BEQ 5:43
NYT 2:54
CS untimed (J)/2:54 (A)
LAT 2:36
Mike Nothnagel's New York Times crossword
I feel like I'm missing the point of this puzzle. Four men—two real, two fictional—whose 3-letter first names end with an X are unified weirdly by the X FACTOR, a [Mystery quality...or what 18- and 55-Across and 3- and 32-Down have?]. But these guys don't have the X factor. They just have names with an X in them, don't they? The fellas are as follows:
• FOX MULDER, [Dana Scully's sci-fi partner] on The X-Files. Hey, another X.
• MAX YASGUR is the [Owner of the farm where Woodstock took place]. Is he Monday puzzle material? Shouldn't Woodstock be Woodstox to ramp up his X FACTOR?
• LEX LUTHOR is the main ["Superman" villain]. Too bad he doesn't wear a costume with a big X on his chest.
• TEX RITTER is the [Cowboy who sang the title song from "High Noon"] and actor John Ritter's father. High noon on a clock with Roman numerals has an X: XII.
Lots of 6-, 7-, and 8-letter answers in the fill, not par for the course on a Monday. But everything's clued at maybe a Tuesday level, and the fill is pretty accessible. The toughest answer may be 10D: [House style with a long pitched roof in back], or SALTBOX. Also on the more difficult end of the spectrum:
• NEMEA is the [Ancient Greek city with a mythical lion].
• LAPP is a [Northern Scandinavian]. These indigenous people prefer to be called Sami rather than Lapps.
• OSIERS are willow [Twigs for baskets]. Classic crosswordese: commit to memory.
• [John of colonial Jamestown] is John ROLFE. I get the Johns Rolfe and Alden mixed up.
• [Learn secondhand] clues the phrase HEAR OF.
• EASY ON is apparently the [Start of a billboard catchphrase meaning "close to the highway"]. Easy Off is an oven cleaner, and I don't think I've seen billboards promising "easy on..." and whatever else the billboard is supposed to say.
• Don't like AS FAT ([Equally plump]) as a crossword answer.
• [Coat named for an Irish province] is an ULSTER. I think I may have learned of the little-U ulster from crosswords.
• Bible trivia I didn't know: [Esther 8:9 is the longest one in the Bible] clues VERSE.
Updated Monday morning:
Patrick Blindauer's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "What's Eating U?"—Janie's review
Learning how to read the titles of the CS puzzles is half the fun sometimes. Today's is a little bit cryptic and a little bit text-y and in its cryptic/text-y way alerts us to the fact that—almost as if it'd been eaten up—the letter "U" has been dropped from four well-known names and phrases to create the fresh 'n' funny theme fill. That's how:
•17A. Gingerbread house → GINGERBREAD HOSE [Cookie conduit?]. A visual and very funny concept.
•30A. Jelly donuts → JELLY DON'TS [No-nos for a sweet spread?]. "Don't lick the spoon that goes in the jelly jar," "don't spread jelly on your hamburger," "don't put the jelly in your sister's hair," etc.
•48A. Lady Capulet → LADY CAPLET [Pill for women?]. Um, guess that'd be something like this...
•63A. "Popular Mechanics" → POPLAR MECHANICS [Those who repair aspens?]. I suppose tree surgeons are mechanics of a sort.
What I particularly like about the way Patrick's filled the grid is his success in excluding the letter "U" altogether—which explains in part why we're seeing U-less fill like E-I-E-I-O (yet) again and (pick-any-number) CLI (Roman 151). The crossing of ESQS. and IRAQ is a great example of how to use "Q" sans "U."
The puzzle is filled to the brim with cultural and entertainment-industry fill of the higher and lower varieties, such as:
•LA BOHÈME [1896 Puccini premiere] (the opera that was also a Broadway offering in the 2002-03 season playing the Broadway Theatre, as did) EVITA [1980 Tony-winning musical];
•musicians and vocalists (all of whom produced their share of SOLI [Songs for a single performer] and well more than one B-SIDE [Half of a 45]) EDIE Brickell, the great BO DIDDLEY ["Have Guitar Will Travel" performer], ["Mama" Cass] ELLIOT, (one-time voice of Chevy) Dinah SHORE, and AMY(S) [...and Grant];
•cinema's DENNIS Quaid, Pam GRIER, Barbara EDEN [Hagman's co-star], glam sisters EVA and ZSA [Twice a Gabor], CHICO MARX, and IDA(S) [Lupino and...];
•the written word's: IDA(S) [...and Wells], AMY(S) [Tan and...], Pulitzer-winning [Columnist Herb] CAEN, (Thomas) [Hardy girl] TESS, and of course, Shakespeare's Lady CapUlet...
There's also a tip o' the hat to the boob tube with AIRS [Shows on TV] (verb, not noun) and HSN [Buying channel on TV]. Unless (yet) another award category is created, this show is (mercifully) not likely to win an EMMY [TV trophy].
If you do "See the USA in Your Chevrolet" (see 38 ACR), you might pass through MOAB [Utah city near Arches National Park] or TENN. [Chattanooga's home (abbr.)]. Like that [Word before cheese or eagle], they're all-AMERICAN.
And that, folks, is my SPIN [Interpretation] of today's puzzle!
Hi, it's Amy again. Patrick, what a delightful crossword! Funny theme (particularly LADY CAPLET and POPLAR MECHANICS), kickass fill (BO DIDDLEY and CHICO MARX, together again!). A great way to start the week.
Jerome Gunderson's Los Angeles Times crossword
The theme is Ahnuld Schwarzenegger's famous line, "I'll be back," from The TERMINATOR, which was released 25 years ago today. Whoo, does that make you feel old or what? The other three theme entries are phrases that begin with the words in that catchphrase"
• I'LL FLY AWAY is a [Hymn whose title follows the line "When I die, Hallelujah, by and by"]. I don't know this song at all, but I think there was a TV show by that name. Yep, early '90s, with Regina Taylor and Sam Waterston, before Sam began his Law & Order run.
• BE PREPARED is the Boy [Scout's motto].
• BACK TO BACK is [How duelists begin]. Minus one point for having BACK in there twice, slightly muddying the theme consistency.
