Onion 5:39
BEQ 4:54
Tausig 4:38
Sun 3:25
LAT 3:15
NYT 2:51
The theme in Michael Langwald's New York Times puzzle feels a decade out of date. Four theme entries begin with the words MAID INN TIE JUAN, which sounds like "made in Taiwan," which this crossword tells us is a phrase borne by a CHILD'S TOYS. Nope, those almost all say "made in China" these days. You have to look long and hard to find a toy that's not from China. The answers whose beginnings sound of "made in Taiwan" are:
This crossword boasts 10 long answers (7 to 9 letters) in the fill.
Gary Steinmehl's 15x16 Sun crossword, "On With Its Head," puts a head on top of four vertical theme entries
See the H-E-A-D that modifies the four original phrases? I've circled those letters in my grid. [Three-time Gold Glove winner Minnie] MINOSO walked past my cousin's dining room window, walking his dog, while we were having Thanksgiving dinner in November. His car has MINOSO vanity plates, and he looks good for 83.
Updated:
Sometimes ACRE gets clued as [Part of a plot], and presumably some solvers first interpret the clue as being about a scheming plot rather than a plot of land. Robert Morris's LA Times crossword plays with that by making ACRE the [Secret plot found in 17-, 26-, 44- and 55-Across]. Those four answers include words ending with A before words beginning with CRE, embedding an ACRE in each:
This theme might seem a little "so what?" or lackluster if not for the "secret plot" twist that imparts a little oomph.
Byron Walden's Onion A.V. Club crossword has SPEED DATE clued as [Encounter shared by the four celebrity couples in this puzzle]. Each of these "speed dates" uses a celeb's name as part of a pun on a specific sort of race:
Highlights: (1) SPEED DATE intersects two of the theme entries. (2) Word count's low enough to be a themeless, so there are lots of long answers here. (3) My favorite letter, Z, makes three appearances. (4) Zingy clues and fill. Why, look: here's DILDOES, clued as [Junk kept in drawers by the bed?]. Slangy HATED ON, clued as [Disparaged, slangily], is of a piece with NO YOU completing ["Oh ___ di'n't!"]. "SIC 'EM, BOY!" means ["Attack, Rex!"]. [Black-and-tan, say] doesn't mean the Guinness-and-Harp drink this time—it's DUOTONE for the two colors mentioned.
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "The Last Shall Be First," has a terrific theme with a whopping eight theme answers. In each of them, the first and last letters swap places:
What elevates this theme—besides the fact that there are eight of 'em and two pairs have answers stacked alongside one another—is the freshness and flavor of the original and modified phrases and their clues. A love child, Fritos, Mr. T, bleacher bums, and Pop-tarts? You won't find more than one of those in most crosswords (Mr. T, I'm looking at you).
Brendan Emmett Quigley's puzzle today is called "Connecting Flights," and he combines pairs of airlines into made-up phrases. My favorite of the three theme entries is AMERICAN VIRGIN, clued as [Yankee who's never been to third base]. An [Estuary in Phoenix] or SOUTHWEST DELTA is mighty implausible, and the CONTINENTAL US is indeed [Everything but Alaska and Hawaii]. Favorite fill: JOAN MIRO, ["The Tilled Field" painter]; MR. BILL, [Old "S.N.L." character currently in MasterCard's "Priceless" ads}; THE MAMBO, a [Dance invented by Cachao], whoever that may be; and exactly THAT GOOD, or [As great as everyone says].
January 27, 2009
Wednesday, 1/28
January 13, 2009
Wednesday, 1/14
Sun 5:50
BEQ 4:40
Tausig 4:17
Onion 3:55
NYT 3:53
LAT 3:13
(updated at 1:10 p.m. Wednesday)
Between a condo board meeting and watching the VH1 tribute to The Who (including a rare set from The Who themselves), TiVoed from the Palladia HD channel, it sure has gotten late, so I'll be quick here.
The New York Times crossword by Oliver Hill seems on the hard side for a Wednesday, doesn't it? Still shy of Thursday, though, so I guess that makes it a Wednesday puzzle after all, but a hard Wednesday. The theme entries have homophones for clues, and the answers are phrases that normally wouldn't pass muster as crossword fill—sort of a clue/answer reversal, with the 11- and 14-letter answers being suitable clues for the 3- and 4-letter clues, which are common crossword answers. Here they are:
Fair enough. But good gravy, what on earth is EXEGETE doing here in the middle of the week? That's an [Expert at interpreting a text], apparently. I wonder if anyone's messed up that T by not knowing that OTAY is [Buckwheat's affirmative].
Among the more interesting entries are these:
Peter Wentz's Sun crossword has a strong streak of lunacy to it. Most of the theme spells out what the theme is: 62-Down is THE AVERAGE / SCRABBLE SCORE OF / ALL THE LETTERS IN / THIS PUZZLE, or in other words, TWO. You've got your standard quantity of vowels, plus six Z's, two X's, plus all sorts of other letters, and they somehow all average out to 2 points per letter using Scrabble tile values? I'm thinking that was no mean feat, constructing this puzzle so that the average isn't,say, 1.83 or 2.07 instead. (I'm assuming it works out to a total Scrabble score of twice the number of white squares—no way am I going to check Peter and Peter's work!) The fill includes entries like JUDE LAW, BOHEMIA, and the X PRIZE for added oomph. There's also some weird stuff, like Italy's LA SPEZIA, an OBLIGER, and a HIERARCH, some of which makes this puzzle also feel supra-Wednesdayish. I haven't looked at the Thursday and Friday Sun puzzles yet, but if they're harder than this puzzle, oof! Are we in for a workout.
Updated:
Michael Langwald's LA Times crossword honors the Lizard King (Jim Morrison), sort of, with a puzzle that includes a SALAMANDER ([Amphibian that can regenerate its limbs]). Morrison led THE DOORS, a [1960s-'70s group, and this puzzle's theme], and each of the other theme answers begins with a kind of door:
A few miscellaneous clues and answers:
Speaking of music downloads, I'm digging the iTunes "genius" option. Pick a song that matches your mood, click the genius button, and get a playlist of 25 compatible songs. The only down side is that it can be hard to do crosswords and type blog posts when danceable songs are playing or when you can't help singing along with an '80s Human League song.
