Sun 4:12
Jonesin' 4:02
NYT 3:20
LAT 2:59
Lately folks have been saying that "four is the new three"—that themed puzzles usually seem to have four or five thematic entries rather than just three. Stephen Edward Anderson's New York Times crossword, a plus-sized 16x15 puzzle, has three theme answers and a lively pair of non-thematic 10's, and some good bits to the fill. The theme entries are "[bird that's a verb] ONE'S [noun]":
The aforementioned 10's are WIGGLE ROOM, or [Margin to maneuver], and PAPER TIGER, or [Toothless enemy]. OSLO is unexciting fill, but its clue links it to the [Norwegian coast feature], FJORD. Other fill and clues I liked:
Less welcome were the military abbreviations, SSGTS ([U.S.M.C. noncoms]) and PFC ([Low-rank inits.]); the suffixes, ENES ([Hydrocarbon suffixes]) and ITES ([Social finishes?]; the triple-letter EEE ([Wide shoe spec] and SSS ([Sound of bacon frying]); the HIREE who's a [Company newbie]; and the awkward-looking RED A, or [Stigma borne by Hester Prynne]. I've never heard of the PAM in this grid, [1989 Bond girl Bouvier]—that's the character played by Carey Lowell in License to Kill. You know what movie character I'd like to see in a crossword someday? Lars Thorwald, the heavy in Rear Window.
Matt Jones's Jonesin' puzzle is called "I Don't Got U, Babe" because each theme entry has lost a U:
Two TV-show names I'd never seen appear in the fill. JAIMIE completes ["The Travels of ___ McPheeters" (1960s TV western with Charles Bronson and a teenage Kurt Russell)], and ["For the Love of ___" (2009 VH1 reality show)] is about RAY J. I also don't spend enough time with desktop publishing to recall LOREM [___ ipsum (faux-Latin phrase frequently used by publishers in placeholder text blocks)]. Bonus points for two game-show references, NO DEAL ([Phrase said without hitting the button, on TV]) and Alex TREBEK ([Connery's foil, in "S.N.L." skits]), for swapping out the usual "Garfield" supporting character Odie for NERMAL, the [Overly cute kitten that annoys Garfield]; and for the scholarliness of Abraham MASLOW, the [Psychologist with a hierarchy of human needs].
Peter Gordon's inner esne, Ogden Porter, constructed the Sun crossword entitled "Puzzle of the Week." The theme is people whose first or last names double as a day of the week. Peter reached into fictional characters to fill out his hebdomadal septet:
Did you notice how tall this puzzle is? It's 17 rows high, so we get 30 more squares than usual and at no extra charge. Favorite answer: William WEGMAN, whose art photographs of his Weimaraners are so captivating.
Updated:
Waah, I have a sore throat and I feel a bad cold coming on. Just in time for the crossword tournament!
Today's LA Times crossword is a quip puzzle by Pancho Harrison. The [Start of an editor's quip about verbose writing] clue is perfect—it's specific and gives the solver some guidance for filling in the theme entries, whereas a flat [Start of quip] clue just says "hey, bozo, good luck working the crossings." The quip theme still didn't excite me, but I appreciate the specificity of the clue. IN EVERY FAT BOOK, / THERE IS A / THIN BOOK / TRYING TO GET OUT.
[Tweeters' quarters] does not refer to stereo speakers with woofers and tweeters. Nor does it refer to Twitter users, whose Twitter action is called tweeting. The answer is birds' NESTS. The [Canonized pope known as "The Great"] is ST. LEO (he's called LEO I in more crosswords). [Supreme council of old Rome] is just a SENATE, nothing more obscure than that. [Turner and a general] clues IKES, as in singer Ike Turner and Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower. To [Exercise a 19th Amendment right] is to VOTE, if you're a woman. [Wall St. trading group] clues ASE.
