LAT 4:59
NYT 4:39
Newsday (untimed)
CS 3:20
(updated at 8:15 a.m. Saturday)
Well, my copy of Henry Hook's Terribly Twisted Crosswords arrived this afternoon. I haven't had a chance to start it, but did note that there are 21 different puzzle types in the book, all variety crosswords with nonstandard grids. This is going to be good fun!
Speaking of variety grids, Trip Payne's got a few of those at his new puzzle site, Triple Play Puzzles. So far, he has posted about 20 of his own puzzles, including themed and (oversized!) themeless crosswords, cryptics, variety crosswords, and crisscrosses. I haven't had a chance to dig into every section yet, but of course I headed straight for the large themeless puzzles weeks ago. Trip also includes a page with all his puzzle books—holy cow, there are a lot!—including descriptions of the books and Amazon links to buy 'em.
I've added a link to Trip's page in the sidebar to the right, along with two new blogs. Madness--Crossword and Otherwise is where Linda G., one of my guest bloggers last month, writes about the NYT crossword each day. For another look at the NY Sun crossword, check out Robert Loy's Green Genius.
I'm invariably pleased to see Karen Tracey's byline on a themeless crossword, and the 68-word Saturday NYT this weekend is no exception. Karen tends to include lots of what I like best: pop culture, Scrabbly letters, fun phrases or words, and geographic oddities. This NYT puzzle doesn't quiz us on any exotic foreign cities, but it's got Karen's other hallmarks. To wit: ERIC IDLE (clued as [Author of "The Greedy Bastard Diary: A Comic Tour of America"]), Nick NOLTE, Phoebe CATES of Princess Caraboo (not clued as Kevin Kline's wife!), and LEVI Stubbs of the Four Tops round out the pop-cult allotment. JEZEBELS and FOXGLOVE help us consume our daily RDA of Scrabbliness. There's just a fresh vibe from entries like G-FORCE (tricky consecutive consonants), EGGHEADS, and SLIPSHOD. Karen also makes us learn (or know) a little astronomy and pharmacy—ALBEDO is a [Measure of reflected light], Friedrich BESSEL is that German astronomer, FOXGLOVE gives us the heart drug digitalis, and Valium's generic name is DIAZEPAM. Favorite clues: the vague [Ready] for PRIME (a verb in both instances); [Complex component] for NEUROSIS; [Arabic name that means "servant of God"] for ABDUL (see Paula Abdul dance with a toon here); [President who claimed to be a voodoo priest] for Haiti's DUVALIER; [Colt handler] for GUNSMITH; [Extreme bovarism] for EGOMANIA; and the "huh?" clue of [Hindu drink of immortality] for the "huh?" answer of AMRITA. P.S. You pop-culture HATERS can simmer down—Karen also gives us two answers from the world of opera (ELSA, LA BOHEME) and two from Greek mythology (OCEANUS, IOLE).
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Quick takes: Patrick Blindauer's CrosSynergy puzzle has a cute theme and a couple lovely long fill entries. Robert Wolfe's themeless LA Times puzzle was a little tougher than the NYT and a little less for for me (low pop-culture quotient, which many of you like!). Daniel Stark's Newsday Saturday Stumper seemed fairly easy (got a phone call midway through, so who knows how long it took?) for a Stumper.
June 08, 2007
Saturday, 6/9
April 27, 2007
Saturday, 4/28
LAT 8:35
NYT 7:04
Newsday 4:28
CS 3:45
(updated at 9:30 a.m. Saturday)
When the caffeine and medication didn't knock out that headache, I took to the couch and napped all evening, and have just now gotten around to doing the Saturday Times crossword. Speaking of Timeses, I've solved about six months' worth of Harper's cryptics in the past few weeks, and read old posts at the NYT's "Cryptics by Maltby" forum. Somewhere in there, someone complained that Richard Maltby had credited "London Times" for one of the puzzle gimmicks, saying that it's always called "the Times of London." On NPR today, reporter Martin Fletcher was said to be "of the London Times," so apparently it's kosher to call it that. Am wondering if I will find the time and motivation to seek out the cryptic crossword in that newspaper when I'm in the U.K. Will I wish to forsake my beloved American-style crosswords? (Nah...)