Matt Gaffney's Onion A.V. Club crossword plays a quasi-cryptic game, with the cryptic crossword–style clues instructing us to put an actor's name inside another word to create a new made-up phrase. In each case, it's a 2-letter word getting sandwiched around the person's first name, with the last name left as is. Here's how it plays out:
If you enjoyed this theme (as I did) but haven't dared to venture into cryptics, you might want to give them a try. With 70 words and four corners packed with 7-letter answers, this puzzle also has a little of the challenge of a themeless crossword. Two clues that slowed me down: [The NBA's Zydrunas Ilgauskas, e.g.] needed a 3-letter answer. Hmm, LITHUANIAN is too long. I had *AV and of course there are two basketball teams whose nicknames fit that pattern, the CAVs (Cleveland Cavaliers) and Mavs (Dallas Mavericks). Then there's [Take in Tolkien, e.g.], which I was reading with "take" as a noun, and I was at a loss. The One RING? No, "take in" is a verb phrase, and the answer is READ.
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "A Turn for the Worse," replaces key words in certain phrases with their opposites, all with negative connotations:
Solid theme, not too tough. Highlights in the non-thematic answers and clues:
It's going to take me all day to do today's Brendan Emmett Quigley crossword. Why? Because instead of looking at the whole puzzle, I'm going the diagramless route and waiting for Brendan to parcel out the clues, one by one, in his Twitter feed. So far he's given the first four Across clues, and I think the grid's just got a standard crossword layout and symmetry, so I think the first six Acrosses are all 7-letter answers stacked beside one another at the top. I can't make fast progress because I won't get the 1- to 14-Down clues until after all the Across clues have been tweeted. I could cheat and Google 1 Across, [With 8-Across, "A Punk" rock band]—but where's the fun in that?
Updated again:
Commenter Squonk actually read Brendan's post today and informed me that the Twitter feed has clues for Friday's puzzle. (You can see the tweets in the sidebar of Brendan's blog if you don't want to sign up for Twitter.) I suspect this is the first instance of a crossword being provided in 160-character (max.) chunks. Anyway, today's puzzle is untweeted, just a regular puzzle, no diagramless option unless you cut out the grid yourself. The "Ow! Aargh!" title hints at the sound change in the theme entries. I don't know how to use the international phonetic alphabet to render the sound change, so I'll let the theme entries demonstrate it instead:
Juicy clues and answers:
September 15, 2008
Tuesday, 9/16
NYS 4:12
NYT 2:59
Jonesin' 3:27
LAT 3:27
CS 3:22
Onion, Tausig— see 9/17 post
Michael Langwald's New York Times crossword serves up four dishes consisting of a cooking word that doubles as an adjective or verb and a food/organism that doubles as a descriptive term for a person:
I'm not wild about the theme, but I do like the fill overall. Sometimes a 1-Across is really dull, or too hard for an easy puzzle. Here, the first two entries are VALET and DROOL, which both are fresh. Yesterday's first two entries were ASAP and A TAD, which are fine but the VALET/DROOL combo has much more zip. Toss in EVITA PERON, "clear AS MUD" (which is not to say that partial-phrase entries are great, but when the full phrase is colorful I mind much less) a SAD SACK, and an ICEBREAKER at the party, and the solving experience perks up a bit.
I decided to plow through the whole week's Sun puzzles yesterday, so I'll be blogging about them one to four days post-solving. Let's refresh my memory... Lee Glickstein's Tuesday New York Sun crossword, "There Goes the Picnic," ruins the picnic by adding ANTs or RAIN to four phrases. The base phrases and the post-RAIN, post-ANT results are entertaining:
Fill highlights include CRABGRASS, a SKOSH, Erma Bombeck's column title (AT WIT'S END), and ARBY's.
Updated:
The title of Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Shrinkage," evokes the Seinfeld episode in which cold water shrinks George's equipment to be "like a frightened turtle." Here, FOOTLOOSE ties the theme entries together at 59-Across. Good gravy, we're losing 12 inches here? Really, it's nothing more than the word FOOT being excised from five phrases:
Fill I liked: SPAZ, GROUPIE, FAT CAMP, EPONYM, VIS-A-VIS, and CROATIA. Fill I didn't: OPEN IN clued as [Golf's Sony ___ Hawaii]. That answer crosses three separate theme entries and the word GROUPIE, though, so I can forgive it. IGG, the [Co. behind Myth War Online and GodsWar Online], was a mystery to me. I could also do without the word WHORE, even with an Othello quote as its source.
Donna Levin's LA Times crossword includes six restaurants or bars where various sitcoms' characters hung out. Now, when I was watching All in the Family as a kid, I paid no mind to the name of the bar Archie liked, as Archie was mostly seen in his living room. The bar is KELCY'S BAR, and Kelcy just looks wrong, wrong, wrong. Like a misspelling of "Kelsey." It's not a common name, so if you didn't know the name and spelling up front, you were reliant on the crossings for this answer. The theme entries are:
The fill's pretty good here, too—FLAB and BLAH, intersecting URKEL and PUNKY from bad family TV, CHEEKY and CRONY, SAYS "I DO" and SCENARIO.
Randolph Ross's CrosSynergy puzzle's called "Fowl Play" because the theme entries all include types of fowl.
I checked the Cruciverb.com database to see if this theme's been done before, because it felt a little familiar—or at least, it seemed like it wasn't so "out there" that someone else wouldn't have thought of it too. (That's no knock on a theme. Great minds think alike, etc.) SITTING DUCK has been in six other puzzles. A 2000 Newsday was similar, but with four shorter theme entries rather than five including three 15's. The two most recent ones in the database focused on the verb part of the phrase SITTING DUCK. Another included a variety of animal types. One used DUCK as a fabric. And another include two DUCK phrases (!) and one with another bird. So I vote this one's a winner. It's also got some good fill, like T-MOBILE, WAIT UP, ZANTAC, and COWER.
August 12, 2008
Wednesday, 8/13
CS 5:03
NYS 3:56
NYT 3:44
LAT 3:38
(post updated at noon Wednesday)
The theme in Vic Fleming's New York Times crossword made me feel a little young. Of the four 15-letter theme entries clued with [Kitty], two were sort of before my time—17-Across's crossings gave me CARLISLE easy enough, but what word comes before that? ACTRESS, as it turns out. I hear she was a game show panelist, but I didn't see her on game shows or in her acting manifestation. For 46-Across, the crossings pointed quickly to GUNSMOKE-something, but what? BARKEEP, that's what. (POKER TABLE MONEY and NICKNAME FOR A CAT were less troublesome for me.) Favorite clues and entries:
David Kahn's New York Sun puzzle, "Go Team!," roots for the American Olympians by means of tossing a "USA!" into each theme entry:
I would write more about the clues and answers I liked, but I'm feeling carsick. I'm not in a car, so that's odd. See y'all in the morning.