February 23, 2009
Tuesday, 2/24
February 15, 2009
Monday, 2/16
BEQ 4:30
CS 3:03
Sun 2:47
LAT 2:47
NYT 2:45
(post updated Tuesday morning with BEQ)
David Kwong's New York Times crossword definitely passes the Monday morning breakfast test. The three wee commercial spokespeople/spokes-sounds for RICE KRISPIES are found at the beginning of three long answers:
The timeliest answer in the fill is that [Rare birth occurrence], an OCTUPLET. Although technically, you're not going to have that in the singular, are you? Here's an olio of other clues and answers:
Peter Gordon marks Presidents Day/observed Washington's birthday with a 15x16 Sun crossword called "All the Presidents' Best Actors and Actresses." I was only faintly aware while I was doing the puzzle that its theme entries weren't occupying a symmetrical grid. The five theme answers are people who won Oscars for their lead roles and who share last names with past U.S. presidents—DENZEL WASHINGTON (president #1), GLENDA JACKSON (#7), REX HARRISON (#9), ELIZABETH TAYLOR (#12), and HELEN HAYES (#19). Good thing Ronald Reagan wasn't a very good actor—he would have mucked up this theme. This crossword's got 13 non-theme answers that are 7 to 10 letters long, too, so there are plenty of goodies in here.
I can't believe there are only nine more of these Sun puzzles. Sigh...
Updated:
An hour ago, around 9:35 a.m., the Obamas flew past me in Marine One, en route from the South Side to O'Hare. The newspaper said they were leaving at 10 a.m. on Air Force One. Man, I wish I could leave this neighborhood 25 minutes before departure time and not miss my flight.
The LA Times crossword by Holly Barnes is either a debut for this constructor or the dawning of a new Rich Norris pseudonym. I'm leaning towards the latter because the light Monday theme—J.J. phrases—is accompanied by some fairly wide-open corners packed with 6- to 8-letter fill. The theme entries are:
Highlights in the fill, intermixed with crosswordese you should know:
I downloaded a themed CrosSynergy crossword for the first time in weeks this morning, and the Patrick Blindauer byline compelled me to solve it. It's a reworking of a chunk-of-letters-progress-through-longer-words theme that Patrick's done before. This time, "A Moving Experience" has a moving VAN (70-Across) inching from the beginning of a word to the end of the fifth theme entry:
VANILLA is a [Common cake ingredient].
IVANHOE is a [Sir Walter Scott novel].
SAVANNA is a [Treeless plain].
NIRVANA is [Absolute bliss] and the classic grunge band.
DONOVAN is the [Scottish "Sunshine Superman" singer], father of actress Ione Skye.
The familiarity of those things called moving vans elevates this above a random trigram moving through the theme entries. I think Patrick's previous iteration had ANTs on the march. In the fill, we have TEEN ANGST, the [Feeling of dread felt by young adults] that debuted as an NYT crossword answer in a 2006 puzzle by Tyler Hinman, who was barely out of his teens when he'd made that puzzle. So I have fond associations for crossword TEEN ANGST. [Northwest and Southwest, e.g.] clues AIRLINES. The [World's highest large lake] has caused many a Trivial Pursuit player to giggle over the years; it's Lake TITICACA at the Bolivia/Peru border. A [Statehouse official (abbr.)] is the LT. GOV., and I have no idea who Illinois's lite-gov is now that Patrick Quinn has moved up to replace Blagojevich.
Updated Tuesday morning:
Brendan Emmett Quigley's crossword, "Me and My Shadow," is about those [Classic "shadow government"]s that conspiracy theorists believe are pulling the strings. (BEQ does not seem to share the belief.) The theme entries are NEW WORLD ORDER and THE ILLUMINATI, which I've heard of, and the BILDERBERG GROUP, which I have not. Highlights in the fill include the OCTOMOM ([Nadya Suleman, in headlines])—a word that likely had not entered the lexicon until the last three weeks, and certainly has not appeared in a crossword before. And there are FATWAS ([Mullahs' calls]), SECOND-BEST ([Nearly optimal]), LIBRETTO clued as [Tosca's story?], and bouncy POGO STICKS ([They go up and down]).
February 11, 2009
Thursday, 2/12
Sun 6:28 (and I took advantage of the Across Lite solution)
LAT 4:07 (saw spoiler for one answer)
NYT 3:41 (...sort of)
It pays to heed the clock. Here I sat, looking to kill some time before the next day's New York Times crossword would be released online, so I navigated over to Jim Horne's blog. Of course, the moment the puzzle is released, Jim's blog post on it is published, and it took a surprisingly long time for it to dawn on me that the puzzle I was reading about was the one I was about to do. (Sigh.) It's not as if Gary and Stephen Kennedy's theme would have stumped me anyway, given that earlier this evening I'd read a different blog post about CHARLES R. DARWIN and ABRAHAM LINCOLN's shared February 12 birthdate (each guy is a [Notable born 2/12/1809]). I do want to call a foul on the inclusion of Darwin's middle initial—in contrast to Samuel L. Jackson and Harry S Truman, we don't commonly refer to him with a middle initial in place. (Jackson and Truman, of course, always called him Charles R.)
