginning X was impossibly wrong for [Run off].
• If you type *headdesk* in an online setting, your readers gather that you're beating your head against your desk, expressing stupidity or, more often, futility. HEADDESK is clued as an [Expression of frustration, in modern day slang]. Just last week, Brendan had FACEPALM in another themeless, and I asked why it wasn't mini-themed with HEADDESK. So here the answer is, a few days later.
Francis Heaney's Onion A.V. Club crossword
Ooh, I love this theme. 63D: ONE is the [Distance forward in the alphabet that each changed letter in the theme entries has moved]. Francis has four pairs of 6-letter words/phrases and two pairs of 5s:
• 18A. [Revealing photos of an old movie actress?] are Fay WRAY'S X-RAYS. One possessive, one hyphenated plural. The X is ONE letter past W.
• 23A. If you ANGLED ANG LEE, you [Set an Oscar-winning director at a slant]. One verb, one full name.
• 32A. [Roasting a blues legend?] clues BAKING B.B. KING, following the structure of the ANG LEE answer. Before I saw that the changed letter was only ONE off, I had BBQING B.B. KING here. (No, I hadn't looked at the crossings.)
• 41A. [Cotton fabric for chadors?] is MUSLIM MUSLIN. Adjective, noun. Muslin takes its name from the French mousseline in turn derived from Mosul, Iraq, where the fabric was made. This pairing may be more apt than I first thought.
• 51A. [Problem for superpowered pickup artists?] is HEROES' HERPES. The square daily newspaper puzzles never seem to have HERPES, do they?
• 60A. BOSOX BOTOX is clued as a [Treatment to keep a ball club looking youthful?]. I wonder if this was the seed entry.
Favorite clues:
• [Gay prostitute customer Haggard] is named TED.
• The [Family name in ___ history] is CURIE for science, FOYT for racing.
• [Trenchcoated antiheroes] are P.I.'S. Wait, antiheroes shouldn't be in a clue when HEROES' HERPES is in the grid.
• [It might require Java] clues an APPLET. Yup.
• [Fought-over leftovers] are an ESTATE.
Miscellaneous points:
• OXO isn't just an [Ergonomic kitchenware brand] anymore—they make office supplies. I have their clipboard.
• ["The world's local bank"] clues HSBC. I have never heard of this.
• [Hip-hop's Das ___] EFX? Never heard of him/her/them. I don't suppose Das EFX is/are German?
• [Matador, e.g.] is a LABEL? Never heard of it.
• XKE is clued as a [Jaguar make]. I think someone recently was saying that nobody ever really referred to it as the XKE, but I just heard Click or Clack, one of the Tappet brothers, invoking the XKE last weekend.
• KAREN O is the vocalist for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Wikipedia tells me. She's also a ["Where the Wild Things Are" soundtrack artist]. Kosher to have Things in this clue and THINGY as the very next answer?
October 29, 2009
Friday, 10/30/09
NYT 5:15
CHE 3:50
LAT 3:19
CS untimed
BEQ 5:38 (joon—paper)
WSJ see next post
Good news! Although the Newsday website has erected a pay wall ($5 per week), the Newsday crossword's still available for free via Stan Newman's site. As with Newsday's site, each day's puzzle comes in online and PDF options (no Across Lite, alas), and you can access the last two weeks' puzzles via pull-down menu. Thanks, Stan.
I'll be handing out Halloween candy and chaperoning a fourth-grade field trip tomorrow, so the BEQ and WSJ blogging will have to wait until late in the day...unless one of the charming and delightful Crossword Fiend team members is in the mood to fill in. If one of them is, please be sure to butter them up with fulsome praise.
David Levinson Wilk's New York Times crossword
Insane grid—six 15-letter entries going across and six 15s going down, divided by rows and columns of 3s and framed with corners of 5s. Getting each 15 to intersect six other 15s—all of them solid answers—does mean that those 3s are a hot mess. But let's focus mainly on the big guns:
• 17A. [Whitney Houston hit recorded for the 1988 Summer Olympics] is ONE MOMENT IN TIME. One wonders: Can a moment be in anything other than time?
• 24A. I do not know this "DOO DOO DOO DOO DOO," a [1974 Rolling Stones hit]. Apparently it is subtitled "(Heartbreaker)."