Updated:
I was half-blind for Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Jump Ropes," as I was oblivious to assorted typos in one section and couldn't figure out what words could fit in their crossings. [Snap at the finish] is a PHOTO, not a HPOTO, and [Powerfully built] is SINEWY, not SINESY—and those typos blocked my discovery of APPETITE ([Craving]) and CHEW ON ([Ponder]). The theme entries have the letter string ROPE jumping across a word space in the phrases LETTER OPENER, DROP EVERYTHING, and TOUR OPERATOR. Lots of great fill in this crossword—a PUTSCH is a [Coup d'etat], DAIQUIRI completes ["It's a hickory ___, Doc!" (bar joke punchline)], OBLIVION is [Total forgetfulness], the KREMLIN was a [Cold War citadel], RAPUNZEL was a [Locked-up long-locked lass], and a TOPKNOT is a [Hair ball] in a sense.
Michael Langwald's LA Times crossword contains six theme entries whose end parts can precede the word MARK (65-Across):
The word AND shows up within two entries, with a pleasing ECHO ([Hollow responses?])—C AND W, or country and western ([Oft-twangy genre, briefly]), and OOH AND AAH, or [React to a trapeze act].
June 16, 2008
Tuesday, 6/17
Onion 4:45
Tausig 4:40
NYS 4:23
Jonesin' 3:59
LAT 3:19
CS 3:12
NYT 2:39
Whew! Busy busy busy. Wednesday morning, I'm heading to Minnesota, and I'll be mostly off-line through Sunday. The charming and delightful PuzzleGirl (who may or may not tell you folks her real name) will work her fingers to the bone leading the puzzle discussion here while I'm away, and Dave Sullivan (also charming and delightful) will peek in and make sure those new solving-time standings doohickeys (he tells me they're "bricklets") are working all right. (Wait, "bricklets"? That sounds like gum that'll shatter your teeth.)
I had to peruse Steven Ginzburg's New York Times crossword for a bit to understand how the theme worked. DINNER TABLE, DOUBLE AGENT, and PLAYSTATION all relate to DATE AND TIME in the same way—we have dinner dates and dinner time, double dates and double time, playdates and play time. I don't care for [Bride's title] as a clue for MRS—yes, it's accurate some of the time so it's valid as a crossword clue, but there are plenty of women who remain Ms. after exchanging wedding vows. 
Patrick Blindauer's New York Sun crossword, "Gross Out," takes out the gross (ICK, 61-Down) and thus morphs six phrases into different creatures. To get a bit more space for six Across theme entries, the grid's expanded to 15x16. Julie Chen of CBS's Early Show (and Big Brother) is featured in SPRING CHEN (spring chicken). Pickup trucks become PUP TRUCKS, the wicked witch becomes WED WITCH, a PET FENCE emerges from picket fence, a ticket office celebrates a New Year as a TET OFFICE, and sticky fingers turn into STY FINGERS, a truly icky [Source of pigs' knuckles?]. The 10 longest answers in the fill have some gems, too.
Updated:
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Never a Good Sign," changes one letter in standard road sign verbiage to alter the message. Bike lane becomes NIKE LANE, COW-AWAY ZONE [restricts Holstein parking] (tow-away zone), a red stop sign says ATOP instead, and PRONG WAY points the way to antlers (not wrong way). My favorite themer is DUNAWAY VEHICLES / ONLY, [sign indicating that the movies "Network" and "Mommie Dearest" are coming up, but no others?]. The Rocky Balboa sign turned out to be YO, RIGHT TURN, but I took a wrong turn on that by guessing NO FIGHT TURN. (Whoops.)
Michael Langwald's LA Times crossword is out of season. Snow? In June? I mean, sure, there was snow out west just last week, but I'm not generally looking for wintry themes in the summer. The theme answers—BOARD ROOM, BANK BRANCH, BALL BOY, BIRD DOG, and BELT BUCKLE—are all SNOW-BOUND in that there are such things as a snowboard, snowbank, snowball, snowbird, and snowbelt. For an added touch, all the theme phrases start with a B.
Paula Gamache's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Accentuate the Positive," incorporates an UP in four phrases. [Two minutes in the penalty box?] might be a FOUL UPSHOT—add UP to a foul shot, and the upshot of a foul in hockey is two minutes in the penalty box. [Spassky's loss to Fischer?] was a CHESS UPSET—chess set + UP. Solid theme, and plenty of solid longish crossing entries in the fill (e.g., PETER PAN, the ARABIAN SEA, and a DAIRY COW). GENE is clued with [One might make you fat]—is that a medical/genetic fact?
Updated again:
Whoops, I forgot that Ben Tausig's Google Group would be sending out two puzzles today. Ben's Ink Well/Chicago Reader puzzle, "Shady Business," breaks out some fancy Crayola shades. Technically, I don't know that these are Crayola colors, but the theme works like this: A phrase is preceded by a color name, and the first part of the phrase also forms a discrete entity when welded to the color (a la Wheel of Fortune "Before and After" answers). [Peaceful financial institution?] is an OLIVE BRANCH BANK, with olive branch and branch bank being legitimate stand-alone phrases. [Buffalo cloverleaf?] refers to Buffalo, New York: RUST BELT LOOP. The TAN LINE JUDGE is [One who evaluates bodies back from the beach?]. And a [Trainer in a herpetarium?] might be a COPPERHEAD COACH. Favorite fill: PEA and LENTIL with [Samosa legume] clues (although I've never seen lentils in a samosa—mostly potatoes, peas, and spices); KABUKI; IXNAY; and JOCKS.
