BEQ 5:43
NYT 2:54
CS untimed (J)/2:54 (A)
LAT 2:36
Mike Nothnagel's New York Times crossword
I feel like I'm missing the point of this puzzle. Four men—two real, two fictional—whose 3-letter first names end with an X are unified weirdly by the X FACTOR, a [Mystery quality...or what 18- and 55-Across and 3- and 32-Down have?]. But these guys don't have the X factor. They just have names with an X in them, don't they? The fellas are as follows:
• FOX MULDER, [Dana Scully's sci-fi partner] on The X-Files. Hey, another X.
• MAX YASGUR is the [Owner of the farm where Woodstock took place]. Is he Monday puzzle material? Shouldn't Woodstock be Woodstox to ramp up his X FACTOR?
• LEX LUTHOR is the main ["Superman" villain]. Too bad he doesn't wear a costume with a big X on his chest.
• TEX RITTER is the [Cowboy who sang the title song from "High Noon"] and actor John Ritter's father. High noon on a clock with Roman numerals has an X: XII.
Lots of 6-, 7-, and 8-letter answers in the fill, not par for the course on a Monday. But everything's clued at maybe a Tuesday level, and the fill is pretty accessible. The toughest answer may be 10D: [House style with a long pitched roof in back], or SALTBOX. Also on the more difficult end of the spectrum:
• NEMEA is the [Ancient Greek city with a mythical lion].
• LAPP is a [Northern Scandinavian]. These indigenous people prefer to be called Sami rather than Lapps.
• OSIERS are willow [Twigs for baskets]. Classic crosswordese: commit to memory.
• [John of colonial Jamestown] is John ROLFE. I get the Johns Rolfe and Alden mixed up.
• [Learn secondhand] clues the phrase HEAR OF.
• EASY ON is apparently the [Start of a billboard catchphrase meaning "close to the highway"]. Easy Off is an oven cleaner, and I don't think I've seen billboards promising "easy on..." and whatever else the billboard is supposed to say.
• Don't like AS FAT ([Equally plump]) as a crossword answer.
• [Coat named for an Irish province] is an ULSTER. I think I may have learned of the little-U ulster from crosswords.
• Bible trivia I didn't know: [Esther 8:9 is the longest one in the Bible] clues VERSE.
Updated Monday morning:
Patrick Blindauer's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "What's Eating U?"—Janie's review
Learning how to read the titles of the CS puzzles is half the fun sometimes. Today's is a little bit cryptic and a little bit text-y and in its cryptic/text-y way alerts us to the fact that—almost as if it'd been eaten up—the letter "U" has been dropped from four well-known names and phrases to create the fresh 'n' funny theme fill. That's how:
•17A. Gingerbread house → GINGERBREAD HOSE [Cookie conduit?]. A visual and very funny concept.
•30A. Jelly donuts → JELLY DON'TS [No-nos for a sweet spread?]. "Don't lick the spoon that goes in the jelly jar," "don't spread jelly on your hamburger," "don't put the jelly in your sister's hair," etc.
•48A. Lady Capulet → LADY CAPLET [Pill for women?]. Um, guess that'd be something like this...
•63A. "Popular Mechanics" → POPLAR MECHANICS [Those who repair aspens?]. I suppose tree surgeons are mechanics of a sort.
What I particularly like about the way Patrick's filled the grid is his success in excluding the letter "U" altogether—which explains in part why we're seeing U-less fill like E-I-E-I-O (yet) again and (pick-any-number) CLI (Roman 151). The crossing of ESQS. and IRAQ is a great example of how to use "Q" sans "U."
The puzzle is filled to the brim with cultural and entertainment-industry fill of the higher and lower varieties, such as:
•LA BOHÈME [1896 Puccini premiere] (the opera that was also a Broadway offering in the 2002-03 season playing the Broadway Theatre, as did) EVITA [1980 Tony-winning musical];
•musicians and vocalists (all of whom produced their share of SOLI [Songs for a single performer] and well more than one B-SIDE [Half of a 45]) EDIE Brickell, the great BO DIDDLEY ["Have Guitar Will Travel" performer], ["Mama" Cass] ELLIOT, (one-time voice of Chevy) Dinah SHORE, and AMY(S) [...and Grant];
•cinema's DENNIS Quaid, Pam GRIER, Barbara EDEN [Hagman's co-star], glam sisters EVA and ZSA [Twice a Gabor], CHICO MARX, and IDA(S) [Lupino and...];
•the written word's: IDA(S) [...and Wells], AMY(S) [Tan and...], Pulitzer-winning [Columnist Herb] CAEN, (Thomas) [Hardy girl] TESS, and of course, Shakespeare's Lady CapUlet...
There's also a tip o' the hat to the boob tube with AIRS [Shows on TV] (verb, not noun) and HSN [Buying channel on TV]. Unless (yet) another award category is created, this show is (mercifully) not likely to win an EMMY [TV trophy].
If you do "See the USA in Your Chevrolet" (see 38 ACR), you might pass through MOAB [Utah city near Arches National Park] or TENN. [Chattanooga's home (abbr.)]. Like that [Word before cheese or eagle], they're all-AMERICAN.
And that, folks, is my SPIN [Interpretation] of today's puzzle!
