Jonesin' 3:33
NYT 2:54
LAT 2:34
CS untimed
Apparently one of Matt Gaffney's recent weekly contest crosswords duplicated a theme previously used, unbeknownst to Matt, in another puzzle by Mike Shenk. Matt demystifies the process of building a crossword to explain how such accidental mimicry can and does occur at Slate.
December? Whoa.
Jonah Kagan and Vic Fleming's New York Times crossword
BREAKFAST gets parsed as "break FAST" and the other four theme entries begin with FA and end with ST:
• 18A. FAIRY DUST is a [Magical powder].
• 22A. FALCON CREST was a [1980s soap opera set at a winery]. I am reminded of those '80s prime-time soaps every time I see the principal at my kid's school.
• 35A. FATHER KNOWS BEST was a [1950s-'60s sitccom that ran on all three networks]. One at a time, I presume? Not during the same season?
• 49A. [Occasion for pumpkin picking] is the FALL HARVEST.
What else is in this puzzle? There's ILO-ILO, the [Repetitively named Philippine province]. Speaking of repetition, [Mine treasure] is both ORE and a LODE. One [Wine container] is a CARAFE, while other [Wine containers] are CASKS. The [Turkish headgear] called the FEZ joins the ILIAD, CAIRO, and EGYPT for today's Mediterranean fill, and the REED that's a [Papyrus plant, e.g.] might grow in EGYPT too.
The fill's not pangrammatic (no J), but there are Scrabbly letters in BOUTIQUE, ZEROES, and ALEX, [The"A" in A-Rod]. You know you've been doing too many crosswords when you try to complete that last one as ALER.
Updated Tuesday morning:
Randall J. Hartman's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Dam Break"—Janie's review
The title tells us from the get-go that somehow we're going to see the word dam in each of the theme phrases and that the word'll be broken up—but exactly how Randy would do that remained to be seen. Would the letters bookend the phrase or would they fall between two words? As is turns out, it's the latter. Now, while I find the gimmick and the theme fill a tad on the dusty side, I really liked seeing that in each case, the "D" falls in the same spot in its respective row, so that all three of the DAMs are aligned in the grid. That's a nice touch. And here are they are:
• 20A. ROALD AMUNDSEN [First person to reach the North and South Poles].
• 40A. SECOND AMENDMENT [Constitutional protection for gun owners].
• 55A. BLIND AMBITION [1976 tell-all book by John Dean].
There are other nice touches throughout, both in the fill and in the cluing. I liked starting out with the rhyming RAGS/[Scandal sheet] and WAGS/[Witty ones]. And there was something pleasing in seeing "NEAT IDEA!"/["Great thought!"] and GOOD DEED [Samaritan's act] running vertically down the grid. Ditto WOODWIND and BLEAK HOUSE. GO TO PIECES/[Lose it] at first made me think of Patsy Cline, but she fell to pieces. Peter and Gordon ("British Explosion" [light-] rockers), on the other hand, did "Go to Pieces."
Speaking of Brits, ADELE [2009 Grammy winner for Best New Artist] was a complete unknown to me. Go ahead. Tell me I'm living under a rock. Here she is singing "Right as Rain"—not to be confused with Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen's "Right as the Rain." (Harburg also wrote the lyrics to the song ["If I Only] HAD [a Brain"].) Other women with an artistic bent to get a shout-out today include NORA/[Director Ephron], REESE [Witherspoon of "Walk the Line"] and LIZA [Entertainer Minnelli], who first came on the scene in a little Kander and Ebb show called Flora, the Red Menace, but that Flora was not today's FLORA, which was clued as [Lady's-slipper and baby's breath]. And notice the lovely way IRIS/[Spring bloomer] crosses flora. Quite a little nosegay in that SW corner.
Props, too, to [Mail for King Arthur] for ARMOR, [Moon shot?] for TUSH and [Punk rock?] for PEBBLE. Took me a while to experience the "aha" for that last one. But it was worth the wait.
Not that this is a heinous offense, but even though it's clear they mean different things, I wish Randy had avoided including both A LOT / [Gazillion] and LOT [Auction unit] in the same puzzle. This repetition could have been avoided in any number of ways. Lot shares a final "T" with BEAT, so that letter could have been a D, M, N or U; and it falls from the final "L" in DUAL, so there was also the option of changing that shared letter to a D. Whether or not this gets changed for some other incarnation of this puzzle, life as we know it will go on. Just sayin'.
Dave Hanson's Los Angeles Times crossword
I don't recognize the name in today's byline. A debut for Dave Hanson? If so, congratulations!
The theme is really icky, or should I say "ICKy." Each theme entry contains two ICKs but in four different ways:
• 20A. [Dickens hero with "papers," as he is formally known] is MR. PICKWICK, with a "MR." in addition to the two *ICK syllables.
• 51A. [Unflattering Nixon epithet] is TRICKY DICK, with the adjectival -Y sneaking in there.
• 10D. [Surprise football plays] are QUICK KICKS, with a plural not seen in the other theme entries. Is this a familiar term to football fans? I don't know it.
• 29D. [Girls-night-out film] is an unadorned CHICK FLICK.
There were some random ICK sounds lurking in the grid, presumably by chance. John Milton's EPIC, ODIC [Like many Keats poems], mind-reading PSYCHICS, and the CHICLE that's in gum. I haven't had Tiny Size Chiclets in years, but the word chicle always makes me want some. And then I start thinking about those sacks of gold nugget gum. If they would make sugarless versions of both, I tell you, I'd always have one or the other on hand.
RARA isn't in as many crosswords as it used to be, but when it is, it's often clued with [___ avis], Latin for "rare bird." Today the clue is 15A: [Not often seen, to Caesar]. Least familiar answer: OUT YEAR, or [Annual period beyond the current one]. There's actually a lot of fill here that seems tough for a Tuesday, but the crossings are generally easy. This puzzle might require a little more back-and-forth eyeballing of crossings to piece everything together.
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Bank Job"
I like the title of this puzzle better than the theme entries—73A: SNOW is a [Word that can precede either word in] the theme entries, but unlike "Bank Job," the four theme answers are made-up phrases:
• 17A. [Macho way to say "dandruff"?] clues MAN FLAKES. Okay, that's funny.
• 66A. PEAS DRIFT is [What somehow happens to the vegetables in your TV dinner?].
• 11D. TIRE BLOWER is clued as [That sharp nail in the road you just ran over?].
• 30D. [Tool used to clean out the pits in kiddie playlands?] clues a BALL SHOVEL. Actually, I think massive quantities of disinfectant would be better than a shovel.
Favorite clues/fill:
• SHAFT is clued with the lyrics ["He's a complicated man / but no one understands him/ but his woman"]. True story: My good friend Amy danced with Richard Roundtree, the actor who starred in Shaft, when she was about 5. She told the tale on public radio a couple years ago.
• ["Liquid sunshine"] is a lie. That ain't what RAIN is. Dang, I thought the answer was going to be something like TEQUILA.
• O'HARE is clued as a [Frequent site for fligth layovers]. Do you know I have never once had a flight layover in Chicago? True story. And living in a centrally located hub means I can get a direct flight almost anywhere I want to go.
November 30, 2009
Tuesday, 12/1/09
November 23, 2009
Tuesday, 11/24/09
Jonesin' 4:42
NYT 3:20
LAT 2:56
CS untimed
Vic Fleming and Bonnie Gentry's New York Times crossword
The three multi-part theme entries in this 16x15 crossword made an especially cohesive set for this solver, as I'd recently read this Language Log post refuting the idea that phrases like "at the end of the day" were management-speak. (Turns out everyone else is using these phrases, too.) The theme entries were split up into two or three chunks apiece, with cross-referenced clues flailing all over the place. This provided a rather choppy solving experience rather than a nice Tuesdayesque flow.
The theme pieced together three phrases that mean [everything considered]. 19A and 64A spell out AT THE END / OF THE DAY. 34A, 43A, and 48A say WHEN ALL / IS SAID / AND DONE. And 4A's clue is [After "in", and with 44-Down, everything considered], which is a crazily stilted clue. THE FINAL / ANALYSIS really wants its introductory IN to appear with it in the grid.
The fill's got some sparkle to it, particularly in the longer answers:
• 1A. [Eucalyptus] is the GUM TREE, as in "Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree..." Not to be confused with the sweetgum tree.
• 30A. ALAN BALL is the [Oscar-winning "American Beauty" writer] who went on to create the show Six Feet Under.
• 67A. Hey, look, it's ONASSIS, [The "O" of Jackie O.], rather than crosswordese ARI.
• 23D. A small [Traveling bag] is a VALISE. This word has always amused me. "Set down your valise, dear, and have a seat on the divan." Does anyone call it a VALISE these days?
