BEQ 4:50
LAT 3:12
NYT 2:43
CS untimed
James Mulhern and Ashton Anderson's New York Times crossword
This pair of cruciverbal newcomers have crafted a puzzle with an "_OCK AND ___" theme:
• 17A. COCK AND BULL is [Like a story that can't be believed].
• 27A. [Military strategy during the 2003 invasion of Iraq] is SHOCK AND AWE.
• 45A. [Subject of a 1950s "revolution"] is ROCK AND ROLL. I don't think rock was the "subject" of the revolution—I think it was the engine that drove the revolution.
• 61A. LOCK AND LOAD is clued with [Prepare to use a rifle].
A novice puzzler in my living room found the common ANDs to be helpful. This is why it's a Monday theme and not a Wednesday theme. The novice thought she wouldn't get too far in the puzzle, but she actually polished it off in a matter of minutes. Thank you, Monday puzzles! You help lure people into the crossword habit, give them their cruciverbal sea legs.
Updated Monday morning:
Raymond Hamel's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "K-K-K-KT"—Janie's review
One of the most enduring songs to have emerged from the World War I era was "K-K-K-Katy," also known as "The Stammering Song." With a wink to that title, Ray has found four well-known phrases whose first word ends with the letter "K" and, with great success, has "re-purposed" them to end with the letter "T." So, doing the K/T swap out:
• 17A. Pack of lies becomes PACT OF LIES, a [Worthless agreement?] containing a pack of lies, too, no doubt.
• 11D. Track record turns into TRACT RECORD, a [Log of land sales?]. This example and the ones that follow are more successful for me as they go farther afield from the context of the base phrase.
• 25D. Duck hunting metamorphoses into DUCT HUNTING, or [Looking for new gutters?]. This one is sounds plain silly and I love it for that.
• 50A. Pickpocket changes to PICT POCKET, [Where an ancient Brit kept his wallet?]. Not only silly but conjures up a strong image. Although... did you know that the Picts (among other peoples) are reputed to have been unclad warriors? Some say that they are known as Picts for the body-paint that covered them... I think my favorite line from the first linked article is the observation that the down side of naked combat is that "the combatant misses the practicality of hiding/carrying objects in pockets attached to clothes." Knew that "tract" could get this discussion back on "track"!
There's some very nice longer, non-theme fill that deserves mention. First the playful sounding, symmetrically-placed pair: DOO-DADS [Gizmos] and BON-BONS [Chocolate goodies]; and then the symmetrically-placed cinematic pair: tv WESTERNS ["Bonanza" and "Gunsmoke"] and WARNER [Surname of Hollywood brothers] fave PORKY PIG [Stuttering cartoon character] (who would have been right at home singing "K-K-K-Katy"...).
While its roots are in the word for "entreaty" and its first meaning has to do with prayer, I loved seeing the word LITANY, which is also accurately defined as a [Long list] (as in a "litany of complaints"...). Other fill/clues that caught my fancy would include:
• PANCAKE [Flapjack]
• OLD SALT [Ancient mariner]
• IVY [Wrigley Field wall covering] crossing IVES [Currier's lithography partner]
• NOT clued as [Undoing word], as in, "Tampa Bay's Bucs look to be having a great season so far. NOT!" Apparently they're having trouble meeting requirements related to their [Passing goals (abbr.)] TDS.
• JAUNT [Pleasure trip]
• SPLAT [Pie in the face sound] (We saw this not too long ago clued in connection with the sound an ice cream cone makes when it hits the floor; both work fer me.)
• And while I'm not wild for SHOER [Village smithy, e.g.], [Writer of sweet words?] for ICER really delights me.
Nancy Salomon's Los Angeles Times crossword
The title for this puzzle could be "Doing It in Grand Style," as each theme entry adheres to the "___ing [synonym for big]" format:
• 17A. WALKING TALL is [Striding self-confidently].
• 60A. LIVING LARGE is [Enjoying an extravagant existence].
• 11D. AIMING HIGH is [Shooting for the stars].
• 29D. TALKING BIG is [Carrying on conceitedly].
The theme's straightforward, so I'm not quit sure why this puzzle took me as long as a Wednesday crossword. I derailed partially with SUGAR BEET in lieu of SUGAR CANE ([Crop yielding a common sweetener]), and [Whammies] didn't shout HEXES at me like a [Bad spells] clue might've. I also didn't quite know that the [Game in which "bullets" can be whatever card you decide] is called ACES WILD. Deuces wild is more familiar, and it's got a definition link on Google, whereas "aces wild" doesn't. Not that this is the most reliable indicator of a phrase's solidity, but I've heard of deuces wild while aces high is more familiar to me than aces wild.
A few two-word answers:
• 53A. WAS ON is clued as [Aired, as a TV show].
• 46A. "TAKE THAT!" is [Words while delivering a blow]. 4D: MAKE TIME has the somewhat ungainly clue [Provide a schedule slot (for)]. I think the 8-letter TAKE and MAKE phrases swirled around in the theme part of my brain with WALKING and TALKING and made it a little harder for the theme to stand out clearly.
• 42A. ICE AX is a [Climbing tool for frozen surfaces].
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Monday"
No time to blog now! In short:
• Terrific topical long answers, GOING ROGUE, BALLOON BOY, and SWINE FLU VACCINE. PENIS ENVY isn't topical, but also sparkles.
• Yay for a return to "Themeless Monday"!
• Boo to fill like U-TWO (the band always uses a numeral) and ONER, and to a couple clues. OVA aren't exactly [Places where it all began]—they're wee little cells. The Fallopian tubes and the uterus feel more like the "places" to me. OXIDE is clued as [Iron compound]. While iron oxide is a compound, this just feels wrong to me—oxides are oxygen compounds, no? Chemists, please explain.