Byron Walden's Onion A.V. Club crossword stretches out to a 16x15 grid. There are five theme answers spanning six entries, all of them inventions that killed their inventors. Certainly an oddball trivia amalgamation, isn't it? Such a shame that the ROPE AND PULLEY / SYSTEM ended up strangling the clever engineer who devised it. Fill highlights include those dozen answers that are 7 to 9 letters long. LOIS LANE is clued ["It's better than your drawings of naked ___" (Retort by Elaine to Jerry)], and I don't remember that line of dialogue. [Not worth doing?] clues BAD IN BED. The Terminator's "I'LL BE BACK" catchphrase is a latter-day classic, of course. I've never heard of ["The Young and the Restless" star Don] DIAMONT; I was always an ABC soaps watcher. I could swear I grew up seeing ONAN clued as a Biblical seed-spiller in crosswords before the convention became cluing it as a two-word partial, ON AN. Byron's clue for it is [Biblical character whose act of coitus interruptus led to his death]; when looking back at the Across Lite window to see if that was the end of the clue, my eyes took in "(as seen on YouTube)" from another clue and I was taken aback. ONAN's crossing an ENEMA, or [Process of elimination?], rounding out the transgressive corner of the crossword. Actually, BRAN is [Regular input?], too.
April 23, 2008
Thursday, 4/24
NYS 5:51
NYT 3:53
LAT tba
CS 3:16
Happy birthday to my son Ben, who turns 8 on Thursday. Birthday greetings also to three other charming people born on April 24—you know who you are.
Michael Langwald's New York Times crossword has a rebus puzzle (not in the sense that crossword folks use the term rebus for squares containing multiple letters) hiding within it. The [1965 hit by the performers suggested phonetically by the ends of 18-, 24-. 37- and 56-Across] is Sonny and Cher's "I GOT YOU BABE". (Here's an ancient video clip of their performance.) The four entries that are referenced are MIDNIGHT SUN ([Summer arctic phenomenon]), WOUNDED KNEE ([1890 battle site that's now a memorial]), SAINT ANNE ([Grandmother of Jesus]—really? I did not know that), and MARKET SHARE ([Measure of a company's dominance]). The ends run together thus: SUN KNEE ANNE SHARE. Seems like an odd way to assemble a crossword theme, but it's a good odd and a welcome departure from the ordinary.
I really should have finished the puzzle faster—the answers were tumbling easily, but the typing thereof? Not so smooth. TO SCALE was TOSSCAL the first two times I tried to enter it, and I kept typing answers in the wrong direction or order. Oy! Here's a clue I don't understand: SOL is clued with [G]. Are those equivalent musical notes or something? Favorite clues: [Mayo can be found in it] for AÑO (Spanish "year," Spanish month of May); [Hamilton who wrote "Mythology"] for EDITH (a highlight of high school, that book); [It'll never fly] for EMU; ["Sanford and Son" setting] for WATTS (Sonny and Cher's TV shows and Sanford and Son both ran from 1971 to 1977—and I was watching them); and [Prepare to serve] for ENLIST (I was thinking first of food served on a tray, then of tennis). I didn't know that CHUTNEY was [Condiment made with a mortar and pestle], but I did know that I love chutney, especially to cut the heat of curry spices. BERTHA was [Charlemagne's mother]? (Also known as Bertrada of Laon, who hooked up with King Pippin the Short, who may or may not have been a hobbit.) [War preceder] wasn't HEIGHTENED TENSIONS at all but rather, MAN O'. Did you know the Portuguese man o' war is not a jellyfish? Read all about it. [Cross as ___ (annoyed)] is A BEAR, and I don't know how many people still use that phrase—but bears certainly can be cross, as demonstrated by the one from the Will Ferrell movie that just killed its trainer this week. (Eek. Poor guy.)
The New York Sun "Themeless Thursday" is by Sue Alexander, and I don't recognize the name—a constructor's debut? She's got a smooth mini-theme: FEET ON THE GROUND and HEAD IN THE CLOUDS. I wonder if it's intentional that their locations are topsy-turvy, or if the fill just wasn't working with THE CLOUDS up top.
Favorite entries and clues: BIKER BAR, clued as [Hangout where you might see a lot of hogs]; SICK AS A DOG; the literal MOON-WALKER or astronaut [Alan Bean, for one]; [Hit singer, perhaps?] for RAT (who might "sing" or rat on a hitman); and [Things assumed to be false?] for ALIASES.
Updated:
Lynn Lempel's CrosSynergy crossword is a good mid-week puzzle. The "Female Leads" in the theme entries (unified by SHE at 66-Down) are female animals, but those words are part of longer words in the two shorter theme entries and span two words in the longer ones. There's a SOW in SO WHAT ELSE IS NEW and a DOE in DO EXACTLY AS I SAY—both great entries even if you ignore the animal gimmick. HENRY CLAY and COWABUNGA contain a HEN and COW. Bonus points to the constructor for plunking WILDEBEEST in there as a fill answer.
David Kwong also has a cool theme in his LA Times puzzle. PETER AND THE WOLF anchors the theme, and the other four theme entries are phrases in which a word is replaced by the instrument that portrays that character in Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. The oboe plays the part of the duck, I have learned from a great many crossword clues over the years. So duck and cover ([Protection method from flying debris]) becomes OBOE AND COVER. There's a bird represented by the flute, so we get a tropical FLUTE OF PARADISE ([New Guinea's black sicklebill, e.g.]). Grandfather and bassoon are linked, so grandfather clock ([Tall timekeeper]) is a BASSOON CLOCK. And the clarinet stands in for the cat, so cat burglar ([Stealthy sort]) becomes CLARINET BURGLAR. The theme's explained in a Notepad note in Across Lite; I suppose the same explanation is given in the actual newspaper. That's probably a good thing, because if you don't know anything about PETER AND THE WOLF, the theme entries would be truly mystifying.
April 21, 2008
Tuesday, 4/22
Onion 5:02
Tausig 4:18
NYS 3:36
LAT 3:21
NYT 3:09
CS 2:50
Well, Friday's NET LEASES and Monday's WASH SALE were leading us straight to the Tuesday New York Times crossword's theme. Here, there are four financial terms, all clued with a twist on the first word's meaning. NET EARNINGS hook into a fishing net, CAPITAL GAINS are tied to a seat of government, a newspaper publisher might have PAPER PROFITS, and [Salary for selling insects for food?] could be construed as GROSS INCOME indeed. 1-Across launches the puzzle straight into trickery: Just as yesterday brought a different crossword with a SILENT C in it, here HARD G is clued as [What a gal has that a gent doesn't?]. Now, count how many other 5-letter things there are that a gal has that a gent does not. I can think of at least three, beginning with OVARY. ERIE shows up for the second day in a row with an unusual clue—this time, [Lake next to Avon Lake], which is not a lake I know. The less-seldom-seen AMEER spelling clocks in ([Mideast pooh-bah]), crossing HARD G at the A—so the tricky 1-Across didn't even have completely obvious crossings. How well-known is the hockey term DEKES, [Fakes out with fancy footwork]? I didn't know it before the 2005 ACPT finals puzzle taught it to me.