The theme also includes Darwin's ORIGIN OF SPECIES and Lincoln's REPUBLICAN PARTY. The central entry, SNACKS like [Cheese and crackers, maybe], ties everything together because Darwin and Lincoln were both inveterate noshers. Yes, I just made that up out of thin air. Other non-thematic material:
Sun crossword editor Peter Gordon moonlights as Sun constructor Ogden Porter. The "Happy Birthday!" puzzle's theme will be no surprise to anyone who's already solved the NYT puzzle for February 12. Peter has just three theme entries—14-letter ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 13-letter CHARLES DARWIN sans middle initial, and their birthdate of 12 FEBRUARY 1809. Having just three theme answers didn't mean taking the easy way out, though—Peter used the numerals as numerals in their crossings, so there's no "sometimes I, sometimes 1, or sometimes letter O, sometimes zero" muddling. I really needed the clue for 59-Down to be drop-dead obvious, though. [Bond] is, after all, a common-enough verb and noun as well as being the surname of fictional spy James Bond, Agent 007. What killed me here was the intersecting aviation answers: [Pioneering Boeing planes] are S07'S, the puzzle tells me, and an [Air Force stealth jet] is F11S. Wait, that S must be short for 6 or 7. Oh! Okay. Boeing 707'S and an F-117, which...meh. I refuse to memorize military jet model numbers. I don't know how I ended up with that S there, as 55-Down wasn't a plural.
Admirable bits:
Updated:
Dagnabbit, I read a comment giving away an answer in Don Gagliardo's LA Times crossword before I'd done the puzzle. Commenters, please refrain from listing answers for puzzles that have not been blogged about yet. "What's up with 28-Down?" is safer than a "What's up with JOOK?" remark, for example. On the plus side, seeing that answer before I did the puzzle allowed me to not fester in that spot of the puzzle, doubting that JOOK could possibly be correct, which I surely would have done sans spoiler. [Joint for merriment, slangily] is a JOOK? I've not seen the word before. This dictionary defines it thus as a spelling variant of juke:juke (jūk, jʊk) Southeastern U.S.
Learn something new every day, eh? The theme in this crossword is a numismatic one, all about the LINCOLN HEAD CENT, a.k.a. the penny. The other four theme answers end with words that double as things that appeared on the original Lincoln penny:
also jook n.
A roadside or rural establishment offering liquor, dancing, and often gambling and prostitution. Also called juke house, juke joint.
intr.v., juked also jooked, juk·ing jook·ing, jukes jooks.
To play dance music, especially in a juke.
To dance, especially in a juke or to the music of a jukebox.
[Probably from Gullah juke, joog, disorderly, wicked, of West African origin; akin to Wolof dzug, to live wickedly, and Bambara dzugu, wicked.]
This puzzle grid has three circled letters in it, VDB. The note accompanying the puzzle says "Victor David Brenner designed the Lincoln Head Cent. His initials (circled in the grid) appeared on the 1909 coin at first, were removed as a result of controversy, and then restored in 1918."
February 02, 2009
Tuesday, 2/3
Jonesin' 3:41
Sun 3:39
LAT 3:18
NYT 2:44
The New York Times crossword for Tuesday is by Katie Yeager, a constructor whose name I don't recognize. (Debut?) The theme entries are tied together by "ISN'T IT IRONIC?"—a [Musical question posed by Alanis Morissette, as suggested by 20-, 33- and 40-Across].
Now, Alanis Morissette came in for a lot of criticism over her misuse of "ironic" to describe things that weren't actually ironic at all. Now, do these three theme entries truly embody irony? Those of you who have studied literature and philosophy are encouraged to weigh in.
My favorite answer in this crossword is AQUAVIT, a [Clear Scandinavian liquor] with a great name. The most unexpected clue is [Anagrammatic cousin of Alice or Lacie] for CELIA. Other names in the grid include Mrs. O'LEARY, the [Catherine whose cow is said to have started the Great Chicago Fire]; SELA, or [Actress Ward]; RYAN, or [TV host Seacrest]; EDIE, or [Singer Brickell], ENYA, or the one-named ["Orinoco Flow" singer]; REDD [Foxx of "Sanford and Son"]; and Aaron BURR, [Victor in a duel with Hamilton].