November 15, 2009
Monday, 11/16/09
October 15, 2009
Friday, 10/16/09
BEQ 4:45
NYT 4:33
CHE 3:16
CS untimed
LAT 2:56
WSJ 8:20
For another sort of puzzle, see "Go Away" in the post below this one.
Karen Tracey's New York Times crossword
Another Friday, another freestyle Karen Tracey creation to love. Let's run through the cool, the challenging, and the classically Karenical, shall we?
First, you're going to grapple with some names of people and places:
• 14A. LIVY is the [Writer of the history "Ab Urbe Condita"]. It's a history of ancient Rome.
• 15A. The fictional SETHE is Toni Morrison's ["Beloved" heroine].
• 30A. Geography! [Lusatian ___ (German/Polish border river)] is the NEISSE.
• 44A. Who? RAUL is clued as [1980s Argentine president ___ Alfonsin].
• 53A. Eric UTNE is a [Reader's digest founder of 1984]. Note the lowercase d.
• 58A. RAFE is clued as the [Male protagonist in William Inge's "Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff"]. I've heard of Inge, but that's as far as I got with this one. Yay for crossings.
• 1A. [Film composer Clausen and others] clues ALFS. He's best known for composing The Simpsons theme. Hey, PuzzleGirl—he grew up in North Dakota.
• 36D. TENERIFE is the [Largest of the Canary Islands].
• 39D. HANA is the [Easternmost town on Maui, on one end of 52 miles of twisty highway].
• 43D. Fake geography! NARNIA is the [Setting for C.S. Lewis's "The Last Battle"].
Usually Karen provides tons of Scrabbly action in her grids. This one's got TUXEDO JUNCTION (23A: ["Where people go to dance the night away," in song]), but not much else. Here are the answers and clues I liked best:
• 20A. The SILENT T is [Part of Christmas].
• 26A. "Limnological" is a pretty word. [Limnological study] clues LAKE.
• 38A. [What you probably have a head for] is the the SHOWER fixture in your bathroom.
• 47A. BEARNAISE SAUCE is a [Chateaubriand accompaniment, often]. How's BEARNAISE on FLANK STEAK (17A: [London broil, often])?
• 50A. Are the Little Rascals synonymous with OUR GANG? Same kids, different era? I honestly don't know. They're [Kids in funny shorts], as in short films. Tricky having a plural clue for an answer ending with G.
• 6D. GET TO KNOW means [More than merely meet].
• 9D. You can think of a few possibilities for [Toy developed in China], can't you? Such as kites? Think instead of toy dogs, like the PEKINESE.
• 10A. A [Set for a reading] is a TAROT DECK. Really fresh answer, that.
• 11D. [Emperor's relative] is ADELIE. Both are types of penguin.
• 24D. "JEEPERS!" means ["Golly!"]. See also DRAT, or 59A: ["Nuts!"], for another old-timey slang exclamation.
• 40D. [Fractional bit?] is the SLASH punctuation mark you see in "1/3."
Let me grumble a moment over the nearly neighboring USENET (45D: [Early online discussion setting]) and USERS (49D: [Detox population]). At least the USERS aren't clued as computer users. There aren't a ton of other options for 49D, with the U*E** fixed by long answers and an 8-letter answer running alongside it.
Jack McInturff's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Capital Gains"
Who doesn't love games based on world capitals? I relished McInturff's theme, in which the second half of various capital cities sounds like the beginning of another word or phrase. The city and phrase are hooked together à la Wheel of Fortune "Before and After" puzzles, and the resulting answer is clued as if it's about the city:
• 19A. [Building material from Sudan?] is KHARTOUM STONE (tombstone). The tomb aspect is dropped from the clue.
• 26A. [Beverage from Lebanon?] is BEIRUT BEER (root beer). Both beer and root beer are beverages.
• 33A. [Sandwich shop in India?] clues NEW DELHI COUNTER (deli counter). "Counter" sans "deli" doesn't much signal "sandwich shop," so the answer hinges on both Delhi and deli.
• 42A. [Soil in Taiwan?] is TAIPEI DIRT (pay dirt). As with 19A, the pay aspect of the base phrase disappears.
• 52A. [Correspondents form Cambodia?] are PHNOM PENH PALS. Again, as with 33A, the clue hints at the second base phrase.
I sort of wish the theme had been more consistent with the inclusion or exclusion of the "after" phrases' meanings, but I'd still give this one a B+ because the theme entertained me, the word count's low (72), and the fill's pretty solid, with high points like NAPOLEON and TOOK A BOW. Why not an A? It ought to be a more challenging puzzle, and nobody's delighted by TAW, RETE, ESAU, ELIA, DEUT., and "IS IT I." (Why the letter grade? Hey, the puzzle's in a publication for professors.)
Updated Friday morning:
Nancy Salomon's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Missing the Point,"—Janie's review
This is lookin' a bit like a three-peat to me. For the third time this week, we have a puzzle with a "take away" gimmick and once again the stakes have been raised. Paula's puzzle on Tuesday dropped one letter from each base phrase (J); Tony's yesterday dropped two (LL); and today, Nancy drops three. = Those letters, as spelled out at 71A [Compass dir. (and point missing from 18-, 30-, 47-, and 61-Across)], are NNE. Pretty nifty actually. In a former life, the phrase:
• 18A. CAD LAUGHTER [Nasty snickering?] was canned laughter (which can also be pretty nasty, come to think of it...).
• 30A. STAR-SPANGLED BAR [Celebs' watering hole?] was our own national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner."
• 47A. UNREPENTANT SIRS [Gentlemen without remorse?] was unrepentant sinners. I wonder if these guys gave Nancy the idea for cad laughter. Or vice-versa...
• 61A. BAD IN BOSTON [What Bean Town felons have been?] was banned in Boston. If you're not familiar with this phrase and its Puritan ties, this would be a good time to check it out. Love the "bean"/"been" wordplay in the clue, too. And... I wonder if those unrepentant sirs had anything to do with inspiring this entry. Or vice-versa...