Hi, it's Amy again. Patrick, what a delightful crossword! Funny theme (particularly LADY CAPLET and POPLAR MECHANICS), kickass fill (BO DIDDLEY and CHICO MARX, together again!). A great way to start the week.
Jerome Gunderson's Los Angeles Times crossword
The theme is Ahnuld Schwarzenegger's famous line, "I'll be back," from The TERMINATOR, which was released 25 years ago today. Whoo, does that make you feel old or what? The other three theme entries are phrases that begin with the words in that catchphrase"
• I'LL FLY AWAY is a [Hymn whose title follows the line "When I die, Hallelujah, by and by"]. I don't know this song at all, but I think there was a TV show by that name. Yep, early '90s, with Regina Taylor and Sam Waterston, before Sam began his Law & Order run.
• BE PREPARED is the Boy [Scout's motto].
• BACK TO BACK is [How duelists begin]. Minus one point for having BACK in there twice, slightly muddying the theme consistency.
Highlights in the fill include KID ROCK ([Duettist with Sheryl Crow in the song "Picture"]), POP-TART ([Kellogg's toaster pastry]), T.S. ELIOT (["Cats" poet]—you know you've been doing crosswords too long when you see TSE and automatically fill in TSETSES before reading the clue), RUGRATS ([Toon babies of '90s-'00s TV], and an actual word aside from the cartoon), and a GERBIL ([Rodent kept as a house pet]). Summertime bonus points for clueing JUICY as [Like ripe peaches].
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Monday"
If you don't follow today's pop culture, you might have had a tough time with the letter in square 3. I sure as hell never heard of ZAP MAMA, [Belgian singer with the 2009 album "ReCreation"], and I've never watched TMZ ON TV ([Syndicated trashy gossip show]) but I know TMZ is the trashy gossip website with a TV show spinoff. It's quite possible that nobody anywhere has ever put either of those answers into a crossword before. Other slappably fresh stuff:
• QB RATING is a [Sports metric where a perfect score is 158.3]. Football fans probably got that a lot faster than I did. I wasn't sure if it would be QADDAFI at 8A, or KADDAFI, or GADDAFI. And I know nothing about how the QB RATING works so the clue wasn't helping me much.
• PAY CZAR is [Kenneth Feinberg's title]. Ripped from the headlines + a Z = natural fit for a BEQ puzzle.
• THE HUMP—is that a 7-letter partial or an entity unto itself? This [Most difficult moment, in a phrase] is what you have to get over.
• ZETA PSI? Really? I had the Z from JAZZ BAND so the ZETA part was obvious, but I needed the crossings to figure out the second Greek letter in the [Fraternity to which Alfred Kinsey and Benjamin Spock belonged].
I gotta Google this clue for A RAT now. ["___ in the house may eat the ice cream" (spelling mnemonic)] is not remotely familiar to me. The answer is in an an exterminator's page, but his A.R.I.T.H.M.E.T.I.C. teacher used "Tom" in place of "the." I was always a good speller so maybe that's why I missed this one. Or maybe my teachers never needed us to be able to spell "arithmetic" because really, when does a kid need to do that?
October 25, 2009
Monday, 10/26/09
September 01, 2009
Wednesday, 9/2/09
NYT 3:39
LAT 2:55
CS J—untimed
BEQ untimed (joon)
Onion 5:04 (joon--paper)
Jim Hyres's New York Times crossword
I had to confirm with Google Maps but yes, the theme entries here roughly sketch out a map of Midtown Manhattan. Broadway cuts through on a diagonal, represented by B-R-O-A-D-W-A-Y in circled squares in the puzzle. And EIGHTH NOTE ([Quaver]), SEVENTH-DAY ([Like some Adventists]), SIXTH SENSE ([Intuition]), and FIFTH WHEEL ([Superfluous person]) roughly sit where 8th, 7th, 6th, and 5th Avenues run (except that the streets are more evenly spaced apart than the theme entries are). The BROADWAY line isn't a straight diagonal because Broadway, the street, has some jogs in it. Certainly this is an unusual theme, and I like its geographic bent.
The theme was more fun than the rest of the puzzle. ALER beside XERS is a few too many -ER people for one corner of a puzzle. I don't knowo whether XERS who do this puzzle will know that SCHAEFER beer is ["The one to have when you're having more than one" sloganeer]. Luckily, Inti is in the clue and not the answer: [Like the sun god Inti] clues INCA. [Partner of grease] seems like an odd clue for DIRT. There are a zillion other short answers of the icky variety (ENNA the [Sicilian resort city], ample abbreviations).
Pop culture haters won't like the current TV clue for HECHE: [Anne of HBO's "Hung"]. I know everyone talks about Mad Men, but Hung is the cable show we watch at Casa Reynaldo. I wonder if the person who wrote the clue is aware that the show's title refers to the male protagonist's genital endowment.
[Lady Lindy] clues Amelia EARHART. She was portrayed by Amy Adams in that Night at the Museum Smithsonian sequel this spring, and this fall there's an EARHART movie starring Hilary Swank.
Anyone else flub the [Bar closing time, often]? With T**AM, I went with TEN A.M. D'oh! That's eight hours too late.