• 31A. THE SAHARA DESERT is [Home for an addax and dorcas gazelle].
• 41A. The PL and X pointed me towards DUPLEX APARTMENT, but I didn't know precisely what [Maisonette] meant.
• 48A. Don't know the novel or the Bible quote. STRAIT IS THE GATE is an [Andre Gide novel whose title comes from Matthew 7:14].
• 58A. The SWIMSUIT EDITION is a [Big newsstand seller for some magazines]. I never miss The Economist's swimsuit issue. Hot!
• 3D. [Bailiwick] is a cool word that means AREA OF EXPERTISE.
• 5D. CHOCOLATE KISSES are [Sweet little things with points to them]. Chocolate! 'Tis the season. I have Kit-Kats, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and Snickers Almond bars in the house. None of them will go to trick-or-treaters because we don't get any.
• 6D. Our unfamiliar technical term for the day is FIELD CAPACITIES, or [Soil water saturation limits]. Chicago had a ton of rain about a week ago (2" to 4") and another 1" to 2" is expected in the current rainstorm. I suspect the FIELD CAPACITIES are nigh unto bursting.
• 8D. NATIONAL ANTHEMS are [Country music], in a sense.
• 9D. If you've [Taken things a bit too far], you've GONE OVER THE LINE.
• 11D. [Like grandchildren] clues THIRD-GENERATION. Immigrants are first-generation, their kids are considered second-generation Americans, and the grandkids are third.
There is no shortage of ugly fill in between these sparkling 15s, but there are some beauts like the clue for 1A: [It no longer circulates around the Seine] clues the FRANC, an ex-unit of currency. Here are 10 toughies:
• 23A. RPS is [Turning meas.]. Revolutions per second?
• 28A. FIL is [Thread: Fr.]. Filament is a related word.
• 38A. TEP completes [Im-ho-___, Boris Karloff's role in "The Mummy"].
• 39A. LER is [Celtic sea god]. Not to be confused with a Roman household god, LAR.
• 62A. ANSAE are [Looped handles]. Old-school crosswordese.
• 63A. EDM is clued as [Teacher's deg.]. Sometimes it's M.Ed., sometimes it's Ed.M., and sometimes it goes all the way to MAEd. or MSEd.
• 67A. Always remember that kites can be birds of prey. [Kite relatives] are ERNES here, without any mention of "sea" or "eagle."
• 10D. The baseball [Diamond figure on a 2006 postage stamp] is Mel OTT.
• 18D. MAO quote: [He said "Learn from the masses, and then teach them"].
• 26D. [Canto contraction] clues O'ER. Why "canto"? Specific way to clue the generic concept of "words used in old poetry"?
• 43D. [Hearing aids, briefly] are big PAS, or public address systems, and not little hearing aids worn in the ear.
• 52D. [Odds' end?] is TO ONE, as in "the odds are a hundred TO ONE." Eh, it might've been kind to just go with a fill-in-the-blank clue instead of using trickery to obscure the partial.
TDS, or touchdowns, are clued by way of [Bears make them, in brief]. My son has a brand-new Chicago Bears jersey, which brings grief to his cheesehead father. I like HAL's clue: [Anthropomorphic film villain]. The suffix -INE stinks as fill, but it's salvaged by the clue, [Salt additive?] (saltine crackers). I also like the [Bookie's charge, for short], the VIG (short for vigorish).
It's weird to have three German words in one puzzle. TOD is [Death, in Deutschland]; Mann's Death in Venice is translated from Tod in Venedig. DER is clued as an [Austrian article]—speaking of Austria, did you hear about Gov. Schwarzenegger's obscene acrostic lurking in a note to a Democratic S.F. assemblyman? Wordplay! EINES is a [German indefinite article].
Trip Payne's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Poetic Couplets"
This is, I believe, the third in Trip's series of literary-themed CHE puzzles. Each theme entry is a made-up phrase consisting of two poets' names that are also common English words. Can you believe there are at least 10 such poets? And that their names can be combined in this fashion? The theme didn't strike me as particularly entertaining, but that could just be my mood. Much more appealing are the nonthematic fill and clues. We'll save that for dessert. Here's the meat/tofu of the puzzle:
• 17A. [Get the bartender's attention during Oktoberfest?] is POUND STEIN. Ezra P., Gertrude S. Nice visual/aural entry.