Besides that unrepentant-bad-cad sub-theme, the puzzle also boasts a Japanese-inspired mini-theme. There's HAI [Yes, in Yokohama] (yesterday it was [OK, in Okinawa]), OBI [Sapporo sashes] and AKITAS [Curly-tailed Japanese dogs]—which look to be both an adorable and beautiful breed.
If you're a carnivore, you probably have a more vested interest in seeing that juicy PRIME RIB [Pricey beef lover's entrée] in the grid. Need a complement of carbs to go with? UNCLE BEN [Big name in rice] might fill the bill nicely. The [Starchy food made from tubers], SALEP, was completely new to me. Am I alone? It does look to have a fascinating history however, and appears to be something that is prepared as a beverage. Also as an aphrodisiac. Which, come to think of it, means it might be just right for a MOONLIT occasion [Like some romantic evenings].
Did you notice that the grid includes both ORAL [By word of mouth] and OREL [Sportscaster Hershiser]? The former shares the final L with EBERSOL [Longtime sports executive Dick], but better still (because of the sports tie-in) is the way the ...REL of the latter sits atop the EBE... of his professional colleague.
SIREN has been clued as [Warning wail], but a siren is also a temptress. Whether or not either of these alliteratively clued femmes intended to be one, DAISY MAE [Dogpatch damsel] and LOLITA [Nabokov nymphet], both have their siren-like ways. And in her own way, I suppose the same can be said of the equally iconic ROSIE [Archetypical 1940s riveter]. (For a study in the-same-only-different, check out all three links!)
Tony Orbach and Patrick Blindauer's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Cooking 100"
Tony and Patrick's theme interprets "Cooking 100" as an academic course of study, with the theme entries all clued as cooking classes. The title also uses "100" as the Arabic equivalent of Roman numeral C, which is the letter added to the start of a word in each theme entry. My favorites among these C+ cooking classes are:
• 68A. LET'S GET READY TO CRUMBLE, or [Course on preparing coffeecake topping?].
• 97A. [Course on a taboo ham seasoning?] is FORBIDDEN CLOVE. I like the unexpected vowel shift from "love" to CLOVE.
As you'd expect from either of these constructors, there's plenty of lively fill—there's KATE MOSS, who could walk on EGGSHELLS, plus a GHOST SHIP and RABELAIS. And the clues sparkle, too. I was partial to [Oblivious beneficiaries] for INGRATES; hockey's St. Louis [Blues scores] for GOALS; [Bldg. that's not well-attended?] for HOSP., which is attended by the unwell; ["A waking dream," according to Aristotle] for HOPE; and [Common or Juvenile] for RAPPER. Two coin answers work together: U.S. MINT is clued with [It makes cents] and SPECIE means [Coined money]. I never think of the LENTIL as a [Soup seed] but rather as a bean, though I guess the clue is botanically sound.
I'm surprised to see both EATS (27A: [Has wings, say]—a terrific clue even if you don't like hot wings) and ATE IT (123A: [Suffered defeat, slangily]) in the same grid.
The two answers most in need of a lot of crossing answers were ATLI and CAMISE. The latter is a [Loose-fitting shirt]—I just saw BLOUSE clued that way quite recently, and while I know chemise and camisole, CAMISE was not in my vocabulary. ATLI is an old-school crossword answer, but the clue, [Brynhildr's brother, in myth], wasn't helping me one bit.
Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword
Ven I vas doing zis puzzle, I started talking in my head mit a German accent. The theme changes initial W sounds to Vs in familiar phrases or vords:
• 18A. Wheelchair becomes VEAL CHAIR, or [Seat for eating scaloppine?].
• 23A. [Tool for a dueling snake?] is a VIPRE BLADE (wiper blade).
• 36A. [What Tarzan becomes after years of swinging?] is a VINE (wine) CONNOISSEUR. The trickiest part of that one is remembering how to spell CONNOISSEUR, isn't it? Better than having a VINE TASTING.
• 49A. VAIN NEWTON joins Isaac Newton to Wayne Newton. The clue's [Egotistical describer of laws of motion?].
• 55A. [Paleontologist's ski resort discoveries?] are VAIL BONES. Whalebones are those stiff stays in corsets.
Smooth and easy, a perfect Tuesday puzzle. The grid is gussied up with long fill like NEON TETRA, SLOWPOKE, CELLPHONE, and LAKE ERIE. Not a lot else to say about it.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Dirty Words"
Quick review here.
Theme = GROUCHO quote, WOMEN SHOULD / BE OBSCENE / AND NOT HEARD. Short quote, leaves room in the puzzle for good stuff.
Good fill = The late Captain LOU ALBANO (I knew him from the Cyndi Lauper video), THE STICKS (same length and last 3 letters as BOONDOCKS, whoops), ED HARRIS, Fred WILLARD and FREDDIE Mercury. Not sure if Saddam HUSSEIN in the Idi Amin slot is gutsy fill or terrible. I like LESBIAN as fill, but could do without the male-centric clue, [She's just not that into you (maybe)].
Favorite clues = [Prefix with cache] stumped me until crossings gave me GEO, as in the trendy geocaching. STATUES? [They may be busts]. Not crazy about LAW CASE as an answer, but the clue, [Mason's job], had me thinking of stonemasons and not Perry Mason. [Miller of note] is STEVE Miller, '70s AM radio mainstay; I guess the "of note" hints at his music but I was thinking of more traditionally notable people and getting nowhere. [Robin hood?] is the TREE its nest is in. Oh! And this one: [They're from Mars] clues M AND M'S. Cute.