The title of Michael Langwald's New York Sun crossword, "I Before E As in Movie," means that an I and E are combined and added inside movie titles. For instance, [Movie about an amp hauler's African journey?] is ROADIE TO MOROCCO, based on Road to Morocco + IE. In the fill, ONO gets a clue I don't recall seeing before—[Sponsor of Central Park's Strawberry Fields]. I thought I knew my desserts, but had no inkling that [Frangipane nut] was an ALMOND. (Frangipane is apparently named after a different guy named Frangipani than the fragrant Plumeria/frangipani shrubs or trees.) Who is DINO Valenti? [Quicksilver Messenger Service lead singer Valenti] seems to convey plenty of information, and Wikipedia has still more—yet I still have no clue. Don't know their/his songs at all.
Updated:
"Emote" alert: Entertainment Weekly just reported that Was (Not Was) has a new album out, with one of their trademark odd guest vocals from the "minimal-voiced" Kris Kristofferson. They asked him not to emote too much because they were going to layer the sound of a cattle stampede over his vocals, and Kristofferson laughed because usually he's being encouraged to emote. Why? Because emoting seems to have pejorative connotations mainly in crosswords. Why, here's some advice for aspiring Broadway performers: "Emote. The best actors know how to emote, but also know how to emote effectively."
Ray Hamel's CrosSynergy crossword has four seemingly unrelated phrases but, as the "End Game" title hints, each phrase ends with a word that's also a game. We have TROUBLE (the Pop-o-matic die is less engaging than I remember from childhood) and SORRY, Ben might get CLUE for his birthday, and RISK doesn't excite me despite its geography aspect. Props to the constructor for getting SKYPE in there—boy, is it handy to have a free way to talk on the phone with an overseas friend. I don't recall seeing it in a crossword before, but perhaps it's been in a Tausig or Jonesin' puzzle.
Norm Guggenbiller's LA Times crossword places its title within the grid: JOIN FORCES. (Yes, the same Norm Guggenbiller who, according to his blog comment, is a resident of Avon Lake, Ohio. That's beside Lake Erie, you know...) The other three theme entries begin with "___ force" entities: POLICE (WORK), AIR (SECURITY), and LABOR (STRIKE). NO, wait! They end with "___ force" entities, too: work force, security force, strike force. I didn't notice that at first and was underwhelmed. Six thematic components is more impressive than three, and while the theme phrases are rather dry, they yield six solid "___ force" phrases. I have no idea how LIFO ("last in, first out") is used as a [Inventory evaluation meth.]. Minor peccadillo in the clue for 46-Down, IN A JAM: it includes the word in although that appears in the answer ([In need of bailing out, perhaps]). [Needing to be bailed out, perhaps] is clumsier phrasing but ESCHEWs the in issue. (HECTIC and ESCHEW appear beside one another in this grid, and despite the part-of-speech problem, I like the idea of "The Hectic Eschew" as a band name.)
Updated:
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "Generational Shift," takes phrases that end with a word that is (or can be) an adult animal and substitutes the name for the young of that species. The resulting phrase is clued as if it has nothing to do with a young animal. A papal bull is a PAPAL CALF, or a [Lower muscle in the Vatican?], for example, and Rommel, the Desert Fox, becomes a DESERT KIT with a canteen and a cactus-cutting knife. The fill includes eight 8-letter answers, stacked three abreast and crossed by another 8. Speaking of "abreast," Ben ventures into non-cactus cluing for AREOLA, [Oft-sore area for marathoners]. (It's true. They chafe. For men and women alike.) The discussion of what 5-letter parts a gal might have that a gent lacks (see today's NYT crossword) points to the squeamishness about body parts that newspaper puzzle editors must have because a segment of their audience would indeed wig out with a human AREOLA or various bodily substances appeared in the crossword. Here, it wasn't at all titillating (that's an unfortunate word), and in fact, the clue could mislead a solver into thinking of achy feet or leg muscles. If you're gonna drop the AREOLA into the puzzle, this is a good way to do it (though I wouldn't expect to see it in the next few years in a daily newspaper puzzle). Favorite entries: MALAPROP crossing the BAD KARMA that could strike you if don't leave tips, a BAZAAR for haggling, and Pig Latin IXNAY.
The AREOLA (clued in a more risqué fashion as [Nipple ring]) also pops up in Byron Walden's Onion A.V. Club puzzle. On the heels of his Charlton Heston tribute puzzle in the NYT, Byron again draws on current events—with "Client 9" Eliot SPITZER and [Louisiana Senator David] VITTER (a client of the "D.C. Madam") skulking around near a PROSTITUTE RING that spans the center of the grid at 38-Across. A 38-Across might leave a TART CARD in a London phone box. Let's see...what else is thematic? One could make a case for CREEP and FLING. This topical puzzle also has a gimmick—four "prostitute rings" in the corners of the grid contain synonyms for "prostitute" (HOOKER, ESCORT, GIGOLO, CALL-GIRL) traveling clockwise from the top in 6- or 8-square rings. Those corners are packed with 6- and 8-letter entries, which means that fill has to mesh together in three dimensions.
Now, the result of the ambitious construction is that some of the fill is insane. [Kid-safe update of "very"] is HECKA (in lieu of "hella," but I gotta tell ya, I haven't heard anyone using "hecka"). [Make a mess of] is FRIG UP; now, I've heard "frig" used in lieu of the other F-word, but not in the "___ up" formation. PAPPAS is an odd-looking spelling for [Dads]; my county treasurer is Maria Pappas, but I suppose the rest of the country doesn't know her name. Favorite clues: [She wants to be starting something] for a PYRO; [Wonkette, e.g.] for a BLOG; ["Ya got it"] for YEP; [Kind of car or album] for CONCEPT; [Have an eruction] for BELCH; [You can stand to go there] for a URINAL; and [Hang loose?] for DANGLE (...right by the urinal). I think the clue for SIT'N SPIN (which is a terrific entry) is wrong—raise your hand if you remember Sit'n Spin toys being around before the '80s. Sure, this page calls it an '80s toy, but it was originally a pre–Care Bears toy and I swear they were around in the '70s.