• 25A. SWIFT BROOKS (Jonathan S., Gwendolyn B.) is clued as [They're hard to ford?]
• 37A. [Dismal winter weather?] is GRAY FROST. Thomas G., Robert F.
• 52A. A [Valet?] is a GUEST PARKER. Dorothy P. was a wit and a poet. Who is Guest? Wikipedia suggests Barbara Guest and Edgar Guest, both American poets, and Harry Guest, a British poet. Is one of them markedly more famous than the others? Here is Barbara G.'s "Finnish Opera."
• 61A. STRAND POPE is clued [Leave Benedict XVI in the lurch?]. Alexander P., of course. Google points me towards Mark Strand, who was awarded the '99 Pulitzer for his poetry.
Either 30% or 40% of the theme's poets are women—nice to have a theme with less of a gender imbalance than we often have.
Time for dessert, some cruciverbal creme brulée:
• 33A. [Lab fuel, perhaps?] is ALPO. Dog food for Labrador retrievers.
• 51A. [Be with someone else?] clues ARE. "I" or "you" or "she" am, are, or is, but when any of us pair up into a "we," plural "you," or "they," then "be" conjugates to ARE.
• 3D. STUCK-UP is [Snobbish]. Great fill.
• 11D. [Where a peripheral may connect] is your computer's USB PORT. Raise your hand if you always try to jam things into the USB PORT upside down.
• 28D. I was briefly stumped by [Musical nickname of the 1960s] with ***FOU* in place. FAB FOUR! Of course.
• 45D. Did you contemplate any wrong answers for [Body part that may be "free" or "attached"]? Eventually I remembered the EARLOBE. (Mine's attached. A clear mark of superiority.)
• 53D. [Ctrl-V, in Windows] is ⌘-v on a Mac: PASTE the text or image in the virtual clipboard.
Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword
Here's a theme that did amuse me. Phrases that begin with a Q lose the Q's K sound but retain the W:
• 17A. [Drones losing their pep?] are WILTING BEES (quilting bees).
• 23A. [Train former senator Dole to do without?] is WEAN ELIZABETH (Queen Elizabeth).
• 33A. WAKING IN MY BOOTS (quaking...) is [The first indication that I had one too many last night?]. This one's my favorite.
• 48A. [Earp in a stage show?] is WYATT ON THE SET (quiet...). I like the surprise of the radical spelling change here.
• 56A. [Skater Katarina enjoying a Camel?] is WITT SMOKING (quit smoking). There's an ice-skating move called the camel, isn't there? The Hamill camel? Nice double-action for the camel/Camel.
When I was a kid I loved the [Tubular chocolate snack] (really more of a roll than a tube), the Hostess HO-HO. And now? Blurgh. Maybe they're more palatable when used in recipes. Favorite fill/clues:
• 45A. You know the phrase "rich as CROESUS"? He's the [Lydian king known for his wealth].
• 63A. [Sentence units: Abbr.] are YRS., or years in a prison sentence. Not words in a written sentence.
• 3D. Super fresh! HELL WEEK is a [College hazing period]. Anyone see the sorority hazing on Heroes? Hazing is even worse when the hazer is invisible.
• 22D. "I BEFORE E" is the [Start of a rule that keeps you from spelling weirdly?]. The expanded rule, "I before E except after C, except when said 'ay' as in 'neighbor' and 'weigh,'" still doesn't cover all the exceptions, such as "weird." In the clue, "weirdly" is a word you'd misspell when following the rule rather than an adverb modifying "spelling."
• 42D. TWIGGY is an [Aptly named mod model].
• 43D. An OYSTER is a [Pearl harborer]. Cute clue.
Updated Friday morning:
Donna S. Levin's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Picnic Invasion"—Janie's review
Really, there's nothing like the appearance of those pesky insects at the left to spoil a perfectly lovely picnic. But the good news is that when they colonize in well-known phrases—as is the case in today's puzzle—they make themselves more than welcome and become the source of more than one real or [Cyberchuckle] (LOL). How does Donna do this? It's a familiar formula: well-known phrase + ANT = new and whimsical phrase. Two of the critters invade at the middle, two at the end for a most successful attack. Hold the Raid and regard:
•20A. "Adam-12" (the late '60s-mid '70s tv show about LAPD patrol officers) + ANT = ADAMANT TWELVE [Strong-willed jury?]. Or perhaps the gender-neutral version of Twelve Angry Men... Nice that the very next clue references another judicial body with [Mo. the Supreme Court convenes], which is OCT.