Updated Wednesday morning:
Bruce Venzke & Stella Daily's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Row Homes"—Janie's review
This is a puzzle whose theme has been executed in a very well-made way. The central entry at 40A is the key to kingdom: HOUSE [A type of one appears in each part of this puzzle's longest entries]. Note those words "each part." Each of the theme phrases—each of which can stand on its own—is made up of two words, each of which describes a kind of house. They're beside each other in the row, hence the title... Now where I'm from, this makes them semi-detached homes (technically), but believe me—I'm not about to quibble! Here's what we get:
There's other good cluing/fill in here as well. Notably:
A couple of weeks ago, Randy Ross clued OVA as [Breakfast for Brutus] and I commented that it surprised me. "Certainly the ancient Romans ate eggs," I wrote, "but I just can't feature Brutus sitting down to breakfast and asking his wife (or more likely his servant) to prepare 'two eggs, over easy' (or 'two ova, ova easy'...). Just something incongruous about this clue/fill combo." Today, we have a variation on the same theme with the clue [Caesar's breakfast?]. Now, believe me, I know this is meant jocularly, but STRICTly in the for-what-it's-worth column, while egg dishes were being prepared back then (I stand enlightened), it's far more likely that these guys were eating bread and cheese and fruit for breakfast. On the other hand (or maybe in it...), it seems the ancient Romans really did have a thing for deviled eggs. I kid you not!
And one final shout out to my home town (the Chamber of Commerce owes me!) with this site that has some wonderful photos of and backstory on the city's famous row houses.
Jerome Gunderson's Los Angeles Times crossword
I really liked the fun pop-culture flip-flop theme, but I'm going to refer you to the L.A. Crossword Confidential post I wrote last night because a migraine has befallen me this morning.
Brendan Emmett Quigley's blog crossword
joon here to pinch-blog for our migraine-stricken hostess. brendan's got a themeless wednesday for us today, and it's tough as nails. the version i test-solved yesterday was even tougher, but this one's still got a whole lot of tough in it. in addition to some stumperesque cluing, there were several answers i hadn't heard of at all:
as usual, though, brendan's stuffed the grid with some goodies, like AIR QUOTE and MIX IT UP and P.F. CHANG'S. i also really like the word HIRSUTE, and the ambivalent combination of "YES, LET'S" and "I MEAN NO."
Byron Walden's Onion AV club crossword
i loved this puzzle. my favorite onion puzzle in recent memory. and yes, he had me at 31d (["Benny and ___"]). but there was so much goodness here, starting with a tight theme into which byron nonetheless managed to jam five long entries, all of which intersected! the theme is works of art consisting of two people, (at least) one of whom starts with JUL:
the 70-word fill had some ridiculously fresh entries, too. JOCK ITCH is a [Rash that's embarrassing to scratch]. the SOUP NAZI! he's in here, clued as the [Strict, restaurant-owning Seinfeld character]. [Not one's best effort] is one's B GAME. byron definitely brought his A game today. how else to explain the intricate theme, low word count, great fill, and typically waldenesque (though toned down a notch from his usual saturday level) cluing?
July 28, 2009
Wednesday, 7/29
Onion 4:55
BEQ 4:11
NYT 3:40
LAT 3:17
CS 7:44 (J—paper)
Tim Wescott's New York Times crossword
Themes with circled letters aren't too tough to figure out. This time, the circled letters spell out various MLB team members. And despite the constraints of having (1) six theme entries (2) occupying 70 squares (3) with each Down theme entry intersecting two Across theme answers, the fill's pretty smooth. Here's the theme:
I gotta dock Mr. Wescott a couple points for one of the six theme players (RAY) being embedded inside a single word when the other five are split between two words. The only other baseball reference I noticed was 71A: [Like Yogi Berra, physically] for SQUAT. SHORT and STOUT were my first two guesses. Oh, wait, there's also 22A: SAC [___ fly (run producer)].
Football interjects itself. Talk about your manly-man sports-nut puzzles, eh? There's an ONSIDE kick, a Denver BRONCO (...clued as the horse, [It's most useful when it's broken]), and SCHULZ, the [Charles who created Peppermint Patty], who was fond of Charlie Brown, who could never quite manage to kick the football. There's also a DEKE fakeout from hockey.
Assorted crosswordese repeaters rear their ungainly heads here. The ERNE, or [Fish-eating raptor], crosses EIRE and NÉE. NORA of The Thin Man meets IRMA la Douce. Better are the longer fill answers, such as ONE-SIDED [Like a Mobius strip] and a slew of 6s. Does ONE-SIDED duplicate ONSIDE too much? I know that tie the knot is 100% "in the language, but to literally take a rope or shoelace and [Finish lacing up] by deciding to TIE A KNOT...I'm not sure TIE A KNOT is a lexical entity unto itself.
Updated Wednesday morning:
Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Direct Overhead"—Janie's review
"Direct overhead" is a business term that refers to the "expense directly associated with the production of goods of services," such as the cost of electricity, maintenance or rent. As a kid, I had no idea what it meant, but I think I first became aware of the word "overhead" in the commercials that used to run for Robert Hall clothing stores:When the values go up, up, up
Sarah Keller's "direct overhead," however, has no association with matters financial, though (broadly speaking) there is a sartorial connection. Here we're dealing literally with items that go on (or in one case, over) your head. I like the way none of the cluing tips Sarah's thematic hand and the fill itself is quite nice. In this way:
And the prices go down, down, down.