Highlights in the fill include KID ROCK ([Duettist with Sheryl Crow in the song "Picture"]), POP-TART ([Kellogg's toaster pastry]), T.S. ELIOT (["Cats" poet]—you know you've been doing crosswords too long when you see TSE and automatically fill in TSETSES before reading the clue), RUGRATS ([Toon babies of '90s-'00s TV], and an actual word aside from the cartoon), and a GERBIL ([Rodent kept as a house pet]). Summertime bonus points for clueing JUICY as [Like ripe peaches].
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Monday"
If you don't follow today's pop culture, you might have had a tough time with the letter in square 3. I sure as hell never heard of ZAP MAMA, [Belgian singer with the 2009 album "ReCreation"], and I've never watched TMZ ON TV ([Syndicated trashy gossip show]) but I know TMZ is the trashy gossip website with a TV show spinoff. It's quite possible that nobody anywhere has ever put either of those answers into a crossword before. Other slappably fresh stuff:
• QB RATING is a [Sports metric where a perfect score is 158.3]. Football fans probably got that a lot faster than I did. I wasn't sure if it would be QADDAFI at 8A, or KADDAFI, or GADDAFI. And I know nothing about how the QB RATING works so the clue wasn't helping me much.
• PAY CZAR is [Kenneth Feinberg's title]. Ripped from the headlines + a Z = natural fit for a BEQ puzzle.
• THE HUMP—is that a 7-letter partial or an entity unto itself? This [Most difficult moment, in a phrase] is what you have to get over.
• ZETA PSI? Really? I had the Z from JAZZ BAND so the ZETA part was obvious, but I needed the crossings to figure out the second Greek letter in the [Fraternity to which Alfred Kinsey and Benjamin Spock belonged].
I gotta Google this clue for A RAT now. ["___ in the house may eat the ice cream" (spelling mnemonic)] is not remotely familiar to me. The answer is in an an exterminator's page, but his A.R.I.T.H.M.E.T.I.C. teacher used "Tom" in place of "the." I was always a good speller so maybe that's why I missed this one. Or maybe my teachers never needed us to be able to spell "arithmetic" because really, when does a kid need to do that?
October 25, 2009
Monday, 10/26/09
September 04, 2009
Saturday, 9/5/09
NYT 4:29 the second time around, untimed the first time
LAT untimed, but it fell smoothly
Newsday untimed, with some snarls
CS untimed (J)
Mike Nothnagel's New York Times crossword
Mike's puzzle was originally the finals puzzle at the Lollapuzzoola tournament a couple weeks ago. I test-solved it aboard an airplane, untimed because my only watch is my cell phone and phones must be turned off during flight. Brian Cimmet, the cohost of Lollapuzzoola, was looking for a tough finals puzzle, so I suggested a few spots that might need toughening up. Aw, I'm disappointed that the genus and species of brine shrimp (Artemia salina) didn't make it into the SEA MONKEY clue, per my suggestion. (15D: [Pet for which you can buy an Aqua-Leash] is harder than the original, at least.) I haven't compared the Lolla final version with the NYT version, so I don't know if there were (m)any changes.
I wouldn't have used the "play against the clock" option on the applet if I'd remembered that the puzzle was one I'd seen before, but the margaritas, they kept me from remembering. Ah, well. Still, Mike's fill and clues were worth another go-round.
Favorite clues and answers:
Updated Saturday morning:
Randall J. Hartman's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Tuckered Out"—Janie's review
Randy may complain of fatigue, and even though the first words of each of the three theme-phrases begin with a synonym for that condition—really, to judge from the fill today, there's little evidence of it at all. Take a look:
Lotta names in the mix today. The gents are: (H.) ROSS Perot, Nicola TESLA, RON Howard, Don IMUS, PETER Ueberroth, Ernest or Julio GALLO and Patrick EWING; the ladies: EDIE Falco, ANNE Hathaway, AMY Adams and ["Cheers" barmaid], the snarky and super CARLA Tortelli.
Other strong fill would include: RANCOR; TAPIRS, those unusual-looking [South American mammals] (that are darned cute in the baby-stage); EXUDE and OXIDE; CURFEW and CUT MAN [Figure in a boxing ring]. That last one conjures up Clint Eastwood ("the best cut man in the business"), Morgan Freeman and Hillary Swank in the rip-yer-heart-out Million Dollar Baby.
Places where I needed the crosses to keep me on track bring me back to our friend AXIOM, where my first thought was adage; [Stratagem]—that's plan, right? Nupe, more like the wily WILE; [Copies] are CLONES today and not mimics; and those [..."knock-knock" jokes]? They're PUNNY, not corny. (Well, they're corny, too—but that's another story!)
Doug Peterson's Los Angeles Times crossword
Fun puzzle, but definitely on the easy side for a Saturday. The morning is racing on without me, so let me do a quick copy-and-paste excerpt from L.A. Crossword Confidential with the crossword's highlights:
Newsday "Saturday Stumper" by "Anna Stiga," aka Stan Newman
(PDF solution here.)
If you like to compare your solving times with mine, boy, you're fresh out of luck today. Maybe tomorrow!
The last corner I was able to work through was the northwest one. The three toughest clues for me in that quadrant were [Powerless people of fiction] for MUGGLES, the non-wizard people in the Harry Potter universe); [Knighted actor] Peter USTINOV, who does not have a very British Isles surname, so he was a surprise there; and [Name meaning "I am faithful"], which brought people name FIDEL to mind but not dog name FIDO, the answer.
The upper right corner is topped by QADHAFI, the [African Union chairman elected in 2009], the guy whose name can be transliterated in about 10 different spellings. He's above "YA THINK?"—a [Jocular "Really?"]. Moving towards the puzzle's midsection, we hit BOO BIRD, or [No fan of the home team]. Who uses that term?
Dropping down to the lower left, LEN is a [Spy novelist's prename]. Len...Len...Deighton? Yeah, that's the guy. I started with IAN Fleming. I didn't know that it was the YEW TREE that was [Wordsworth's "pride of Lorton Vale"]. Oak, elm, ash...so many trees to choose from.
In the final quadrant, I started with FATCATS instead of TOMCATS for [Garfield et al.]. [Like moles] uses the two-syllable mole, the MEXICAN sauce made with chocolate. P.W. BOTHA, that unsavory [ANC opponent] who ruled South Africa as a staunch proponent of apartheid, balances QADHAFI's North Africa geographically.