• 47D. V.P.'S are [#2's, for short]. Can we start calling #2 pencils "V.P.'s"? Who's with me?
If you didn't know that 68D: [Soul: Fr.] is AME, make a note of it. This is Franco-crosswordese and while it doesn't come up often, you'll probably see it again. I needed all the crossings for 55A: LAIRD, [Melvin of the Nixon cabinet]. And I was briefly thrown by the 4-letter Roman numeral, 3D: [The year 1450], or MCDL. We don't often see 4-letter Roman numerals without an I, do we?
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Initial Reaction: letters, not words"
The five theme entries change the first word of (semi-)familiar phrases into the single letters whose names sound the same:
• 17A. [Valentine sentiment to the 80-89% crowd?] is "B, MY LOVE" instead of "be my love." Does B MY LOVE make sense to you? It's eluding me. Is it "B, be my love" or "B, (you are) my love"? Is B the letter grade or a person who earns that grade?
• 26A. [Thankful thought toward a universal blood type?] is "O, WHAT YOU DO TO ME" (swapping O for oh). Wouldn't you be thanking O for what she/he/it does for you rather than to you?
• 32A. [Cloud shaped like a small Roman numeral?] is I IN THE SKY (swapping an I for an eye—wait, has that theme been done, or maybe "an eye for an I"?).
• 41A. [Tagline of a rap-oriented cologne slogan?] is "G, YOU SMELL GREAT." Urban Dictionary helps explain "G" if you don't grasp that part. I was hoping for an evocation of Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific shampoo from the '70s-'80s.
• 53A. [Hassle at the local community gym?] is a Y BOTHER ("Why bother?"). My favorite among the quintet of theme entries.
The biggest "WTF" clue was right up top at 1A: [Numerical classification of some World War II U-boats]. As luck would have it, 1A intersected the second biggest "WTF" clue, 5D: [Surname of four generations of French painters in the Louvre]. Did not know of the TYPE VII boats, nor the VERNET artistic dynasty. I could see 39D: VALJEAN/["Les Miserables" surname] meeting 52A: ABUJA/[Current capital of Nigeria] mucking things up for some folks. Did anyone else want 43D: [North Africans disputed in a "Seinfeld" Trivial Pursuit question] to be the MOOPS rather than the MOORS?
Updated Tuesday morning
Randolph Ross's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "On the Up and Up"—Janie's review
Synonyms for something or someone "on the up and up," include legit, honest, sincere. Today's puzzle easily qualifies—and is a great deal of fun as well. The word "UP" can be found embedded twice in each of Randy's theme phrases. There are five of them—and in the first two and the last two, there's an overlap factor of eight letters, which I do consider a BIG DEAL [Something worth making a fuss over]. The "UP"-camouflaging phrases are:
• 17A. PU-PU PLATTER [Appetizer assortment at a Chinese restaurant]. A tasty start to the proceedings—and also a little deceptive. Because of the phrase's initial "P," I first thought that all of the UPs were going to be reversed (cryptic-style, as if going ↑). This particular phrase supports that theory. But it didn't take me long to see that my hunch was wrong, wrong, wrong...
• 20A. SUPPORT GROUP [Alcoholics Anonymous, e.g.]. See what I mean? In this example and all the remaining ones, the UPs are not only separated out, but are clearly meant to be read from left to right.
• 35A. CUP OF SOUP [Lipton offering]. Or at 38%, more like Cup of Sodium...
• 55A. "SUPER TROUPER" [ABBA hit album and single of 1980]. Omg. That's almost 30 years ago! Um. Time flies when you're having fun? Even longer ago,
• 59A. "STUPID CUPID" [Connie Francis hit remade by Mandy Moore]. Here's Connie's version, 1959...
There was more in the puzzle that AMUSED [Entertained] me as well, and fave clue/fill pairs include:
• [They're set and broken]/RECORDS;
• [West of Nashville]/DOTTIE—so that's the country singer and not the direction. Now there's someone who made a lot of records (of the vinyl variety, that is);
• [Standing]/REPUTE (the noun and not the progressive tense verb form is what's required here);
• [Beat to the tape]/OUTRAN (because that gives me a good mental image)
• [Back for front?/IER → frontIER (as in "the wild West" [the region of the country and not Dottie...]); and
• [Great service]/ACE (tennis, anyone?). John McEnroe and [McEnroe rival] Bjorn BORG are both known to have put away their share of aces.
Also loved seeing the word NASCENT [Just starting to develop], which has great aesthetic appeal for me. EEL POT [Conger catcher]? Not so much. HONORER [The president at a medal ceremony, e.g.]? Not at all. Though I rather enjoyed UNFUNNY [Bad adjective for a comedian], because I'm still surprised to hear talk show hosts introduce "a very funny comedian." Who brings a comedian on national television and introduces him or her any other way? But one of these days......
Gary Whitehead's Los Angeles Times crossword
Spelling! Today's theme centers on a trio of homophones with different spellings that so often get mixed up by people. The homophones appear with introductory words that help clarify which is which, and this puzzle should be required reading for anyone who's had trouble with these words:
• 20A. REFINED PALATE is [Sophisticated taste, foodwise]. The palate that's the roof of your mouth is spelled this way. The word is from the Latin palatum.
• 36A. [Studio item with a thumb hole] is a PAINTER'S PALETTE in an artist's studio, not a film or TV studio as I'd first thought when I read the clue. The word's origin is French: a diminutive of the word pale, meaning "shovel."
• 47A. That rough wooden [Portable shipping platform] is a FREIGHT PALLET, also called a skid. The etymology partners up with that of PALETTE: "Middle English palet, tongue depressor, from Old French palete, small potter's shovel."
Just before doing this crossword, I'd just tweeted about another common spelling mix-up:
My favorite clue is the one for HARE: 49D: [Cocksure Aesopian racer]. Don't see "Aesopian" too often.
Highlights in the fill: 37D: EARL GREY, the [Tea named for William IV's prime minister], and 9D: TEXAS TEA, or [Oil, informally]. The "tea" in the EARLY GREY clue should've been changed to "brew" to avoid the duplication. Also terrific: DEAN'S LIST, or 35D: [Academic honor].
November 16, 2009
Tuesday, 11/17/09
Jonesin' 3:59
NYT 3:40
LAT 2:35
CS untimed
Caleb Madison's newest Bard Bulletin crossword is available now in Across Lite, at the Crossword Fiend forum's "Island of Lost Puzzles." It'll be online in Java applet form later this week. Enjoy!
John Farmer's New York Times crossword
Structurally, this is an unusual puzzle. The theme entries are 10 (or 14)-letter doubled entities criss-crossing in two 5 (or 7)-letter halves that intersect in the middle, and these are found in the four corners and in the middle of the grid. The letters in those central intersections spell out RINGO. Here's how it plays out:
• 16A. [WIth 2-Down, group with the only James Bond theme to hit #1] is DURAN DURAN.
• 18A. [WIth 10-Down, flashy jewelry] is BLING-BLING.
• 39A. "TWINKLE, TWINKLE" is [With 25-Down, start of a nighttime nursery rhyme]. It's not just the start of the rhyme/song as a partial entry—we often call it "Twinkle, Twinkle" without adding the "Little Star" part, don't we?
• 61A. [With 60-Down, #1 hit of 1969] is "SUGAR, SUGAR." The Archies?
• 64A. [With 54-Down, intro to a joke] is "KNOCK, KNOCK."
• 52D. RINGO Starr is the [Rock star whose name is spelled out by the middle letters of 16-, 18-, 39-, 61- and 64-Across].
Okay, John: Please fill us in. What drew you to playing with crossword conventions in this way? Was there a compelling thematic reason to have the middle letters spell out RINGO, or could you have just as easily gone with another 5-letter word? How many iterations did you go through while working on this puzzle?
Okay, fellow solvers: Is it just me, or was this puzzle of Wednesday difficulty for you, too? Here are the tougher spots:
• WIGAN?!? 40D: [City near Manchester]—Wiggin' out about that one? Me, too. If you didn't know that RIGEL is the name of that 46A: [Bright double star in Orion], you were sunk here.
• 53A. The SKUA is an [Arctic seabird]. Remember this one with the AUK, ERN(E), and TERN.
• 12A. OCULI are [Eyelike windows]. I prefer auriculi, the ear-shaped windows.
• 21A. [International alliance] didn't shout ENTENTE to me, so I worked the crossings instead.
• 34A. I kinda wanted the [A.P. transmission] to be a WIRE STORY, but it's a WIRE PHOTO. On Twitter, you can follow the APStyleBook or, for a more irreverent take on writing and editing, there's Fake AP Stylebook. Sample: "Avoid using 'gadzooks,' lest your monocle pop out and land in your jar of mustache wax."