Robert Hall this season
Will show you the reason
Low overhead! Low overhead!
I don't have lots and lots to add today. The remainder of the fill is perfectly fine, mind you, just not particularly sparkly. There's nothing wrong with PETER OUT, NADIR, LESSENS, RESIDUE, and ABSENCE individually—but seeing all of them in one puzzle weights it down some.
We do get an array of names: AGNES [Choreographer de Mille] (niece of Cecil B., too!); AMOS ["Famous" cookie maven]; ELSAS [Martinelli and Lanchester] (the former was a model before enjoying a small screen career, the latter a first-rate character actress); EMIL ["The Last Command" Oscar winner Jannings] (and Marlene Dietrich's co-star in "The Blue Angel"); and CLARA [Barton or Bow]. But AMOS aside, there's something dated in the feel here that, once again, grounds the fill.
Where we do get some lovely leavening is in the cluing: [Good, in the 'hood] for BAD; [Musical firsts] for DO'S; [Left on a map] for WEST. Now that's more like it!
Jerome Gunderson's Los Angeles Times crossword
My longer L.A. Crossword Confidential writeup is over there. The theme, in 25 words or less: Synonyms for "tease" are embedded at the start of four phrases, within longer words. JOSH, RAZZ, RIB, KID. Highlight: RAZZLE-DAZZLE!
Brendan Quigley's Onion A.V. Club crossword
Brendan's muse this week is the abbreviated phrase, "WTF?" That's clued as ["Huh?"...and the theme of this puzzle]. The five theme entries do not include the standard WTF with the F-bomb in it, but rather, are phrases with W.T.F. initials:
Too bad 11D isn't clued as the singer/poet JEWEL (rather than [Ring binder?], which doesn't quite work for me—the ring binds the jewel, the jewel doesn't bind the ring). Then the upper right corner could be filled wall to wall with famous people in the Down direction. OLIVIER! COLETTE! KID ROCK! Is this KID ROCK's crossword debut? Certainly it must be WIIWARE's debut—that's a [Nintendo download service].
I hear the A.V. Club constructors peer-edit their puzzles. Wouldn't you think that with eight smart people checking over this puzzle, JOCK wouldn't be clued as [High school type with cache, often]? A one-syllable cache is a stash. The two-syllable cachet is the word that connotes prestige.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Wednesday"
Yay! Themeless Monday is followed by Themeless Wednesday! This one's got 20 long answers (7 to 15 letters), including five 15s. HENRY LOUIS GATES, sans the "Jr.," is a perfect 15. He's clued as the [Educator who once famously compared the lyrics of 2 Live Crew to Shakespeare's (sic) "O my luve's like a red, red rose"].
INFOMANIA is clued as a [Continual and excessive quest for knowledge]. This has got to be a shout-out to Brendan's demi-celeb fan, Sarah Haskins. She's a comedian who makes incisive and funny videos about the crap the media and advertisers put out there for women. Click that link for access to Haskins' "Target Women" videos as well as a bunch of InfoMania videos that...I never watch. But do watch the "Target Women" clips. My personal favorite is the one about the sexification of cleaning product commercials.
Least familiar answers: URIM is clued [___ and Thummin (Judaic objects)]. [Longtime Beatles "road manager" Evans] was named MAL. CARA is the [Oldest daughter on "Jon & Kate Plus 8"]. I know about A-1 steak sauce, sure, but AONES clued as [Some steak sauces] had an unfamiliar feel to it. [___ prole (without offspring)] clues SINE.
Today's "Ask a Medical Editor" science lesson: BACILLI are rod-shaped bacteria. Viruses are not bacteria at all. Thus, [Virologist's subject] is not a good clue for BACILLI. [Antibiotic targets, sometimes], sure. [Troublesome rods], sure. But [Virologist's subject], 7 letters, wants to be VACCINE.
March 15, 2009
Monday, 3/16
BEQ 3:39
CS 3:32
NYT 3:00 (there was a 20- or 30-second search for a typo)
LAT 2:30
Lynn Lempel has been one of my favorite Monday constructors since she arrived on the puzzle scene a few years ago. Her New York Times crossword pokes at the usual guidelines which say that Across answers that aren't part of theme should be shorter than the theme entries. Here, there are eight theme answers that are 6, 7, and 8 letters long that end with a long-I sound spelled eight (!) different ways, set apart from the other fill by starred clues:
There's also the German ei spelling, but the dreadful 15-letter Arbeit macht frei would not be welcome in a crossword. Other German words ending -ei (like Bäckerei, or "bakery") aren't familiar enough for an American crossword. Are there other long-I spellings left out?
The longest Down answers are longer than any of the theme entries, which is fine, as they're not starred, they're not Across, and there is a Notepad message about the theme. Oh, hey, applet users, did you see the new(ish) Notepad button above the grid? This is a welcome enhancement to the applet experience. If you click it, a box pops up saying "The answers to the eight starred clues all have something in common, each in a different way." The grid disappears when the Notepad is visible, but when you click "back," the puzzle is there in all its splendor.