Updated:
Peter Gordon (writing as Ogden Porter) marks the 50th (!) anniversary of THE DAY THE / MUSIC DIED with his puzzle, "I Can't Remember If I Cried..." It was February 3, 1959 when a plane crash took BUDDY / HOLLY, THE BIG / BOPPER, and RITCHIE VALENS. Buddy Holly is the only musician I'm fond of who died before I was born—too bad he's not a 72-year-old man still putting on shows for his middle-aged-plus fan base. The Don McLean song "AMERICAN PIE" (9-minute video here) calls 2/3/59 "the day the music died. Peter's included 64 theme squares, which is a lot, in a 15x16 grid with left/right symmetry. I kinda see a fighter jet in the black squares, but I'm sure that's not intentional.
John Lampkin's LA Times crossword makes a logical progression from cause to effect:
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Verse for Wear," fills the three theme entries with 5-, 7-, and 5-syllable lines, like a haiku:MY HAIKU WRITING'S
If you are the parent of a young child, you may appreciate the Momku Twitter feed. (Example: Son stuck paper clip / In outlet "just 'cause." And they / Wonder why I drink) Turning back to the puzzle, the answers I liked best include First Kid SASHA crossing OBAMA, across the puzzle from a CIVIC DUTY like voting; actress Susie ESSMAN of Curb Your Enthusiasm; GUAC, a [Nacho topper, slangily]; OK GO, the [Band that hit YouTube with the treadmill-choreographed video]; and THE EL, or [Chicago public transportation, familiarly].
OK BUT ALL I GOT WAS
THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT.
January 26, 2009
Tuesday, 1/27
Jonesin' 4:50
Sun 3:40
LAT 3:03
NYT 2:45
(post updated at 9:15 Tuesday morning)
I think the Tuesday New York Times crossword by Jim Hyres was a little easier than yesterday's puzzle. (I had a typo, so my time should've been 10 or 15 seconds faster.) The theme entries all end with homophones:
Assorted other clues and answers in this puzzle: [Cop's cruiser] is a PROWL CAR. Squad car and patrol car are more familiar terms to me. [High-voltage weapon] clues AIR TASER, but I have never heard the term with "air" included. I, ROBOT is a [Classic Isaac Asimov short-story collection]. BENIN is the [Nation once known as Dahomey]. If you like African geography, try this map quiz. [Exert one's superiority] is PULL RANK. [Vigorous feelings] is a strange clue for ENERGIES. I'll bet PONZI [___ scheme (investment scam)] is far more familiar to crossword solvers in the wake of the Madoff debacle.
Peter Gordon/Ogden Porter's 15x16 Sun crossword, "Hitchcock Double Features," includes four mash-ups of Hitchcock movie titles that can be clued plausibly as made-up phrases. 10-Down was my favorite of the four. The clue [Subvert hawks and doves?] made me think of metaphorically pro- and anti-war groups, but the answer is more avian-minded: SABOTAGE THE BIRDS. Holy crow, The Birds freaked me out when I saw it late at night by myself when I was about 18. Birds have beaks or [Bills, e.g.], but that clue is for an NFL TEAM. [Thing that gets socked?] is a FOOT; the official socks of this blog are Smartwool.
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Just Add Vodka," creates its theme entries by adding vodka to something in the base phrases and thereby mixing a cocktail. This is one of those puzzles with a slightly delayed "aha" moment, where I had the whole thing done but didn't understand the theme yet. I don't understand all of the theme entries, so I need to Google up some info. What's a Greyhound? It's grapefruit juice and vodka. So:
In the non-thematic fill, there are some cool answers. DARA TORRES was a [Swimmer in the 1984 and 2008 Olympic Games]; she won a silver medal last summer at about age 40. TUNA HELPER is a [Dinner mix with a glove on the box]. Cute little cartoony glove with a face on its palm, too. [It's promoted as infallible truth] clues THE GOSPEL, and I like the clue's vague suggestion that there's a marketing or P.R. team working on that account. GOOD LOOKS are [What vain people think may get them far in life].