• 47A. [Japanese prime minister Taro] ASO puts me in mind of taro chips.
• 59A. The weird "I MEAN NO" is clued as an [Emphatic refusal].
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "You Want Fries With That?"
This week's Jonesin' theme is unusual French fry toppings or dips, beyond ketchup and malt vinegar and my son's preference, barbecue sauce. Me, I want a dash of sea salt flakes and a little ketchup. Other options:
• 17A. [Garnish that some upscale fries at Chicago restaurant mk are served with] is TRUFFLE CREAM.
• 26A. [Ingredient served with fries and brown gravy in the Canadian dish poutine] clues CHEESE CURDS. The gravy ruins poutine for me. Not a gravy fan. As for CHEESE CURDS, I like 'em breaded and deep-fried, à la the Upper Midwest. Mmm, hot cheddar goodness.
• 40A. MAYONNAISE is the [Condiment most often used by the Dutch with their fries]. Mac, is this true?
• 56A. I don't quite understand how this one works. CHICKEN SOUP is a [Seasoning option for fries at the Japanese fast food restaurant First Kitchen]. Wet or powdered soup?
• 67A. WENDY'S FROSTY is the [Fast food dessert that some kids insist on dipping their fries in].
Freshest answers in the fill:
• The FAR LEFT is an [Ultraliberal's place on the political spectrum].
• The GEEK SQUAD is the [Tech support subsidiary of Best Buy].
• Good gravy (a nonsequitur for me)! Crosswordese ARLO gives way to his last name for a change. GUTHRIE is clued as ["Alice's Restaurant" singer Arlo].
• The F-TEST is an [Analysis named after statistician Sir Ronald Fisher]. I've heard of Fisher's exact test, too. Someone else named the F-test after Fisher.
• GLAM ROCK is the [Genre for Gary Glitter].
• SIA is clued as ["The Girl You Lost to Cocaine" singer]. Who? Sia Furler is an Australian pop singer.
• [MSNBC anchor Monica] NOVOTNY is not anyone I'd heard of. I'm not a big consumer of cable news. What I see from across the health club once a week is pretty much it.
Updated Tuesday morning:
Patrick Jordan's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Cart Game"—Janie's review
This "cart" game deals out three fresh phrases and one familiar name whose first word can be followed not by cart but by its synonym WAGON, as is made clear at 69A. [Word that can follow the starts of...]:
• 20A. STATION BREAK [Spot for a commercial] → station wagon. Here's a Hudson classic from the '40s. Are station wagons even made today or is it all-SUV-all-the-time? (Remember, this question comes from someone who lives in Manhattan and doesn't own a car. And the last time I did, it was a VW Beetle... that got great mileage!)
• 35A. CHUCK NORRIS ["The Delta Force" star] → chuckwagon. Here's an interesting backgrounder on this mobile food wagon that first came into being in the American West, in the mid-1860s. And here's a picture of one from the 1920s.
• 42A. COVERED DISH [Potluck dinner contribution] → covered wagon, the 19th century version of a station wagon? If you were crossing the Great Plains, your belongings were likely to be packed inside.
• 59A. WELCOME SIGHT [Glimpse of something pleasing] → Welcome Wagon. You and your covered wagon would not have been greeted by one on your arrival in, say, Oregon, but Wiki tells us that "the company was founded in 1928, by Thomas Briggs in Memphis, Tennessee. At that time, Welcome Wagon 'hostesses' would visit new homeowners with a gift basket containing samples, coupons, and advertising from contributing businesses. These home visits continued for over 50 years until 1998, when changing demographics meant few homeowners would be at home when representatives called." I never realized there was an actual company with this name—that that's where the phrase (apparently) came from. And it's still around—on the internet, these days.
There's a lot of good fill and cluing throughout to make this a solid kind of puzzle. For instance, there's a mid-Eastern mini-theme by way of [Palestinian leader Yasir] ARAFAT, ARABS [Jordanian majority], OMANI [Muscat resident] and KURD [Certain Turk or Syrian].
There are also a pair of hirsute creatures—one diminutive, the other... probably not. The former is the EWOK [Forest-dwelling Jedi ally]; the latter, the YETI [Hairy Himalayan humanoid]. Oh—and I nearly forgot a reference to a third creature (a certifiably real one this time) with [Cat's coat] and FUR.
About to be late? You might not be if you [Hotfooted it] RAN. If someone were doing a play-by-play, she might even say, "There he is, and he RACES IN [Enters hurriedly]!"
Other TREATS (they're not only [Halloween handouts]) include SPLOTCH [Irregular stain], because it's a great word to get your mouth around; TABASCO [McIlhenny Company sauce], because it's hot stuff; VAN clued as [Part of Mayflower's fleet], because that's a fleet of moving vans and not ocean-going ships bearing Pilgrims...; BOTOX [Wrinkle-reducing treatment], because I just like that "X"; THREE for its thought-inducing clue [Line count of a haiku]; and the homophonic crossing of SITE MAP [Table of contents on the Internet] with WELCOME SIGHT.
Finally, whether by design or chance, there's that whole assonant SE corner. Look at it: STEEP [Like a canyon's sides], DEEP [Low-bottomed] (like that canyon, no doubt) and THREE. Plus the eye-rhyme that EPEE [Olympics rapier] lends, and the true rhyme of the bottom-central PEEP [Hatchery sound]. Nice touch!
Bruce Venzke's Los Angeles Times crossword
The four theme entries end with words that can substitute for BUNCH: a VACANT LOT, SEATTLE SLEW, IMPERIAL TON, and RIVER RAFT. Two of the theme answers have 9 letters, so it was a little distracting to have an 8-letter non-theme answer, NO BIGGIE, also end with a word connoting largeness.
The theme square count is 45, which is not small but also not too dense. So I was surprised by the amount of answers that can fit the category of crosswordese (words seen more often in crosswords than in the wild). Consider BRAE, IRANI, SMOTE crossing EMOTE, the OAS, AGER and APED, ANON, E'EN, MOUE, APSE, and G-MAN. Plus a prefix (ACRO), abbreviations (APR, ABA, NET WT, TMI), partials (ALL OR, A CHIP, a single NANU, PRIORI), and a bizarre plural (MA'AMS). These outweighed the theme and the zip of MR. FIX-IT for me.
November 09, 2009
Tuesday, 11/10/09
Jonesin' 3:57
NYT 2:50
LAT 2:30
CS untimed
Uh, yeah, hi. I haven't done the puzzle yet because it's about to come out but I am about to leave to take a friend to a late-night MRI appointment (they have those!), and I just got home from the vaccination clinic (2.5-hour wait). Gah!
Go ahead and discuss amongst yourselves for the time being. It's Tuesday. How mystifying can a Tuesday theme be, anyway?
Updated Tuesday morning:
Bruce Venzke & Stella Daily's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Assorted Searches"—Janie's review
Last Tuesday, Doug Peterson gave us a puzzle entitled "Search Party." Bruce and Stella look to have developed the idea Doug set in motion. Now where the connection between today's title and today's theme fill is concerned, what ya sees is what ya gets: four theme phrases, each describing the object of a different search. The variety and range of quests, however, makes for some very fresh fill, and there's a nice SENSE of PLAY in the non-theme fill as well. Cue up The Coasters' "Searchin'" as you, too, go looking for the:
• 17A. [Object of a Ponce de León search] FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH.
• 26A. [Object of an eHarmony.com search] PERFECT MATCH. Finian's Rainbow is enjoying a well-reviewed revival on Broadway right now, and in that Burton Lane/Yip Harburg score, our heroine Sharon explains in song that in matters of the heart, she'd been well-advised to "look to the rainbow" and then "follow the fella who follows a dream." Ah, for the days before the internet!
• 48A. [Object of a Sir Lancelot search] THE HOLY GRAIL. Wait—ya mean?...I thought that was the object of a Monty Python search!
• 63A. [Object of many a hopeful machine inventor's search] PERPETUAL MOTION. Hopeful—and deluded...
Bruce and Stella do name a lot of names right at the top of their puzzle: EDIE McClurg, GENA Rowlands, Mos DEF, Dr. PHIL, OONA (O'Neill) Chaplin, and Burt LAHR [...of "The Wizard of Oz"] (the score of which was written by our pal Yip Harburg with Harold Arlen). But they also give us several fill combinations that can be nicely tied together in a sub-theme kinda way. For instance, there's a [Quaint exclamation] for EGAD, and also a [Quaintly polite response], YES'M. Also quaint to my ear (and totally charming), is [Have a crush on, to a Brit], for FANCY. In baseball, if you [Overthrow, for one], you commit an ERROR. An error of a different sort is a TYPO, as demonstrated in [Thsi clue has one]. If it's more than that—a word that's wrong or a sentence that can be cut, say—the offending text may be marked DELE [Editor's "take it out"].
