NYT 4:36
LAT 3:01
Tausig untimed
CS untimed
Joe Krozel's New York Times crossword
The theme is either "four ways of spelling the 'air' sound, including 'air' and some longer words" or "four ways of spelling the 'aero' sound, only with two long O sounds and two schwas." Here are the theme entries:
• 18A. ARROWSMITH is the [Sinclair Lewis novel].
• 26A. A [Series of sorties] is an AIR OFFENSIVE. If the theme is words/phrases that start with the "aero" sound, this one doesn't work because OFFENSIVE begins with a schwa.
• 46A. EERO SAARINEN is the St. Louis [Gateway Arch designer]. Crosswordese EERO elevated to both full name and theme entry status.
• 57A. One meaning of [Bomb] is AEROSOL CAN, which also uses a schwa for the first O.
The grid reminds me of Byron Walden's Onion A.V. Club puzzle (blogged yesterday), with a lot of long answers in the fill. The word count here is 70, which is low enough to hit themeless requirements. Alas, 54A has the feel of a 9-letter partial: [Has been around since, with "to"] clues DATES BACK. It wouldn't feel that way if the clue omitted the "with 'to'" bit—and if a thing DATES BACK many years, the verb/adverb feels like more of a unit. I do not care for the plural GASOLINES (2D: [Refinery products]). And I don't know what the point is in clueing TALENTS as 43D: [Biblical money units]; you could skew clever/tricky with something like [They might be hidden] instead of going with a blechy old Biblical term. Speaking of blechy, the CORONERS clue is rather gross: 6D: [Ones examining bodies of evidence?].
Best clue: 10D: [They're out standing in their field] for the HOME TEAM. Runner-up: 21D: [Coin "swallower"] for SOFA. Honorable mention: the [Big do]/[Big ados] pair (AFRO, STIRS).
Best fill: The LOVE SCENE is 32D: [What's barely done in movies]. My favorite LOVE SCENE is less "barely done" than "intercut with smart repartee"—George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez in Out of Sight. I kinda like the homely little utilitarian SOUP SPOON, a 20A: table [Setting piece].
Worst answer: 4D: [Like some traffic] is STOP/GO. Who among you call it that? 'Round these parts, it is strictly "stop-and-go traffic."
Ten toughest clues:
• 5A. [Punts, e.g.] are flat-bottomed boats, and so are SCOWS.
• 23A. [Venetian feature] is a LAGOON. Not canals, boats, insane flooding, doges, or the slats of venetian blinds.
• 30A. [Tricolor pooch] clues BEAGLE. White and brown with black splotches, yes?
• 39A. [Set on the court] is an ASSIST in volleyball.
• 49A. [Made a switch in a game] clues CASTLED. Is this about chess?
• 62A. ["Doctor Who" villainess, with "the"] is RANI. No apparent connection to the rani that's a Hindu queen. Doctor Who fans can't account for even 5% of crossword solvers, can they?
• 12D. [Not natural, in a way, after "in"] clues VITRO. Too many "in"s in the clue. Why not use its Latin meaning, "glass"?
• 26D. [Goddess of breezes] is one way to clue AURA. Don't recall learning about this goddess before.
• 31D. [Kind of party] is one of those clues that's not really looking for a noun—it's just skirting the fill-in-the-blank formation. GOING-AWAY fits [___ party], but a GOING-AWAY is not a "kind of party" at all.
• 47D. [It doesn't end in 00] clues an ODD LOT, a stock purchase of something other than the usual round number of shares.
Updated Thursday morning:
Randall J. Hartman's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "World Series"—Janie's review
Yep. It's that time of the year again. But, nope. This is not a baseball puzzle. Instead of a trip around the diamond, Randy has provided a trip around the solar system, with stops at various orbiting bodies. Most of these are still considered to be planets; one has been demoted. And that's just one of problems I have with the theme/theme fill... The non-theme fill? Some of the very best—so this was a very schizzy solve for me. Let's look at the theme fill:
• 20A. VENUS-MERCURY [Stuff in tennis star Williams's thermometer]. This has to be a hypenate, because VENUS'S MERCURY is too long and VENUS' MERCURY isn't the way the possessive is made for a name ending in "s" (and there's Williams's right there in the clue as a model). Regardless, the phrase feels forced to my ear.
•37A. PLUTO MARS SATURN [Disney dog scratches a Vue?]. There's our dwarf-planet designate. It can't be easy being knocked down a peg from full-planet status. Still, this phrase is kinda cute and works better for me than its preceding theme-mate.
•52A. JUPITER EARTH [Swampland in Florida]. Omma don' know... JUPITER is definitely a town in Florida, but isn't swampland marshy and oozy, and isn't earth considerably more solid? That's how I've always understood the difference. So I find the phrase confusing this time—as well as forced. Ideally (unless there's something very cryptic and witty going on), it shouldn't be a challenge to justify or explain the theme fill. But that's how it feels today. To this solver anyway. What's your take on it?
I was also puzzled by the conspicuous absence of Neptune and Uranus. Seems to me that while it's a clever idea to use the names of the planets as adjectives and verbs and nouns, it's best served as an all-or-nuthin' proposition.
"ZOUNDS!" ["Gadzooks!"], let me get on to this puzzle's real strength—and that would be its colorful and scrabbly non-theme material. That great interjection sits beside [United States Postal Service cartoon character] MR. ZIP. It's not often that you encounter an M-R-Z pattern in the grid, so that was surprising. Not only that, the Zs of both words are side-by-side, and are incorporated in the crossing word EMBEZZLE, with its superbly understated clue [Misappropriate].
It looks like there's an automotive mini-theme, too. [Drag race participant]? Well, that'd be HOT ROD. With all the money that goes into customizing some of these cars (which their owners generally don't wish to become REPOS [Seized vehicles]), one can only hope that it's outfitted with a working TAIL LIGHT [Something on the back of a Bronco?]. Or two... And that whether it's for a drag race or for more leisurely, less aggressive driving, the owner remembers to GAS UP [Get ready for a road trip]. Because nuthin' [Puts the brakes on]/CURBS one's ability to get up and go like an empty gas tank.