Speaking of things in all their splendor, NUDE is clued as [Ready for skinny-dipping]. And those long Down answers I mentioned are ORGAN MUSIC, clued as [Hymn accompaniment], and a MODEL PLANE, or [Small replica of the Spirit of St. Louis, e.g.]. Ordinarily I'm no fan of "wife of famous guy" clues, but today's pair of actresses had been married to the same guy: AVA [___ Gardner, Mrs. Sinatra #2] and MIA [___ Farrow, Mrs. Sinatra #3]. Did you know that O GAUGE is a [Track choice for Lionel trains]? I filled in the GAUGE parts and leaned on the crossing JOINTS ([Wrist, elbow and ankle]) for the O. Of course, having FITS instead of the correct NETS for [Meshes] slowed down the appearance of JOINTS. IMS gets clued as [AOL chitchat]—I wonder what percentage of IMing is carried out via AOL/AIM, which seems to be alluded to in half of the IMS clues I see. A lot, but not most, this chart suggests.
My favorite answer in this puzzle, given the loudness of my kid this afternoon, is SHUSH, or ["Be quiet!"]. See also YAP AT, or [Talk to persistently and with a big mouth]. This is my PLAINT, or [Lament].
Updated:
Jerome Gunderson's LA Times puzzle was so easy, I plowed through the Down clues and glanced only cursorily at the Acrosses along the way. I did read one of the three theme clues:
The rock 'n' roll vibe carries through to The King, ELVIS / PRESLEY. Assorted non-theme clues:
Now, which of the three songs in this puzzle is still going through your head? I have an "Honesty" earworm this morning.
Updated again Monday afternoon:
Sorry about that delay—I went out to IHOP for breakfast, then to the hair salon and the grocery store, and the next thing you know, school's letting out and it's a lovely day so we stayed at the playground for over an hour. During my outings, I had the opportunity to see Broadway's potholes (this being Chicago's Broadway St., not NYC's) up close. You know what's in the bottom of these potholes? Cobblestones and decades-old streetcar tracks (the Broadway streetcar ceased service in 1957). I had no idea the history was buried so shallow.
The theme in Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy puzzle, "The End Is Near," wasn't all that easy to tease out. The end of each theme answer is a synonym, sort of, of "near":
Lots of goodies here, but I'm short on time so I'll just mention three favorite clues/answers:
Today's Brendan Quigley crossword, "Stimulus Package," features a theme with five illicit stimulants. I think. I'm not sure.
Brendan's got four nice corners of fill in his puzzle, with 10-letter Down words each intersecting four theme entries. There probably aren't many alternatives for F*R*S*O***, so it's good that the southwest corner cooperated with FIRESTORMS. What did I like the most in this puzzle? This stuff:
June 29, 2008
Monday, 6/30
LAT 3:22
NYT 3:19
Jonesin' 3:09
NYS 3:08
CS 3:05
The New York Sun puzzle is Patrick Blindauer's umpteenth published crossword in the past week. Well, maybe not the umpteenth, but at least the third, maybe the fourth or fifth. I groaned when I saw that the first theme entry of "Show People" was DREAMGIRLS, a Broadway show. But then the other shows turned out to end with (JERSEY) BOYS, (LITTLE) WOMEN, and (A FEW GOOD) MEN, so they make a good foursome, and the way they're paired gives a Mondayesque solving boost. Patrick (and/or editor Peter Gordon) was showing off a bit when he included four X's and two Z's in the fill...along with a Q, a J, and some K's. KARL MARX stacked atop corporate chicken man Frank PERDUE is beautifully inapt, isn't it?
Updated:
Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy crossword, "Abide With Me," begins three theme entries that are synonyms for abide: BEAR (MARKETS), STAND (UP AND CHEER), and STOMACH (ACHE). Supplementing the theme are longer-than-usual fill entries—two 9's, six 8's, two 7's, and 20 6's—that give it a hint of a themeless-fill vibe.
After getting the first two theme entries in Jerome Gunderson's LA Times crossword (BREEZEWAY and SQUEEZE PLAY), I thought all four would rhyme—but the other two are SNEEZE GUARD and FREEZE-DRY so the theme appears to be compound words or phrases that start with *EEZE words. One of the theme entries crosses SNAZZIER, with an extra Z added, and that extra Z crosses ZZ TOP with another optional Z, bringing the Z count to six. I can't be sure that anyone has ever uttered the sentence, "I'M HEP" (["You dig?" response]), though...
Updated again Monday afternoon:
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword for this week is entitled "I'm Going to Have to Cut You Off," but it has nothing to do with overimbibing. Actually, that's not true, I see belatedly! The five theme entries are phrases with the last letter lopped off to change the meaning, and each of those phrases is a cocktail. [The part of the church that's covered in hair?] is a FUZZY NAVE (the Fuzzy Navel drink is peachy). [Irish version of an old French coin?] repurposes the crosswordesey SOU in WHISKEY SOU (whiskey sour). A hot toddy drops the Y to be HOT TODD, or [Attractive actor Bridges of "Diff'rent Strokes"]. There are also GIN AND TONI (tonic) and DRY MARTIN (martini). The fill percolates with bartending words, too—there's ice in ICEMAN, SPOONS for stirring (wait, do bartenders stir with spoons or just stirrers?), a bottle of BAILEY'S, ABEAM (evoking Jim Beam), ALE, TENDS (bar or the goal), DASHING with a dash of bitters perhaps, and ILL and MOANS for the hangover that results from ingesting all this liquor.