July 30, 2009
Friday, 7/31
NYT 5:38
LAT 5:26
BEQ 5:18
CS 7:49 (J—paper)
WSJ 10:44
Mike Nothnagel's New York Times crossword
Now, you could look at Mike's puzzle and say, "Wow, 72 words? That's the most he's allowed to have in a themeless. He should've been more ambitious." But the ambition is in the zing—zingy fill and some twisty Friday clues. Here are 15 favorites:
Among the tougher spots for me, there's a quote clue for the good ol' ASP: 58D: ["My baby at my breast," in Shakespeare]. That's not the same baby/breast combo mentioned in the Salma Hayek writeup. And what about 1A? A fill-in-the-blank like ["___ better be!"] looks so easy, but it took me a bit to get IT HAD. Partial at 1-Across = meh. Patrick SWAYZE is a familiar name, sure, but who is this SWAYZE that's 42A: an [Early TV news commentator famous for doing Timex ads]? John Cameron Swayze, Google tells me. Ooh, this clue's a good one: 52A: [Stars participate in it: Abbr.] clues the NHL, as in the Dallas Stars' league. How about the TORAH? 10D: [It contains 613 mitzvot]. [Vultures were sacred to him] clues ARES, and [Fast Eddie's girlfriend in "The Hustler"] is SARAH.
Overall, a really fun themeless with enough tricky clues to keep me happy and an abundance of sparkle in the fill.
Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword
Is it just me or is this the toughest L.A. Times puzzle in a good long while? Dan's last crossword made me grumble, but Brendan Quigley predicted the next go-round would be more satisfying—and so it is. Why? Let us count the ways:
1. The theme is straightforward and yet it took me a while to figure out what was going on. (Perhaps you cottoned to the theme faster than I did. It's words with an SK sound that gets flipped to become a KS sound, better known as X.)
2. There are six theme entries, but they're on the shorter side (56 theme squares in all), so...
3. There's room for plenty of lively fill, made all the more so by...
4. A relatively low word count (72), which translates to longer answers on average, with plenty of 6- to 8-letter entries.
The theme runs like this:
Highlights:
Updated Friday morning:
Raymond Hamel's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Foodie Workout"—Janie's review
Gosh, I love this puzzle. Each compound-word theme answer (an entity unto itself) names both something that may be ingested and an exercise move, so there's a three-for-one thing going on that is a treat. Though the remaining fill is all of the seven-letter-and-under variety, there are some nifty connections to be made between several of them that add to the liveliness of an already lively construction. With Ray's culinary-themed regimen you'll savor/execute a:
All save one of the themed entries appear to be major-publication firsts, and the one exception—our friend the soda jerk—looks to be a CS first. Fresh fill of the sort we see today is always an ASSET in my book.
If the fill described so far has not piqued your appetite, perhaps the SWISS [Variety of cheese] and/or STILTON [Rich British cheese] will. I envision an INERT HOMER [Abe Simpson's boy] ensconced on the sofa, snarfing down PIZZA, STEIN [Beer mug] in hand. (Okay—Homer's more of a right outta the can kinda guy, but I'm tryin' to work with what I got here!) Nice, too, how those last three words stack up in the NE.
There are two particularly good clue/fill combos today: [A lot of sassafrass] for ESSES—there are five of 'em, in fact; and the charming [Course for Crusoe?] for ANAGRAM. Anyone need that one spelled out? I like, too, how SLAVS is right next to SERBIA in the grid, because even though the former has been clued [Poles, e.g.], it could have been clued in connection with the population from that [Balkan country].
The assonance of ANAGRAM, ANAPEST and NIAGARA is most appealing. And I like seeing ANT [Insect in "High Hopes"] right after UPSIDE [Optimist's focus]. If any creature was optimistic, it was definitely that ant. I also like seeing the high-scoring Scrabble letters—those Xs and Ks, the Vs, J and Zs.
Getting back to the "workout" component of today's theme, should you undertake it and find that your muscles start to TIRE and your body ache, Ray has provided a fitting bonus right there in the grid. Just pull out the ol' ICE BAG!
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Fighting Words"
I'm not generally a fan of quote themes, but I am a fan of comedian Sarah Haskins, and she's a fan of Brendan's crosswords, as am I, so a puzzle that features a Haskins quote is OK by me. The quip is I'M A FEMINIST. IT IS / AN EXTENSION OF MY / LIFELONG WAR / AGAINST / PANTYHOSE. I follow sarah_haskins on Twitter (I'm OrangeXW) and like her "Target Woman" videos (which are not about Target, the store).
What's that? What about the puzzle? Oh. 15x16 grid, lots of tough stuff, lots of long answers sprawling across and beside one another. Good crossword. Am short on time thanks to two-hour (!) doctor visit.
Randolph Ross's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Egotism"
The theme is all about ME, as in the two ME rebus squares that appear in each otherwise unrelated long theme entry. It didn't take me that long to figure out that there was a rebus involved, but it still wound up being a tough puzzle for me. Ten double-rebus answers in all, with the middle one, [ME]DIA NA[ME], sharing its rebus squares with two Down theme answers, one of which shared another ME with another Across theme entry, so instead of an egotistical 20 MEs, we have a humble 17 MEs.
A couple tough names from long ago—TILDEN was the [Popular vote winner of 1876], and [ME]LLON was the [Treasury secretary under Harding, Coolidge and Hoover].
Time to work now!
May 25, 2009
Tuesday, 5/26
Jonesin' 4:01
LAT 3:18
NYT 2:40
CS 6:46 (J—paper)
Mike Nothnagel's New York Times crossword
Most of Mike's puzzles are themeless, so it's a bit of a departure for him to show up on Tuesday. But the six-part theme's augmented by Nothnagelian fill, in addition to being a flawless theme. The theme entries are:
Highlights in the fill, quickly: NANCY DREW's the [Character who first appeared in "The Secret of the Old Clock"]. DOT MATRIX is an [Early printer type]. [Annotates, as a manuscript] clues MARKS UP. K-PAX! That's the [Title planet in a 2001 Kevin Spacey movie]. Tony DANZA is the ["Who's the Boss?" co-star] who, by the way, looks like he could be Rahm Emanuel's brother. Crosswordese name NYE graduates to full-name BILL NYE, [TV's Science Guy]. And a TWINGE is a [Sudden, sharp pain]. Plus we have colloquial language like "GOT ME" and "I KNOW" ("IT IS I" is a lesser caliber of fill). Seeing EGEST in the grid just now made me imagine it as an E-word: E-GEST, a notable adventure or exploit on the Internet.