Other peppy fill/clues (almost all noteworthy for the attitude they convey):
• BIG CHEESE [Top dog];
• HEADCASE [Piece of work] (I have a special fondness for this combo...);
• HOOEY [Mumbo jumbo] and INANE [Goofy]—which are side-by-side in the grid;
• CAJUN [Zydeco player] and PROXY [Shareholder's substitute], for their contributions to the high-scorin' Scrabble letters; and
• "OH, MAN!" ["Give me a break!"]. This is but one way to clue it and is a good reminder of the power of inflection. Most of us have probably uttered the phrase or heard someone else use it to convey a reaction meaning anything from "I'm so sorry" to "That is fantastic—wow" or the exasperation in today's example. All of which supports the theory that it's not what ya say, but how ya say it!
Don Gagliardo's Los Angeles Times crossword
One downside of solving in Across Lite is that when there's a really long clue, you have to resize the window in order to read the whole clue. (That "mouse over it and the clue pops up" feature is Windows-only.) So while I did this puzzle last night, I hadn't grasped the full SHOEBOX oomph—not only are the four long answers phrases that end with categories of shoe, but the letters in SHOE are spelled out counterclockwise in four different rings/boxes in the corners of the grid, each time with the E in the very corner. This is a big SHOEBOX indeed, having room for pairs of CLOGS, HEELS, PUMPS, and FLATS:
• SINK CLOGS are [Kitchen backups]. Not wild about the phrase SINK CLOGS, as it's the sink's drain that is clogged.
• The [North Carolina team] are the TARHEELS.
• [Octane rating sites] are GAS PUMPS.
• The SALT FLATS are the [Bonneville Speedway feature].
So, it's the SHOE boxes that account for the "meh" fill in the grid. Both EONS and EOS, ESSO and ESSE, OTHO and SHO, OTOE and ESTES—those wouldn't be there if they weren't facilitating the four-square corners.
There's good fill in here, too. My favorites are CORN CHEX (which I should add to my shopping list!), a [General Mills cereal], and the UTNE READER, an [Eclectic bimonthly reader]. Nice to see the magazine in its entirety rather than just a bland clue for UTNE alone.
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "Starting Something"
If you want to be starting something, you're spoiling for a fight. The theme entries are four famous people whose names begin with synonyms for "fight":
• There's a ROW in ROWAN ATKINSON, the ["Mr. Bean" portrayer].
• WARREN BEATTY, who [won an Oscar for playing Bugsy Siegel] but could not pull off playing Mr. Bean, begins with WAR.
• She was billed as Tiffani-Amber Thiessen when she was on Saved by the Bell but dropped the Amber by the time she was on Beverly Hills, 90210. So she's TIFFANI THIESSEN, and that starts with a TIFF.
• BOUTROS-GHALI is the last name of Boutros Boutros-Ghali, so this theme entry is not structurally consistent with the other theme entries. But both his first and last names begin with BOUT. (He's the [U.N. Secretary General succeeded by Annan].)
• FIGHTING WORDS at 54A ties everything together, and "fighting words" is a colorful phrase so it's an asset to the theme to be in the grid rather than the title field.
Selected clues:
• ["For reals!"] clues "NO LIE!"
• [Bratislavan currency] is nothing more exotic than the EURO.
• [Take care of one's canines?] clues FLOSS. This is about human teeth, not dogs and their teeth.
• [Moe who recorded Woody Guthrie and others] is Moe ASCH. Usually the crossword ASCH is novelist Sholem Asch.
• [Popular subway time-killers] are PSPS, or PlayStation Portable handheld game players.
• RSVP is clued as [Let people know if you're coming to their wedding], and [Plays at a wedding] clues the verb DJS. Can you guess that Ben Tausig's wedding is coming up soon? Did you RSVP already? What's that? You didn't get an invitation either? Well, let's all show up and surprise him.
• A bank [Balance problem?] is an OVERDRAFT.
• [Emulate Angelina Jolie and Madonna] clues ADOPT.
• [Put up a minor obstacle?] means "put up an obstacle to minors" here—the bouncer or bartender who iDED the kid kept her out of the bar.
October 28, 2009
Thursday, 10/29/09
September 11, 2009
Saturday, 9/12/09
Newsday a leisurely 10 minutes
NYT 4:32
LAT 3:00
CS untimed (J)/3:38 (A)
I'm on tuck-in duty tonight and my kid's back on his school-year schedule, so I've gotta run. I'll be back tonight if I don't wind up falling asleep myself.
Barry Silk's New York Times crossword
Short-form review:
Updated Saturday Morning:
Don Gagliardo's Los Angeles Times crossword
(Post excerpted from my L.A. Crossword Confidential writeup.)
I worked an advance copy of the puzzle in Across Lite, and there's an error in the solution. The corrected file has not yet made it onto Cruciverb, but the puzzle should be correct on the L.A. Times website and the newspaper itself presumably doesn't reveal the solution until the following day. The error is a D where 5A: [Snake with a puff variety] meets 9D: [ACLU concerns], and those are a puff ADDER and rights, abbreviated as RTS. There is no "puff added" (though that phrase should appear on packages of cotton candy), and the ACLU does not customarily concern itself with delirium tremens.
Highlights:
Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Opener Openers"—Janie's review
26A: [Show featuring agents 86 and 99] is GET SMART. I never, ever saw the TV show, and I've only seen a portion of the Steve Carell movie. Did I miss much? I know about the shoe phone. (My son peeked over my shoulder at this puzzle and knew this clue thanks to the movie. The title was on the tip of his tongue but he couldn't summon it up. Kids! They're just like adults sometimes.)
