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?
September 01, 2009
Wednesday, 9/2/09
July 11, 2009
Sunday, 7/12
PI 8:26
LAT 7:00
NYT 6:02
BG untimed
CS 4:42
NYT diagramless untimed
Don't miss Douglas Quenqua's NYT article, "No Puzzle in the Paper? I’m Blank!". It was posted to the website on Saturday and appears in the Sunday Fashion & Style section. The piece is about puzzles getting the axe in print media—the New York Times Magazine won't always include the second Sunday puzzle, the New York Sun folded, the Washington Post dropped its acrostic, the Atlantic Monthly will no longer even publish the Hex cryptics online...please don't make me go on. I don't want to have to list still more puzzle demises. (Sigh.)
Alan Arbesfeld's New York Times crossword, "Links to the Past"
Wow, if you are a native speaker of Modern High Crosswordese, this puzzle can practically fill itself in. Maybe if the TV had been off and my family not talking, I'd have broken the 6-minute mark on this puzzle, and I don't think I've ever come so close on an NYT Sunday puzzle before. It felt like there were more than the usual allotment of such gimmes (which, of course, are probably not gimmes to those who've not dedicated years of study to Modern High Crosswordese), and while they didn't lend extra entertainment value to the puzzle, the "whoo, this crossword is tumbling like a house of cards" speed thrill has its charms. I'm talking about clues like [Indian tourist locale] AGRA, [Former Swedish P.M. Olof ___] PALME, [Pacific capital] APIA, NETTY [Like mesh], and that [Cousin of a raccoon], the COATI. Things that aren't exactly household words unless someone in the household does a boatload of crosswords.
The theme was not too hard to unravel without peeking at the Notepad. Each of the straightforwardly clued theme entries includes a "placement" word, and if you interpret each phrase hyper-literally (as you might in a cryptic crossword or in those tricky crossword clues for the spelled-out names of letters), you'll extract one letter from each one's key word. Those seven letters spell out HISTORY.
- 23A. The [Boondocks] are the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, and the middle of the word "nowhere" is H.
- 34A. [Ambulance destination] is a MEDICAL CENTER. The center of that first word is I.
- 50A. An [Imam or priest] is a SPIRITUAL LEADER, and the "leader" of that word is an S.
- 69A. The BEGINNING OF TIME—the letter T—is clued by way of [When the heavens and earth were created].
- 87A. [Deputy] is the SECOND IN COMMAND, and that second letter is O.
- 103A. [Week after Christmas] is the END OF DECEMBER. This is the least satisfactory of the theme entries, because "end of December" feels strikingly arbitrary as times of the year go. Here's the R.
- 118A. BROADWAY CLOSING, or [Lights out in New York City], is the letter Y.
I like how the cryptic-style locator signals are all different—two beginning, two middles, two ends, and one second letter.
On Cruciverb-L, there was a recent discussion about entries like CEE and ESS. The legendary Bob Klahn loves the tricky, hyper-literal clues that go with such answers, while the legendary Merl Reagle interjects that nobody ever uses these spelled-out versions so they oughtn't populate our crosswords. This puzzle's theme kinda splits the difference—the letters are themselves and not the little-used three-letter names for them, and we get the tricky clues, only these tricky clues are found in the grid for a change. It's not the meatiest theme around, but I like how it settles into a neutral ground between the Klahn and Reagle camps and lets us play with hyper-literalism without the "ESS? Really?" eye-rolling.
Without further ado, let's run through some clues:
- 35D. COED gets a perfect clue: [Like most dorms nowadays]. My husband and I met when we lived across the hall from each other at Carleton. COED is a perfectly fine adjective, but as a noun it's either (a) outdated or (b) used in porn.
- 5A. [Intelligent, creative sort, supposedly] clues a VIRGO, astrologically. You like the gentle hedging of the "supposedly" in the clue? A friend of mine has sworn off dating VIRGO men owing to their supposed moodiness and incompatibility with her Aquarian nature.