August 20, 2009
Friday, 8/21
NYT 5:25
LAT 4:23
BEQ 4:04
CS 9:25 (J—paper)
CHE awol
WSJ 8:34
Patrick Berry's New York Times crossword
Patrick Berry's slacking off with a ridiculously high word count of 66 in this puzzle. A 66 is actually quite low by anyone else's standards, but Berry has spoilt us with his smooth 64-and-under creations. This one's got only two 3-letter answers, and while there are some tacked-on word endings (OPENEST, REMOTEST, CRASSER), they don't overshadow the livelier fill.
I got myself mired in the upper right quadrant, where I opted for OCEANIA for 12D: ["1984" superstate dominated by Neo-Bolshevism]—I needed EURASIA there. That E made me assign 17A: [Cuban-born jazz great Sandoval] a wrong first name of MIGUEL (he's ARTURO). Then the two-word HAUL UP for 15A: [Call on the carpet] just wasn't happening. HAUL UP? That sounds off to me. I also wanted 13D: [Like some pinto beans] to be REFRIED rather than SPOTTED; tonight's bean tacos from Taco Bell were yummy.
Favorite answers and clues:
Mystery word of the day: [Premonish], the clue for 9D: WARN. I know admonish, sure, but never knew there was a premonish dating back to 1526. The word's wordnik.com page tells me it anagrams to morphines.
Updated Friday morning:
Nancy Salomon's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Throwbacks"—Janie's review
Boy, did I feel DENSE [Slow on the uptake] in the course of solving Nancy's puzzle and trying to put the theme together. But once I stepped away from the puzzle, I got a true appreciation of this wordplay-rich creation. It's SUPER.
I'm not sure how succinctly I can do this, but bear with me. Each of the four theme-phrases ends with a word that is a synonym for "throw"; it's at the "back" of the phrase—whence "throwbacks"... Each theme-phrase has a meaning that has nothing to do with throwing anything but has a self-contained meaning of its own. Each of the theme-phrases is both really fresh in its conventional meaning and really visual in its themed meaning. The cluing of each theme-phrase begins with the words [Hurl of a ...]. So how does this play out? The [Hurl of a...]
Other strong fill includes FANFARES [Trumpeted flourishes], MINI-DRESS [Outfit that shows a lot of leg] and ARMCHAIRS [Places to take a load off]. I also like the musical E-G-B-D-F for [Lines of the treble clef] and the way the mention of LAURA [Otto Preminger film noir classic] automatically starts this song on the juke-box in my head. Back to the former: is "Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge" (or "...Favor") still the mnemonic-of-choice among music teachers or has it been given some sort of 21st century spin?
There's more music to be found in HARPO [The silent Marx brother] who...played the harp (when he wasn't honking his horn), ["Rigoletto" composer] Giuseppe VERDI (a/k/a Joe Green), "HE'S [ ___ got the whole world..."], and ["When will they] EVER [learn?"], a line from Pete Seeger's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" (I don't think we can legitimately include the kinda kitschy [Lady of Spain], since the correct fill is DONA—but, hey, here it is anyway.)
Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword
The theme is doubling an N to change the entire meaning of a phrase. Dan's got six theme entries, two of them stacked in the middle, and the only way to stack two answers in the middle is to have a grid with an even number of rows—this puzzle's 15x16. I wasn't quite as fond of the puzzle as Rex was, and I've got a migraine, so I'll let his L.A. Crossword Confidential post do the heavy lifting for me today.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Questions for the Death Panel"
This theme is not about killing Grandma. Rather, it's death-related idioms that might be used innocuously by "death panels" to answer innocuous questions. For example, if you're looking to move to Iowa, you might consider trying to BUY THE FARM. And you'd PULL THE PLUG on your alarm clock if the alarm won't turn off.
What, no KICK THE BUCKET, Brendan? ["I want to water my garden, but that pail's too heavy to lift. What should I do?"]
Favorite answer/clue: [Completely insufferable] clues UNGODLY.
Dan Fisher's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Over-the-Counter Investments"
Various phrases become invested with OTC: the letters OTC are inserted within them, changing the gist of the phrase. For example, freak shows become FREAK SHOT COWS, clued as [Mutant wielded his ray gun in the pasture?]. There are six other theme entries throughout the puzzle.
Favorite clues: [Work from a folder] is ORIGAMI. Usually I'm not a big fan of cross-referenced clues, but I enjoyed the three-part 105D: [Famous final question], ET TU, spoken by 17D: CAESAR, the [105-Down utterer], of OLD ROME ([49D: [Where 17-Down ruled].
August 01, 2009
Sunday, 8/2
NYT 10:53
BG 8:38
PI 8:35
LAT 8:15ish, if I recall correctly
CS 3:23
Patrick Berry's New York Times crossword, "Group Formation"
This is definitely a challenging puzzle, this Sunday-sized beast with 12 rebus squares containing, I think, 10 11 different GREEK LETTERS (with THETA and PHI appearing twice) but with 14 13 other Greek letters floating in the ether as candidate rebus fillers. The theme is embodied by 108A: FRATERNITIES, or [Four groups found in this puzzle], whose names are each made up of three GREEK LETTERS (23A: [Contents of four answers found in this puzzle]. Mind you, if you filled in your grid with the actual Greek letters rather than their spelled-out English names, you'd have a dickens of a time with the crossings—those 12 answers are non-thematic but contain a spelled-out Greek character. Here are the frats (found in symmetrical spots in the grid) and their crossings:THETA DELTA PHI. The TAU is in 14D: GREAT AUNT, or [Social reformer Margaret Fuller, to Buckminster Fuller]. THETA DELTA inhabits something I've never heard of, 35D: THE TACODEL TACO, a [Mexican-style fast-food chain]. And this PHI instance is part of 26D: SOPHIE, an early [Meryl Streep title role]. (Edited to say: Well, that's odd. The applet accepted a T for THETA where it should have demanded a D for DELTA. How the hell are you supposed to know you need a completely different unfamiliar fast-food chain if the applet accepts your incorrect answer??)