Updated Tuesday morning:
Donna S. Levin's CrosSynergy puzzle "Going Once, Going Twice,..."—Janie's review
For the second Tuesday in a row we have a CrosSynergy constructor debut. A hearty welcome to Donna, yet another skillful, clever, well-published constructor, whose puzzles have been seen extensively as part of the Creators Syndicate (Newsday), the L. A. Times, the Sun, and more recently in the NYT. Her inaugural summons up the auction block. Live auction, not this kind... Each theme phrase ends with a word related to auctions and the first three of them are appearing for the first time in a CS puzzle; the last is making its major-puzzle debut. Whaddo-I-hear, whaddo-I-hear, whaddo-I-hear for:
And the beauty parts of the grid-as-is are many:
Some clue-cogitatin':
Clocking in at 7:30 (they ain't called INXS fer nuthin'!), here's a link to signature song "Need You Tonight" as the band performed it at Wembley Stadium in the early '90s.
All in all, one PRIMO premiere—and (fair warning) I am going, going,...
Fred Jackson III's Los Angeles Times crossword
The theme here is old musicals whose titles end with women's names:
Favorite entry in this puzzle: the ELKS CLUB, or a [Fraternal group, familiarly]. Super-fresh—or as fresh as a group of mostly older men can be. Biggest fake-out: I combined the Y from HELLO DOLLY and the clue for 46A, [Stevenson's ill-fated doctor], and automatically filled in MR. HYDE, grumbling that this alter ego wasn't a doctor. D'oh! It's Dr. JEKYLL, who has a Y in the same place.
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "That's B.S.!—at least it's broken up"
Matt's puzzle has seven theme entries in which the first word ends with B and the other word begins with S, so there's a broken-up B.S. in each. Alas, there is a Down answer outside of the theme in which there's an unbroken BS—BEAR CUBS, clued as [Den mother's group]. The theme lacks a certain rationale, as we don't typically think of breaking up bullshit. Here are the theme answers:
There are always some bloggable clues in a Jonesin' puzzle—interesting or unusual answers, oddball names, etc. ["Hinky Dinky Parlay ___" (WWI song)] is completed by VOO (parlez vous). SAL ["___ the Stockbroker" ("The Howard Stern Show" personality)] is nothing I've ever heard of. BOPGUN is a [1977 hit from George Clinton and Parliament] and I can't say I recognize the title. What's a [Rounded architectural framework in cathedrals]? It's a RIB VAULT. LOW BP is clued as a [Healthy heart rate, on a doctor's chart], though actually, blood pressure can be dangerously low too. JOYSTICK, or [Arcade game control], is a terrific-looking crossword answer. I think Brendan Quigley might've had [Aladdin ___ (David Bowie alter ego)]/SANE in a puzzle recently, and yet I still forgot it. "A lad insane"? I'm not convinced that ZOOMANIA, or [Animal fanatic's condition], is a real English word; it might be a Spanish one.
March 09, 2009
Sunday, 3/8 NYT Diagramless
If you haven't yet taken a crack at Mike Nothnagel's Second Sunday New York Times puzzle, a diagramless crossword, because you're not sure how to get started, let me give you a boost. (After the cut.)
There are two ways to get started on a diagramless. One is to use the hint that tells you the starting square for 1-Across. If you're good at conventional crosswords, though, you can probably muddle through without the hint, and you'll feel that much more accomplished when you finish it.
If you're leery of giving up the starting-square crutch, make things easier on yourself by using graph paper that's bigger than the puzzle's 17x17 grid. Here's a printable PDF of a 20x27 sheet that will work well. Using graph paper will let you start writing answers before you've figured out exactly where the first square is supposed to go. Read the clues for 1-Across and the Down answers that intersect it, and see how many of the words you can fill in. Turn that graph paper sideways and jot your 1-Across answer in the top row, near the middle. That will give you enough leeway to not run off the edge of the grid. You can blacken in the squares before and after 1-Across. So that means two black squares with five white squares between them.
[Classroom furniture], 5 letters? Could be DESKS. Do the crossings support that? 1-Down is [Search for water with a divining rod], or DOWSE. 2-Down is [Franc replacers], or EUROS. Yep, it looks like 1-Across is DESKS. 3-Down is ["Uncle!"] and starting with an S, it could be STOP, STOP IT, STOP THAT, SAVE ME, or something else. 4-Down is Barbie's KEN, and 5-Down, [Wise man] starting with S, looks to be SAGE. When you're confident of a Down answer, remember to follow it with a black square—those black squares will help you figure out the placement of subsequent Across answers.
With those crossings, the answer below DESKS includes OU*EA. [Defeat in a hot dog contest, e.g.] sounds like OUTEAT, so we can fill that in, along with the number 10 in the O square and black squares before and after the word. With the black square above the second T, you know a Down answer starts there; after 10 comes 11, so that's the number that goes there. [Economic stimulus]...hmm, I'm thinking it's TARP, but the clue has no signal for an abbreviation.
The answer between DESKS and OUTEATS is [Island east of Java] at 6-Across. It's either in the top row to the right of DESKS or in the second row to the left of OUTEAT. If you don't know 6-Across, use the clues for 6-, 7-, 8-, and 9-Down to try to fill in the 4-letter 6-Across. I'm thinking BALI, and if [Cruising] is ASEA and [Feudal lord] is LIEGE, 7- and 8-Down provide confirmation of BALI.
13-Across is a starred theme clue, [*"Nope, that's not it either"]. The Down crossings extending from DESKS/OUTEAT give us WR*NG*—so WRONG something, maybe WRONG AGAIN. The O in WRONG makes ["Uncle!"] start with STOP, and that P finishes SOP, or 19-Across [Soak (up). The E at the end of SAGE is thus square 20, and 20-Across is clued [Dual track bet]. EXACTA? That would make 11-Down a TAX something, TAX BREAK or REBATE or CUT. The A in TAX supports WRONG AGAIN, so we can fill that in. The letters we have connected so far run 10 letters wide; WRONG AGAIN is 10, and answers like DESKS and SOP don't extend farther to the left than that W.