[Do-___ ] RE-MI is the way many a singer will warm up, tune up the voice. TUNE-UPS, though are also [Car maintenance requirements]. Benzoyl peroxide treats ACNE; ACME is [Wile E. Coyote's favorite catalogue company. IGNITES is a word for [Sets ablaze]; when something's [Going out, as a fire], it's DYING.
I liked the misdirection of [Stuff in blue books?] for SMUT. And you thought this was a reference to your college EXAM booklet. Then again, maybe the stuff in your exam books was smut... (You know—for your History of Porn class...) STIR is but one of the many great words for another great word, [Hoosegow]. Clink, pokey, cooler, coop, jug, can. Colorful language for a place where "grey" is the new everything, and the only kind of companionship might be a CHIA PET...
Alan Arbesfeld's' New York Times crossword
Okay! I'm only 12 hours behind schedule. Why, I'll be caught up in no time. Maybe.
Eh, I don't love this puzzle. The theme entries are five phrases that begin with the words TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN, which apparently is a a line associated with WOODY /ALLEN. First, I do not like Woody Allen. Second, never would've thought he was connected to that line. Two non-theme answers are stacked with the first and last theme answers and are the same length, which is not optimal. And then there are a zillion two-word answers littering the grid, along with a three-word, 9-letter phrase clued as a partial. Two short answers (TONY, EDIE Falco) are tied to THE SOPRANOS, but why? The THE is part of the Woody Allen theme. It's distracting to shift the focus to The Sopranos.
The glut of two-word answers includes SIC 'EM crossing SIT ON and IN AWE, SAW IN, partial Q AS, I'LL DRY, and I LIED. None is particularly juicy.
As for the theme entries themselves, I like THE SOPRANOS, MONEY LAUNDERING, and AND I LOVE HER, but TAKE PLACE is flat and RUN SCARED, well, I don't like it as much as those others.
I'm short on time this morning too, so...moving on!
Donna Levin's Los Angeles Times crossword
Lovely early-week puzzle from Donna. DRIVE at 68A ties everything together: The four longest Across answers begin with "___ drive" words. FLASH IN THE PAN, SEX EDUCATION, LINE ITEM VETO, and TEST BAN TREATY point towards the lively "drive" phrases flash drive (the itty bitty USB gadget that's so handy for transporting files, and that holds a gazillion more bytes than diskettes ever did), sex drive (hey-o!), line drive (baseball term), and test drive (we fell in love with our 9.5-year-old VW on the test drive when it took a sharp curve fast).
Highlights in the fill include ROUND TRIP ([There and back]), MOON RIVER ([Song with the lyric "I'm crossing you in style"]), VISHNU ([Four-armed Hindu deity]), and HIPSTER ([cool cat]). Overall, smooth stuff.
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Home Slice"
Matt's theme is bread puns:
• 17A. [Bready agreement?] is YOU GOT THAT WHITE ("you got that right"). Except there's no inherent "agreement" in YOU GOT THAT WHITE. That's merely identifying that the white bread has been gotten. How about clueing this as a [Wonder lover's question?]?
• 32A. [Bready folk singing group?] is PITA, PAUL AND MARY (Peter, Paul and Mary). Cute.
• 42A. [Bready magic act?] clues SIEGFRIED AND RYE (Siegfriend and Roy). Cute.
• 60A. [Bready phrase after a double take?] is HEY, WHEAT A MINUTE ('hey, wait a minute"). This one has no surface sense at all. Boo!
Highlights:
• TAX DOLLARS are clued via [They're "at work" when talking about public projects]. I am most appreciative of the economic stimulus road resurfacing. My car is grateful for smooth roads replacing horribly pot-holed streets.
• ERIC BLAIR is the [Author who went by the pseudonym George Orwell].
• THE PLAYER is that [1992 Robert Altman satire of Hollywood execs].
• GRUB and [Vittles] have the same variety of slangy vibe to them.
Mystery TV answer #1 (because my son's too old for preschooler TV shows): LAN is clued ["Ni Hao, Kai-___" (Nickelodeon cartoon)]. I know the "local area network" sort of LAN, but needed every crossing for this one.
Mystery TV answer #2 (but inferrable): "I PIE" is the ["Good Eats" episode title where Alton Brown discusses lemon meringue]. I like Alton Brown's goofy-yet-practical sensibility.
November 02, 2009
Tuesday, 11/3/09
NYT 4:00
Jonesin' 3:40
LAT 3:04
CS untimed
Barry Boone's New York Times crossword
Chills + malaise + quote theme = "meh." I guess it's a timely electoral theme for New Yorkers, but nobody's going to the polls in Chicago so politics are not much on my mind. It's a quote by MARIO / CUOMO: "YOU CAMPAIGN IN / POETRY. YOU / GOVERN IN PROSE."
One clue really jumped out at me. A couple weeks ago on the Cruciverb-L list, there was a heated discussion regarding nurses, their roles, the way they're clued in crosswords, and whether they have a valid complaint when they don't like a NURSE clue. Well! NURSE is clued as [Surgeon's assistant]. I guess that puts Will Shortz squarely in the camp of nurses = assistants to doctors, though a couple doctors I talked to accord nurses a considerably higher standing.
Lots of longer fill here, balanced by lots of 3-letter answers. Highlights:
• KWANZAA is a [December celebration] that jacks up the grid's interest level with a K, Z, and final double A.
• SNEEZED gets a trivia clue: [What Fred Ott did in the first movie to be copyrighted].
Was 2D: [Flu fighters: Abbr.] supposed to be a tricky clue leading you to enter the incorrect (but technically far more correct) answer, CDC? The AMA's members may treat people with the flu, but the AMA itself, is it doing much on this issue? I haven't heard of anything.
I feel like I haven't seen RAREE in a puzzle in years, though it used to be more commonplace. The clue is [___ show (carnival attraction)]. Dictionary says archaic: "a form of entertainment, esp. one carried in a box, such as a peep show."
Updated Tuesday morning:
Doug Peterson's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Search Party"—Janie's review
The theme of Doug's puzzle today is a pretty straightforward event. The last part of each theme-name or -phrase is also a word that's synonymous with the word search. A choice was apparently made to clue each of the theme entries in a straightforward way as well. Nuthin' twisty goin' on there–which does make this a good puzzle for newbies, or even solvers with more experience who need a "comfort solve" from a master-constructor. What can I say? There's a lot of terrific non-theme fill/cluing, so (as an example) "I'LL BUY THAT" ["Sounds good to me"]. To get the ball rolling, the theme-fill consists of:
•17A. BONNIE HUNT [Daytime talk show host]. Since 2008.
•27A. TRIVIAL PURSUIT [Game in which players collect wedges]. Never played the game, never knew about the wedges. That's a piece of trivia to tuck away.
•47A. CUTS TO THE CHASE [Makes one's points without delay]. This is my fave of the theme fill as it's both active and concise.
•61A. JONNY QUEST [Animated TV adventure series of the '60s]. Nupe. Never heard of it. But with both a "J" and a "Q," what's not to love? And yes, another piece of trivia to tuck away.
More interesting (for my money...) is the aforementioned non-theme fill/cluing. There's the sequential "Down" pair, for starters, opposites GET WORSE [Take a downturn] and SHORE UP [Bolster]. Then, there are those KOPS or ["Keystone" lawmen], who could always be counted on to be part of a MELEE [Free for all]—especially when on a hunt, in pursuit, on a chase or a quest. Did they ever use HOUNDS [Hunting dogs] when trying to nab the PERP [Criminal in copspeak]? I kan't rekall... STEALTH [Cat burglar's asset], however, was never their strong suit. Oh, and from the same early era of film-making, there's The Little Tramp and his CANE [Prop for Chaplin] (who made his first appearance in a Keystone comedy).
[Soup can artist] Andy WARHOL also spoke of everyone's having their "15 minutes of fame." Happily, SARAH [Jazz singer Vaughan] shared considerably more than that with us. I suppose it's all a matter of taste (which is so very subjective) and even context as to whether that's too much time or not enough where the excellent "slacker" actor SETH [Rogen of "Knocked Up"], ARLO [Folk's Guthrie] or [Rock band Mötley ___ ] CRUE are concerned...
HIGH SIERRA [Bogart/Lupino film of 1941] is the one in which Bogart spoke the line: "I wouldn't give you two cents for a dame without a temper." Why does that make me smile so?
But to end on a genuinely "sweet" note, we get "chocolate x 2" today with Roald DAHL [Wonka's creator] (Willie Wonka being the candy-maker in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), and (bane of mothers/delight of dentists everywhere) [Count] CHOCULA [(Cereal brand)], making every day Halloween.