32A: ["See?!"] points towards the wordier "WHAT DID I TELL YOU?!" Now, that's awesome. I love it when the puzzle speaks to me in exclamations.
54A: The [2002 film for which Adrien Brody won a Best Actor Oscar] is THE PIANIST. And then he inappropriately smooched Oscar presenter Halle Berry, who did not give up her bodily autonomy just because he thinks she's swell. (Hmph!) I always hear that movie title as "The Penis." Anyone else have that problem? No? Just me?
7D: ["Sound familiar?"] and "DOES IT RING A BELL?" are synonymous. I kinda feel like "Does that ring a bell?" is a bit more natural-sounding.
13D: [H.G. Wells's island researcher] is DR. MOREAU. Didn't South Park have a Marlon Brando/Dr. Moreau character with a bunch of mutant animal combos?
27D: [Sargent portrait of a mysterious Frenchwoman] is called MADAME X. Even if you don't know the painting in question, you really can't complain about fine arts content in a Saturday crossword. The Saturday puzzle should challenge, entertain, and expand our knowledge base. And you know what? Right now I'm sort of wishing I'd chosen Madame X instead of Orange as my fake name. I'm a bit of a RUER.
Three theme phrases; each begins with a word that can precede the word opener. Two of these words are tiny; all of the phrases are power-packed. There aren't tons of longer entries, but the four eights are especially good; and the cluing of the many shorter words adds to the overall success of today's Klahn. Looking first at the theme fill, there's:
Each of the four eights deserves a mention, too: THE ENEMY [He is us, to Pogo], VOLATILE (because it's such a good word), and the rhyming (and symmetrically placed) INTERPOL and BANKROLL, the latter with its alliterative [Back with bucks] clue.
And then, let's look at the way Bob writes his clues, using repeated words to make sequential connections from one clue to the next and strengthening their impact in the process:
Some other clue/fill combos that made me think twice (and smile):
In other words, this whole puzzle is basically ['60s "Wow!"]/"FAR OUT!"
Sandy Fein's Newsday "Saturday Stumper"
(PDF solution here.)
I generally prefer themeless crosswords with stacks of long (9- to 15-letter) answers to the ones with a slew of 7s, which feel drier to me. Comments on a handful of clues and answers:
August 26, 2009
Thursday, 8/27/09
NYT 4:17
LAT 3:33
CS 7:23 (J—paper)
Tausig untimed
Did you do the Wednesday NYT crossword? If so, did you read Ryan's "Ryan and Brian do Crosswords" post? Ryan and Brian both are seriously funny, and their takes on the daily puzzle skew a different direction from the other bloggers. Based on the comments, it would appear that about a dozen people read Ryan and Brian's posts, but they absolutely deserve a larger audience. Give 'em a whirl if you haven't before.
In a few days, Eric Berlin is releasing his suite of nine puzzles with a board game theme to an elite group consisting of "people who are willing to buy good puzzles." I ponied up a few bucks via Kickstarter.com, but you can still join the cool kids. Go here for more info and handy-dandy PayPal/Amazon e-tail links. Eric created the Brooklyn-themed suite of puzzles many of us enjoyed the hell out of at the ACPT last year, and the new batch of puzzles promises to be equally fun (and of top quality).
Derek Bowman's New York Times crossword
Oh! Look at that. I hadn't taken the time to see what the words in the circled letters were because usually, the crossings were sufficient to reveal the answers with clues like [Second row]. But those circled letters make a...triangular word ladder? I'm not sure what the name is for a series of words in which one letter is removed at each step, but this one plays out like this, and those triangulated words clue answers as follows:
PATTERN (First row, 52A: DESIGN)
PATTER (Second row, 51D: SPIEL)
PATER (Third row, 43D: DAD)
PATE (Fourth row, 64A: HEAD)
PAT (Fifth row, 4D: DAB)
PA (Sixth row, also 43D: DAD)
A (Seventh row, 60D: ONE)
That's a nifty gimmick, one I've not seen before—definite bonus points for originality and thematic gutsiness. More bonus points for having 17 answers in the 6- to 9-letter range. And then we must dock a few points for the slew of icky 3- and 4-letter answers and the out-there, so-old-it's-crosswordese-I-don't-even-recognize EPHOR (2D: [Ancient Spartan magistrate]!). All things considered, I'll give this a thumbs up with mild reservations. It looks cool.
Among the knottier clues are these:
So, where did this bells-and-whistles, look-at-me puzzle land on your enjoyment spectrum? Closer to the "wow" or the "meh" end of things? As I said, I'm a little more on the "wow" end but with reservations. The concept is cool, and I'd like to see if another puzzle with a different set of pyramid words might play out more smoothly. There must be a few other seven-down-to-one-letter word ladders like this, no?
Updated Thursday morning:
Donna S. Levin's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Heart of Gold"—Janie's review
Talk about yer "sparkly" fill...
52D tells us that [79] is the AT. NO. [for the chem. symbol at the heart of the four longest puzzle answers] to be found in Donna's grid. And that would be the atomic number for AU (from the Latin aurum)—or gold. Whether the symbol falls in the fifth and sixth squares or in the sixth and seventh, it always falls right in the middle—at the heart—of the theme phrase. Nice. And here're the four precious (metal) theme-phrases themselves:
Other fill/clues that illuminate the puzzle include: [Dolls or Clusters preceder] for GOO GOO; the verbal cluster of FREER for [Less inhibited], which might predispose you to behaving in an [Affectionate] FOND way towards someone, which might lead to some [Togetherness] UNITY; and [Cancún coin] PESO—which might go towards the cost of a FAJITA [Grilled Tex-Mex dish].