After 20-Across is 21-Across, theme entry [*Sonic the Hedgehog game system]. Isn't that the SEGA GENESIS? (The things I learn from crosswords...) There's a corresponding ES at the ends of DOWSE/EUROS. If that's where SEGA GENESIS goes, an I would follow STOP in 3-Down, making STOP IT look good there. If you write in the rest of SEGA GENESIS to the left, the distance from its start to WRONG AGAIN's end is 17 squares—exactly the width of an NYT diagramless grid. So now we know where the grid's edges are. Go ahead and draw an outline for the 17x17 grid within the confines of the graph paper—or copy what you've got to the diagramless's grid now that you know where things go. It looks a little weird to have DESKS just to the right of center, doesn't it? You'd expect a 1-Across to be further left.
The AG in SEGAGENESIS pairs up with the A and G in ASEA/LIEGE, so now that section of fill can be connected to the rest of what we have. 12-Across must be AS IN ([Q ___ queen]), and [Knock-___] must be KNEED. 6-Down is a theme entry, [*1972 T. Rx hit titled "Get It On" in the U.K.]. BANG something...I'm not sure what this is. 9-Down looks to be INDENT, the [Start of many paragraphs].
Head back over to WRONG AGAIN. There are black squares above the GAIN portion, so those white squares get numbers and double as the start of four Down answers. With the help of EXACTA, you can probably forge your way through 14- to 17-Down and use those answers to divine 24- and 29-Across.
It's always a good idea to see what unifies the theme entries. WRONG AGAIN and SEGA GENESIS...hmm...I see GAGA hidden in the former, but only a GAG in the latter. Take a gander at the other starred clues—6-Down, 44-Across, 40-Down, 65-Across—and see if you think they might have a hidden GAG in them. The clue for 73-Across is [Something you might not get...or what the answers to the starred clues each contain?]. That supports the theory that the unifying theme is a hidden word. Is a GAG "something you might not get"?
Has this step-by-step write-up given you a good nudge in the direction of knowing what to do when faced with a diagramless puzzle? I hope so. In lieu of continuing this (time-consuming!) approach, I'll trust that you're off to the races now.
If you've skipped the hint, you don't know if the grid will turn out to be asymmetrical (like the diagramlesses that form a picture with the black square pattern) or have standard crossword symmetry. You've already observed that it doesn't have left/right symmetry, because DESKS isn't in the exact middle and BALI and OUTEAT are different lengths and not centered below DESKS. It doesn't look like a picture of anything, and most diagramlesses do have symmetry rather than a picture. If you're confident that the puzzle has standard rotational 180° symmetry, you can get a jump on the bottom half of the grid by filling in black squares diagonally opposite from the black squares on top. Where DESKS has 7 blacks before it and 5 after, the sole answer in the bottom row will have 5 blacks before it and 7 after. The clue for that answer, 78-Across [Word before fund or me], points towards the 5-letter word TRUST. Fill in the black squares in the row above that, and you'll see that 76- and 77-Across have 6 and 4 letters, respectively. So you can work your way towards the middle of the puzzle from both ends, which can be a huge help if you hit the skids on your way down.
Remember, a square in an Across answer that has a black square above it will contain a number and be the start of a Down answer. You can use the Across and Down numbers to figure out how long certain answers are. For example, 32-Across [Overworked worker's cry] has two letters that are below black squares, because the next Across clue is numbered 35. 33 and 34 appear along with 32 in 32-Across. Looking at the partially filled grid and working through the crossings will help you figure out if 32-Across has just 3 letters or if it's longer (with one or more squares not containing numbers].
Feel free to drag your mouse over the solution grid below to highlight the white text if you're stuck and want to see a chunk of the grid.
Good luck, and have fun!
If you're already adept at solving diagramless puzzles, please don't be shy about sharing other hints and approaches in the comments.
Answer grid:
*******DESKS*****
**BALI*OUTEAT****
**ASIN*WRONGAGAIN
*KNEED*SOP*EXACTA
SEGAGENESIS*CLEAR
TEA*ENO**THOU*SLY
INGA*TGIF*RUT****
NEON***SOYUZ*AVEC
GYNT*LONGAGO*MOVE
SEGS*ARTUR***ITEM
****RCA*PDAS*DINE
APR*EELS**REB*NON
MODUS*BUSTINGAGUT
BRAZEN*DAR*AIMAT*
INSIDEJOKE*TRIG**
****AWAKEN*ELSE**
*****TRUST*******
As for the theme, here's how it plays out (again, click your mouse and drag over the text to highlight the white text):
WRONG AGAIN, SEGA GENESIS, LONG AGO, BUSTING A GUT, BANG A GONG, and VOTING AGE all contain a hidden GAG, which is defined as an INSIDE JOKE in 73-Across. A gag is a joke, not an inside joke—but the jokes/GAGs are all "inside" the phrases in the theme answers.
February 20, 2009
Saturday, 2/21
NYT 6:24
LAT 5:16
Newsday 5:06
Mike Nothnagel and Byron Walden are two of my favorite themeless constructors. They have similar sensibilities about the kinds of answers they like to wrestle into a grid, so it's natural that they'd pair up on this New York Times crossword. They're both mathematically inclined, so the minitheme of two related 15-letter answers makes sense:
I was just telling my kid that crosswords have a rotational symmetry rather than the left-right flip kind of symmetry mentioned on his math worksheet. And now this puzzle proves me wrong by having its symmetry be the reflected-images variety, with the line of symmetry running along the diagonal from upper left to lower right. I don't believe I've ever seen a crossword with this kind of arrangement.
And wow, look at the density of Saturday-friendly answers that would be Wednesday-hostile. Most of the Across answers aren't so bad (even if their clues may be tricky), but the Downs are a minefield:
Twistiest clues:
Tough clues for familiar answers:
Other favorite things not already mentioned:
Updated:
Barry Silk's LA Times crossword has a single "ick" answer (that'd be SWEAT STAIN, or [Workout consequence]) and a whole bunch of great ones:
Here are my favorite clues:
Crosswordese Maine college town Orono gets promoted to the big time with ORONO, MAINE, clued with [It's 42 miles NNW of Bar Harbor]. The [Mythical Hun king] is ATLI, and Tyler Hinman and I once named our trivia team after him. You know how the fish mahi mahi often shows up halfway in crosswords, clued as half a fish? Now MAHI is given as a complete entity: [Literally, "strong" in Hawaiian].