Now, that's a demanding theme for the solver to piece together—not to mention a phenomenal feat of construction. The task of filling in the puzzle wasn't made any easier by the overall cluing, was it? Here are some of the tougher spots, if you ask me:
And these were the entries I thought were really cool:
Updated Sunday morning:
There's a lot to do to get ready for vacation—the repotted herbs don't look properly planted, we haven't started packing at all, I need to charge up the laptop, I gotta test-solve puzzles for Brian and Ryan's Lollapuzzoola 2 tournament (top-notch constructors!), and there are still so many crosswords to blog about today. Can I finish before lunchtime? I'm going to try!
Nancy Salomon's syndicated Los Angeles Times crossword, "At the Y"
The theme entries contain one or two added Ys that change the meaning. My favorites:
For more on this puzzle, I refer you to PuzzleGirl's L.A. Crossword Confidential review.
Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer crossword, "None of Your Business"
Merl's theme answers are 13 companies, some (e.g., TIME WARNER, PRICE WATERHOUSE) with old names. Merl annotates the puzzle with this explanation: "Some of the companies in this puzzle have gone through mergers in recent years, but I'm using their earlier, simpler names." Each is clued [It doesn't sell ___], with various things filling in the blank. 82D: RUBBERMAID is clued [It doesn't sell inflatable dolls]. Eww! 127A: UPJOHN gets [It doesn't sell toilet seats]; 72A: PRICE WATERHOUSE is [It doesn't sell pay toilets]. Two toilet theme clues! We don't see that often. My first thought for 26A: [It doesn't sell Band-Aids] was CURAD (before I knew what the theme was), but it's HERTZ, which sounds like "hurts."
Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon's Boston Globe crossword, "Gimme Five"
Each of the 10 theme entries contains a different letter five times. I don't think the specific letters have any grander meaning. In order, they're ASOLIRTNEP, which can be anagrammed to..."STOP! I LEARN!"...or POSTAL REIN...or POLE STRAIN. Okay, I think they're just 10 random letters. LUCILLE BALL is a [Comedy star with five] Ls. "TUTTI FRUTTI" is the [Little Richard hit with five] Ts. PRIMITIVISTIC is a not-so-common word meaning [Quite simple, with five] Is. And so it goes.
There were a couple answers that were wildly unfamiliar to me. 93A is clued [A.k.a. gannet] and the answer is SOLAN. The dictionary tells me the solan, or solan goose, is another name for the northern gannet, and gannets in general are large seabirds with mostly white plumage that plunge-dive to catch fish. The crossings were pretty straightforward, so I got this answer, I just didn't recognize it.
The other mystery word was 6D: ["Roman de Brut" poet]. WACE? That W was my last letter, because the crossing [Tape-measured area] wasn't necessarily going to be a body part like the WAIST. Who is Wace? Turns out he was an Anglo-Norman poet about 850 years ago. "Roman de Brut" "is a verse literary history of Britain by the poet Wace. Written in the Norman language, it consists of 14,866 lines."—so says Wikipedia. I can't read Norman. My high school didn't offer the language.
Randolph Ross's themeless CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge"
Nobody seems to have paid the slightest attention to the changing highlight colors in my Across Lite solution grids. At Rex Parker's blog and at L.A. Crossword Confidential, newcomers often ask "What is the significance of the blue square?" They're sure they're missing something important, but no. The color scheme in this puzzle is courtesy of my son. Looks like Valentine's Day to me.
Now, as to the letters in the crossword: My favorite part of this puzzle is the 1A/15A/17A stack:
Some of the fill feels like the sort of language we encounter mainly in crosswords:
You know how ONE LOOK should've been clued, rather than 37A: [Brief peek]? As [Web site that can help you fill in the blanks in a crossword puzzle]. onelook.com is handy when you're constructing by hand and need to know what words will fit a particular letter pattern. ?N?L??K, for example, could also be unblock, unsleek, uncloak, and some other things that would make unsuitable crossword fill.
June 23, 2009
Wednesday, 6/24
BEQ cryptic 9:57
Onion 4:45
NYT 3:53
LAT 3:01
CS 5:57 (J―paper)
Wow, I had my low-key Wednesday all planned out. Rush-rush puzzle books all done, at last! Time to enjoy a day of medical editing in air-conditioned comfort. And then...the car's "check engine" light dinged on during the drive home from dinner. Who doesn't love taking the car to the shop and hailing a cab when it's 92° out? I know I do—not love that, that is. I expect my bilious mood to follow a sine-wave pattern. Right now it's in a dip, but I predict a rise by 9 a.m.
Oh! Maybe if I remind myself of this, I can keep the crankies at bay: Next Sunday, July 5, the crossword that Tony Orbach and I constructed will appear in the New York Times. Now I'm nervous. What if the other bloggers find things to complain about? What if they're underwhelmed by the theme? What if outraged blog commenters try to eviscerate Tony and me? How do constructors handle criticism with equanimity?
And another thing—Dean Olsher's book, From Square One, was officially published yesterday. Buy it now! I read it in galleys and found it most engaging, and I'm not just saying that because Dean says nice things about me in the book. Honest. (More info about the book and Dean's public appearances here.)
Corey Rubin's New York Times crossword
The phrase TAKE OUT AN AD inspires this theme, in which the letter pair AD is taken out of each theme entry:
Favorite clues and answers:
When do you encounter the plural MODI [___ operandi (methods)]? Not often, not often at all. Remember MABEL [Normand of old movies]? Me neither, other than from crosswords. We have a variant spelling of tyro: TIRO is a [Newbie: Var.]. And rounding out the category of "answers that I wasn't so fond of," we have [Chantilly's department], OISE.
Updated Wednesday morning:
Nancy Salomon's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Short Stuff"―Janie's review
Oh, boy―is this one lovely LEAN-machine of a puzzle; the solving is swift and the fill is fresh as can be. Today, the word short can precede the first word in each of the theme phrases. In this way:
Coming of age appears for the first time in a major puzzle, and both hand-in-glove and stop-on-a-dime are appearing for the first time in a CS puzzle, all of which makes for some really good stuff.