The other combo that really grabbed me today was [Logger's leftover] for STUMP. Are many of you aware of the brief but wildly destructive storm that passed through Manhattan Tuesday a week ago (8/18)? Winds of up to 70 miles per hour in something called "micro bursts" or "down bursts" swept through the city and wreaked wild-crazy havoc on Central Park, taking down some 200 trees and doing irreparable damage to literally hundreds more. The clean-up has been in effect from the get-go and will continue until the job's done, of course. But ya simply can't believe the extent of the damage. Here's a link to the Central Park Conservancy where you can read more—and also see some dramatic photo coverage. There's many a stump in Central Park these days where there used to be a tree. Alas!!
To close on a lighter note: Donna has also included three bonus "nuggets." Can ya find 'em?
Don Gagliardo's Los Angeles Times crossword
Today is crossword D-Day, with puzzles from Derek, Donna, and Don.
Don's puzzle is made on a budget, with three short symmetrical theme entries worth $1 (LOVED ONES, or 50A: [Adored bills?]), $5 (HIGH FIVES, or 23A: [Lofty bills?]), and $10 (TOP TENS, or 38A: [Superior bills?]), but no ROARING TWENTIES. Running downward at 8D, intersecting those three theme answers, is TERRIBLE TWOS, [Hated bills (that appropriately spoil this puzzle's symmetry)?] Hey, I love the $2 bill! Sure, it's a mere curiosity that nobody much got in the habit of using, but it looks great. The symmetry hiccup is at the L in TERRIBLE TWOS; for a symmetrical grid pattern, that square should've been black.
I do like asymmetry for a purpose, but this feels a little arbitrary. The phrases with numbers have nothing to do with currency, and the clues for those phrases have nothing to do with those denominations: $5 are neither lofty nor high. What I do like is the traditional crossword sticklers getting poked a little: Sure, we can have a theme entry that wrecks symmetry, but we're going to moralize and call it TERRIBLE because we know it's breaking the rules. If EXCELLENT TWOS was an actual phrase, it would fit thematically but the naughtiness of asymmetry wouldn't get a wink.
The toughest part of this puzzle, for me, was the northeast corner:
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "Foreign Consumption"
This theme skirts around the trouble spots Brendan Quigley outlined for circled-letter themes. Five theme entries are all food items, and the spaced-out hidden words in the circled letters are a graphic representation of food contamination by various substances. Tying these together is the FDA at 71A: [Agcy. that sets (often surprisingly high) maximum standards for the amounts of the circled materials in edible goods]. Holy crap! The "circled materials" include:
Did this puzzle ruin your appetite? Because it didn't even touch on the allowable number of insect parts the FDA says are A-OK in the food supply. You can read up on the official limits here. For canned citrus fruit juice, for example, the limit is "5 or more Drosophila and other fly eggs per 250 ml or 1 or more maggots per 250 ml." Cornmeal has set limits for the number of whole insects, insect parts, rodent hairs, and rodent excreta. I wish I were kidding! Ben is right: the limits are indeed "often surprisingly high." Shall I go on? Just one more: In ground marjoram, the "insect filth" cap is "Average of 1175 or more insect fragments per 10 grams." I can't help wondering how much 1175 insect fragments weigh. Okay, I'll stop, thoroughly disheartened about the food supply. Good crossword, though!
August 12, 2009
Thursday, 8/13
NYT 4:01
LAT 3:35
CS untimed
Tausig untimed
Patrick McIntyre's New York Times crossword
I believe this puzzle marks the debut of another crossword-constructing Patrick, and I'm pleased to see that it fits in with the quality we have come to expect from Patricks. This Thursday puzzle has just 70 words, meaning that the grid's packed with longer answers—look at that white space sprawling across the southwest and northeast of the diagram.
The applet claims my finishing time was 4:13, but the applet also told me it took me 4:01. Shall we spot everyone 12 seconds for technical malfeasance, or is it just my computer with a lag tonight?
The middle of the five theme entries is COIN FLIPS, which are 32A: [Starts of some games...and of the answers to 16-, 22-, 48- and 56-Across?]. The first four letters of the other four theme entries are anagrams of COIN, not always forming a stand-alone 4-letter word. The clue does a good job of tying the theme together, with the start of a game and start of a theme answer. There's a loose logical connection between the two concepts, but I think the "start" aspect gives adequate rationale for the puzzle's existence. The four answers beginning with flipped COINs are:
I don't know about you, but I had the whole puzzle done before I really read the 32A clue and understood what the theme was. And I liked the puzzle both before and after seeing the theme. Other highlights:
Craziness: EMIL is clued as 58A: [Mathematician Post or Artin]. I guess I'm not up on my mathematicians because I've never heard of either. And the Roman numeral gets a "year of the king" clue that doesn't narrow things down all that much if you're not up on your kings of early England. [Third year in the reign of Edward the Elder] is CMI.
Don Gagliardo's Los Angeles Times crossword
Happy 110th birthday to ALFRED HITCHCOCK! [Born 8/13/1899, he directed the answers to the starred clues], and there are seven such movies in the grid. When you include Hitch's CAMEO / SCENEs, there are 71 theme squares in this puzzle. As a visual representation of the director's brief CAMEOs in his films, his name passes briefly through five of the movies in the puzzle. I was actually a tad disappointed that Hitchcock also made cameos in REBECCA (clued as [Sunnybrook Farm girl] and VERTIGO ([Dizziness]) because his name doesn't intersect those entries. Those movie titles are right next to the words CAMEO and SCENE, though.
I like how the seven movies are clues in non-Hitchcockian veins. For example, THE BIRDS is an [Aristophanes comedy] as well as the movie with Tippi Hedren that I wish to never see again. Birds! Coming at ya! Once is enough for me.
Three entries I wish to comment on:
Updated Thursday morning:
Let us go then, to the john,
Where the toilet seat waits to be sat upon
Like a lover’s lap perched upon ceramic;
Let us go, through doors that do not always lock,
Which means you ought to knock
Lest opening one reveal a soul within
Who’ll shout, “Stay out! Did you not see my shin,
Framed within the gap twixt floor and stall?”