June 11, 2008
Thursday, 6/12
LAT 4:03
NYS maybe 4:00 or so, felt easy for a Thursday Sun
NYT 3:18
CS 3:15
If you're having trouble getting the Sun puzzles to download this week (...or next), try Will Johnston's Puzzle Pointers .puz calendar page, and right-click to save the file to disk. Launch Across Lite and use it to open the file.
Alex Boisvert's New York Times crossword felt like a Wednesday puzzle to me, but a fresh one. Once I had the first two theme entries filled in and saw the clue for 56-Across—[Speaker of the quip revealed by the ends of the answers to 17-, 25-, 35- and 48-Across], I could finish the quip at the end of those other two theme entries. The line by GROUCHO MARX is "Time wounds all heels," and it's found in these phrases"
It's a creative way to hide a quip theme so that the "aha moment" factor isn't kicked to the curb. Highlights in the fill: SOUSA and a SOUSE (["Semper Fidelis" composer] and [Drunkard], respectively); CAL STATE, a [Fullerton campus]; A-HOLE or rather, the partial phrase A HOLE [__ in the head], but it looks a lot like A-HOLE in the grid; AU JUS, a [French menu phrase] that sometimes gets bastardized as "with au jus sauce"; two [Bar choice]s, ALE (my preference) and STOUT (my husband's); and EZ-PASS, which is an I-PASS in Illinois.
Spencer and Eileen Pasero, a new constructing duo, are credited with the Thursday New York Sun crossword, "Loverly Lady." The theme entries elide an H à la My Fair Lady's ELIZA (28-Down) DOLITTLE (34-Across). A harbor seal becomes an ARBOR SEAL, or [Official stamp in a shady recess?], for example. The fill includes 10 7-letter answers, such as UMPTEEN, TABOULI salad, and "O CANADA." I had to rely on the crossings for [Character actor Herb] EDELMAN, but when I saw his picture at the Wikipedia article linked here, I said, "Oh! That guy!" I'm surprised to see that he didn't make the cut at the Hey! It's That Guy! site.
Updated:
Jerome Gunderson's LA Times puzzle hides a diverse herd of BOVINES at the end of the theme entries:
Favorite clue: [Out to lunch and having a bite] for IDIOMS.
Lynn Lempel's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Common Complaints," has a clue that didn't make any sense to me. [David Copperfield's marvel] is a TRICK? Wow, I don't remember that being central to the Dickens novel at all. What the... Oh! That David Copperfield. The magician. The theme entries all begin with minor medical complaints: FEVER PITCH is a [Frenzied state]; COLD TURKEY is a [Way to kick a habit]; RASH PROMISE is a [Too-fast commitment]; and SORE SUBJECT is an [Unpleasant topic]—a bit like the words at the beginning of the theme entries!
December 03, 2007
Tuesday, 12/4
NYS 4:37
Onion 4:16
Tausig 3:46
NYT 3:08
LAT 3:08
CS 2:59
There's an extra puzzle this week, which commenter Sue tipped me off to this morning. Fred Piscop's "Paint by Numbers" crossword appeared in the Sunday NYT's Style magazine. The theme entries are tough if you don't know the 20th century and contemporary art world, but the cluing for the rest of the fill is easy enough to pull you through it. I knew only a few of the theme entries, but still whizzed through faster than a regular Sunday NYT.
In the applet version of Alison Donald's New York Times crossword, there's some explanatory text: "Same Clue Missing Four Times." In the Across Lite version, the Notepad text reads, "The answers at 17- and 51-Across and 11- and 24-Down can all be defined by the same missing three-letter word. What is it?" So the AL version gives away a little more information—but I'm guessing most solvers without access to that hint still figured out that CLOSE FRIEND, POPULAR BREW, COMIC ABBOTT, and BLOSSOM-TO-BE could all be clued as [Bud]. I've seen this sort of theme before, but generally the theme entries would all be clued [Bud] rather than [???]. Wait, where can I submit my secret BUD answer and receive a prize? There was plenty of fill I liked here: FINICKY and KNACK, MITZI and ZEALOT among the Z words, JULEPS, MACABRE Poe, PRENUPS, and the DODGERS.
If you peel away the sides of Alan Arbesfeld's New York Sun puzzle, "Apple Core," you find five boroughs of New York City lurking within the theme entries, spanning multiple words. [Capture ones who hang crows?] is NAB ROOK LYNCHERS—I could do without mention of lynching in a crossword puzzle, frankly. [Inside shots of NBA star James?] are LEBRON X-RAYS; I like this one. The strange OTTOMAN HAT TANGO comes from the clue [Ballroom dance performed wearing a fez?]. To [Tick off a naval officer?] is to PIQUE ENSIGN. And the [Half-score from a court grp. that yours truly defame?] is the nonsensical USTA TEN I SLANDER—kudos to anyone who can concoct another way to bury Staten Island in a phrase. Outside the theme, I liked SQUAWK (but wouldn't exactly call it a [Lame duck sound?] unless maybe you're talking about politicians), the DUODENUM (the name comes from the Latin for "twelve finger-widths in length"), SCHWAS (anyone know how to make that special character appear?), TRIGRAMS (with the sort of misleading clue, [ABC and KLM, e.g.]), and SUSAN clued as ["Terror Dream" author Faludi].