- 28A. Unusual clue for a VIOLET: [Symbol of modesty]. I approached the answer from the end and had no idea where to go with it. CORSET seemed altogether wrong, and nothing else came to mind. Violets are hardly modest, however—they grow wherever they want to and refuse to leave your garden when instructed.
- 37A. [Group of genetically related organisms] is a BIOTYPE. Didn't know this one, not even with **OTYPE in place.
- 48A. [Emulates AZ or T.I.] is RAPS. I've heard of T.I., so this clue was 50% helpful to me. AZ has an album and song called "Doe or Die", but it doesn't appear to be about Bambi.
- 58A. Man, did I need a lot of crossings to get HEIDI, the [Literary heroine whose best friend is a goatherd].
- 76A. The AFTON is the ["Sweet" stream in a Burns poem]. No idea how I knew that off **TO*.
- 80A. BEAN BAG is a great entry. It's a [Noisy but comfy chair].
- 94A. Ooh, cutting edge! [Tweets, e.g.] clues TEXTS. Most of my tweets are posted from the web, but when I'm out and about, I do text tweets from my phone.
- 95A. The awkward SRS is clued as [Grandfathers of III's]. I know a guy whose grandfather was not a Sr. but an XXI. The guy's baby son is XXIV. No kidding. A line of same-named descent stretching back a good five centuries!
- 112A. [Bathroom fixture] is a BIDET. I've never tried one. Do you recommend bidets?
- 1D. [A mechanic might see it a lot] refers to a real LEMON.
- 3D. MEDIA BLITZ is an interesting answer. Clued as [Publicity push].
- 11D. [Choler] is IRE. I'm unreasonably fond of the word "choler," and yet I seldom use it. Must remedy that.
- 36D. I definitely did not know ANNE [___ Page, woman in "The Merry Wives of Windsor"]. My Shakespeare comedy knowledge involves A Midsummer Night's Dream and maybe one or two others.
- 46D. [Pleonastic] means REDUNDANT, as in the phrase "ATM machine," where the M means machine.
- 67D. OFFENSE is [Something to play] when the other side's on defense.
- 72D. [They may be crunched]? Your ABS. Drop and do 25 crunches, now!
- 101D, 102D. Aw, OLEO is [Promise, for one], but GREASE doesn't get the same clue. It really could. Instead, it's [Payola, e.g.]. Not to be confused with Mazola.
- 121D. [Science writer Willy] LEY is not someone I've read, but I reckon I've encountered his name...in crosswords.
Updated Sunday morning:
David Levinson Wilk's syndicated Los Angeles Times Sunday crossword, "Take a Letter"
Alas, I would have enjoyed this theme a lot more if I hadn't just done essentially the same theme—but with an added twist—in the NYT. Here, the hyper-literal theme entries are clued with the letter the answer suggests, rather than the answers being clued straightforwardly and the letters being an add-on. Where Arbesfeld's batch of letters spelled out HISTORY, this one's letters spell out...SACPVEFD. I wish this puzzle had come out a week earlier so I could better appreciate the fun of figuring out these:- 23A. [S] is the HEAD OF STATE.
- 29A. [A] is END OF AN ERA.
- 34A. [C] is MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE.
- 58A. [P] is LEADER OF THE PACK.
- 66A. [V] is CENTER OF GRAVITY.
- 85A. [E] is FOREGONE CONCLUSION. This one is terrific—a great phrase to drop into a crossword, and not a tricky/cryptic clue I recall seeing before.
- 94A. [F] is FALSE START. I had a false start on this one because FALSE FRONT also fit perfectly.
- 104A. [D] is GRAND FINALE. Perfect to save GRAND FINALE for the last theme entry in the puzzle.
As with the Arbesfeld puzzle, there's a good assortment of positioning words here. Three beginnings (HEAD, LEADER, START), two middles (MIDDLE, CENTER), three ends (END, CONCLUSION, FINALE). None of the theme entries duplicate those in the NYT—there are a zillion such phrases to choose from, I suppose. And while I admired the NYT's extra level of theme action, I'll give the liveliness edge to Levinson Wilk's set of theme answers.