No, I did not see that at all.
That is not what I saw, at all.
If you loved your English lit classes, you ought to go buy at least two copies of Francis's book.
Stella Daily & Bruce Venzke's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Fruit Filling"—Janie's review
I'm untimed today because I decided that "for fun" I'd work only with one set of clues. I chose "across" and all things bein' equal, uh, this was not such a good choice. I was correctly able to fill in just half of the clues, and even suss out some of the correct "downs" in the process, but the (lack of) theme fill did me in and I had to selectively resort to the down clues. Note to self: try this again but start with the "downs"...
But what lively fill Stella and Bruce have given us. The theme is pretty standard: there's a word (hint, hint—a fruit) that can precede the last word of each of the theme phrases. As we learn at 71A, that fruit "fill" is the BANANA, but the theme phrases—and the new ones that result—are a pretty tasty bunch. Here we go. BANANA +
There are so many good visual/aural connections with this theme-fill—and that's what makes this puzzle so lively. It has a fresh feel to it, too, with ejector seat and chemical peel looking to be complete first-timers and miss the boat a CS debut; lickety split's only been in two other puzzles, both CS, both as theme fill—but this theme is a first here.
Elsewhere, the non-fruit fill is quite solid, too. There are a lotta good fives and sixes (among them, RAJAS, FIONA, ICEMAN, ADONIS, RAVISH) and a little end-of-the-alphabet action as well (EXTRAS, SURTAX, IZOD). A [Little earthquake] is a TREMOR. Earthquakes lead to [Breaks in the earth's crust] or RIFTS.
[Comparable to punch?] is a dandy clue for PLEASED (as in "pleased as punch"); and I know that the three-letter limit makes ROE the only right fill for [Wade's court opponent]—but that didn't stop me from thinking about Billie Jean King, whom Virginia Wade defeated in her first U.S. Open. Or even Margaret Court, Wade's doubles partner.
Fyi—where I went off the track in my "across only" approach: had both TEEMED and POURED penciled in lightly where RAINED lives, IN RE for AS TO, FRODO for FREDO, MA'AM for SIRE... Them's the RISKS, eh? 'Til next time...
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "Getting High"
In each theme entry, the word UP moves up ("gets high") by one word. For example, "it'll turn up" becomes IT'LL UPTURN, a [Promise to a rhinoplasty patient with a droopy nose?], and "Step right up!" becomes STEP UPRIGHT, or [What bipeds do?].
Tougher stuff:
Seeing RETINA ([Eye part that may become detached]) in the grid makes me think that RE: TINA should be the name of a Tina Turner biography, just as I, Tina is the title of her autobiography.
July 07, 2009
Wednesday, 7/8
Onion 4:28
BEQ 4:08
LAT 3:40
NYT 3:30
CS 8:40 (J―paper)
Tim Wescott's New York Times crossword
So, Rex Parker, PuzzleGirl, and I were corresponding tonight, trying to piece together the "unusual feature that appears nine times" in this crossword. Eventually I gave up and consulted Wordplay, where I learned there are nine word squares and that the constructor probably won't be surprised to see my grumbles: "I also realize that the puzzles that are a challenge to construct are not necessarily the same as the puzzles that a lot of people like to solve, as I’ve seen some complaints about these kinds of puzzles elsewhere on the Web." Yeah, I saw a lot of word segments that intersected with their clones, but in 3 1/2 minutes, I did not notice the word squares. So that wasn't an aid in solving. And so many repeated chunks of letters didn't enhance the solving experience for me.
Those word squares are as follows:
ROB CUD WES ROE
OPE USE EVA ONE
BEE DEN SAL EEN
BING CRAM CHAS RUMP
IDEA RUDE HASH UBER
NEWT ADIT ASHE MEGA
GATE METS SHED PRAY
HEART
EMBER
ABOVE
REVUE
TREES
The 5x5 is pretty fancy, but if you don't appreciate it in the midst of doing the puzzle...well...this is a gimmick for the leisurely solver to be blown away by. And I'm sure there are speed solvers in awe of the construction, too. I'm predicting about a 60/40 split between the "Wow!" and "meh" contingents, in favor of the "Wow!" side.
A few clues and answers:
• 3D. BEER GARDEN is as [Place for a pilsner].
• 38A. CAB-OVER is a [Style of truck with a vertical front].
• 31D. WEST MONROE is a [Louisiana city named for the fifth U.S. president].
• 32D. EVAN-PICONE is a [Big name in women's apparel since 1949]. Hooray for the clue not suggesting that there's ever been a person in fashion named Evan Picone.
• 55A. RUM PUNCH is a [Bacardi concoction, perhaps]. Crossword constructors use the term unch as shorthand for "unchecked letter." No idea what a RUMP UNCH might be.
• 22A. EMMETS are [Ants, archaically]. If you know a guy named Emmet, please call him Ant.
• 20A. To IRRIGATE is to [Make arable, perhaps].
Updated Wednesday morning:
Patrick Blindauer's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "They'll Take a Mile"―Janie's review
Today we have the titular companion piece (and thematic cousin) to yesterday's Doug Peterson, "Give 'Em an Inch..." And what a lively companion piece it is. The abbreviation for mile is mi.; the four theme phrases take that abbreviation and affix it to the beginning to create a new phrase. Each is also the beneficiary of some mighty crafty cluing.
There's a lot of strong cluing today. I like the alliteration of [Lamp-lugging lad of literature] for ALADDIN, and the ambiguity of [Bars] for SALOONS and [Drops from the sky] for RAIN. In neither case is the clue to be understood as a verb―yet that's what I thought of first. Neither are [Clogs and pumps] to be understood in relation to plumbing issues. They're SHOES.