Updated Monday evening:
Ben Tausig's weekly e-mail with the puzzles he edits and/or writes arrived early this week, so I can blog about these puzzles tonight. I know, you haven't had a chance to solve those crosswords yet, and you'd just as soon have me wait until morning. But mornings are busier, so here we go.
Ben Tausig has the constructor byline for this week's Onion A.V. Club puzzle. The final theme entry is ALIEN INVASION, clued as a [Possible title for this puzzle]. I'm such a geek, I saw the ET inserted into the other three theme entries and thought of the Latin et, meaning "and." But E.T., extraterrestrial, sure, that works too. Those E.T.'s find their way into NEW YORK JETSET, PICKET A FIGHT, and the [Royal regiment?], or PRINCESS DIET (my favorite of the three). Favorite fill: AFRIKAANS, Will ARNETT, and the ethnic cuisine answers, AREPA and KORMA.
Ben's Chicago Reader/Ink Well puzzle, "A Century of Fakers," gathers a group of famous LIP-SYNCHING offenders: PAVAROTTI, LINDSAY LOHAN, MILLI VANILLI, and FIFTY CENT. (Alas, no room for Ashley Simpson and her SNL gaffe.) It's a rather ugly grid with those 7-square chunks of black at the sides of the puzzle, isn't it? I do like some of the clues, though. My favorites: [It might have a black eye] for PEA; [It's for babies] for SPERM (!);
I also liked the five-consonant MTV VJ entry, though I think of Dan Cortese as the Seinfeld "himbo" George had a man-crush on, and Bill Bellamy as that comedian I scarcely know (though Wikipedia provides the important information that Bellamy is largely responsible for the enduring phrase booty call). J.J. Jackson and Martha Quinn, now, those are some VJs for the ages. (1981, whoo!)
Updated Tuesday morning:
Will Johnston—who is America's #1 enabler of crossword junkies, thanks to the Puzzle Pointers page he maintains to provide easy access to the top crosswords available online—constructed today's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Fortunate Four." The theme entries begin with words that can follow LUCKY, and they appear in sort of a ring around the grid. My alternate title: "Four-Leaf Clover." The four lucky things are a PENNY, STIFF, STRIKE, and CHARM. (What, no LUCKY BASTARD?) I don't know if Will intended it or not, but the four 7-letter Down answers all seem rather unlucky—a LOW CARD (unless you're playing blackjack and have 18 or 19), SUCKERS (unless you're the scam artist in the clue), a NO-SEE-UM, and SARCASM.
Jerome Gunderson's LA Times crossword has one of those double-play themes—both the first and second words in each theme entry can precede HOUSE. FIREPOWER delivers firehouse and powerhouse, CLUB STEAK has clubhouse and steak house, GLASSWARE has the proverbial glass house and a warehouse, and SAFEGUARD hides a safe house and a guardhouse.
July 31, 2007
Wednesday, 8/1
NYS 6:29—see previous post for link to .pdf
LAT 3:43
NYT 3:19
CS 3:18
(updated at 2 p.m. Wednesday)
Ellen Ripstein tipped me off to some YouTube videos you might enjoy. The Discovery Channel's got a trivia game show called Cash Cab, in which people who hail a taxi and find themselves in the Cash Cab have a chance to win money by answering trivia questions. If they miss three, they have to get out of the cab even if they haven't reached their destination. Apparently puzzle folks in NYC are on the lookout for the Cash Cab and sometimes they find it.
In this segment, frequent NY Sun constructor Tony Orbach and his son do battle with the cabdriver/inquisitor. Another clip features Mark Danna, a constructor whose byline I've seen mainly in Games and/or Games World of Puzzles, I think. He's published several NYT crosswords and a Wall Street Journal one, too.
Patrick Blindauer continues to unearth new ways to innovate in crossword construction. In his 14x16 New York Sun puzzle, "Board Members," there's a 8x8 chessboard (though not one with alternating black and white squares) embedded in it. The two long vertical theme entries give you a chess problem to solve: WHITE TO MOVE; MATE IN THREE. Within the chessboard area, certain squares are tagged as containing black or white chessmen; K, R, P, B, and Q designate which pieces they are. Me, I skipped the chess portion of solving this puzzle—if you're a chess fan, though, tell me how you liked the embedded chess content here. Favorite clues: [Deal breaker?] for NARC; [Shirts and skirts et al.] for RHYMES (this one always fools me!); [It might be cashed for pounds] for CHEQUE; and [Common Polish name ender] for SKI (I have some Jablonski in me). I love the word [Salacious] and note that BAWDY (the answer here) and RANDY have three letters in common. Want to know more about the [Highly venomous snakes] called KRAITS? Read this. It also lists other poisonous snakes, including two sea snakes. I have an ex-Marine neighbor who has both water moccasin and tree snake anecdotes and, frankly, I can't say which is more horrifying—snakes lurking in trees or snakes lurking beneath the surface of the water. I never heard of baseball player Jim KAAT ([Pitcher Jim with 16 Gold Gloves]) even though he played with the White Sox for a couple seasons in my childhood. Of course, in my childhood, my dad was utterly bored by baseball and didn't expose me to it.