David Cromer's Los Angeles Times crossword
The theme is THE OUTER LIMITS, and the other three theme entries have outer "limits": BORDER TERRIERS, MARGIN ACCOUNTS, and FRINGE BENEFITS. I think. Or they just begin with words that mean "limit." Usually an "outer" theme will break up a word more than just plunking an S at the end.
For more on this puzzle, I refer you to PuzzleGirl's L.A. Crossword Confidential post.
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Uh-Oh, It's Magic"
I don't quite get this theme. 1A/17A spell out ANY / CARD FROM THE DECK—[what you're instructed to pick]. What magician is going to use those words, "Pick any card from the deck"? It's "Pick a card, any card" in standard parlance. SHUFFLE SHUFFLE is the [Sound effect now heard after putting it back]. Wait, SHUFFLE isn't a sound at all. "IS THIS YOUR CARD?" is the [Question I hope to be correct]. Wait, it's not that the question should be correct. The answer to the question should be affirmative. "HOW DID YOU DO THAT?!?" is the [Response I'm really hoping to get], but "BOO!" is the [Response that, odds are, I'm probably going to get]. Wait, who boos someone if they successfully pull out the right card? Or is the implication that the person doing the card trick has completely failed to pull it off? Hmph.
Time to do some editing before the virus returns me to the sofa.
October 26, 2009
Tuesday, 10/27/09
Jonesin' 3:45
NYT 2:58
LAT 2:48
CS untimed
Chuck Deodene's New York Times crossword
This constructor has a weird pattern of NYT bylines. Several puzzles a year through the '90s, one in 2001, two in fall '07, and now two in the second half of this month. If he's cranking out more puzzles like today's, then dang it, the flow should keep going now. The theme is the old-fashioned cheer, the components of which I know more from crossword fill than from any real-life cheerleading: "Rah, rah, sis-boom-bah!" Has this phrase been exclaimed unironically in the last 30 years? Doubtful. But that goofy little phrase pops up in consecutive circled squares in various lively answers.
• 17A. The first RAH is in TETRAHEDRON, a [Solid with four triangular faces]. It's a pyramid but with a triangular base rather than the square one seen in Egypt.
• 25A. The [Chief of staff in the Obama White House] is RAHM EMANUEL, with RAH #2. Rahm's kids go to school near me. I'll bet my internist knows him because her kids go to the same school.
• 35A. GENESIS is the [Start of the Bible]. SIS!
• 37A. The BOOMERS are the [Post-WW II demographic, informally]. BOOM!
• 49A. A [High muck-a-muck] is a GRAND POO-BAH. I prefer other spellings: muckety-muck and pooh-bah. The cheer ends with a non-Scroogean BAH. (See also 46D: [Jacob whose ghost appears to Scrooge], MARLEY.)
• 57A. CHEERLEADER ties it all together as the [Shouter of this puzzle's circled sounds].
I'm fond of any number of answers in the fill. My top 10:
• 47D. BOTERO! [Fernando ___, painter of plump figures], is also a sculptor. That's his work at the Besthoff Sculpture Garden in New Orleans. We love us some Botero. We use "Boteri" as the plural of "Botero artwork."
• 34D. LOWBALL is [Like an offer that's under actual value.
• 29D. The DEEP END is the [Part of a pool for diving].
• 50D. "PSHAW!" means ["Nonsense!"].
• 31A. TIPSY is clued as [Midway between sober and drunk]. The word is as fun as the feeling.
• 22D. [Riddles] are ENIGMAS.
• 37D/47A. How can I resist the BLOB/BOOB combo? One is a [1958 sci-fi classic, with "The"] and the other is an [Idiot].
• 12D. We've seen ITUNES in the puzzle plenty in recent years, but I like the [Online music mart] clue because it somehow made me think of K-Tel.
• 8D. Mmm, MORSEL. Tasty [Tiny bit to eat]. I refer, of course, to Trader Joe's miniature peanut butter cups, about twice the size of a regular chocolate chip.
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "2 Funny: i'z in ur crosswurd, makin u solv"
The title evokes LOLcats because the theme entries have an LOL inserted into them. Some people think LOLcats are dumb. Some people don't understand the appeal at all. And some of us like them and may even speak in LOLcats from time to time. "Ur doin it rong!" we say here at home. "O hai," we say. Mind you, there is no actual LOLcats-like content in this puzzle, just the intrusive LOLs:
• 18A. "Grade A" becomes GRADE LOLA, or [Rate Jennifer Lopez's newest alter ego?]. I'm sorry, did she come up with something post-"Jenny from the block"? I wasn't aware. Did you know that "lola" is a Filipino word for "grandma"? My son loves his lola and lolo.
• 24A. Today is "CALL LOLITA' DAY, or [Time to phone your nearest Nabokov character]. "Call it a day" means to stop doing something for the day.
• 38A. [Got lazy for the sake of worship?] clues LOLLED TO BELIEVE ("led to believe"). Nice crossing this with BLESSED BE, or [Wiccan salutation].
• 49A, 59A. [Kojak's bootleg British porn title?] might be SEX, LOLLIES, AND VIDEOTAPE. We call 'em suckers or lollipops on this side of the ocean.
Holy cats! There's a new ELON clue! 69A is clued [Actor Gold of the Fox series "Stacked"]. Oh, wait—that's the Pamela Anderson bookstore show that lasted less than one season. ELON Gold is also a comedian and writer, but he needs to get cracking if he's going to be a viable alternative to the North Carolina university in our crosswords.
Gotta love the IG NOBEL Prizes, the 26D: [Yearly parody prize awarded at Harvard]. This year's winners are a good batch, particularly the Physics team who explained why pregnant women do not tip over.
Fred Jackson III's Los Angeles Times crossword
Alas, the grid is not wide enough to accommodate BEI MIR BIST DO SCHÖN, just four other beginning with words (or a syllable, in one instance) that sound like BEI:
• 20A. BY THE SAME TOKEN means [Furthermore]. Who has these tokens? Anyone? Curious phrase. Completely familiar, but odd now that I'm thinking about it.
• 33A. BYE BYE BIRDIE is the [1961 Tony-winning musical inspired by Elvis being drafted]. The hair from his in-the-army-now haircut just sold at auction for 15 grand.
• 43A. The BICENTENNIAL was the [7/4/1976 celebration]. I turned 10 that summer, and I loved my red, white, and blue shorts and halter top outfit. I do not currently own any outfits that evoke the U.S. flag.
• 59A. "BUY NOW, PAY LATER" is a [Retail store financing come-on].
This is an easy enough puzzle, but I got off to a need-the-crossings start with 1-Across. The [One-person boat] isn't a KAYAK? No, it's a SKIFF. I don't think I knew skiffs were one-person boats. Maybe because they aren't strictly that—c.f. Three Men in a Boat. Hmm.
Gotta love punctuation. The COMMA is 8D: [Cause for a pause].
34D: [Netanyahu of Israel, familiarly] clues BIBI, Benjamin Netanyahu's nickname. Remember the Letterman Top Ten list of ways to mispronounce "Bibi Netanyahu" back on June 4, 1996? My favorites were Yahu Netanbibi, Betty Needs a Yoo-Hoo, and Boutros Boutros Yahu.
Updated Tuesday morning:
Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Who Needs Friends?"—Janie's review
Today we have a four-part Klahn quip-puzzle—by way of none other than Paul Newman. Bob's title is a twist on the old (rhetorical-type) query, "With friends like you, who needs enemies?" The Newman rejoinder?
• 17A. IF YOU DON'T
• 30A. HAVE ENEMIES,
• 48A. YOU DON'T HAVE
• 63A. CHARACTER.
Newman sure had character, but it's hard for me to imagine that he had enemies. (Still, I do know what he's talking about; I suspect he'd have said the same thing about wrinkles...)
And this puzzle (like all the good ones) has character, too, in the sense of personality—which it gets from its vivid cluing and fill. I particularly like the phrasal (and phrase) combos: WEIGH IN [Add one's two cents], SWEAR AT [Shower curses on], "I MEAN IT!" ["All kidding aside!"], "IT'S EASY!" ["Piece of cake!"], and TAKE A NAP [Recharge one's batteries].
Bob's also provided some sweet sequential clue pairs: the paradoxically worded [It'll fly if it's ironclad] for ALIBI and [It flies on Saturdays only in emergencies] for Israeli airline EL AL; and the delightful double-bill [Where Bill met Hillary] for YALE and [Bill with Hamilton] for TEN.