And how about the [pedal] pair: [Put the pedal to the medal] for FLOORED IT (in what looks to be a CS debut) and [Instrument for pedal pushers?] for ORGAN. Or the matched set of terms of endearment: ["Cutie pie" or "sweetie"] for PET NAME and [Darlin'] for HON.
Among the non-theme fill, gotta give a shout-out to CS-debut OXYMORONS, those figures of speech that pair opposites to ironic effect, as the clue [Deafening silence and bittersweet] demonstrates. You probably have your favorites, but here's a snippet of George Carlin going through a few of his.
A fave cross: ASEA and SEE; and a seriously smile-worthy pair: [iPod...] NANO and NANU (-nanu) [Either half of a classic sitcom sign-off]. Finally, given the tie-in this puzzle had with yesterday's, had a moment of GLEE seeing SKEW once again. (I know, yesterday it was SKEWS, but it's close enuf for jazz in my book!)
Don Gagliardo's Los Angeles Times crossword
I did this puzzle shortly before doing the NYT puzzle last night, and it made me cranky in similar ways. Tour de force construction? Check. (81 theme squares is huge.) Uninteresting fill and clues? Check. There are many who greatly admire a tour de force and focus on the constructor's achievement in building such a puzzle, but I tend to be solidly in the "I want it to be fun and interesting" camp.
It's past 10 a.m. and I have two more puzzles to blog before getting to work on a puzzle consulting gig, so allow me to copy and paste from the theme writeup from my L.A. Crossword Confidential post:
• 41A: Secret get-together, or what occurs literally in each of this puzzle's circled squares (HUSH-HUSH MEETING). The circled letters are hush-hush meetings of two words.
• 5A, 8D: Clever move (COUP)/Prefix with science (PSEUDO-). Silent P from French and Greek.
• 9A, 9D: Bad-mouth (KNOCK)/Hillock (KNOLL). Two words from Old English with now-silent Ks.
• 4D, 28A: Newspaper feature (COLUMN)/Organ numbers (HYMNS). Classical roots for both of these M+silent N words.
• 48A, 48D: Like Letterman lines (WRY)/Eerie apparition (WRAITH). Silent W before an R; one Old English root, one Scots/unknown.
• 40D, 54A: Oppose (REPUGN)/Omen (SIGN). Silent G in a GN combo. Both words are from Middle English by way of Old French taken from Latin. Begging your pardon: REPUGN? I know an awful lot of words, but I haven't run across this one before. Repugnant, sure. Impugn, of course. But not this word.
• 57D, 64A: Prefix with stat (RHEO-)/Like a question that isn't a question (RHETORICAL). Silent H after an R, presumably a Greek rho being transliterated as RH rather than R. It's a bit of a cheat to throw in a prefix here, but RHYME is too long for this spot and havign 81 theme squares gives little flexibility.
• 63D, 73A: Blockbuster, e.g. (BOMB)/Oversimplify, with "down" (DUMB). BOMB has a promiscuous etymology—English from French via Italian, probably from Latin, before that from Greek, "of imitative origin." In other words, everyone agrees it bomb/bombe/bomba/bombus/bombos sounds like "boom." DUMB's a good Old English word of Germanic origin.
I had more fun looking these words up in the dictionary than doing the crossword, honestly. The fill squeezed in around the massive dose of theme was mostly uninspired, hitting a nadir with ILLER (technically legit but nothing I'd say) and a not-a-real-word singular KUDO (which would be OK if the clue acknowledged the joke by playing with "praise" sounding like a plural or something). Does ILLER have hip hop usage? Is it in Nas's Illmatic lyrics anywhere?
Byron Walden's Onion A.V. Club crossword
We are overdue for some more Byron themelesses, aren't we? That was one of the biggest losses when the New York Sun folded—one top-notch themeless puzzle every week, from talents like Byron, Karen Tracey, and Patrick Berry. Seriously, what is wrong with the masses of people who have not signed up to subscribe if the Sun Crossword relaunches? The incredibly innovative tough Friday themes are just as missed as the sparkling themelesses. So if you fancy yourself a lover of the finest crosswords and you rather wish there were more tough puzzles available, sign up!
Now, where were we? Oh, yes. The Onion puzzle. Blogger is in a mood and won't let me upload the grid image, so I'll just tell you about the theme and lay out some clues. The first theme entry began TURNOFFPH- and I couldn't get a "turn off phones" instruction out of my mind, which got in the way of understanding the theme. It's "___ of ___" phrases in which the "of" becomes "off":
★ 20A. TURN-OFF PHRASE is a [Pickup line that backfires badly?].
★ 26A. The jack of clubs becomes JACK-OFF CLUBS, or [Bars for total assholes?]. Don't go there. You won't like the crowd.
★ 40A. I love the "walk of shame" as the basis for a theme entry. WALK-OFF SHAME is a baseball-pitchin' [Reliever's feeling after giving up a game-ending homerun?].
★ 48A. PLAYOFF COLORS are [Jersey options for the postseason?].
Fill highlights include EMILY POST, NBA OWNERS ([The Mavs' Mark Cuban and the Nets' Jay-Z, e.g.]), FANFIC ([Writing genre for creative devotees, briefly]), and aren't-you-glad-you-read-the-NYT [New York Times science reporter Gina] KOLATA.
Favorite clues: Crossword-friendly country OMAN gets the fun-to-say [Country whose sultan is Qaboos bin Said al Said]. The DELETE KEY [can make mean men, but can't make men mean]. NOLTE is clued as [Nick who was People's Sexiest Man Alive in 1992]; his subsequent drunken mug shot made a mockery of that. (What? The Sexiest Man Alive designation is not mockable except in extenuating circumstances like Nolte's.) James T. KIRK is a [Captain based in part on Horatio Hornblower]. KEEP LEFT is a [Progressive's favorite road sign?].