So. The crossword. Sherry Blackard constructed the NYT puzzle, and the northwest corner of it stayed blank until the rest of the grid had been filled in—none of the clues shouted answers at me. The puzzle is anchored by a 13-letter entry across the center, IDENTITY THEFT, [Wallet loser's concern]. Off to the right, a clue's "loser" was dieting and forgoing DESSERT, which is a terrible shame. (Eat less of a lighter entree and save room for dessert! That's my policy.) [Ratatouille ingredient] answered the question I had in my head yesterday: It's got EGGPLANT (and CGI rats in France, at least in this summer's Pixar movie). Anyone else ponder whether SCAVENGE could be a noun meaning [Refuse]? (The answer's actually LEAVINGS.) A SLAP from a Thomas Paine quote joins ETHAN ALLEN in the American Revolution subtheme. Nice to see OBLAST promoted from obscure-Russian-geography cluing to crossword answer. Next to that is [Top in a closet?] for BLOUSE. The southeast corner crosses ENNOBLE and LAUDER, but here it's Harry Lauder rather than "one who lauds." Moving to the southwest, [Makes some lines disappear] is IRONS, but could also be BOTOX. ELKE Sommer crosses Olympian Karin ENKE in the battle of the E*KE women. For romance, I'M IN LOVE crosses RED ROSES. By the time I moseyed back up to the northwest quadrant, I decided that 5-Down had to be FRONT LINES (whoops—ENEMY LINES). Love the word ANONYM for [Unidentified person], and the evocation of the perpetrator of IDENTITY THEFT. I've only read the first Harry Potter book, so ROWENA Ravenclaw didn't come to mind readily, and I've never seen Porgy and Bess, so ditto on Catfish Row as a TENEMENT. I couldn't picture any sort of [Table saver] until I had most of the letters in TRIVET. [Powers that be]/REGIME and [One on a longship]/VIKING both kept me in the dark for far too long, too. For those who've forgotten their geometry (like me), an ISOGON is a polygon with equal angles; presumably an equilateral triangle and a regular pentagon fit the category as well as a [Rectangle or square] does? I think I would've opted to clue either TEAR AT or TORE INTO in terms of physical ripping, though, rather than cluing both in terms of heated emotions. One of my favorite clues was the one for EAR: [Sound system component?].
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I'm not sure where Bruce Venzke and Stella Daily's wavelength lies, but for their Saturday LA Times puzzle, it was miles away from the cruciverbal lobes of my brain. The top third of the grid (which features two triple-stacks of 15-letter entries plus two more single 15s) was particularly elusive for me. [Removed by melting] is ABLATED? Not so much in medicine, where ablation is more about scraping or carving than melting. With -ETTER at the end of [First-class traveler], I had jet-setters on my mind rather than first-class mail (CERTIFIED LETTER). [Epitome of rightness?] is RAIN, which refused to come to me for the longest time despite three days of rain; read about the phrase here. Down in the bottom of the grid, there's a partial entry: "Thy hair IS AS a flock of goats": Song of Solomon. Angora and cashmere be damned, telling someone their hair is as a flock of goats is not likely to endear you to them these days. In the middle is RUMPELSTILTSKIN, a terrific entry that hid from me behind his clue, [Noted spinner] (the clue put me in mind of disk jockeys).
Daniel Stark's Newsday Saturday Stumper yielded much more easily than the day's other themeless crosswords. Favorite morsels: [Land on the Pacific and Caribbean] for NICARAGUA (this map shows plenty of other countries that fit the bill); [B.B. King's guitar], LUCILLE; and [Go beyond embroidery] for LIE.
In Mel Rosen's CrosSynergy puzzle, trains were the last thing on my mind for the clue, [Local's opposite] (EXPRESS). I blame the CTA for switching to all-stops trains some years back.
April 06, 2007
Saturday, 4/7
NYT 8:04
LAT 7:04
Newsday 3:29
CS 3:25
(updated at 9:40 a.m. Saturday)
Newsflash! The Chicago Sun-Times published an article about that local chap who won the ACPT. Yes, the headline falls back on the old trope of "Top puzzler, 11 letters," but the article branches out to describing Tyler Hinman's solving speed in terms of distance traveled. Tyler likes to finish early-week NYT crosswords within four blocks (a half mile) on the El, worst-case scenario, eight blocks. (Although the CTA's doing some platform construction now, and El travel times are slower—Tyler may be finishing crosswords in less distance.)
Kinda tough Saturday NYT crossword from Michael Shteyman, nyet? Nine 15-letter entries (2/3/2 sets going across, crossed by 1/1 going down), and not a one of them had a clue that gave me the answer quickly. Favorite nuggets: THE URGE; [Like some wine]/[Like wine] for OAKY and AGED; [Musical circles?] for CDS; THINKING OUT LOUD; IN A PERFECT WORLD; DON'T BE A STRANGER; EVENING RUSH HOUR; [95 for Am or 100 for Fm: Abbr.] for AT NO; [Go with] for PICK; [Salon job, informally] for EDIT; [Plantation head?] for TRANS (as in transplantation); [Capable, facetiously] for EPT; and the Iranian double-play of SHIA and SHAHS. Sweet construction, but I had trouble tuning into Michael's wavelength on this one.
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The bottom section of Lynn Lempel's themeless LA Times crossword is anchored by the phrase PECK'S BAD BOY, which I'd never heard of before. Late 19th-century books, a 1921 silent film, and a 1934 talkie—a bit before my time. The phrase (clued here as [Mischief-maker]) is in the dictionary, though. (The E crossed the last name of someone I didn't know, [Former MSNBC anchor Randy] MEIER, who could just as well have been MAIER crossing PACK's. Lucky guess.) Favorite clues: [It might get rid of a pain in the neck] for ANACIN (though really, ibuprofen would be better for that); [Triumphant cry] for YES; [Fast prelude] for MARDI GRAS; [Hamburguesa, por ejemplo] for CARNE; and [Eponymous coastal Cuban village] for DAIQUIRI.