April 13, 2008
Monday, 4/14
CS 3:06
LAT 2:59
NYS 2:47
NYT 2:27
Foot update! I know that's what you were hoping I'd open with. My foot is feeling much better, but I still can't persuade it to get inside a shoe. (It yelps when I try to put on a shoe.) So I'll keep wearing my husband's orthopedic boot. I assure you, it is every bit as foxy as it sounds. At least it's black—and black is, after all, the new black. We'll see how much I relapse when I actually leave the house and, you know, walk somewhere. I've mostly been on the couch since Thursday with my foot elevated.
Christina Houlihan Kelly's New York Times crossword is easy (Jan, look at you! Clocking in at 2:13! Sitting atop the leaderboard!), and understanding the theme helps only a wee bit in filling in all the squares. Each theme entry ends with a noun that can double as a verb meaning "to impede." There's AUCTION BLOCK, clued as [Bidding impediment?], as if it were a block impeding a bid at an auction rather than, well, the auction block. There are also a PICNIC HAMPER, REALITY CHECK, and ALUMINUM FOIL (hey, do Canadians spell it that way, or the British "aluminium" way?). In the fill, poor John STAMOS: he's gone on to have a number of prime-time series, most recently E.R., and still he gets clued as [Actor John of "Full House"]. (Full House was that abysmal sitcom featuring the Olsen twins jointly playing a toddler. Stamos sported quite the mullet in that.) Plenty of familiar crossword fill and clues here, as you might expect on a Monday. AGATE is clued as [Playing marble] even though the game of marbles had its heyday decades ago. Did you know that there is such a thing as Lake Superior agate? It gets its characteristic color from iron, and some Minnesotas hunt for agate on the beaches of Lake Superior. Another old-timey crossword answer is ONER, or [Humdinger]. I just Googled several phrases, various combos of "That's a oner" and "It's a real oner." I got one hit, from a 1920 book, for all four searches. There's a 1905 hit for "he's a oner." I think it's safe to say the word oner is kept alive mainly in crosswords. We've got suffixes -ASE and -IST, old gas brand ESSO, and some SOTS. Of course, we also have GOTTI, RANKLE, and a few current pop-culture names.
Michael Langwald's New York Sun crossword is called "Green-Lighting." This extended 15x16 grid has six theme entries, the last being GO-BETWEEN. Each of the other five is a three-word phrase (wait, does MERRY-GO-ROUND count as one word or three? a three-word word?) in which the middle is GO. I would crank Prince's "LET'S GO CRAZY" right now, but it's on the late side for loud music in a condo building). "YOU GO, GIRL" and "DON'T GO THERE" share a sassiness. And HAPPY-GO-LUCKY is, well, happy-go-lucky. Fun theme, eh? Favorite fill: BOB CRANE from Hogan's Heroes (subject of the lurid-sounding Auto-Focus); the MCDLT sandwich; a call on LINE TWO; MADRAS and LONDON internationalizing one corner; LT. GOV. (in Illinois, I've heard it pronounced "lite guv"—is that just a local thing?); and the ROLY-poly (I will, for once, abstain from posting that photo of the giant isopod that looks like a roly-poly from your nightmares); and the Pepperidge Farm MILANO cookie (mmm, chocolate).
Updated:
Was anyone able to download the LA Times crossword in Across Lite? The Cruciverb link gives me a 404 Not Found message.
Patrick Blindauer pulled together the CrosSynergy puzzle, "Abracadabra!", with a letter bank of just 10 letters (those that appear in PRESTIDIGITATOR). Now, that word does contain the four most popular vowels, pluralizer S, and five other fairly common consonants. But there is no L or N, so OLEO and ANTE must sit this one out. Favorite clues: [Bar stuff] for SOAP; [Victory, to Wagner] for SIEG (I like to put my waning knowledge of German to use); and [O'Shea who appeared on "Ed Sullivan" the same night as the Beatles] for TESSIE. First person to tell me something about Tessie O'Shea without looking it up wins being quoted in an addendum to this post.
Janie, our resident Broadway maven, reports the scoop on Tessie O'Shea:
tessie o'shea -- brit. music hall performer, may also have appeared in a pretty not wonderful adaptation of pride and prejudice in its b'way musical incarnation, and i think maybe something's afoot
Then Janie looked it up to see if she was right:
hmmm. not *too* bad. the musical adaptation was not p & p, but the girl who came to supper (based i believe on terrance rattigan's the prince and the showgirl) -- and something's afoot was a broadway production as well.
and/but yes -- she comes from the british music hall tradition of performing.
***
Updated later with the LA Times crossword:
Well! Nancy Salomon's LAT is the clumsiest crossword I've ever seen! This theme is stumbling all over the place. There's a SLIPCOVER, FALL SEMESTER, TRIP ODOMETER, and FLOPHOUSE. (You all get that I don't really think the theme is clumsy, right? It's a theme about clumsiness?) With eight 7- to 9-letter entries in the fill, this is pretty fancy for a Monday. [Fast fliers of the past: Abbr.] are SSTS—this weekend, my son and I delved into Comcast's library of on-demand flicks and watched The Concorde: Airport '79. An SST in action! I'm not sure if commercial Concordes could really do evasive barrel-rolls, but my kid enjoyed that. We have now seen the entire Airport oeuvre of four '70s disaster movies.
March 25, 2008
Wednesday, 3/26
Tausig 4:11
Onion 3:55
NYS 3:45
NYT 3:19
LAT 3:17
CS 2:41
Hmm, the Tausig and Onion A.V. Club puzzles didn't come out via e-mail on Tuesday, when they're normally delivered. Maybe Wednesday. I will not liken them to Godot until Wednesday evening.
Michael Langwald had the Tuesday LA Times puzzle, and now the Wednesday New York Times crossword—his NYT debut. The theme involves famous people whose last names are homophones for cooking-related words, such that [name]'s [food] sounds like [first name] [verb]'s [food]. So we have actor PETER BOYLE'S STEW, singer GLENN FREY'S EGGS, and singer SAM COOKE'S STEAK.