Brendan Quigley's blog puzzle, "Support System"
The theme is STAND BY ME, and the four long answers that include the letter sequence STAND are abutted by something with a ME above or below the STAND. For example, TWIST AND SHOUT has a ME in MENLO PARK above it. Now, it's a little muddled here because the ME of STAND BY ME is underneath TWIST AND SHOUT's STAND, so it appears that the puzzle's ME has a split personality. STAND BY ME's STAND has a ME below it, too.
Juvenile highlights: [Stooge's laugh syllable] is NYUK and [Gas] is FART.
I need to get to work here. Am all crossworded out for the day! Too bad the work that's waiting is...crosswords.
May 11, 2009
Tuesday, 5/12
Jonesin' 3:18
NYT 2:45
LAT 2:36
CS 6:38 (J—paper)
Ooh, sorry I'm a little late tonight. I got distracted by the Blackhawks game, which is so unlike me. Hockey? It moves too fast. (Baseball? It moves too slow. Call me Goldilocks the reluctant sports fan.)
Wayne and P.K. King's New York Times crossword
I figured a theme like this had surely been done before, and it has, back in '99 and also in 2006, but with entirely different sets of DISsed theme entries. The Kings' fresh foursome follows:
A few other clues:
Updated Tuesday morning:
Stella Daily & Bruce Venzke's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Back Biters"—Janie's review
Looking for a little flash in your Tuesday puzzle? Look no further. The dynamic duo of Daily & Venske provide it in the very first themed entry:
17A: [Electricity in the sky] BOLT OF LIGHTNING
The gimmick, however, is not about brilliant displays of light, but what's [...found at the end of this puzzle's longest answers]. At the back of these four answers are biters of sorts: BUGS!! Two of them are of the insect variety; two—and these are the far more insidious sort—are of the human variety.
The companion to our friend the ...LIGHTNING bug, emerges here at 27A [Cousin of the Etch A Sketch] MAGNA DOODLE. And behold, we now have the DOODLE bug.
But beware the LITTER bug and the FIRE bug!!
The former comes to us via 49A: [Cat owner's purchase] KITTY LITTER; the latter from 63A [Oscar-nominated Clint Eastwood thriller] IN THE LINE OF FIRE.
("FIRE bugs" also puts me in mind of Swiss playwright Max Frisch's play Biedermann and the Fire Bugs. Though, all things bein' equal, I think I'd be happier recalling Johnny Mercer's tribute to LIGHTNING bug larvae, "Glow Worm".)
What's so good about this theme-fill is that, once again, it's very fresh. BOLT OF LIGHTNING is making its first appearance in a CS puzzle (and has appeared in only one other major puzzle—nearly ten years ago); MAGNA DOODLE and KITTY LITTER are complete newcomers. I like that!
What else do I like? Well, there are some charming crosses within the grid: RENT and DENT; LIMIT and EMIT; SKEE and KNEE. While not clued as such, we also get a theme-related bonus in PEST. We get a pair of past-tense complaints, too: MOANED and NAGGED.
SNAFU showed up four days ago in Randall Hartman's "Cheese Heads," but then it was clued as [Major miscue]; today it's a slangy [Hot mess]. And yesterday, Doug Peterson gave us COMP for [Freebie]; today we have ANNIE for [Oakley of the range]. Whaddaya call a comp ticket? An ANNIE Oakley. Scroll to the end to find out why!
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Pig Out"
Yes, "pig out" is a familiar phrase, but I can't get too excited by this sort of theme—long phrases that begin with PI and end with G or begin with P and end with IG. Matt adds another title-related element to the theme—the first four theme answers center on eating and the fifth is the results of "pigging out." Three of the five theme answers are rock solid, and some seem to be pig-related in a way:
[Gwyneth Paltrow's website] is GOOP.com. I haven't explored the site—just read things where people make fun of it. Favorite answers: UFF-DA is ["Oh no!" in Norwegian areas of the Midwest]. At Carleton, we made fun of St. Olaf with "Uff-da!" chants at football games. GIFTED KIDS is a great entry' [They may be placed in a higher class]. DANGER ZONE is, apparently, a [Song that elicits images of "Top Gun"]; don't know the song, am glad to have never seen the movie (also missed Cocktail). The BUZZER is a [Game show device]; Jeopardy! likes to call it a "signaling device," perhaps because it doesn't buzz, but come on, we all know it's a BUZZER. I liked the [Brothers with a 2009 movie] clue; it had me thinking of the Hughes, Coen, and Farrelly brothers, all directing teams, but no—it's the teen-idol JONAS Brothers.
Don Gagliardo's L.A. Times crossword
Gagliardo's theme is occupationally oriented ways to say "shut up":
Lots of good long answers in the fill—the HEAT INDEX is [Wind chill factor's opposite]. Winnie the Pooh's beloved HONEY POT should really be spelled HUNNY to capture Pooh's vibe. ZOOM LENS is a camera [Attachment for closeups]. SET UP SHOP means to [Go into business]. And old Mother Hubbard's [Bare fixture of rhyme] is her CUPBOARD.
April 15, 2009
Thursday, 4/16
Tausig 6:34
NYT 4:37
LAT 3:36
CS 2:27
Oliver Hill's New York Times crossword
I'm feeling torn about this puzzle. On the one hand, the theme idea is clever—EXTRACT parsed as "extra CT" added to certain phrases—and there's some terrific fill. On the other hand, one of the theme answers feels off to me, and some of the fill and clues strike the wrong note. First, let's sum up the theme:
Here are the non-theme answers and clues I admired:
The clue for FURY, [Hurricane's force], felt too specific for its answer. Fill that sort of sticks in my craw:
I imagine I had more to say about the puzzle, but I spent so much time watching neo-Journey clips with my husband, and poking around Facebook...I forgot. I'll be more bloggy again in the morning.