•32A. Page break + ANT = PAGEANT BREAK [Commercial during the Miss America telecast?] "We interrupt the Talent Competition to bring you these words from..."
•41A. Green peas + ANT = GREEN PEASANT [Ecofriendly field laborer]. Oh, good. Glad this wasn't clued as [Field laborer with upset stomach] or [Field worker from Mars]...
•55A. Perfect ten + ANT = PERFECT TENANT [Landlord's desire?]. This is terrific.
Terrific, too, are such combos as: [Beat] for TIRED (where the correct fill is an adjective and not a verb), [Great gobs] (as in "Great green gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts...") for OODLES, [Giddyap's opposite] for WHOA, and [Corner] for TREE (verb, not noun).
There are also two mini-themes running through the non-theme fill today—one for the scholars, one for the athletes. For the scholars: there're the Hamlet double-bill of "TO BE..." [Start of a famous soliloquy] and RUB [Difficulty]—as in "...ay, there's the rub," which occurs in the eighth line of that same soliloquy. There's also a nod to Arthur Miller's third Tony-winning Best Play with SALEM ["The Crucible" setting]; and to another giant in the history of American dramatic literature with ELECTRA [Mourning becomes her, per Eugene O'Neill].
For the athletes: that [Hockey infraction] is ICING (sorry, food-lovers!); NCAA is the [March Madness org.] (go there—you can sign up now!); NLE (National League East) is the [Marlin's and Mets' div.] (ALE, ALW, NLE, NLW, etc., etc.—you knew all those additional franchises and league subdivisions had to be good for somethin'...); and for those times when you're not sitting on the couch, there's the GYM [Place to pump iron]. I'm also going to include SARATOGA here, for while it's certainly the [Site of a pivotal 1777 battle], the Saratoga Race Track, which opened in August of 1863, is the "oldest organized sporting venue of any kind in the United States."
Finally, for everyone else... Donna has included or referenced two very colorful characters amidst the fill: CHARO, kitschy [Celebrity known for her "cuchi-cuchi"] and with TRIX, the [Cereal with a spokesrabbit].
Brendan Emmett Quigley's blog puzzle—joon's review
joon here, filling in. i'd have been here earlier, but i just got around to today's puzzles. anyway, this is my favorite themeless BEQ in weeks, maybe months. maybe ever! it was that good. this is definitely not a newspaper crossword, what with OH SHIT and BITCH-SLAP enlivening the grid. my favorite entries, in no particular order (other than those two): KNAPSACKS; ADUMBRATE, an unusual word that means [Foreshadow]; ESOTERIC; EGOSURFER, one who googles his own name; EATS CROW; evil HR director CATBERT; and the janis joplin classic ME AND BOBBY MCGEE. other fresh answers included ARIANNA huffington of the huffington post; PODCASTS; rapper LIL KIM; brendan's favorite show THE WIRE; and FACE PALM, an [Act of exasperation, in modern-day slang]. i did not know that last one at all. other less familiar answers:
October 21, 2009
Thursday, 10/22/09
NYT 4:11
Gordon* 3:31
LAT 3:05
Tausig untimed
CS untimed
*Remember what Tuesday Sun crosswords were like? Sort of like Wednesday NYTs but with zingier clues? This summer, Peter Gordon ran into stand-up comic Lee Camp in a bookstore's puzzle section. Peter steered Lee towards one of his books, and in turn Lee gave Peter a disc featuring some of his stand-up. So Peter based a crossword, "Campy Humor," on one of Lee's jokes (that link is a JPEG of the puzzle). Enjoy!
Exciting afternoon in Chicago! I went to my local indie bookstore, Unabridged Bookstore, and saw my book, How to Conquer the New York Times Crossword Puzzle, there for the first time. Their crossword selection is so teeny, I despaired of their ever stocking my book. So I signed the one copy they had and the guy smacked an "Autographed Copy" sticker on it. I took a picture of it with my phone but I'm too lazy to download the photo right now.