** We interrupt this broadcast to note that the Tausig and A.V. Club puzzles just reached my in-box (will do them Wednesday), and that my browser just crashed but one of the things I like best about Blogger is its autosaving of drafts every minute. I lost nothing in the browser crash! **
Favorite clues in the NYT crossword: [Angered and enraged, e.g.] for ANAGRAMS; [Word before luck or cluck] for DUMB; [Clinton cabinet member satirized by Will Ferrell] for Janet RENO ("Now dance!"); and [It may be under your hat] for SECRET (ah, yes, I remember that day about 12 years ago when my division's executive V.P. told me a corporate secret and told me to keep it under my hat—the one and only time I've received the hat request).
A dear friend asked me what the heck the theme was in the New York Sun puzzle by Alex Boisvert. It was a pretty easy crossword for a mid-week Sun puzzle, except for figuring out the theme after I was done. Did you find the theme to be too subtle for a Wednesday, or wonderfully subtle, or so obvious you're a little embarrassed for me that it took me a while to identify it? The title is "Post Post," and the vertical entry FOURLETTERWORDS is said to describe the last parts of the four theme entries, collectively. Those ending words are CARRIER, PERFECT, BOX, and OPENER (BOX is part of THE JUICE BOX, a great nickname for a ballpark with naming rights belonging to a juice company). That vertical entry isn't FOUR-LETTER WORDS, hyphenated, but rather, FOUR "LETTER" WORDS: letter carrier, letter-perfect, letterbox, and letter opener. Aha! My favorite entries were brand names: SUZY-Q snack cakes (not to be confused with Suzi Quatro), VW BUG, and CUERVO tequila; brands are also represented by IHOP, BOSE, EDDIE Bauer, AMCS (cinemas), TRIX, and the clue for BRA. Favorite clues: [Die across the border?] for LES (die in German is feminine or plural "the," and plural "the" in French is LES); the two pachyderm clues for BABAR and a HIPPO; [Credit, informally] for PROPS; and [Bizet's brother] for FRERE (French for "brother," that's all).
Updated:
Super-easy Wednesday CrosSynergy puzzle from Martin Ashwood-Smith. The "Fine Dining" theme entries are phrases that begin with the words BITING, CHEWING, and EATING, but none of the phrases are about the intake of aliment. I like the name density in the opening corner, where JONAS Salk crosses two names that were bigger in the '80s, JOBETH Williams and OLIVIA Newton-John. Favorite clue: [Level the playing field?] for MOW the grass.
I like the LA Times crossword by Gary Steinmehl today. The last section of the puzzle I filled in was the upper right, which is where the tie-it-all-together answer was—and before I saw that, I didn't realize that there were also two 7-letter theme entries, nor what the theme was. What links TWEETYBIRD, MARVIN GARDENS on a Monopoly board, and a SMILEY FACE? And also relates to the ONE BALL in pool and PIKACHU from Pokemon? They are all YELLOW (16-Down)! Of course. Now it's obvious. Au courant clue: [Center of Phoenix?] for Shaquille O'NEAL, recently traded from Miami. It's probably against somebody's rules to have both ANIMAL clued as [Orwellian farmer] and an ["Animal House" house] clue, but you know what? The Orwell thing made me think of Animal Farm, so I wanted to see if BARN would work in lieu of FRAT house. (We all know about the "aha" moment in crosswords, but there are also "d'oh" moments.)
I'm heading to the gym now, so I'll get to the Tausig puzzle and Deb Amlen's Onion crossword later this morning.
Updated again:
Ben Tausig's Chicago Reader/Ink Well puzzle was most enjoyable. "The Hidden Persuaders" are his subliminal ads, brand names found BACKWARDS as words in the other four theme entries. Larry Flynt can be called a SMUT PEDDLER, and Tums antacids are in there backwards. Evian water's NAIVE backwards; the BOXER SHORTS have Stroh's beer; and MAPS is Spam meat product backwards. I think I knew that Evian and naive were a pair, but I never noticed the other three. SHORTS is a particularly nice find, in my opinion. Twenty-six of the fill entries are 6 or 7 letters long, with plenty of goodies among them: PALE ALE, BAND-AID, TRAIPSE, MAH-JONG, and intersecting baseball pitches HEATER and SPITTER. Favorite clues: [Something caught in the act?: Abbr.] for STD; [Handheld console, for short] for PSP (that's the PlayStation Portable that my kid has—hooray, a video game answer I actually knew!); and ["Damn it!" alternatives] for D'OHS. I don't really like KIX as a [Corn Pops competitor] because while they are both breakfast cereals, one is a guilty pleasure (mmm, I do enjoy a bowl of Corn Pops—for an extra flavor kick, splash a couple drops of OJ on top of that cereal with milk) and one is pretty guilt-free (or as guilt-free as a major-brand non-organic cereal can be).
Deb Amlen's Onion A.V. Club crossword celebrates Easter with theme entries starting with BUNNY, EGG, CHICK, and BASKET. I like that BUNNY SLOPE. CHICK MAGNET, and BASKETCASE have exactly nothing to do with the symbols of Easter. Look what's in the fill—a GONAD! Clued as [Testicle, e.g.]. Nothing wrong with that. Parts is parts, after all. Favorite clues: [Laptop item?] for NAPKIN; [TV show featuring "The Others"] for LOST; [Out of gear?] for NUDE; and the verb phrase [Reference books?] for READ. Isn't that last one terrific? Favorite entry: "OH, I DUNNO."
March 24, 2008
Tuesday, 3/25
NYS 4:42
CS 3:34
NYT 3:15
LAT 3:06
Tausig tba
Onion tba
Wow, I don't quite know how I finished the Tuesday NYT and Sun puzzles tonight. I tucked my son in (making sure the tooth he finally lost in Florida was safely stashed beneath his pillow for the tooth fairy) and promptly fell asleep. An hour or an hour and a half later, I awoke for crosswords. It wasn't a refreshing nap—rather, it was an amuse bouche for the sleepy brain, whetting its appetite for a full course of dreams.
The New York Times puzzle by Steve Salmon plays a densely packed homophone game. The vertical MORNING MOURNING ([Wake at dawn?]) anchors the theme, with two 10-letter theme entries crossing it and four more (9 letters apiece) heading Down. I wonder if tomorrow's puzzle will also have more than the usual allotment of theme squares, like this one and Monday's. Not a hard theme, but kinda fun.