Updated Tuesday morning:
Don Gagliardo's L.A. Times crossword
Wow, what an unusual theme! One of the holy grails of crossword construction is to come up with a cool theme nobody's done before, and I don't recall seeing a puzzle like this before. There's no obvious theme until you get down to 67A: [Letter appearing only in down answers; its opposite appears only in across answers]. That's the HARD G, with two or three soft G's in each of the five Across entries placed where you'd expect to see theme entries. GINGER ROGERS has three soft G sounds, but the Down crossings are OLGA (Korbut, ['70s Olympics name]), GOOD AT, and MI AMIGO (which is an [Address to a pal, in Pamplona]), all with hard G's. I suspect it would take too much effort to tailor a program to construct a puzzle like this, so Mr. Gagliardo presumably handcrafted the crossword. One could argue that there's not much point to this theme, but I liked the impact of the one "aha" moment when it hit me.
Let's take a look at some of the content:
This puzzle contains 21 G's. I don't know of anyone who keeps track of this for non-NYT puzzles, but the record for the most G's in a daily NYT is 19.
PuzzleGirl loved this theme too and has more to say at L.A. Crossword Confidential.
Patrick Jordan's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Dead-End Endings"
The theme here is phrases that end with dead ends, like the title says, with the words used in other contexts:
You can be treed, cornered, or trapped when those final words are converted into verbs.
Assorted clues:
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "You're It!"
Hey, I didn't test-solve this one during vacation, and it darn near killed me today. It was the junction of 3D and 19A that did me in the worst.
The theme's a good one. "Tag, you're it!" means that each theme entry's base phrase has been TAGged (a TAG has been inserted somewhere):
Among the clues I found tough were these ones:
March 16, 2009
Tuesday, 3/17
Jonesin' 5:05
LAT 3:13
CS 2:52
NYT 2:49
Onion tba
♣ Happy St. Patrick's Day! ♣
Three of the five theme entries in Richard Chisholm's New York Times crossword refused to be familiar to me, but once you GRASP (1-Across, [Comprehend]) that they're all phrases that start with Irish surnames in the possessive, things fall into place.
I think it's a tight theme—I can't think of any other works of art/fiction that follow the same format. Murphy's law and McSweeney's Internet Tendency don't fit that model; the Kennedy Center and O'Reilly Factor aren't creative works and they lack the possessive S.
What else is in this puzzle? Despite its alternating consonant/vowel pattern, HASID almost never shows up in the NYT crossword. Its clue today is [Jew traditionally dressed in a black coat and hat]. The clue's only half-accurate; half of Hasidic people are women with different garb. Move out of the '40s and into the late '70s and I'm in my wheelhouse—GONNA ["___ Fly Now" ("Rocky" theme)] was a gimme. The [Pakistani leader, 1977-88] was ZIA, or General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Since when is OBOE clued as an [Instrument held with two hands]? The Cruciverb database suggests that's a new clue for the word. Here's a photo demonstrating the two-hand oboe grip.
Yay! I love a surprise themeless crossword. Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword for this week is a themeless one called "60 Clues Go In." The grid doesn't look like your usual low-word-count grid—Matt uses some black stair-step corners to facilitate the stacking of 13-, 14-, and 15-letter answers at the top and bottom of the grid, and the corners with those stairs sprawl out madly. Favorite answers:
A few entries fall short of the usual bar for crossword fill. A French definite article squeaks into LE COEUR, or [The heart, to Henri]. RIDE AN ELEVATOR feels a little arbitrary as phrases go. ICAM, or ["I'm 100% with you," in Internet shorthand], is not as well known as other onlineisms (IMHO, LOL) that have made it into crosswords; Google tells me it's short for "I couldn't agree more." SLOW GAIT—an [Ambling pace for a horse]—looks iffy but isn't; it's an actual thing.
In my "Huh?" category, we have ["The Baroness Redecorates" singer-songwriter Sarah] SLEAN; RUPERT, [Stewie's teddy bear, on "Family Guy"]; PAPADAKIS, or [Former host Petros of Spike TV's "Pros vs. Joes"]; and PANELA, or [Queso ___ (Mexican cheese molded in baskets)]. I halfway knew the medical terminology MIOTIC, or [Like excessively small pupils] (as when bright light hits the eyes and the pupils constrict).
Updated:
Don Gagliardo's Los Angeles Times crossword goes GREEN (38-Across) too. The theme entries are in unexpected places, so their clues are starred. Each theme answer is a word, clued straightforwardly, that can follow GREEN.
So with the inclusion of GREEN in the middle, that's 14 theme answers. Believe it or not, there's still room for nonthematic material. I have to make my obligatory complaint about the clue for EEG, [Brain scan]—and as I've said before on this blog, an EEG is not a scan! Scans are x-rays, MRIs, CT scans—capturing a picture of the body's insides. EEGs and EKGs are zigzag tracings of electrical signals put out by the brain or heart. They're not scans.
Assorted other clues: SPEEDEE was [McDonald's aptly named mascot before Ronald]. [Morgen's opposite] is the German word NACHT; Morgen is "morning" and Nacht is "night." [Kelly of talk] clues the surname RIPA—no Kelly green here. O'HARE is an Irish name; it's clued as the [Airport WNW of Wrigley Field]. If you used your green thumb, you GARDENED, or [Tended the flowers]. POTAGE, a [Creamy soup], can be green. The same mythological character appears twice in the grid; Greek EROS is [Archer with wings], and Roman AMOR is [Matchmaking god].
Tom Schier's CrosSynergy puzzle, "St. Patrick's Favorites," presents a batch of Irish-associated things. The theme entries include two Across 10's, two Across 8's, and two Down 8's. It's a little weird that there are also two non-theme 8-letter answers running Across. Here's the theme:
The non-theme 8's are METAPHOR, a [Figure of speech in which two unlike things are compared], and ALTRUIST, [Person unselfishly concerned for others.
Whew. Three St. Patrick's Day themes, all different—and I'm glad the Onion's publication day is not Tuesday, because that means maybe the Onion A.V. Club puzzle won't also skew Irish.