Basketball fans probably got NBA [Where the Suns might beat the Heat (abbr.)] without too much difficulty, but how about [Hoop skirts?]? This is one terrific clue for NETS and gave me a fine "AHA!" For SNL fans, there's both TINA FEY and Will FERRELL; and for those more inclined to classic writers there's CONGREVE ["Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast" poet William] and Anton CHEKHOV [Russian master of the modern short story]. Both of these gents, btw, are also renowned for their contributions to dramatic literature as well. (A PLAY is a [Thing onstage], of course, but today the correct fill is PROP.) Oh—and on the subject of music, there's SHANIA ["I'm Gonna Getcha Good!" singer Twain] and "ADIA" [Top-five Sarah McLachlan hit...].
The grid, if you didn't notice is distinguished by those triple columns of sevens in each of the four corners, where we encounter such fill as ELF-LIKE, BEST BET, SYMPTOM and HORRIFY.
Finally, my fave clue/fill combos today include:
• ["South Park" kid with a two-part head]/IKE;
• [Spots for shots]/ARM;
• [Boobs, boors, and bozos]/OAFS; and
• [Past prince, perhaps]/FROG.
October 19, 2009
Tuesday, 10/20/09
Jonesin' 5:46
NYT 2:57
LAT 2:36
CS untimed
Gary Cee's New York Times crossword
Wouldn't it be great if some of Gary Cee's relatives became wildly famous? Finally, constructors could clue CEE as something other than the pretty-much-only-in-crosswords spelled-out form of the letter C. Then we need to work on finding the Ess family and spurring them to greatness.
The theme is explained by SHIFT GEARS: In each of the other four theme entries, the letters of GEARS are scrambled up into non-words that are buried within longer phrases. SHIFTing GEARS could also mean that each letter would shift over one space, but that's not what happens here. The [View from the Oval Office] is the ROSE GARDEN. Hey, look! It's Popeye creator E.C. Segar, lurking on the White House lawn! CHIVAS REGAL (in which the final A could be circled instead of the other A) is a [Premium Scotch whiskey] brand. OLD-TIMERS GAME is an [Event featuring sports stars of yesteryear]; I'll take the puzzle's word for it that this is an actual thing. The final scramble is in SAUSAGE ROLL, or [Pastry sold at pizzerias].
What I liked:
• 50D. TOFFEE gets a weird clue: [Chewy coating for an apple]. Naw, that's caramel. TOFFEE is delightful, but I haven't ever seen a toffee apple. If I did, mind you, I would pay good money for it. Num. Toffeeeee.
• 15A. [Dame who's a hoot] is Dame EDNA Everage. The most hoot-associated of all the EDNAs who show up in crosswords, for sure.
• The combination of the CAT ([Litter box visitor]) and FETAL ([Like an unborn baby's position]) reminds me of these little fetuses made of polyfleece and stuffed with catnip.
• 12D. Nobody loves a plural first name answer, but CARLAS goes au courant when clued as [France's Bruni-Sarkozy and others].
• 22D. The ORANGE is a [Tropicana fruit]. Technically, I'm more of a Copacabana girl.
I wasn't so fond of the abbreviations (ORIG. DEPS., Athens airport code ATH, ASST. D.A., LT. GEN.) and partials (A BITE, A PAR, ARE UP) but overall, a solid Tuesday presentation.
Updated Tuesday morning:
Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy/Washington Post Puzzle, "Foodies"—Janie's review
Well this was one surprisingly odd solve. And I'm not sure I mean that in the kindest possible way. Martin's finely crafted puzzles ordinarily delight me; today's left me confounded. The theme is very straight-forward: food last-names of four high-profile types from different walks of life. They are:
• 17A. CONDOLEEZZA RICE [She preceded Hillary Clinton]. A great and scrabbly name, to be sure—15 letters, too. But she appeared as theme fill just less than two weeks ago (also clued in connection with H.C.), which kinda diminishes the impact of her appearance today. Sorry, Condi...
• 24A. KEVIN BACON ["Loverboy" star]. Star and director. A project the whole family looks to have been involved with. Until today, never heard of it...
• 46A. HALLE BERRY ["Catwoman" star].
• 59A. "MEADOWLARK" LEMON [Basketball's "Clown Prince"]. He was new to me, too, but not the Harlem Globetrotters, whom he played for.
"What's her problem? What's wrong with the theme?" Everybody's reasonably well-known; and yes, all of the surnames are foods—but not in any way that adds coherence to the theme as a whole. Or in any combination that sounds palatable. I kept hoping for something that would tie these disparate ingredients together, and did have a modicum of success finding recipes combining rice and bacon, e.g., or rice and lemon, or wheatberry, rice and lemon. But it shouldn't take a scavenger hunt to try to synthesize the elements of the theme. So that's my problem.
That said, I did appreciate the amount of (what I see as) theme-related bonus fill. In a puzzle about food, we get [Twinge], which takes us to PANG, which leads me to think of "hunger pang." What does a hungry person do to attend to that pang? In an ideal world, s/he [Chows down]/EATS. Perhaps some BRIE [French cheese]—and shares with an AMIE [French friend]. [Then there's MAPLE clued as [Syrup flavor], conjuring up blueberry pancakes topped with maple syrup. Meadowlark Lemon comes into play once again, this time as a [Drink garnish], or PEEL. And how is all of this served up? Why, it's [Easy ___ ] AS PIE (not to be confused with AS PER [In accordance with]).
I think I'd have preferred seeing "THE SWAN" (a tv show I'd never heard of...) clued in connection with mythology's Leda or the Molnar play rather than the poorly-rated [Fox reality TV series of 2004], which one viewer described as "a shrieking abomination of a show." Well, I suppose the pairing does have some kitsch value...
Several clue/fill combos I did like include: [Winter coat?]/SNOW (for the wordplay), [Poise]/APLOMB (because aplomb is a great word, being tied in as it is with plummet and plumb line), and [Brought forth, as a memory]/EVOKED (this combo has a nice, poetic feel). The puzzle isn't without its merits. The theme as executed today, however, simply isn't not one of them. Imoo, of course.
Bruce Venzke's Los Angeles Times crossword
Did you ever notice that the entry **TSUP can be completed with two permutations of the same pair of letters? I filled in CATSUP before seeing the clue, [Acts bratty], indicating ACTS UP.
The theme entries are clued with [Suffering writer's block]: If you are COMING UP EMPTY, FRESH OUT OF IDEAS, and DRAWING A BLANK, your creative endeavors may not be progressing well. These woes can strike crossword bloggers, too. A few highlights:
• ARMY MULE is a [Military mascot]. Like its fellow lively 8s TOP-NOTCH and EATS DIRT (and the less exciting INDEBTED), ARMY MULE hooks two theme entries together.
• 10-Down PASTA is a [Carbo-loader's choice] and Dr. ATKINS was the [Diet guru who wouldn't have recommended 10-Down]. Mmm, carbs.
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Mixed Reviews"
Was this puzzle uncommonly tough for a Jonesin' or was I just sleepy last night when I solved it? I was too tired to blog the crossword by the time I finished it. The theme is movie titles clued by their anagrams, in the guise of what a reviewer might've said. I'm fond of anagrams, but when the answers aren't familiar and the clues don't give much away (other than which letters are in the answer, in some order), it's tough. I've heard of 2.5 out of the five movies:
• 17A. I know there've been a few Madea movies by Tyler Perry, but MADEA GOES TO JAIL? Not ringing a bell. The clue is [Review #1: "I, a male? A good jest."]. The MADEA part was signaled by the clue (Madea is Tyler Perry in drag), but the JAIL portion? I had no idea.
• 23A. [Review #2: "Filmy ennui, sir."] clues MY LIFE IN RUINS. No idea what this movie is.
• 36A. [Review #3: "O, burn!"] clues BRUNO, this year's Sacha Baron Cohen movie.
• 43A. ["Review #4: 'Dat the 'S.N.L.' fool?"] points towards the Will Ferrell (ex-SNLer) movie, LAND OF THE LOST
• 53A. [Review #5: "Re-perks, eyes mist"] relays zero information about the movie. Lemme look up MY SISTER'S KEEPER. Oh, it's that one. Tearjerker about a girl conceived to serve as a tissue donor for her ill sister. OK, the clue does provide salient information. The title made me think it was a horror movie for some reason.
I see a couple dictionaries telling me that blowsy and blowzy work for 39D: [Unkempt], but BLOUSY...isn't that a casual word describing anything that blouses out like a blouse?
I knew 27D: [___-1 ("Ghostbusters" vehicle)] right off the bat—my son plays the Ghostbusters video game and tells me about ECTO-1.
Not a fan of the answer Y KEY. 24D is clued [You can't type "you" without it]. The Y KEY? Boo! I don't want to see 25 other _KEY answers popping up in crosswords.
Took me a while to summon up CLORETS, the 40D: [Breath mints brand since 1951]. No wonder: Wikipedia tells me "It is widely available in South America, the Middle East and South East Asia. The largest markets for Clorets are in Mexico, Thailand, Egypt and Japan." I haven't seen CLORETS in years.