It took my sleepy head a while to understand how the theme entries in Lee Glickstein's New York Sun crossword, "Send in the Clones," worked. Was that tricky for you, too, or am I just not fully awake? Each of the base phrases for the five theme entries adopts a PC (as in an IBM clone PC), altering the meaning. The goon squad becomes a GOP CON SQUAD ([Republican dirty tricksters?]), "Proud Mary" is a PROUD MAP CRY (["I found it in the atlas!"]), and the Miami Heat turns into a jazz-loving MIAMI HEPCAT. Favorite clues: [Fade, e.g.] for HAIRDO; [Play opener?] for FORE (now, does that mean "Fore!" opens the play of golf, or that it's the beginning of foreplay?); [Oscar-winning role for Hoffman] for CAPOTE (oh! Philip Seymour Hoffman, not Dustin Hoffman—Dustin won for Rain Man and Kramer vs. Kramer); ["Now you've done it!"] for UH-OH; and [Split components] for bowling PINS.
Updated:
I woke up quite refreshed this morning, so that pre-bedtime nap paid off eventually. Just not last night when it impeded my consciousness.
In Ray Hamel's CrosSynergy crossword, "Catching Up," each theme entry's base phrase catches an UP. [Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor?] are an OLD KING COUPLE. (No, they weren't a couple, as they lived about 200 years apart. They were just a couple of English kings of old.) I especially like CATSUP AND DOGS from a hotdog vending cart. And I like that DUPING BATS derives from dingbats. Interesting fill: G-SEVEN (though I don't think I've seen the 7 spelled out, it seems to be crossword convention that that's kosher, as with VH-ONE); "YOU GO, GIRL"; TO AND FRO.
Michael Langwald's LA Times crossword has a BLACKJACK theme in which the other four theme entries (clues asterisked) end with blackjack actions: HIT, STAND, DOUBLE, and SPLIT. The clues were easy and required no blackjack knowledge (the theme entries have non-card contexts, such as BANANA SPLIT and TAXI STAND), though, so zip-zip, it's an easy Tuesday puzzle.
February 04, 2008
Tuesday, 2/5
Tausig 4:30
NYS 4:23
Onion 4:20
NYT 3:17
LAT 2:56
CS 2:42
I'm having fun reading the entries to the crosswordese haiku/senryu contest! Some make no sense at all, and most have confounded my expectations. I'd envisioned funny little poems using crosswordese words in their proper context, but some of my favorite entries use crosswordese as a stand-in for words that sound similar.
Frank Virzi's New York Sun crossword, "Do Drop In," instructs the solver to do just that: drop the letters IN from the base phrases that birth each theme entry. (Speaking of birth: The funniest clue was [Like the little kid inside some of of us?] for FETAL.) Most of the theme entries make perfect sense to me. FEELING NO PA (pain) amuses me, as does shopping at the DEAN MART (Martin). ENGLISH MUFF and ALL-POINTS BULLET capture my fancy a bit less, but make sense. I recognize that NEAT AS A P comes from "neat as a pin," but I can't for the life of me parse that. Oh! I see it now! "NEAT, A.S.A.P." monkeys with the word spacing. Okay, now that I understand that one, it's my new favorite. Tuesday is Super Duper Tuesday for the primaries and caucuses, and there are a few topical clues in the mix. There's plain ol' VOTE, TUES. clued as ["Super Duper" day: Abbr.], and...all right, there were just two topical answers. But those answers, along with [Washington safety Taylor who was murdered in 2007] (SEAN), offer some au courant content along the lines of what Jim H was asking for.
The New York Times crossword by Peter Collins has a more ordinary theme than some of his other creations. The four longest answers contain a smattering of HERBS embedded within them—PARKED ILLEGALLY, I'M IN TROUBLE, PRESS AGENTS, and LENGTHY MEETINGS. From a culinary standpoint, I must advise against adding any of those to PEPSI or HO HOS, today's junk-food contingent. Favorite entries: ALGIERS, Fran DRESCHER, HURRAH, and HOCK. I just learned that the statuettes for the National Magazine Awards, [The Oscars of magazine publishing], are called ELLIES. That's short for "elephants," and they're miniature Alexander Calder stabiles.
Updated:
Francis Heaney's Onion A.V. Club crossword is custom-made for fans of movies and pop culture. Francis squeezes in a whopping 10 theme entries, paying snarky homage to the only five actors to have ACCEPTed their GOLDEN / RASPBERRY awards (the Razzies) for worst actor or actress IN PERSON. They are HALLE /BERRY (for Catwoman—in her acceptance speech, she said "It was just what my career needed - I was at the top and now I'm at the bottom."), BILL COSBY (Leonard Part 6), BEN AFFLECK (for three movies!), TOM GREEN (Freddy Got Fingered), and TOM SELLECK (Christopher Columbus: The Discovery). Tons of fun, Francis!
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "Early Opposition," adds a negativity prefix to the beginning of the Toxic Avenger, fairgrounds, trust fund, and bandwagon to create the NONTOXIC AVENGER, UNFAIR GROUNDS, ANTITRUST FUND, and CONTRABAND WAGON. Fresh fill, fresh clues. One out-of-left-field answer—NEU is the [German group with "Hallogallo"], and also the German word for "new."
The LA Times crossword is bylined by Michael Langwald, and I suspect the puzzle marks his debut. The theme kept me guessing until the end—what do BRAINTEASER, HOUSE TRAILER, and MAGAZINE CLIP have in common? They are all MOVIE EXTRAS, such as you would see in the previews before a movie. I like that MOVIE EXTRAS is clued as [Uncredited actors], rather than being swapped out for something blah and factual like PREVIEWS. Great answers in the longer bits of fill, too—ABOUT-FACE, TRAPEZE, ORIGAMI, DEAN'S LIST, PIT STOPS. If this is a debut, it's a very polished one.
Thomas Schier's CrosSynergy crossword, "Body Conditions," groups adjectives that include body parts—e.g., TIGHT-FISTED, HARD-NOSED, BUG-EYED. The uncommon word ADDUCE is in here, clued with [Cite as evidence]. This is how much of a crossword nerd I have always been: In ninth grade, we had a sub in German class named Mr. Adduci, and in my head I linked him with ADDUCE. What 14-year-old knows that word? The one who has been doing crosswords circa 1980. I would also have taken note of a Ms. HOD—that old [Mortar porter] pops in here, too. The [Freshwater crustaceans with seven pairs of legs] are ISOPODS, and that's my favorite photo of a giant isopod to the side. (The little isopods, or roly-polies, sowbugs, or pillbugs, are much less daunting, aren't they?)