Another echo between these two puzzles: 107A here is [Energetic risk-taking type, so it's said] for ARIES. Hey, it's ZODIAC (31D [Collection of signs]) day!
As for the rest of the fill, PuzzleGirl singled out many of the same words I would've in her L.A. Crossword Confidential post. So read that, but know that I have been to the [Utah ski resort] ALTA so I knew that one.
Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle, "Hit It"
Sometimes I'm in the mood for Merl's trademark overcooked puns and sometimes I'm not. This time, I wasn't feelin' it, dawg. This weekend's batch of "Hit It" puns work various hitting utensils into familiar phrases:- 23A. ABSENCE OF MALLETS plays on Absence of Malice, a Paul Newman movie. I suppose it was a preexisting phrase before it was a movie title? The clue is [Reason the croquet game was called off?].
- 38A. An acoustic guitar, one of which resides in my living room, turns into A CUE STICK GUITAR, or [What the pool player started "playing" when his favorite song came on the radio?]. Merl, hon? Ow. This pun hurt.
- 54A. I had trouble figuring out what THE CLUB COMPARTMENT, or [Storage space in a golfer's car?], played on. The glove compartment.
- 76A. [Dolls for young tennis players?] are RACQUETY ANN AND ANDY. Ha! Okay, I like this one. It's completely nuts and I like it.
- 93A. ["___, but we won the game"] clues WE LOST THE PADDLE (battle). Could've avoided the WE dupe with ["___, but won the game"] without losing anything, I think. No question mark in this clue. Which paddle-related game do you suppose it is?
- 111A. [Messiest game at the Sara Lee company picnic?] is BAT-A-CAKE, BAT-A-CAKE, playing on "pat-a-cake." Oh, the carnage, Please do not pummel the desserts. Unless it's a lemon cake. Go ahead and pummel lemon desserts, but please give me first crack at the chocolate cake, and with a fork, not a bat.
Most unfamiliar word in the grid: 19D is WELTERED, or [Rolled about, as a pig in mud]. My Mac's dictionary tells me this verb means "lie steeped in blood with no help or care" or "move in a turbulent fashion," like a roiling stream. I like this muddy pig application better. 92D is the [Pink Floyd epic] THE WALL—terrific entry. Overall, though, the fill lacked Merl's usual sparkle. Next week will be more to my taste, I'm sure.
Henry Hook's Boston Globe crossword, "Double Ring Ceremony"
Hey, Hubsters—how many weeks back was this puzzle in the newspaper there? Am I still six weeks behind, or have the Across Lite ranks caught up with y'all?The theme entries are cooked-up two-word phrases in which each word contains RING. For example, 25A's clue is [Caters a fish dinner?] and the answer is BRINGS HERRING. 33D is clued [Outskirts, on "The Simpsons"?]. My kid saw that clue and asked if the answer was SHELBYVILLE. I explained that both words in SPRINGFIELD FRINGE contain a hidden RING. "Huh," he said. "That's confusing." I didn't find it especially confusing, but it also wasn't particularly rewarding. Two theme entries, 27A and 96A, not only are partly stacked with other theme entries, they also cross the Down themers.
Favorite parts: 44A is [Doesn't share], or BOGARTS. I have fond memories of a get-together in Prague at which some "don't bogart that joint, my friend, pass it on over to me" song was playing. Bogarting apparently applies specifically to marijuana cigarettes, but one can certainly request that someone else not bogart the potato chips. 71A's clue, [Some are nothing but air], points towards imaginary GUITARS. I have not witnessed an air guitar competition, but it sounds entertaining.
Weirdest answers: 39A EMESA is an [Ancient Syrian city]. 7D is CABMAN or [Hack], and not a term I ever use for a cabbie/cab driver/taxi driver. 81D is EPERGNE, or [Ornate centerpiece]; I learned this one via crosswords, but it doesn't come up often. At 59A, [Monozygotic] clues ONE-EGG, but I can't say I've seen one-egg used adjectivally at all.