October 13, 2009
Wednesday, 10/14/09
BEQ 6:48
Onion 3:46
NYT 3:20
CS untimed (J)/2:58 (A)
LAT 2:58
Richard Silvestri's New York Times crossword
My, that's an unusual theme. The central entry, 36A: PUBLIC EDUCATION, is [What this puzzle's four missing clues spell, in order]. The phrase splits up as follows:
• PUB is 20A: BRITISH ALE HOUSE.
• LICE are 25A: COOTIES.
• DUCAT is 46A: OLD COIN.
• And ION is 52A: CHARGED PARTICLE.
Three quarters of those are the sorts of not exactly "in the language" terms you'd expect to see in a clue, not the grid. That sort of theme tends to get on my nerves. Did you like the surprise of having the theme come together at the end, or was the payoff not quite worth it?
Hey, look! Here's DIDO again, this time in the singular: 33D: [Founder and first queen of Carthage]. In the category of "fill that doesn't make the highlights reel," we have these:
• 9A. MESTA is clued as [Perle who inspired "Call Me Madam"]. Old-school crosswordese, Proper Nouns Department.
• 15A. A curvy ESS is a [Slalom section]. Any skiers call it that in the three-letter version?
• 61A. ENROL, or [Sign up], is the nonstandard British spelling for "enroll." Some dictionary somewhere must include this as a kosher American spelling, or there'd be a geographical tag in the clue.
• 2D. ALAR the [Banned apple spray] may have vanished from the headlines years ago, but I guess this is deemed a better clue than the old crosswordese [Wing-shaped].
• 22D. Sure, computers are crucial in the modern world. But [Univac's predecessor] ENIAC—how many non-crossworders know that one?
• 29D. [Italian diminutive ending] clues INI. I'd rather have a pasta-suffix clue because INA is also an Italian diminutive ending.
• 32D. Ah, the ADZ(e), our favorite [Wood-smoothing tool].
• 46D. An ONAGER is a [Wild ass]. Bonus point for being an anagram of Orange.
• 51D. APACE means fast or [On the double]. I actually use this word in speech because I am that much of a crossword geek.
The process of filling in the theme answers was heavily reliant on the crossings, which, luckily, had nothing particularly tough, provided that you've been doing crosswords enough to know most of those answers. Also, hooray for PUBLIC EDUCATION! My son just asked me today why people have to pay taxes. Free public education was one of the things I mentioned.
Updated Wednesday morning:
Patrick Blindauer's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Special K"—Janie's review
This is a very "special K" indeed. This is the "K" that is added to the last word of a familiar phrase, following its final "R" sound. As a f'rinstance, if the last word were poor—or even pour or pore—the new word would be pork. Patrick gets a lot of (s)mileage out of his choices, and I sure do love the way:
• The Fab Four, as the Beatles were long-ago dubbed, becomes THE FAB FORK at 16A [A marvy utensil?].
• Grocery store turns into GROCERY STORK at 27A [Bird that brings baby broccoli?]. This is truly inspired silliness and I can't say enough good about it. I mean, think about it!
• The Way We Were cunningly morphs into THE WAY WE WORK at 46A [Name of a news special on labor policy?]. This one is especially cagey because of the way that first "e" in were changes to an "o" while the sound stays the same. This one is only an eye-rhyme with its theme-mates. The other three are true rhymes.
• Garage door ends up as GARAGE DORK at 62A [Body shop loser]. I mean this as a compliment when I say that the concept here is yet another LULU [Wowser]. (Oh, and look—the dork's cousins get representation today, too: the OAFS [Chowderheads].)
Happily, there's lots of fine fill and cluing throughout the puzzle as well. The high spots for me include:
• A [Show interrupter] is a TV AD. Another word for ad is spot. So it's most fitting that the very next clue is [Spot announcement]. Only this time Spot names a dog, so the correct fill is "ARF!"
• The pair of "O"s in [Designer Chanel] COCO at the West is nicely balanced by those in SOLO [Millennium Falcon pilot in "Star Wars"] in the East. I also like the way LULU, down in the SW is balanced in the SE by GIGI [Best Picture of 1958].
• In the pre-Tony Awards year of 1938, Thornton Wilder's OUR TOWN [Play narrated by a stage manager] won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. In 2008, Tracy Letts's ["August] OSAGE [County"...] was honored also with the Pulitzer—as well as many Tony Awards, including the one for Best Play. Among other themes, both pieces dramatize family dynamics. You'd have to go pretty far to find two more disparate pictures, the former being a model of temperance and (hang-on-to-your-hankies) harmony, the latter one of discord and (hang-on-to-your-hats) dysfunction. [Old enough], btw, is OF AGE, and not OFAGE.
• CRIES WOLF [Gives a false alarm] livens up the grid, though while it packs a cerebral punch, does not elicit an "OUCH!" [Punch response].
• Finally, I like the way [Bollywood film outfit] refers not to the group of people making a movie, but to an article of clothing from the costume department—a SARI.
Charles Barasch's Los Angeles Times crossword
(Post adapted from my L.A. Crossword Confidential post.) The theme can be described as "76 Trombones – 73 Trombones = 3 Trombones"—Three phrases that have nothing to do with musical instruments are clued as if they do. It's a little arbitrary to make the clues all about trombones rather than other instruments, but that provides some thematic unity—plus, my husband was a trombonist in high school.
Theme answers:
• 20A: [Big Southwestern trombones?] a could be TEXAS LONGHORNS. The Longhorns are both a Texas college sports team and a breed of cattle (and beetles!). I was going to include a photo of the Asian long-horned beetles that pose a threat to American trees, but they were too creepy-looking and gave me the willies.
• 37A: [Refined trombones?] are POLISHED BRASS. Horns are brass instruments, which, like anything brass, likes a good polishing. I'm thinking this answer isn't quite an in-the-language phrase like the crisp TEXAS LONGHORNS is.
• 54A: [Continuously-playing trombones?] are SUSTAINED WINDS. You could argue that this isn't an in-the-language term either, but you would be shouted down by Weather Channel junkies who like to watch hurricane coverage. Hurricane season's almost over—hooray for fewer bad storms than in recent years. But the Weather Channel's been more boring this summer.
So, just three theme entries today. Luckily, the constructor capitalized on that by including some fun words, 20 answers in the 6- to 8-letter range, and only a couple clunkers. I'll put the 7-letter partial phrase ON EARTH (22D: Lord's Prayer words following "Thy will be done") in the latter category, along with the seldom seen partial 4D: EEK A "__ mouse!". Oh, and SHES, clued as 33D: Women. Any of you ever use the plural SHES? No? I thought not.
And now for the good stuff:
• 41A: [Imitation] is synonymous with ERSATZ). It's got a Z and it's fun to say.
• 45A: [Musical beat] is RHYTHM. It took me years to learn how to spell this right. Gotta love a word with a Y and five consonants.
• 3D: [Loud auto honker of yore] is a KLAXON. Ai-OOO-gah! This "electric horn or a similar loud warning device" takes its name from the company that manufactured it in the early 20th century. Cool word.
• 36D: LAZY IS [Slow-moving, as a river]. That's a lovely clue for LAZY.
• 44D: QUARTZ is a [Crystalline mineral]. I like this because (1) I like me a little geology, (2) it comes in pretty colors, and (3) a Q! and a Z! And now I'm thinking about quarts of milk, which took me to that Simpsons episode where mosbter Fat Tony has been selling rat milk to the schools and Mayor Quimby declares, "You promised me dog or better." That line? It never gets old.
Matt Jones's Onion A.V. Club crossword
Standard newspaper crosswords shy away from cluing STD in its "sexually transmitted disease" sense. They also don't go with the Doctor of Sacred Theology degree or "subscriber trunk dialing" (a British term), since the innocuous "std." is the abbreviation for "standard." The alt-weekly puzzles do go with the VD type of STD, except not in this puzzle. Here, STD ties together the entire theme (phrases with S.T.D. initials), but its clue is 1: [What each of the starred clues has, in a way]. Across the middle of this grid with left/right symmetry, we have "SHAKE THIS DISEASE," a [Hit Depeche Mode single of 1985] that does not ring a bell at all for me. The other three theme entries intersect this one. 21D is STACK THE DECK, 26D is SAVE THE DATE, and 23D is SCARE TO DEATH—all very much in the language.
I'm not particularly fond of the theme, except for its including of those three solid, familiar phrases. Better are the 18 fill answers ranging from 6 to 11 letters in length. Among my favorites is [Kmart founder S.S.] KRESGE because shopping at Kresge's and having a grilled cheese at the lunch counter was part of my childhood. B-DAYS are [Times to blow out candles, slangily]. ETHIOPIA is a [Horn of Africa nation]. GRAHAM FLOUR is a fairly dry answer, but we've been having s'mores every day at my house; yum! MISSED gets a solid and contemporary clue: [Like some calls that go to voicemail].