Updated:
The theme answers in today's LA Times crossword begin with FEE, FI, FO, and FUM, all tied together by the GIANT (67-Across) who is the [Fairy tale bellower of the starts of 20-, 31-, 42-, and 53-Across]:
I thought I'd seen this theme concept before, so I Googled it—there were two FEE FI FO FUM rebus puzzles in 2006, from Levi Denham and Nancy Salomon (NYT) and Edgar Fontaine (Sun).
Miscellaneous clues and answers:
January 12, 2009
Tuesday, 1/13
Jonesin' 4:25
Sun 4:11
LAT 3:12
NYT 2:39
(updated at 10:30 Tuesday morning)
Dan Kantor and Jay Kaskel's New York Times crossword noshes on some MIXED NUTS for a theme. About a year ago, there was another NYT puzzle with mixed nuts, featuring anagrammed nut names. This time around, NUTS is anagrammed into assorted letter sequences that appear inside longer phrases, in the circled squares:
The theme concept doesn't excite me, but the execution is terrific anyway. "Four phrases with some permutation of the letters NUTS in them" sounds like a lifeless concept, but these four phrases pack a lot of SALSA ([Tortilla chip dip]) in them and make it all work. Assorted other entries:
I know a lot of you like to get the jump on the Sun crossword. You may notice a couple blank spots on the Sun calendar page of puzzle downloads. The 1/15 puzzle is available only in PDF form, via the calendar on the right side of the page at Cruciverb. The 1/23 puzzle will be made available that day after the Oscar nominations are out. Returning to the present, the 1/13 puzzle is by editor Peter Gordon (a.k.a. Ogden Porter), and the "Oys of Yiddish" are the groans you may let out when you encounter the puns in the theme. No groans here, though—the "turn S-words into Yiddish SCH-words" theme was fun, and Peter saved the best one for the end. First, you've got your BATTING SCHLUMPS, clued as [Slovenly hitters?]. Sounds like a baseball fan's had too many beers, no? Then there's SCHMEAR CAMPAIGN, a [Set of ads for cream cheese?]. And the all-star, SCHLEPPED AROUND, plays on "slept around" and gets clued as [Carried?].
I'm surprised to learn that there was ever an OREO Fun Barbie doll. Top-notch fill all the way around in this Sun puzzle, from AM RADIO and the SUN BELT to CRAYOLA, "I'M GOOD," and HARLEM.
Updated:
Gail Grabowski's LA Times crossword has a "beautiful" theme—each of the long Across answers begins with a synonym for that word.
An ATTRACTIVE DEAL is a [Temptation for a business exec].
[Getting on in years] is BECOMING OLD.
A good [Chunk of change] is a PRETTY PENNY.
FETCHING STICKS is [Fun for Fido], but British vets say it's dangerous.
I don't think all the theme entries quite make it as stand-alone phrases. For example, playing fetch works better, but in this theme, the beautiful words come at the beginning. EMOTE is clued as a [Director's cry to an underactor?]. I recently read a couple articles that used the word. In one case, emoting was a good thing for a singer to do. In the other, when he felt the actors were going too far, a director cried "Emote! Emote!" to mock them into reeling it in a bit. There are several numbers hanging out in this grid: one [Till compartment] is TENS, which at first I thought would be ONES, but ONE is a few words away, clued as [Ace's value, at times]. There's also a TRIO, or [Small jazz combo], and an [Egg purchase] of a DOZEN. Yesterday, I bought my first half-dozen eggs, which I should've started long ago because I seldom finish a dozen before they're long expired. The nautical content doesn't goad me by skewing obscure, for which I'm grateful; there's just a CHART, or [Marine map], and STERN, or [Back on the ocean?]. The cruise ship I sailed on last month labeled the ends "forward" and "aft"—no bow or STERN in sight.
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "A New Beginning," rings in 2009 by finding the year (in Roman numerals) strewn throughout four phrases. The letters in MMIX (68-Across) appear in order (but not consecutively) in these answers:
I took a guess that [Boxer Ingemar Johansson's nickname] was the inferrable INGO because that's the only way I was getting that G. The crossing is ARGUIDOS, the [Portuguese term meaning "suspects," brought up in the 2007 Madeleine McCann disappearance case] that I don't recall seeing before even though I was reading the papers in England for two weeks when that story was fresh. I can easily forgive ARGUIDOS from making me use all eight crossings because of what it's sandwiched between: MAN-BOOBS ([Features of some fat guys, at a pool]) is off to a good start in the contest for my favorite crossword answer of the year, and the colloquial GOT NEXT ([Placed dibs on, as in a street basketball game]) is good, too. Both are unlikely to populate a daily newspaper's crossword, and I appreciate the sassy freshness that the indie puzzles can offer. (Does it ruin it, calling it "sassy freshness"?) Other fill I liked: AM-SCRAY, Gustav KLIMT, the SEX WAX surfwax brand name, and pop-culture names like KUMAR and PEREZ Hilton. Oh, and DITKA clued as ["Bill Swerski's Superfans" idol, on "SNL"]. Here's a video clip of that for you. The psyche of a Chicago sports fan, the Chicago accents, the sausage and heart attacks—it's all rendered in accurate splendor.