And so does the remainder of the fill―with the likes of EVIL EYE, LOOPHOLE, (CS-debut) STAMP TAX, JANE DOE, McJOBS and MUD BATH especially. I keep thinking of those cagey colonists who, in response to the stamp tax imposed by the Stamp Act, spoke up and won the right to for "no taxation without representation." What a loophole that turned out to be!
Where else but in the puzzles will you find T. S. ELIOT of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" fame in the company of COSMO [Mag famous for sex quizzes]? Hmmm. Maybe next April, for National Poetry Month, Cosmo will create "The Love Quiz of J. Alfred..." And where else but in the puzzles have most of us ever seen an OKAPI [Relative of a giraffe]? Here's an illustration of the two of them together from J. Arthur Thomson's 1922 tome, The Outline of Science. (Though it might be more fun to see an illustration of a ZANY YENTA...)
Anyone out there ever sing madrigals? That's where I first learned the word TABOR, as in Thomas Weelkes's:Strike it up Tabor and pipe us a favour,
I like [Start of something big?] for MEGA―and its placement beside ONE TON in the grid. That's fairly mega! I also like [Months and months] as the clue for YEARS; [Head line?] for PART; and the reminder that [Tangles or disentangles] are synonymous for RAVELS.
thou shalt be well paid for thy labour:
I mean to spend my shoesole to dance about the Maypole,
I will be blithe and brisk, leap and skip, hop and trip,
turn about in the rout,
until very weary joints can scarce frisk.
If the constructor has OUTDONE herself, well, that seems to be a pretty regular occurrence. I wonder about the theme-fill that didn't make it in this time: breadbasket, change of heart, division of labor, order in the court, etc., etc., etc. This is not to find fault! This is a lively theme and it makes me think about it―beyond what I see in the grid on the page. ["Well done!"], Nancy, BRAVO!
Sharon Petersen's Los Angeles Times crossword
My full write-up of this puzzle is over at L.A. Crossword Confidential. The theme is a David Bowie-less LET'S DANCE, with four phrases ending with the names of dances. It felt a little hit-or-miss as the theme phrases weren't all familiar and one of the dances was unknown to me (according to L.A.C.C. reader Carol, I'm just not old enough to remember the Pony). Here's what I said about the theme over there:
Invariably I misspell this constructor's last name with an -son ending. I did so in my L.A.C.C. post (since corrected). Thanks to Doug Peterson-with-an-O for correcting me all the other times so that I could finally get it right today.
Matt Jones's Onion A.V. Club crossword
Aha! While working this puzzle, I was feeling as though some of the numbers were arbitrary, but now I see that they follow the familiar 2-4-6-8 pattern, so I can better appreciate the construction. Here's the theme:
This crossword had all sorts of small bits of weirdness that I didn't know. [Georgia State's conf.] is the CAA. [Ookla the ___ ("Thundarr the Barbarian" character)] is MOK. JAM IT and DIG ON were unfamiliar verb phrases—the former completes ["I wanna ___ with you" (Bob Marley lyric)] and the latter means [Enjoy, slangily].
I did know the [L'Oreal hair color line] FERIA and the [Japanese poetry similar to haiku], or SENRYU—if you've written or read haiku that's funny, it might actually be senryu. I also liked the MAXI clue—[Absorbent pad]. No, references to menstruation in crosswords don't alarm me. MAXI dresses are back in style now, so constructors can once again clue this word with reference to fashion without looking outdated.
Brendan Quigley's blog puzzle, "Cryptic Wednesday"
Dang, I forgot about Brendan's puzzle and thought I was done blogging. Will be quick about it and just list a few of my favorite clues. Be sure to read the comments at Brendan's post—British cryptics guy Peter Biddlecombe gives an educated critique of Brendan's first cryptic, and he says it all so much better than I could.
23A. [Subway mascot shows a container to Mad man] (5). I was thinking that "subway mascot" was part of the wordplay, but that's the straight definition for JARED, the guy from the Subway restaurant ads. The container is a JAR and a man at Mad magazine might be an editor, or ED.
3D. [Desires sexual attraction for losers, probably] (4,5). "Desires sexual attraction" is redundant (and so, as I learn the lingo from Biddlecombe, maybe the surface reading of the clue suffers a bit), but it's split into two distinct parts. Desires = LONGS and sexual attraction = the HOTS. LONG SHOTS are probably going to lose a contest.
16D. [Dope! Callas is lying about Peron] (9). MARIA Callas is "lying about" JUAN Peron to make MARIJUANA, or dope.
June 22, 2009
Tuesday, 6/23
Jonesin' 3:32
NYT 3:11
LAT 3:04
CS 7:16 (J―paper)
At long last, we have reached the time of year when "cooler near the lake" is a splendid thing. Hot, muggy days are much improved by a lake breeze knocking off 10° from the temperature. I hope you Northeasterners who've had the same overlong wet, cool spring as Chicago are now getting some genuine June weather too.
I did some proofreading on six (!) different books today (Brendan Quigley's NFL-team word searches). Is it just me, or is looking at word search puzzles more exhausting than, say, medical editing?
Caleb Madison's New York Times crossword
Caleb's theme contains four phrases that begin with synonyms for "wallop":
Where this puzzle shines is in the longer Down answers. Why, here's GROUCHO MARX—[He said, "Here's to our wives and girlfriends...may they never meet!"]. Ah, adulterous deception is always a reliable source of hilarity. (Maybe the retro ADMEN, [Some Madison Ave. workers], are living the Groucho lifestyle.) One type of [Magazine staffer] is the FACT-CHECKER. STAN LEE is perhaps one of the more common 7-letter first-and-last-name people in crosswords; he's [Co-creator of the Fantastic Four]. REAL LIFE probably gets discussed more now than ever, thanks to how much time people spend in the virtual world discussing [Actuality]. Also nice: the Scrabblicious ZZ TOP, the ["Sharp Dressed Man" band], and an ELIXIR, a [Drink said to prolong life]. Is Diet Coke an elixir? I say yes. Favorite clue: [da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM] presents examples of IAMBS.