Today, the Newsday "Saturday Stumper" (solution here) seemed a little easier than the day's other themeless puzzles. It wasn't dull, though—there were a few clunky words (-ER ones) and boring ones (TERN, or [Skimmer relative]; ESSE, or [They: It.]), but a bunch of terrific answers too:
There were weird clues for MARION—the [Surprise-attack master of the Revolution], Francis MARION, is no one I'd ever heard of—and CRINGER ([Mouse, at times]). The CRINGER is accompanied by other -ER answers: STRUTTERS ([Peacocks, e.g.]), RIDGIER ([Comparatively corrugated]), ABLER ([Less error-prone]), VEXER ([Irritant]), and SKATERS ([They work with figures]).
Nobody really likes a clever clue for a danged marble-of-crosswordese, do they? TAW is clued as [Sharp shooter]. Much better is this fresh clue for OREO: [One of a half-trillion sold since 1912].
The "name the person for the title/quote" clues were tough. James AGEE is the ["Permit Me Voyage" poet]. Essayist ELIA is the ["Man is a gaming animal" writer]. Robert BORK is ["The Antitrust Paradox" author]. The ["A Bridge Too Far" author] is Cornelius RYAN; between this one and MARION, that's about two military-history answers too many for my taste. Tea LEONI is the ["Ghost Town" actress] from that Ricky Gervais movie that nobody saw last fall.
January 15, 2009
Friday, 1/16
Sun 5:50
LAT 4:50
NYT 4:27
CHE 3:50
BEQ one day (diagramless, with Acrosses and Down clues up to 26-D)
WSJ 7:38
Mike Nothnagel is one of those themeless constructors whose bylines I'm invariably pleased to see. Why? Because of stuff like this in the Friday New York Times crossword:
Lively fill that tells a story (in my head, anyway): YOU KNOW WHO is an [Unnamed individual], but forget this anonymity, let's call him MR. UNIVERSE ([Arnold Schwarzenegger, four times]). I bet he met a lot of women at a SINGLES BAR (a [Match point?]) in his heyday. You have a question for the bartender there? "OK, SHOOT" is her [Response to "I have a question for you"]. "Do you sell Pimm's?" "YES, WE DO" is the [Reply to "Have you got that in stock"]. "Forget about the Pimm's. I'll have a Scotch. It's an IMPULSE BUY. Make it a double," you say. (PEAT is a [Scotch flavorer, you know.) "LESS IS MORE" (["Keep it simple"]), the bartender cautions, "IN THAT you've had enough. Let me pour you a HOT MILK instead." (That's a [Bechamel sauce ingredient].)
Proper nouns: Some folks hate finding names in their puzzles because they fall in the category of "either you know it or you don't," and when it comes to, say, contemporary pop culture or non-major geography, they can be hopelessly mired in a seemingly insoluble square. Me, I like the names. I didn't know that YING was the name of [Soprano ___ Huang], but pieced it together from the crossings. ETHAN HAWKE is our [Oscar nominee for "Training Day," 2001]; he did a good job looking skeered and conflicted. Gay TALESE is ["A Writer's Life" writer, 2006]. Fictional KATO [fought Robin on an episode of "Batman"]; isn't there another Kato in superhero land? David HUME is ["An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals" philosopher], and he sits atop Verne TROYER, a.k.a. [Verne of Austin Powers films]; he's an actor of short stature who later appeared on reality TV too drunk not to pee on the floor. There's ANKE [Huber of women's tennis]; no other famous Ankes come to mind, so her position in crosswords is a lock. [Israel's Weizman] is named EZER. And there's poet Alexander POPE, [who wrote "Hope springs eternal in the human breast"].
Places in the grid include Michigan's ALMA College, WASHOE County in Nevada, HENLEY-on-Thames ([Regatta setting]), the [Aleutian island] ATKA (I know a lot of you had ATTU there, as I did). There was a a SWEDE ([Uppland inhabitant]) keeping company with a KURD ([Many a Kirkuk native]). Speaking of people in other countries, there are some foreign-language answers here, too. [Cul-___] DE SAC came from the French but is solidly English now. NOTRE is [Our counterpart in France?], or more exactly, "our" counterpart. [Is in Spain?] is "is" in Spain: ESTA. SANS [___ fil (wireless, in Paris)] explains itself.
Other answers/clues I was fond of (or feel slightly ranty about): There's an HOURLY RATE, clued with the hint [A raise may raise it]. [Tinseltown is a part of] SHOW BIZ. I love the word (but not the feeling) ANGST, [Not just jitters].
A couple clues are not PETA-friendly: OPEN SEASON for hunters is [When many shots are taken], and LASSO is clued as [Ringer of some necks]. The ERNS, [Birds with "meat cleaver" bills], do what they can to defend themselves. Those flying geese are on their own, though. PETA probably wouldn't object to ALL OK ([Perfectly good]), but it doesn't feel like it makes the grade as crossword fill.
Barry Silk's Sun "Weekend Warrior" felt easier to me. I tackled this one right before the NYT, and much preferred Barry/Peter's clue for OPEN SEASON: [Animated film of 2006]. I see a lot of the cartoon movies because I have a kid, but this one...I can't remember if it was the one with a bear and a snack machine or the one with the suburban incursions. Wait, it was the bear. The other one was Over the Hedge. Two 2006 cartoons about forest animals starting with O*E* words? Crikey. Getting back to the crossword: My favorite clue was one of the last ones I figured out. [Leaving while the iron is hot?] sure sounds like it has to do with the idiom "strike while the iron is hot," but it's a FIRE HAZARD, leaving the house with an iron still plugged in. Two people merit the full-name treatment here: TALIA SHIRE and LEANN RIMES. I first opted for HOOVED for [Like pigs' feet]; I imagine our porcine friends are less than pleased about BRINED feet. I'm not a POTSTICKER fan, but it sure looks cool in a crossword. I noted to myself that all the GPS clues, like [GPS display], seem to have displaced AAA clues for RTE. Whoops, the GPS display is a MAP this time...and RTES are [AAA suggestions] up above.