All that is a roundabout way of avoiding the point: Congrats to Patrick B2 for another cool twist that expands what "crossword puzzle" means!
The New York Times crossword by David Kahn is a tribute to Beverly Sills, who died this July 2. Tons of relevant answers: BEVERLY and SILLS, for starters. She was a LYRIC / SOPRANO (those entries cross in the middle). Some of her noted opera roles: CLEOPATRA, LUCIA, ROSALINDE, and VIOLETTA.
And, not part of the symmetrical theme, crossword stalwart ARIA, clued as ["Sempre libera," e.g.]. Here's a video clip of Sills on The Muppet Show, singing that aria while Miss Piggy tries to outsing her. Opera COSTUMES and Sills' nickname, BUBBLES, round out the theme. If you highlight the theme entries, you'll be impressed by how the 10 words intersect in the grid. Some of the fill is unexceptional (as one might expect with 10 theme entries that interlock), but there are also some goodies, such as ARCANA (a cool word—and also the plural of arcanum!); SERB and CROAT sharing the [Balkan native] clue; and CARRIES clued as the football-stat noun. I also took a fresh look at INANER. Nobody ever uses this comparative word outside of crosswords. It gets a mere 785 Google hits. But it could also double as a phrase. Where might you get stitches? IN AN E.R. (N.B. That wouldn't be kosher crossword fill.) Favorite clue: [Stretches out?] for COMAS.
Updated:
Raymond Hamel's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Say Uncle," has a 100% pop-culture theme: actors who played uncle characters on TV shows. The Sopranos' Uncle Junior was the only one whose name (DOMINIC CHIANESE) came quickly to my mind. WILLIAM DEMAREST from My Three Sons was a close second. The other two? Let's see. BRIAN KEITH was in Family Affair, which was from my early childhood and I remember very little of it. He played the dad in the original Parent Trap movie, but I can only picture Dennis Quaid in the remake (which launched the talented Lindsay Lohan into her hideous celebrity). Here's what Brian Keith looked like. And here's DENVER PYLE in Dukes of Hazzard. Elsewhere in this puzzle, PLUMPS is clued as [Drops heavily]. I could swear I've heard "plop" but not "plump" with that meaning, but the dictionary tells me I should get out more.
Jerome Gunderson and Nancy Salomon's LA Times crossword features phrases that begin with 3-letter names of AUTHORS: Amy Tan, Edgar Allen Poe, Umberto Eco, and Anais Nin all get the treatment here. These writers are crossword heavyweights whose short names get a lot of action in the grid, so it's nice to see them used in a fresh way. My favorite theme entry is NINCOMPOOP. Other favorite bits: IGGY POP and MOSHPIT placed opposite one another in the grid, and [Where to hear a lot of grunts?] as the clue for ARMY. Not a big fan, in general, of short clues that alliterate or rhyme, though, and this puzzle has a great many of those.
June 03, 2007
Monday, 6/4
NYS 3:32
LAT 3:23
CS 3:14
NYT 2:34
(updated at 11 a.m. Monday)
Oddball crossword-related link of the day: It's LOLPresident. This plays on the lolcats "krazy-spelled words on a picture" meme that's been floating around the internet of late, often with cute kitties but also with my nemesis, the tapir, and assorted people. I have an unreasonable affection for this type of goofiness. And the intersection between mangled English and working a standard crossword, as in the first image—I like it. I'm picturing someone struggling through an ACPT puzzle 5 and asking, lol-style, I CAN HAZ ANSER? KTHXBYE.
I think the Monday NYT crossword may represent a debut. Or is Steve Kahn the same as the Steven Kahn who published a few puzzles last year? Either way, a fine, breezy Monday offering, with an R AND R theme that comprises four RO*RO* phrases: ROTO-ROOTER, ROLLS ROYCE, ROMPER ROOM, and ROUNDROBIN. Good longer fill: ALSO-RAN, HEROINE, BOTTOMS UP. And ORANGE! Clued here as [Like pumpkins and traffic cones]. I also liked the pairing of ADOBE and ACROBAT.
Updated:
My husband woke me up 10 minutes before our son was due to leave the house for school! So I started the day a little behind schedule and didn't get to the other crosswords until now.
Gary Steinmehl's Sun puzzle, "Noteworthy Reminder," has one of those music themes that tend to elude me, but this one came to me not too long after I'd finished the crossword. The five theme entries begin with the words EVERY, GOOD, BOY, DOES, and FINE—a mnemonic for the EGBDF order of the notes.
The LA Times puzzle by Jerome Gunderson and Nancy Salomon has a great theme! Take a phrase like SOUL BROTHERS that doubles as a pair of famous people's last names and clue it accordingly: [David and Joyce are great buds?]. As in David Soul (of the original Starsky and Hutch) and Dr. Joyce Brothers. Fun little puzzle-within-a-puzzle. Highlighted, like Harvey Estes' CrosSynergy crossword, with long non-theme fill: MOB SCENES, IN LIMBO, and ON A STREAK in the LA Times, and MINT CHIP (yum!), CASHES IN ON, and COAL MINER in the CrosSynergy puzzle.