Rich Norris's themeless CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge"
It seemed like this one was a couple notches harder than the typical "Sunday Challenge" (though still easier than a Saturday NYT).Hot stuff:
- 1A. ["I enjoyed this"] clues IT'S BEEN FUN. Do you think there's an intentional mini-theme linking this with its opposite partner in the grid, 69A [Words of gratitude] for MANY THANKS? One might say both when leaving a party.
- 32A. I am fond of the weirdness of BELEAGUER as a word. This [Vex] synonym derives from a Dutch word, belegeren, meaning "camp around." I find it difficult to type beleagueured (see?) correctly. Beleaguerued. Nope, wrong again. Beleagurued. Wrong a third time. This is what happens when I let my hands type away blithely. 99% of words work out just fine, but this one? Not so much. Slowing down, let's go for beleaguered. There. It takes effort.
- 63A. APPOMATTOX is a [Historic Civil War town]. I like to pronounce this "uh-POM-uh-tocks" and say "Appomattox o' both your houses!" Yes, I realize that's odd.
- 32D. BAD APPLES are [Troublemakers], as in the bad apples that spoil the bunch.
- 34D. The clue, [Shooter's protection], pointed me in any number of directions, but not LENS COVER.
- 64D. [Pin cushion?] is a solid clue for a wrestling MAT. I've seen the clue before, but it's well worth recycling.
RTS and ACLU aren't clued together but could be—sometimes the ACLU is mentioned in clues for RTS, short for "rights."
At 27A, [Stop holding it in], 4 letters ending in T? Uh, the actual answer, VENT, wasn't my first thought here.
Updated again Sunday afternoon:
Jim Hyres' second Sunday NYT puzzle, a diagramless crossword
This one wasn't too hard to find my way through. I grabbed a piece of scratch paper and started jotting down the first few Across answers, working back and forth with the Down clues. By the fifth row, I hit a width of 17 squares and so could deduce that 1-Across began in the very first square. Ahh, it feels good to transfer answers over to the diagramless grid and know that they're going in the right place—it doesn't always work out so well.
When I filled in 36-Across in the middle of the grid—TONGUE TWISTER, or [It's hard to say]—I read the three longest answers aloud to myself and to my mother. What do YOU'LL BE SORRY (["Not a good idea!"]), LARGER THAN LIFE ([Very imposing]), and TONGUE TWISTER have in common?? Suddenly childhood smacked me in the forehead and I noticed the games at the ends of those phrases. Indeed, the remaining theme answers are STIRS UP TROUBLE ([Is a rabble-rouser]) and RUNNING A RISK ([Not playing it safe]). Trouble is the board game with the noisy Pop-o-matic die in the middle. Risk is the geopolitical board game. Twister...I fear I am now too old to be able to play Twister. Here at home, we have the SpongeBob edition of Life (excuse me, but why is Fry Cook the best-paying career??) and enjoy the turmoil of a round of Sorry. The final Across answer, 69A, is GAMES to tie everything together. Cute theme; the theme is probably much more accessible than the diagramless itself, though as NYT diagramlesses go, this one was pretty easy.
Assorted other clues I liked: 10A ["Uh-uh"] clues NO DICE. You can use dice to play many board games, but I don't think the answer's meant to be thematic here. 23A [Symbol of limpness] is a WET RAG, and I can't say that's an image I see used in Cialis and Viagra commercials. [All alternative] pulls double duty as laundry detergent ERA and as quantity SOME. 27D's clue is [You may need to step on it] and I first thought of the GAS pedal, but the answer's a ladder RUNG.