Joel Fagliano's New York Times crossword
Kudos to Mr. Fagliano. Not only is this his NYT debut (and maybe his everywhere debut), but when I took the time to fully understand the theme, it knocked my socks off. (Figuratively.) Rarely does a theme elevate the black squares to a starring role, so it's fresh and interesting. Here's how it plays out:
• 27A, 52A. [Wild guess...or what the answer to each starred clue has?] is A SHOT IN / THE DARK. The DARK is the black square before or after the starred entries where the SHOT is hidden.
• 5A. [Jigger] is a shot GLASS.
• 17A. ["That's way off"] clues "NOT BY A LONG shot."
• 38A. This is the first of three "shot in the dark" entries in a single row. A [Photo] is a SNAPshot.
• 39A. A JELL-O shot is a [Colorful party drink]. Is this the first time the seamy little Jell-o shot has been featured in the NYT crossword?
• 40A. The same black square is called into action a second time. Shot DOWN means [Rejected].
• 62A. [Quick hitch-up] is a shotGUN WEDDING.
• 71A. A SLINGshot is a [Y-shaped item].
• 10D. [What "fore" may precede], in golf, is your TEE shot.
• 61D. The shot PUT is a [Track-and-field event].
Most of the theme answers would, with the inclusion of their "shot" part, make for lively crossword fill, and not a one of 'em is the slightest bit iffy.
Despite the wildly out-there 37D (NORVO, or [Red of early jazz]), the puzzle wasn't too tough at all. I would've had a Wednesday solving time if I'd bothered to read the clue for 23A when I filled in EMMITT instead of EMMETT for 11D: [Daniel Decatur ___, composer of "Dixie"]. I blame Emmitt Smith, of course.
Favorite clues:
• GUAM was a [Stop on Magellan's circumnavigation of the world].
• [Cuisine with sen yai noodles] is THAI. I had the Rama chicken tonight myself. What are sen yai noodles?
• [El numero de agosto] is OCHO, or eight. The other day, I caught part of a phone number on a Spanish-language radio commercial. "Uno ocho ocho ocho..."
• To SPOT is to [Give a handicap of]. Don't you think I should be SPOTted at least 50 points when I play Lexulous (the Scrabble variant on Facebook) against a lexicographer? I do.
• OK, this one's a favorite answer and not a clue. RUTABAGA! It's a [Vegetable that's peeled]. The word's from the Swedish dialect rotabagge. I also like KNURL, a [Small ridge on the edge of a button or dial].
• [Nick name?] is SANTA, or St. Nick.
• [Rat Island resident] sounds fictional, doesn't it? It's an ALEUT.
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "Action!"
This one's got an elegant theme: Familiar phrases ingest an -ING that turns a word that's not a verb at all into a gerund, but in each case the -ING word has a context entirely different from the original context. This explanation seems not remotely clear to me. "Show, not tell":
• 18A. [Sport for people apt to wear their gloves upside down?] is IDIOT BOXING, building on the idiom "idiot box," meaning television.
• 24A. The computer spell-check morphs into Tori Spelling. SPELLING CHECK is a [Search for Tori on IMDB?].
• 39A. [Lingerie shopping assistants, at times?] might be STOCKING HOLDERS (stockholders).
• 51A. [November cooking school program?] is GRAVY TRAINING, getting set for Thanksgiving gravy. The gravy train is "used to refer to a situation in which someone can make a lot of money for very little effort," per the New Oxford American Dictionary folks. You know what? I don't like gravy.
• 61A. [Sign that Cuba is near?]...well, on my cruise last winter, it was big waves rocking the ship. But Ben's answer is GOODING OMEN, combining a good omen with Cuba Gooding.
I liked the inherent surprise in each theme entry, with the before and after versions having such different connotations.
1A is clued [Alternative to smoking]. You wanted NON, right? But instead, it's nicotine GUM, or any old GUM that satisfies the oral urge. At 20A, WEBMD is clued as a [Site that kept telling me I either had sunburn or cancer, when I had food poisoning]. I learned a little German when ACH was clued as 57A: ["Die Wurst ist ruiniert!"] ("the sausage is ruined"). How about 34D: [Power trio member?]—were you thinking of Rush, the Police, or Cream? The answer is the HOLY GHOST. YUGOS are 52D: [Reviled cars that ceased production last year]. If you haven't seen Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, you should rent it—Michael Cera's enormously appealing character drives a yellow Yugo that is practically a character in the movie.