The title of Robert Doll's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Two-Letter Entries," makes it sound as if the puzzle will violate the standard interdiction against crossword answers with just 2 letters. The first three theme entries each have two words occupying 11 or 12 letters, though—but in the NATO ALPHABET (that international phonetic alphabet), those two words stand in for single letters. The elegance comes in the choice of letter-words: FOXTROT TANGO stands for FT, and both words are names of dances. [Two male nicknames], MIKE CHARLIE, fill in for MC. And Shakespeare's ROMEO JULIET make up RJ. O gets transmitted as "Oscar," who doesn't partner up with another letter in this puzzle—but there's an OH-OH and the movie OH, GOD, combining in my head into Oh, Oh, Oh, God, which would be a considerably more alarming movie. Oh, and look who's here—the NYT had Verne TROYER and here's VERNE, only he's not clued with reference to Mr. Troyer but rather, [Captain Nemo's creator] Jules.
ESSO update:
Joon's comment reminded me that I wanted to mention the ESSO clues. In the NYT, it's a [Brand named after the pronunciation of its parent company's initials], S.O. or Standard Oil. (If you didn't know that, it makes for a nice little "aha!" moment when it clicks.) The Sun clue is [Sinclair alternative], but it's the NYT clue that has that "long clue providing a piece of trivia" vibe we associate with Peter Gordon and the Sun.
Updated Friday morning:
Tracey Snyder's LA Times crossword adds an -EL to a familiar (or semi-familiar) phrase to create each theme answer:
A number of clues threw me for a loop in this puzzle. I immediately thought of hens for [Sound heard after a lot of brooding?], and CLUCK. Uh, no. Oh! Chicks. They CHEEP. No, guess again. CHIRP, from any bird whose mama did that sitting-on-eggs thing. ["The Conspiracy Against Childhood" author] clue upends convention—usually LESHAN is included with the book title in a clue for the writer's crossword-friendly first name, EDA, and "Eda" was omitted from this clue. For [Corona alternative], I thought of other Mexican beers, but Corona is also a cigar, as is the answer, PANATELA. For [Spew out], I started with ERUPT instead of EGEST. [Flour sometimes used in naan], an Indian bread, is ATTA, and though I've had naan I didn't know the flour's name. Two bits of older crosswordese came to me much faster (a true sign of having done an excessive amount of crosswords): ARETE is a [Rugged ridge] and OGIVE is a [Pointed arch]—the latter answer not to be confused with an OGEE, or S-shaped molding (though centuries ago, the two words were synonymous).
Randy Ross's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Cabinet Meeting," calls a meeting of various phrases that include the names of eight of the U.S. cabinet departments. My favorites are GO INTO LABOR, clued as [Visit a cabinet department building?] but evoking childbirth, and BRINGS TO JUSTICE, clued as [Delivers to a cabinet department?]. I liked the Asian geography sprinkled throughout the puzzle—THAI crosses MALAYA (this [Former Asian nation] makes up part of modern-day Malaysia, but Singapore was spun off to be its own country), and BURMA was a [Japanese conquest of 1942] that has since been renamed Myanmar. And there's crowd favorite Jerry ORBACH, [Briscoe portrayer on "Law & Order"]. [Give a hand?] clues SLAP, which is too question-marky for me, too much of a stretch. I went with CLAP, which wouldn't merit a question mark in that clue, which made it hard to see what [Encase] was—SHEATHE, not CH- anything.
Brendan Emmett Quigley's crossword for Friday is called "Corner Stones" and it's a themeless. On Wednesday and Thursday, Brendan parceled out the clues one at a time in his Twitter feed so solvers could go the diagramless route if they wanted to. Knowing that it'd be available as a regular crossword come Friday, I figured it would have standard crossword symmetry and not look like those kooky diagramless puzzles, and it turns out that this makes it easier to solve without a diagram. Hell, I finished the puzzle before BEQ had posted the Down clues from 28-Down to the end. I didn't know this could be done, but there you have it. (Am patting self on back now; definitely have earned a cookie.) In Brendan's accompanying blog post, he says another constructor nudged him to load a puzzle with the sort of entries he wanted to see in a crossword. So this puzzle includes these answers:
more animals
- LOLCATS is clued misleadingly as [Pictures of pussies on the Internet]. A lot of folks think those LOLcats pictures are moronic. I love 'em.
- [Mini covering] clues an IPOD SKIN.
- [Tweet source] is TWITTER.
- If you go [All out], you're going WHOLE HOG.
- I'LL TELL is a [Playroom threat]. This one took me forever to figure out. Mentally inserting that apostrophe was the key. If your playmate tells on you, you might throw a HISSY [___ fit].
- I needed the Down clues to figure out 1/8-Across, VAMPIRE WEEKEND, ["A Punk" rock band]—I'm guessing that combo was another of those things Brendan wanted to work into a puzzle.
January 07, 2009
Thursday, 1/8
LAT 4:48
Sun 4:40
NYT 4:34
CS 2:48
(updated at 9:15 a.m. Thursday)
The Sun "Themeless Thursday" puzzle is a reminder of how enjoyable Mike Nothnagel's crosswords are. If you're a fan too, check your local bookstore or newsstand for the February 2009 issue of Games—the World's Most Ornery Crossword is a plus-sized 25x25 themeless, and this one by Mike is the funnest Ornery I've done in ages. Mike told me they used most of his clues, so it seems I approve of his cluing style as much as his fill. His Sun crossword bears the usual hallmarks—lovely lively fill. Highlights for me (as opposed to Highlights for Children):
In Joe DiPietro's New York Times crossword, five phrases in which the first word starts with S and ends with -ING lose the -ING, which changes the meaning of the phrase. The de-INGed word becomes a noun used to modify another noun (I know there's a term for that). Here are the theme entries:
I like the base phrases, but the de-INGed results don't sing to me. In the fill, there are a few names I don't know, and a couple I do. The Jim [Nabors role] is Gomer PYLE; got that. The [Pupil of Miss Crump, on TV] is OPIE; more decades-old TV, got it. [Nancy's aunt in Nancy Drew mysteries] is named ELOISE; she had an aunt? [N.F.L. Hall-of-Famer Matson] is named OLLIE; never heard of him. ["Porgy" novelist ___ Heyward]'s first name is DUBOSE; Dubose Heyward is a delightfully weird name. [Sci-fi novelist ___ S. Tepper]'s first name is SHERI; never heard of her. The [R&B singer with the hit "Thong Song"] is SISQO; I know the name but not the song. [Last name in comedy] is MARX, as in Groucho, Harpo, et al.; got it. [Curly whacker] is MOE Howard, one of the Three Stooges; got that.