January 26, 2009
Tuesday, 1/27
Jonesin' 4:50
Sun 3:40
LAT 3:03
NYT 2:45
(post updated at 9:15 Tuesday morning)
I think the Tuesday New York Times crossword by Jim Hyres was a little easier than yesterday's puzzle. (I had a typo, so my time should've been 10 or 15 seconds faster.) The theme entries all end with homophones:
Assorted other clues and answers in this puzzle: [Cop's cruiser] is a PROWL CAR. Squad car and patrol car are more familiar terms to me. [High-voltage weapon] clues AIR TASER, but I have never heard the term with "air" included. I, ROBOT is a [Classic Isaac Asimov short-story collection]. BENIN is the [Nation once known as Dahomey]. If you like African geography, try this map quiz. [Exert one's superiority] is PULL RANK. [Vigorous feelings] is a strange clue for ENERGIES. I'll bet PONZI [___ scheme (investment scam)] is far more familiar to crossword solvers in the wake of the Madoff debacle.
Peter Gordon/Ogden Porter's 15x16 Sun crossword, "Hitchcock Double Features," includes four mash-ups of Hitchcock movie titles that can be clued plausibly as made-up phrases. 10-Down was my favorite of the four. The clue [Subvert hawks and doves?] made me think of metaphorically pro- and anti-war groups, but the answer is more avian-minded: SABOTAGE THE BIRDS. Holy crow, The Birds freaked me out when I saw it late at night by myself when I was about 18. Birds have beaks or [Bills, e.g.], but that clue is for an NFL TEAM. [Thing that gets socked?] is a FOOT; the official socks of this blog are Smartwool.
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Just Add Vodka," creates its theme entries by adding vodka to something in the base phrases and thereby mixing a cocktail. This is one of those puzzles with a slightly delayed "aha" moment, where I had the whole thing done but didn't understand the theme yet. I don't understand all of the theme entries, so I need to Google up some info. What's a Greyhound? It's grapefruit juice and vodka. So:
In the non-thematic fill, there are some cool answers. DARA TORRES was a [Swimmer in the 1984 and 2008 Olympic Games]; she won a silver medal last summer at about age 40. TUNA HELPER is a [Dinner mix with a glove on the box]. Cute little cartoony glove with a face on its palm, too. [It's promoted as infallible truth] clues THE GOSPEL, and I like the clue's vague suggestion that there's a marketing or P.R. team working on that account. GOOD LOOKS are [What vain people think may get them far in life].
Updated:
The theme answers in today's LA Times crossword begin with FEE, FI, FO, and FUM, all tied together by the GIANT (67-Across) who is the [Fairy tale bellower of the starts of 20-, 31-, 42-, and 53-Across]:
I thought I'd seen this theme concept before, so I Googled it—there were two FEE FI FO FUM rebus puzzles in 2006, from Levi Denham and Nancy Salomon (NYT) and Edgar Fontaine (Sun).
Miscellaneous clues and answers:
December 14, 2008
Monday, 12/15
Sun 3:12
LAT 2:53
CS 2:45
NYT 2:19
(updated at 10 a.m. Monday)
See that yellow box to the right? If you click there, it'll take you to suncrossword.com. If you like crosswords that eschew the same ol' junk that's been in crosswords since the dawn of time (i.e., the 1920s), shell out a few bucks ($12.50, to be exact) to subscribe to the Sun crossword online. Many of the finest crossword constructors in the business make Sun puzzles, so you'll get your money's worth. The Sun's especially tempting for those of us who hanker for tough puzzles—they're often a couple notches harder than the NYT crossword. Click on the yellow box to learn more.
Susan Gelfand's New York Times puzzle dishes out authorial meats and desserts—with desserts first, as is my preference.
I like the echoes between some of the fill answers. You can take a SUNBATH (of course, you'd call it sunbathing and not taking a sunbath, unless you talk funny) beneath an AZURE sky. SERBIA, the land from which Rod Blagojevich is descended, sits atop OILY, clued in a non-political manner ([Opposite of dry, as hair] does not describe Blago's Lego-style hair). SNUG and SMUG are just a letter off. Randy and Dennis QUAID are BROS. A tart LIME might make you PUCKER. DOODAD and PSHAW are both fun words—and TUSSLE, too.