January 04, 2009
Monday, 1/5
BEQ 5:20
Jonesin' 4:02
Sun 3:01
CS 2:58
LAT 2:56
NYT 2:15
(updated at 11:45 Monday morning)
Yay! Monday is back-to-school day! I am definitely looking forward to getting my son back into the daily routine. Those of you with school-aged kids know what I'm talking about.
The Monday New York Times crossword by Andrea Carla Michaels is an easy one. The theme is a basic one. Three phrases begin with homophones:
As in nearly every Monday crossword, there are some answers that show up in crosswords more than they do in the other parts of the newspaper. If you're new to the world of crosswords, here are some of those words—you will be seeing them again in future puzzles:
This puzzle's got a lot of proper nouns in it, which typically means that I'll whip through it and find it fun but some people will be slowed down by pop-culture trivia they just don't know. It's cool that Andrea included a couple 9-letter answers in the fill. DIXIECRAT is a [Strom Thurmond follower of 1948] (boo, hiss) and HOPSCOTCH is a [Sidewalk game with chalk].
Updated:
Ogden Porter, better known as Peter Gordon, must've been short on easy Sun crosswords suitable for Monday, because his byline's been popping up early in the week more than it used to. Luckily, Peter's skills have always allowed him to whip out smooth puzzles on the easy end of the spectrum. Today's theme is "They Died With Their Birthday Hats On"—famous people who died on their birthday. Yesterday was the anniversary of my grandmother's death and tomorrow is her birthday, and a neighbor recently died two days before his birthday—so clearly, not everyone can pull off this dying-on-their-birthday thing. Trivia crossword themes can be fun—if you asked "What do LEVI P. MORTON, GABBY HARTNETT, MACHINE GUN KELLY, INGRID BERGMAN, and MIKE DOUGLAS have in common?" most people wouldn't know the answer, but could find it by poking around in Wikipedia. The fill tends toward the boyish/sports-nutty, with ESPN, TIP / INS, poker player STU / UNGAR crossing himself, RED Sox, OPEN tournaments, NIL as a soccer score, MLB commissioner Bud SELIG, COMISKEY Park, and thematic baseball player GABBY HARTNETT. I filled the bottom middle of the grid with the Acrosses, so it was only now that I saw [Word before "on a Grecian" in a Keats poem title] and [Word after "on a Grecian" in a Keats poem title] for ODE and URN. Hey, I like that.
Kenneth Berniker's LA Times crossword has a theme that's not particularly inventive—phrases that end with -IPPER—but the theme entries are so damned lively, the theme escapes being a yawner.
Berniker makes room for two X's and two Z's in the fill and peps things up with PAUPER ([Destitute type]) PEPPERONI ([Pizza sausage]). OK, so PAUPER is actually a depressingly timely word, but sandwiching a BODICE-RIPPER with PAUPER and PEPPERONI makes it pop. Having ETTA or KETT alone would be "meh," but here they're clued together as a [comic that started out teaching social graces]; Etta Kett sounds like etiquette. I didn't know this trivia factoid.
Martin Ashwood-Smith's latest CrosSynergy puzzle is called "Not G-Rated," and each theme entry has lost the G that used to begin a phrase:
I like that the central entry is OSTRICH, with the more common giant crossword bird the emu consigned to the clue this time—[Emu's cousin]. Go, OSTRICH! LIANA is here, too—it's the [Tropical vine] that used to show up in crossword puzzles a lot more often than it does now. If you've never heard the word, make a mental note of it—it'll be back in future crosswords.