Updated Tuesday morning:
Donna S. Levin's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Early Bird's Reward"—Janie's review
The "early bird's reward" is of course the WORM, double-clued here as [Computer malady (and what can follow the starts of the four longest puzzle answers)]. May all of our computers be free of that first kind of worm―but what great fill Donna has provided in those four longest answers to clue the other kinds:
This is all top-notch fill in its own right that does double duty as it livens up a tried-(sometimes "tired-")and-true crossword theme.
Other terrific fill includes three CS-firsts: the poetically clued LOST LOVE [Theme of Poe's "Annabel Lee"], the colorful RED-NOSED [Like Rudolph, in a song title], and NTH POWER [Ultimate degree]. These phrases are well-met with IN RESERVE [Set aside] and SNEAK INTO [Crash]. Did you have trouble with either of these? I sure did. A little nosing around the Cruciverb database, however, reveals that both of these phrases with these exact clues have appeared in puzzles by Rich Norris―and in both cases, in Saturday NY Times puzzles. Aha―so that explains it. Glad I finally GOT WISE [Woke up and smelled the coffee] (another great combo)!
Knew PRESLEY [Graceland name] but was at a complete loss for WEIR [Bob ____ (Grateful Dead co-founder). Today is first time this name has been clued in conjunction with the Dead. More often than not it's clued in association with director Peter or as a "small dam."
All of which comes down to this: congrats to Donna for breathing so much fresh air into the cluing and the fill today!
Gary Lowe and Nancy Salomon's Los Angeles Times crossword
Newcomer Gary Lowe, a regular (and often hilarious) commenter over at L.A. Crossword Confidential, partnered up with constructing mentor extraordinaire Nancy Salomon for today's L.A. Times puzzle. The theme is things you COUNT (54D, [Tally, and what to do with the last word of 18-, 26-, 45- or 60-Across]:
Highlights in the fill: ADVICE GURU, MOLIERE, SLUMDOG Millionaire (though it remains to be seen whether "Slumdog" still resonates a few years from now), and EN MASSE.
I answered a question about 2D via Twitter today. Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn tweeted that he didn't understand how [Totaled] and RAN TO fit together. Totaled, as a restaurant bill, not totaled, as a car. Most of my tweets aren't about crosswords, but you're welcome to follow OrangeXW anyway.
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword,"We've Got a Monopoly"
Cute theme—in each of the six theme entries, Matt changes a single letter in the name of a Monopoly space, giving it a new spin:
WORK WITH ME is stone-cold terrific, in-the-language fill. Its clue is ["C'mon, I need your help here, so stop resisting"]. FORD SUV is...is that terrific or contrived? I'm not sure. That's a [Bronco, Explorer, or Excursion, e.g.]. A trickier clue would've included only the Excursion and the Expedition.
I'm out of time for the morning, so I'll sign off here. Toodles!
April 11, 2009
Sunday, 4/12
PI 9:15
BG 8:15
NYT 7:05
LAT 6:06
CS 3:09
Eric Berlin's New York Times crossword, "Fitting Words"
Eric riffs on the phrase "a square peg in a round hole" by placing 10 square PEGS into 2x2 squares...but the word reads around so those 2x2 spaces serve as round holes. It wasn't too hard to guess that was the theme after filling in the first PEGS in the upper left corner, so the other nine marked 2x2 squares more or less provided a couple crossing letters for 36 more answers. (If you know there's a GE in one answer crossing a box, then you know P and S appear in the other half of the square.) There are just two traditional theme answers, spanning the middle of the grid—SQUARE PEGS are [Things that may not go in 69-Across], and ROUND HOLES are clued [See 65-Across].
The answers intersecting the square PEGS don't feel forced or clunky, which is always a risk when fill is constrained by a puzzle's gimmick. It helps that the PEGS can go clockwise or counterclockwise, can start in any square, and aren't confined to symmetrical spots in the grid. Highlights, from both the PEGS zones and elsewhere, include these clues and answers:
I'm coming down with a cold and feel my energy waning, so here are my top 10 tough clues:
Updated Sunday afternoon:
Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer crossword, "You Can Say That Again"
Was this puzzle hard or is my cold damping down my cognitive function? The 10 theme entries change the pronunciation of a word in a (semi-)familiar phrase to change the meaning, and the new meaning is suggested by the clue:
There were some gnarly bits here. [Holst subject] is MARS with the A crossing IDIOTA, or [Nitwit, in Italian]. NILES Crane was a [Cafe Nervosa regular] on Frasier. [Seeker of prajna (enlightenment)] is a HINDU. [Song of 1850, "Santa ___"] clues LUCIA. [Ayesha will show hers (and how) by the end of H. Rider Haggard's "She"] clues AGE; has anyone read this book? I had trouble getting the answer to [Stomp on the gas], though my cousin said her dad exhorted her to PUNCH IT when he taught her to drive. [Maugham's Thompson] is SADIE; again, has anyone read the book involved here? A TO Z gets a clue I don't recall seeing before: [1994 thesaurus, "Roget's ___"]. Even 1-Across and 1-Down slowed me down—[With "with," pronto] clues FORTH (but the clue suggests that the answer is a separate word here, which it isn't), and ["___ on bottom"] is the yogurty FRUIT.
Jack McInturff's syndicated Los Angeles Times Sunday crossword, "On the Fly"
My full write-up of this puzzle is over at L.A. Crossword Confidential. The theme is six-legged, winged creatures: the last word/part of each theme answer is a type of fly.
Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon's 6-week-old Boston Globe crossword, "Beatles Medley"
The theme entries are five 21-letter answers that span the full width of the grid. Each one consists of two, three, or four Beatles song titles piled up into a medley phrase. For example, [Mean Beatles medley] is YOU WON'T SEE ME HELP JULIA. This anti-altruistic medley combines "You Won't See Me," "Help!," and "Julia."
For added Beatlemaniac oomph, a bunch of shorter answers throughout the puzzle have clues that evoke the Beatles. [Michelle, to herself?] is MOI; in the song "Michelle," there's some French singing going on. YOKO ONO was [A Beatle's honey pie]. The SEA is clued as [Octopus's garden?]. A record DISC is [One of a White Album pair]. [Come together?] clues SYNC. ALOFT is suggested by [Like Lucy, in the sky?]. ANTS are [Pests in strawberry fields]. OLGA is a [Saint back in the USSR?]. ["Getting Better" feeling?] is RELIEF. [Ways to hold you tight] are BONDS. STOW / AWAY is clued as [go with no ticket to ride?]. [Put a fool on the Hill?] clues VOTE. ["Let it be!"] clues STOP. Your NET is your [Post-taxman take]. To GAD is to [Go here, there, and everywhere]. There are probably more Beatles references lurking in here that I missed. [Penny follower] is ANTE, though, and not LANE. I wonder how many people leaped at the chance to put Penny LANE in the grid.
Nancy Salomon's themeless CrosSynergy crossword, "Sunday Challenge"
Another "Sunday Challenge" at the easier end of the spectrum this weekend. Favorite bits:
March 17, 2009
Wednesday, 3/18
Onion 4:31
BEQ 3:49
LAT 3:03
NYT 2:51
CS untimed
Tuesday's puzzle had a theme centered on the 1940s to '60s. Robert Doll's Wednesday New York Times crossword doesn't have a theme that skews old, but much of the fill transported me to the crosswords of 30 years ago. The theme takes two-word phrases that begin with a GR- word and remove the initial G. If this puzzle had a title, it could be "A Case of Gout."
I thought the puzzle was mighty easy for a Wednesday NYT, but I was also struck by a preponderance of fill that used to be seen more often than it is nowadays. I've done puzzles long enough that those answers were gimmes, but I could see a lot of newer solvers getting a case of the grumbles with these:
With [Orange feature] cluing NAVEL, my eyes started seeing NAVELs everywhere in this grid. INANE ([Cockamamie]) looks sort of like INNIE, IN-LAW ([Acquired relative]) had the first two letters, and INNER ([Word before city or child]) was also close.
Favorite clues:
Updated:
Ed Sessa's LA Times crossword includes a title as the last theme entry, 63-Across GOON SQUAD. Who's part of the goon squad? The punk, mug, hood, and tough at the end of these theme answers:
Good riff on the phrase GOON SQUAD. Did ALDO Ray play goons? For a change, a clue for ALDO gives me some information that's of interest. [Actor ___ Ray known for macho roles]? Hey! Now I know some context for Aldo Ray other than being given the title of an old movie I'll never see. Other clues:
When I open a puzzle in Across Lite, usually the timer starts going automatically. I didn't notice that it sat quiescent when I opened Nancy Salomon's CrosSynergy crossword, "Space Invaders," so I have no solving time to report. Probably a smidge below 3:00, if I had to guess. The theme hinges on calling sentient entities (...not quite anagrams, those two words) from outer space ALIENs, CREATUREs, and BEINGs:
As with the Doll NYT puzzle, some of this crossword had a retro feel. The trusty old ADITS are [Mine entrances]. There's a mineral/rock store called Open Adit; the site takes pains to provide a definition for the term. ADIT used to show up in many more crosswords than it does these days. STYE, or [Eyelid ailment] was in plenty of old crosswords, and alas, it is still in plenty of current crosswords. ESSO often gets clued as an outdated or non-U.S. brand, but here it's the [Tiger-in-your-tank brand], no hint of anachronism; the phrase still bubbles up in various ways. [Supreme Diana] and [Karl of "The Streets of San Francisco] appear one after the other, as 42- and 43-Down; Ms. ROSS left the Supremes in 1970 and KARL's show aired from 1972 to '77. [South Yemen port] is ADEN; this is one of those ageless crossword answers that I've known forever and will probably see in the last crossword I do in the old-age home some decades hence. The bottom row dispenses three more classic crossword answers: EPEE, a [Fencer's blade], along with ERTES, or [Some Art Deco pieces], and ESSEN, a [City on the Ruhr].
The quartet of 9-letter answers in the fill are good. TAILGATED means [Followed too closely on the highway]. LET IT SNOW is [One third of a winter refrain]. ORATORIOS are [Handel's "Messiah," et al.]. And the PAST TENSE is clued with [History is written in it]. I also like SKEETERS, or [Bloodsuckers, colloquially]. Did you know that South Africans and Australians and their ilk call mosquitoes "mozzies"?
This week's Onion A.V. Club crossword was constructed by Ben Tausig. The theme entries take words that end with a Z sound and change the pronunciation to an S sound, forcing a variety of spelling changes. The new phrases are clued with question marks:
The theme idea's a good one, but I only liked the first two entries. Here are 10 other clues and answers:
Pop culture rules the day in Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Hand Jive: Five songs to help you get a grip." Brendan used a book of lists about music as the seed for this puzzle, with five song titles that fit into symmetrical spots of the grid and are all about masturbation:
The rest of the puzzle has some good stuff—there's a small corner with GAWKS and RITZY stuffed into it. There are longish answers like GIRL TALK and HAT TRICK, BY CHANCE and SO SORRY. And two corners with three-abreast 7-letter answers, marred only by the inclusion of the woeful ENSTEEL, or [Strengthen]. Wait, is that word thematic (for the theme entries other than the Divinyls song)?