Jim Hyres' Sun crossword, "Table Talk," wasn't hard to solve, but I had to reread the completed theme answers a few times to see what the theme was. It's a poker table or something along those lines, as the theme entries begin with words you might hear around the card table—FOLD THE LAUNDRY, CALL WAITING, RAISE A STINK, and ALL IN THE FAMILY. That last one's particularly nice, with the first two words of the classic sitcom's title playing a role in the theme. Favorite fill entry: ALARM CLOCK, 10 letters, crossing two theme answers and piling up four consonants in a row in the middle. Favorite clue: [Teapot contents?] for a TEMPEST in a teapot.
Updated:
Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Top Level," begins its three 15-letter entries with sort-of-synonymous words:
This 74-word grid has stacked pairs of 7-letter grids attached to the 15's at the top and bottom, and ITALIAN LIRA ([Former currency unit in Rome]) connects the three 15's. How many other 11-letter answers start with an I, end with an A, and have an A in the middle? Maybe IMNOTAZEBRA? Yeah, that's not showing up as a standard crossword entry.
Timothy Meaker's LA Times crossword plants a MARSHAL in the middle of the grid to accompany the first words of the four longer theme entries:
June 02, 2008
Tuesday, 6/3
CS 3:23
NYS 3:07
NYT 3:06
LAT 2:52
Onion —> see Wednesday
Tausig —> see Wednesday
I went to the Chicago Improv Festival tonight and saw Scheer-McBrayer—that's Jack McBrayer, who plays Kenneth the NBC page on 30 Rock, and Paul Scheer, who plays Kenneth's archrival page. They were both hilarious, but the theater's air conditioning was out so it was sweltering in there. And thanks to a second-row seat, I saw an actual sweat droplet fling itself off McBrayer's head. That's famous perspiration, from a cast member on my very favorite TV comedy.
Pete Muller is perhaps famous only among crossword insiders, but that particular fame is well-deserved. Pete is one of those constructors who specialize in twisty innovations on the crossword format (others include Patrick Blindauer, John Farmer, and Patrick Berry). This time, the theme in his New York Times crossword includes just two Across entries...but there are also four diagonal answers, each crossing five Acrosses and five Downs, so you could argue that there are 46 entries contributing to the theme. "WHERE'S WALDO?" is a [Question posed by a 1987 children's best seller], and the question is answered by 43-Across, IN THE CORNER. In each corner of the grid, there's a W that begins a diagonally placed WALDO. Lending their support are six long entries. A [Purchase of one who's looking for love] might be a PERSONAL AD, MONTICELLO is the [Building seen on a nickel], NILES CRANE is a [1990s-2000s sitcom shrink] (Frasier Crane's brother), ELLIPTICAL pairs up with [Like many planetary orbits], MOLTEN METAL is a [Material used in casting], and TOILET WATER is [Light perfume]. Thank goodness WALDO isn't hiding in the toilet! I can't believe I left the [Moselle tributary] SAAR off the sidebar poll on favorite crossword rivers. Wasn't OSMAN the [Ottoman Turk leader] just in a crossword last week or the week before? His A crosses ARIANE, the [French satellite launcher] and a rocket whose name I know strictly from crosswords.
Edited to say: Whoops, actually Pete is even more famous in the worlds of Wall Street, poker, and music. (Hat tip to Jim H.)
Jim Hyres' New York Sun puzzle, "Extra Points," incorporates all four cardinal points (N, S, E, and W) in appropriate spots in the grid, and those letters are inserted into four phrases to change their meaning. For example, Panama hat is in the eastern part of the grid, with an E added to make it PANAMA HEAT, or [Canal cops?]. (I kinda wanted the canal cops to be the people who tell you never to stick Q-tips in your ear canal.) This grid has a low word count for a themed puzzle (72, when the maximum allowed is 78), and there are plenty of interesting longer words in the fill. My favorites: MOWGLI from The Jungle Book; TRAIL MIX; TERRARIA (I have fond childhood memories of having a terrarium); GOINGS-ON; SMITHIES that are [Forgers' workplaces]; and SKIRMISH.