Much easier themeless offering from Daniel Stark's Newsday Saturday Stumper.
February 23, 2007
Saturday, 2/24
NYT 6:12
Newsday 5:36
I'm leaving the house at 7:45 tomorrow morning, so I rather doubt I'll find time for the LA Times and CrosSynergy puzzles before I take off for the weekend. You all behave yourselves, okay? If you find yourselves compelled to comment here on the Sunday puzzle because I won't have blogged about that before Sunday afternoon, feel free to do so. But somebody should send me an e-mail and remind me not to read those automatic e-mails HaloScan sends me with the comments before I've gotten around to doing the puzzle. (I am prone to spoilerizing myself that way—I just can't bring myself to steer clear of e-mail.)
So. This week, the Saturday NYT comes from the atelier of Byron Walden, who hit us up with quotation trivia right off the bat with 3-Down. Although there's a noted Twain quote, apparently the concept popped up earlier in BYRON's "Don Juan" in a slightly different form. (Way to put your name in the grid, Byron!) Other than that, the only entry that was flat-out unknown to me was the basketball player BOB MCADOO. I may have seen the name before, but good gravy, that's not the sort of trivia I know. I wouldn't have necessarily known that the [Family Guy mom] was LOIS, except that I recently saw this clip that depicts the behavior of a small child with terrifying accuracy. Speaking of funny YouTube clips, here's one from HBO's Extras featuring DANIEL RADCLIFFE from 7-Down (don't show it to your kids who like Harry Potter). What the hell, here's a video depicting JENGA. (Okay, I need to stop before I explode the Internet.) Favorite clues and entries: TABLOID TV; the glad-I-pieced-it-together-from-vague-memories RURITANIA; [Seat of generative power] for LOINS (that "generative" is key, isn't it?); [Hanky-panky] for DALLIANCE, which may occur during the TRIAL SEPARATION it crosses (with a great clue, [First step in division?]); [Study aid?] for NO-DOZ; straightforward [Place for a pin] for JACKET LAPEL; and [It has a certain ring to it] for ATOLL. MUSIC ROLLS did not come readily to mind for [Calliope filler], nor did POISON PEN for [Vitriolic]. Overall, this was tougher than yesterday's fun NYT by Pat Merrell, but certainly not among the toughest Byron puzzles.
Daniel Stark's Newsday Saturday Stumper contains a ton of just-plain-words—nothing crazy, nothing obscure, quite smooth. Maybe a slight surfeit of -ED words, but none of those "roll-your-own words" (I forget who coined that usage about a week ago—someone at the NYT forum, maybe Bruce Morton?—but it's brilliant) formed with assorted prefixes and suffixes, words that are seldom used in those forms. The short clues are both straightforward and oblique, neither too challenging nor too easy.
February 10, 2007
Saturday, 2/10
NYT 7:43
Newsday 4:31
LAT 4:26
CS 3:15
Bob Peoples is one of the constructors whose themeless creations I find the most challenging, and his Saturday NYT bears that out. Plenty of uncommon fill, meaning solvers are less likely to have their limbic brain bits think of those answers. Plenty of entries with alternatives that fit the same space. Plenty of devious clues. Mix 'em all together and what do you get? I GOT THE SHAFT. The trickiest clues, IMO (clued as ["I think," succinctly]), were: [Top in a certain contest] for WET T-SHIRT (raise your hand if you thought "top" was a verb and tried to get OUT-something to work); [Task to focus on] for EYE EXAM; [Glen Gray's "Casa ___ Stomp"] for LOMA; [It has a cap in the kitchen] for MOREL mushroom; [Oppressive measure that helped spark the French Revolution] for SALT TAX (I'm not up on my French history); [Artist on the cover of a 1969 Life magazine] for PETER MAX; and [One of the five major circles of latitude] for ANTARCTIC. Oddball fill included TELEG (abbrev. for telegram or telegraphy, presumably, clued as [Wire: Abbr.]); EXIM ([___ Bank, U.S. loan guarantor]); and BRA PADS ([Ones doing push-ups?]). [Bothered] set a trap; the answer's IN A STIR, but IN A SNIT and IN A STEW also fit (I was leaning toward the SNIT). I liked GO OFFLINE, SMIRCH, the WAR ROOM, and I HEAR YA. And here's a sampling of paintings by Berthe MORISOT, whose name aptly crosses the French phrase, BONS AMIS.
Daniel Stark's Newsday Saturday Stumper was markedly easier than the NYT. The LA Times puzzle by Stella Daily and Bruce Venzke has a fun mini-theme (YO ADRIAN and STALLONE), six 15-letter entries (five of which I really liked), which helped ease the challenge level. Paula Gamache turns the letter A into gold in her CrosSynergy puzzle, "The Midas Touch."