I like the varying Jets in the clues. The [Only Super Bowl won by the Jets] is III, while [The Jets, e.g.] are a GANG in West Side Story. There are two [Jot]s, too, a WHIT and an IOTA. There's no [Jut] clue, but close: [Just] means ONLY. There's not much information provided in the cross-referenced clues for 28-Down and 45-Down, GAS and a FILL-UP.
Updated:
Don Gagliardo's LA Times crossword has a theme that takes a while to suss out because the clues for the first three theme answers is simply [?], and the grand unifying answer's clue is [Question that begs to be asked about 17-, 30- and 37-Across]. It turns out the question is WHERE DID IT ALL GO?—referring to the DISAPPEARING INK, VANISHING CREAM, and EVAPORATED MILK. Evaporated milk is actually quite easy to see, but I like the overall conceit anyway. Liveliest fill: RAISE HELL, or [Cause a ruckus]. So accustomed am I to the daily crossword's catering to the stereotypical great-grandma who gets the vapors, I wanted to put CAIN in there instead. Speaking of vapors, [Paralyze with mist, as an airport] almost looks like it's suggesting that TSA employees spray passengers with paralyzing mist, doesn't it? I bogged myself down with ICE IN (wrong! where's the mist?) instead of FOG IN, which led me to have CREW instead of OARS for [Trireme hands], too. [Word often seen in green] is obvious if you're solving the crossword while walking down a busy street, less so if you are sitting indoors—it's WALK. Also cute: Crossing PETRI dish with a TEST TUBE.
I don't at all recall ASTRES, ['70s Pontiac subcompacts]. I doubt I have ever used the word REINVOLVE, or [Bring back into play]. The lower left corner of this puzzle didn't please me at all. [Lateral lead-in] devoutly wished to be EQUI, because nobody much uses AMBIlateral; ambidextrous, yes. The ["Sands of Iwo Jima" director Allan] DWAN is not as famous these days as he might have hoped. The [Despondent cry] is "OH, ME," which I have never, ever said, and which could just as plausibly be AH ME, OH NO, or ALAS. [Some of the landed gentry] are DOWAGERS and [Birds' bills] are also called NEBS. Stretching down into this corner, too, is AT A LOW EBB, or [Declining seriously]. The idiom may date back four centuries and may be used in mainstream newspapers today, but it resisted my efforts to piece it together this morning.
Randall Hartman's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Five of a Kind," has a vowel progression theme, with five lively phrases swapping in A, E, I, O, and U to fill in the B*LLY___ space:
Hartman probably didn't realize that Byron Walden did essentially the same theme (but with BELLYFLOP and the shorter BILLY GOAT) in his 11/23/01 NYT puzzle. The two puzzles are different—the older one was a tougher Friday puzzle, while today's is as easy as a Tuesday NYT. I like 'em both.
December 11, 2008
Friday, 12/12
NYT 6:05
LAT 5:17
Sun 4:45
CHE 4:39
CS 4:12
WSJ 7:52
What a treat—themeless crosswords from a long established master of the form, Frank Longo, and a newer hotshot, Mike Nothnagel.
Mike's puzzle is the New York Times one, and he's loaded it with some delightful fill. There's some knotty stuff, as you expect for a late-week puzzle, but nothing beyond the pale. Here are the incandescent answers:
Things I did not know:
Favorite clues:
Yeah, I liked this crossword a lot. LUCY VAN PELT! She lights up the grid, she does. I'd actually just been wondering the other day why we hadn't seen a Mikey N. creation for a while, and here 'tis.
I've got to be quick about blogging Frank's Sun crossword, a "Weekend Warrior" (yay! two themeless Suns in a row this week!), because two DVRed TV shows are waiting for me and they're getting impatient. This grid contains two completely unfamiliar answers—CATAMARCA, the [Argentine province or its capital], and CALMA, clued with ["Ridente la ___" (Mozart song)]. The second C in CATAMARCA crossed the [Jailer in Beethoven's "Fidelio"], ROCCO—I think he was in another crossword in the last year, also with a crazy crossing, and some people had opted for ROSCO instead.
Favorite clues and answers:
Updated:
Once again, I had trouble tuning into the Friday LA Times crossword's wavelength. I didn't get the feeling that Gail Grabowski's clues were really hard, and the fill is all straightforward—it was a quasi-"Saturday Stumper"-esque experience of missing the point of the clues. (Sigh.)
The theme entries insert an O to change a phrase's meaning:
Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy puzzle, "It's Just a Phase," starts each theme entry with a phase of the MOON (67-Across). NEW ENGLAND is [Where Patriots are revered]. CRESCENT ROLL is a sort of [Bent bread]. The QUARTERHORSE is an [Animal raised to run 1,320 feet] on a racetrack. [Back to the start] means FULL CIRCLE, and the phases of the moon—from new to crescent, quarter, ("waxing gibbous" omitted from the theme), and finally full go full circle. Or they do when they pass through waning gibbous to the other quarter and crescent before returning to a new moon. Favorite clue: [Work on a wall?] for ART mounted on a wall.
Todd McClary's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Polymath," has a cool theme. Familiar phrases that start with numbers and share the same noun are paired and subjected to arithmetic operations, and the theme answer is the result:
Isn't that a fun game?
Mike Shenk constructed this week's Wall Street Journal crossword under the pen name Judith Seretto. The title is "Small Investments" because the word WEE is invested in each theme entry. For example, CB radio is short for Citizens' Band, which takes on a WEE to read CITIZENS BAN WEED, or [Headline about an antipot referendum?]. The Dark Knight becomes THE DARK WEEKNIGHT, or [Moonless Monday, perhaps?]. This one's the best of all the theme entries, if you ask me. Plenty of interesting clues and fill here, too.