Updated:
Larry Shearer's LA Times crossword has one of those "word that can follow the first or last word each theme entry" themes, only HOUSE can follow both the first and second words of the four theme entries:
Often such themes include resulting combos that are a mix of compound words and two-word phrases. It's cool that all of these houses are in my dictionary as single words.
Bruce Venzke and Stella Daily's CrosSynergy crossword, "A Long Walk," features a Steven Wright quip: WHAT HAPPENS IF / YOU PUT A SLINKY / ON AN ESCALATOR? My son got his first real Slinky for his birthday this spring, so he likes this Steven Wright concept.
May 28, 2007
Tuesday, 5/29
NYS 4:15
NYT 3:18
LAT 3:17
CS 2:53
Tausig tba
Onion tba
(updated at 8:15 a.m. Tuesday)
All righty, I'm back home after a weekend in Wisconsin and a Memorial Day in the 'burbs. I'd almost been ready to put away the finally emptied suitcases a few days ago when it was time to reload one for the weekend trip—so now I'm back where I was a week ago, with luggage to unpack and laundry to do. (Sigh. Will refuse to sleep anywhere but my own bed for at least a month.)
It's possible I've seen a similar theme before, but I still liked Jim Hyres' theme in Tuesday's NYT. The six longest entries, a rather lively batch (I'm fondest of HOPSCOTCH with its paltry two vowels), all begin with words or syllables that can be preceded by BAR (38-Across, right in the center). The products of the recombinations include (BAR)HOP and (BAR)KEEP, a (BAR)BELL, the dry (BAR)CODE and (BAR) CHART, and the phrasal (BAR) NONE. MUD BATH is a nice bit of fill, but the tight layout—with four across entries, two downs, and the central BAR—limits the flexibility for most of the fill, so some of the shorter words are a bit blah.
The Sun puzzle for Tuesday comes from Patrick Berry. In the "En Zone," -NDS ends of words become -NS endings, and those Ds are scarcely pronounced anyway, so the resulting phrases sound a lot like the originals. "Rubber bands" become RUBBER BANS, or restrictions on galoshes. Zones of woe: 1-Across is a baseball player I've never heard of, an AARON Heilman who played with the Mets last season. (New York, Shmoo York...) I haven't heard a TV's picture tube called an IMAGE TUBE, and I don't think our plasma screen's got a tube anyway. And I still haven't read "The Lorax," so I blanked on the THNEEDS. Liked [Chew toy coater] for SLOBBER (no shortage of dog slobber at my sister's house this afternoon, but I was trying to think of what substance chew toys were made of); BOOTLEG concert recordings; and the clue [Something that isn't taken lying down?] for SHOWER.
Updated:
Daniel Bryant's LA Times crossword has a homophone theme (e.g., BORED BOHR'S BOARS), but oddly, HOMO and PHONE appear in two separate entries tying the theme together. The theme is Monday-easy. Okay, so it's Tuesday now, but it feels like a Monday owing to yesterday's holiday. Some Scrabbly entries and otherwise good fill: QUIZZES with its three crossings at the Q and Zs, another Q elsewhere, VIRTUOSO, THE ONE.
Martin Ashwood-Smith spends "Three Bucks" in his CrosSynergy puzzle, with three phrases that mean "buck," as in "buck the system." As with the LA Times puzzle, plenty of Scrabbly letters (three Xs, a pair of Zs and Ks, and a Q and a J) lurking in the midst. Also liked the 9-letter entries, JUAN PERON and METER MAID, but must take exception to [Addams Family lion] as the clue for KITKAT. The American rendition of the KitKat is one of my favorite candy bars, though it is nutritionally abysmal. The creamy filling between the crisp wafers is essentially saturated fat blended with sugar. It's tasty, but I kinda wish Hershey would upgrade to a nonsaturated fat. My also-beloved Snickers Almond has that good nut-based fat in it, so I guess I just ought to eat more of those.