Updated Thursday morning:
Randolph Ross's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Keep Your Shirt On"—Janie's review
When someone [Puts the pedal to the metal], s/he STEPS ON IT. This driver is in a hurry—and while the expression is often used to calm someone down before an argument ensues—we also say "Keep your shirt on!" when we mean "Slow down!" Not only on the road—but even sometimes as we solve, in order to appreciate the multitude of pleasures a well-made puzzle can provide. Like today's—where we have 70 letters of quality theme-fill in six phrases: two 15s with two nines (overlapping in their entirety), and two 11s. All of it top-notch. The last word of each of the phrases is a component part of a shirt and can also follow the word shirt. Here's how it all comes together:
•13A. HOT POCKET [Microwaveable turnover]. At your own risk...
•16A. ACE UP ONE'S SLEEVE [Secret advantage]. And one lively phrase, with its card-playin', Wild West conjurin' roots.
•28A. WHITE COLLAR [Kind of crime]. Think "Bernie Madoff"... A blue collar worker is a skilled laborer, and here are some "other collars of the rainbow" (not my locution—dang).
•37A. PANIC BUTTON [It's pushed under stress]. And its opposite number...
•53A. SPOKE OFF THE CUFF [Gave an extemporaneous speech]. Another very lively phrase.
•57A. DOVETAILS [Meshes]. More like this, which is related to this. As the OED defines the term dovetail joint (and shifting to the noun form), it's "a fastening or joint composed of tenons cut in the shape of an expanded dove's tail, fitting into mortises of corresponding shape."
Impressive, no? And the non-theme fill holds up its end of the bargain quite convincingly as well. Allow me to ADD TO [Expand upon] this by pointing out:
•COSMIC [Way out there], which is also a good way to describe the way Michael Richards portrayed COSMO [Kramer on "Seinfeld"];
•A cushy INNERSOLE [Podiatrist's recommendation] may make it more comfortable for "Leadfoot" to put that pedal-to-the-medal. Let's just hope that's not the way the [Prom night rental] LIMO is handled. Or the BMW [Audi alternative] or even any remaining OMNIS [Bygone Dodges];
•A PEEKER is [One who looks in advance]—though my first thought for this was (the too-long) SEERESS. Nice seeing peeker next to PEERESS [Lady in the House of Lords, e.g.];
•[Came through slowly] is SEEPED IN; HIE, on the other hand, carries with it the connotation of speed [Get going]. It's also a homophone for high, which is something you might get on LSD [Psychedelic drug]—and which overlaps hie;
•In the animated series based on the book, LILAC [Purple shade] is also the name of Harold's dog. He of the purple crayon. He was a COLORER [Child with a box of crayons] (or one that we know about anyway...) with a penchant for purple;
•BLITHE is a beautiful word, isn't it? And it's clued beautifully, too, [Like a carefree spirit]; finally, a question to ponder:
•What kind of shirt is worn under a G-SUIT [NASA gear]? (I'm thinking a t-shirt. With a v-neck...)
Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword
Alas, there's not a familiar phrase that ends with lewd, so the five rhyming spellings we get are UED, OOHED, EWED, UDE, and OOD:
• 17A. [Lost it] clues CAME UNGLUED.
• 25A. POOH-POOHED means [Dismissed out of hand].
• 37A. [Like Starbucks coffee, every 30 minutes] is FRESHLY BREWED. Rumor has it the coffee will still taste burned no matter how fresh it is.
• 48A. "BUMMER, DUDE" is clued with ["That's too bad, man"].
• 60A. TAKEOUT FOOD is an ["I don't feel like cooking" option].
With a half dozen 8-letter answers (plus a bunch of 6s and a couple 7s) in the fill, we don't have the same tired 4x4 chunks of grid. Highlights: the [Austin Powers catchphrase] "Oh, BEHAVE!"; SPANDEX, that [Stretchy fabric]; and FRÄULEIN, a [German miss]. Sound-wise, I also like IGLOO crossing UNGLUED.