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Wednesday"
My three favorite answers are the ones Brendan says were the seed entries: MOM JEANS, BIG BOX STORE, and CAPTCHA. I use CAPTCHA to leave comments at Brendan's blog and elsewhere, and I shop at some BIG BOX STOREs, but I do not wear MOM JEANS. No, ma'am. No high waists here.
I got MAJOR ARCANA pretty easily, but was otherwise completely stymied in the lower left corner. Finally I gave up and Googled Odin's second son [...who was killed with a piece of mistletoe] to get the first two letters of BALDUR, and then everything else fell. Not a fan of SEA-GIRT, NOL {[___-pros (legal discontinuation)]}, and ACTS SAD. My god, Montreal is an island?!? Did not know that. And who is designer TRINA Turk? She doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. She designs some jumpsuits, which are the #1 fugly fashion sign of the apocalypse.
Overall, the good stuff far outweighed the bad, so I gave this a rating of 4 stars (out of 5) on Brendan's leaderboard.
October 12, 2009
Tuesday, 10/13/09
Jonesin' 3:46
NYT 3:29
LAT 2:50
CS untimed
Sharon Delorme's New York Times crossword
Ha! This is a fun theme. I hardly paid any attention to it as I hopscotched my way through the grid, which I think actually slowed me down today because I didn't finish filling in LITTLE JOHN (17A: [Member of Sherwood Forest's "Merry Band"]) until nearly the end, and sort of had it in my head that HEIR TO THE THRONE (35A: [Prince Charles, beginning in 1952]) was a king in a deck of cards, tying to the ROYAL FLUSH at 58A ([Poker player's dream, yadda yadda]). But it's flush toilets we need, not poker: LITTLE JOHN, LETTERHEAD (25A: [Company stationery]), HEIR TO THE THRONE, and SARDINE CAN (50A: [Cramped spot, slangily]) all end with slang terms for the potty. Does this theme pass the breakfast test? Sure! I bet a lot of people start the crossword over breakfast and cart it along to the loo when the urge strikes. I'm feeling uncomfortable that the word "cramped" is in one of the theme clues, though.
You know why else this felt like a Wednesday puzzle to me? All the wrong turns I took. I blanked on 26D: ["Hamlet" soliloquy starter] when the space had 7 letters, but I was looking at the space for 15D. Then I had NOTHING instead of NOT A BIT for 28D: [Opposite of everything], and that erroneous H made 41A: [Blackmailer's evidence] look like PHOTO rather than TAPES. And then there were two wrong answers for 54A: [Fire up]—in lieu of EXCITE, I went through IGNITE and INCITE.
Favorite things:
• 65A. [Woad and anil, for two] are DYES. Woad is a word that dates back to Old English; it's the blue dye seen on the Scots warriors in Braveheart, anachronistically. First learned about woad from my medievalist English prof at Carleton.
• 20A. Sports trivia: The Houston ASTROS were the [First pro team to play on artificial turf]. They don't call it Astroturf for nothing.
• 64A. [Elzie ___, Popeye's creator] SEGAR was better known as E.C. Segar. I just blogged about him last week in the L.A. Crossword Confidential "Crosswordese 101" lesson.
• 5D. SALT is clued as a [Margarita go-with]. Me, I've got a sweet tooth so I like a strawberry margarita better than a lime one. In the last year, I've been asked multiple times if I want salt on the rim of that strawberry margarita. That is all kinds of wrongness there. It's sugar or nothing. Salt? With berries?
• 6D. G.I. JOES is a good answer, but [Action figures for boys] is a kinda sexist clue, isn't it? Either call it a doll mostly used by boys or an action figure for no specified audience.
• 7D. A POST is clued as [Words after "deaf as" or "dumb as"]. That reminds me—if you'd like to sponsor me in the Walk4Hearing, benefiting the Hearing Loss Association of America, see here. (Thanks for listening!)
• 9D. [Cattail's locale] is a MARSH. That takes me back to childhood family outings to the marsh.
• 47D. A CANARY is [One who sings to the cops]. Good old-timey slang.
• 51D. [Pranks] are DIDOS. The other day, someone left a "Dido" comment on my cousin's Facebook note. I realized the person meant "ditto." I told my husband about it and he said, "So that's what they meant!" He's been seeing that in work e-mails and it hadn't occurred to him that "ditto" was so hard to spell. Dido!
Thanks, Ms. Delorme, for the unexpected fun of a potty-mouthed theme.
Updated Tuesday morning:
Paula Gamache's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Jay Walking"—Janie's review
This puzzle is neither a shout-out to Leno nor is it in any way associated with the traffic violation that may get you a ticket in Los Angeles. Instead, in the hands of our witty constructor, the letter "J" was last seen walking away from four familiar phrases, leaving us with four familiar sounding yet definitely altered phrases that also happen to be very funny.
• 17A. The phrase "cheek by jowl" means "very close together." The phrase CHEEK BY OWL means [Back talk from a hooter?]. This is my fave (and the others are hardly shabby!). It just conjures up a whole new meaning for "wise as an owl," more along the lines of "wise-cracking as an owl."
• 27A. I've never made a "parachute jump," but were I ever to do so, competitively, I suspect there'd be a PARACHUTE UMP [Skydiving referee] on hand. Or there'd better be! (Not to mention a paramedic.)
• 46A. and 61A. Certainly you've heard the Christmas/Holiday songs "Joy to the World" and "Jingle Bells." Paula's even thrown in an ELF, a [Seasonal helper]. But take away the "J" and whattya get? OY TO THE WORLD, the brilliantly clued [Global cry of dismay?] and INGLE BELLS, the more cheerful [Fireplace ringers?].
For all its good humor, there's a cranky undertone to this one. Someone's IRKED [Peeved]; someone has a SNIT [Hissy fit] and utters [Butler's famous last word] "DAMN." The one who's the EDGIEST [Most nervous] may be the one who really GOES APE and LOSES IT, both clued as [Flips out]. (Nice, btw, the way those last two stack up vertically.)
The [Garden buzzer] is the HONEY BEE, which produces a golden product. Said golden-product producer shares a grid line with [King with a golden touch] MIDAS.
[Spread liberally] is a past tense clue, so the correct fill is SMEARED and not SMEAR ON. And it looks like Paula just can't let go of her 9/28 puzzle, for look what we have today: C AND W [Brad Paisley's music genre, briefly]. Guess it is true that [Old] HABITS [die hard...].
And ["There it is!"], friends. "VOILÀ!"
Fred Jackson's Los Angeles Times crossword
In this fishing-themed puzzle, the four longest Across answers end with an angler's equipment, in phrases that have almost nothing to do with fishing (OFF THE HOOK does derive from fishing). The ROD is useless without the LINE, which is fed out by the REEL and has a HOOK at the end.
My favorite parts of this crossword include the long Downs, J.K. ROWLING and EDSEL FORD (together again!) and the crossing of [Dance company founder Alvin] AILEY with an ILLNESS ([The flu, for one]), or ailment.
For more on this puzzle, including a Crosswordese 101 lesson on PAUL / ANKA and "ESO Beso," see PuzzleGirl's L.A. Crossword Confidential post.
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "What Are the Odds?"
The theme entries are clued with your odds of doing various things, but I don't know that the statistics used are comparable from item to item. ASTEROID IMPACT? Your [Odds of dying because of it: 1 in anywhere from 200,000 to 500,000]. Does that mean 1/200,000 people on the earth would die if an asteroid landed here, or that the odds are 1/200,000 that an asteroid impact will happen and kill us all? The FOUR-LEAF CLOVER and SLOT MACHINE odds seem solid. I dunno about this WATER allergy afflicting 1 in 230,000,000 people—Wikipedia to the rescue! It's a skin reaction to water; I was thinking of food allergies. Then there's MILLIONAIRE: [Odds of being one: 1 in 83] doesn't specify the population in which that is true. In the U.S.? On the household level? Including home equity in net worth? You can be sure that 1 in 83 people in Africa, Asia, and South America are not dollar millionaires.
Moving along to the fill, I misread [When some studiers cram] as [When some soldiers cram], so I left it blank while waiting for the crossings to give me this military slang for mealtime. What? "Studiers"? Oh, they cram ALL NIGHT. Coolest entries: WIIMOTES, or [Nintendo controllers designed for motion], and "HOT DAMN!" (["Hoo boy, that's exciting!"]). Favorite clue: CAFFEINE is the [Cause of a crash, perhaps]; with the CA in place, I figured it had to be CAR-something.