Brendan Emmett Quigley has transformed himself into the hardest-working man in the crossword construction business, self-publishing three new puzzles each week at his new website (Monday, Wednesday. Friday). Sure, he's not getting paid for it, but he does have a PayPal tip jar for voluntary donations. (Side note: Amazon recently yoinked the "honor box" that many of us bloggers liked as an easy way of channeling blog donations. I am still mad at them.) Today's offering is "Baby It's Cold Outside," and the five theme entries, baby, all have a synonym for cold on their outside, enclosing the rest of the phrase's letters:
My favorite clue is ["No shit, Sherlock!"] as a snarky equivalent for GEE. Freshest fill: a ZITCOM is a [TV comedy aimed at teenagers]. Does this include the shows tweens like, such as iCarly? We see the three-word RANDR in plenty of crosswords, but this is the first time I recall seeing RNR for [Time off, initially]. Does anyone ever take "R and R," pronouncing "and" clearly? I think we take "R 'n R."
I took a few wrong turns along the way. [Faker] tried to be a POSER, but ended up as a PSEUD. [Laughed out loud] is HOWLED, but HOOTED almost worked. And then I had N'DJAMENI for [Chad's capital], when of course it's N'DJAMENA. D'oh!
And the continual updating continues:
I had been blogging about the Jonesin' puzzles on Tuesdays, and the Ben Tausig and Onion A.V. Club puzzles on Wednesdays, but now I think I'm moving them back to Mondays and Tuesdays, respectively. Adding in M/W/F BEQs crowds my blogging schedule, but the regular Monday puzzles are so quick, Monday can accommodate BEQ and Jonesin'. My Tuesday mornings had been otherwise booked last year, but will be free for a couple months now. I might skoosh the Tausig puzzle to Thursdays when my Tuesdays fill up again—poor Thursday has but four puzzles on the roster.
So, Matt Jones's Jonesin' puzzle for this week has a fun theme: "The Worst of 2008" (subtitled "hey, at least I avoided talking about the economy"). If you like the Razzies for crappy movies and Go Fug Yourself for the worst in celebrity fashion choices, you'll like this theme. The MOMENT OF TRUTH was [Entertainment Weekly's pick for worst TV show of 2008]. SELMA BLAIR was tagged as a terrible TV casting choice by the Television Without Pity folks. iVillage.com identified HEIDI AND SPENCER from The Hills as "The Worst Couple of 2008." Never saw the show, but Go Fug Yourself has taught me that HEIDI AND SPENCER are a mockable couple. Business Week noticed that GUNS N ROSES have the 'Worst Music Marketing." Nearly 20 years in the making, and the Chinese Democracy album still didn't live up to the advance hopes? DISASTER MOVIE is the [2008 spoof flick that got a rare 0% rating from the website Rotten Tomatoes]; I love Rotten Tomatoes, which rarely steers me wrong. As newspapers shed film critics, the Tomatometer tells critics their opinions still matter.
Hey, look at how Matt stacked those theme entries at the top and bottom of the puzzle. Every single one of the resulting crossings is A-OK. I think Matt might be second to Merl Reagle in fondness for stacked theme entries and ability to pull 'em off smoothly.
Fun stuff in the grid:
December 28, 2008
Monday, 12/29
NYT 3:01
Sun 3:00
CS 2:59
LAT 2:18
(updated at 7:37 p.m. Monday)
The key to the theme in Kevin Donovan's New York Times crossword is 54-Down: [Something 18-, 26-, 42- or 51-Across might have] is a RUN. Mind you, the three Across answers that intersect with RUN were easy enough to fill in without ever looking at the clue for 54-Down, so I had zero idea what the theme was when I finished the puzzle. The four things with RUNs are:
This crossword's got some answers that we don't often see in a Monday puzzle. BIG TOE is [Something often stubbed]. [Most morose] means GLUMMEST. NO DOUBT means ["Absolutely"] as well as being the name of Gwen Stefani's band. Steve CARELL of The Office entertains me on Thursday nights. To REPHRASE something is to [Say another way]. [Much ballyhooed] is HYPED UP. Favorite clues: [Like half of Istanbul] for ASIAN; [Like an N.B.A. center] for TALL; and [Sunbathe] for TAN—sunbathing this week was lovely, but now that I've passed through O'HARE, the [Chicago air hub], I am months away from another sunbathing opportunity.
Updated Sunday evening:
Peter Gordon's alter ego, Ogden Porter, constructed the Monday Sun crossword, "Foodies." The six theme entries are food metaphors for people. A STRINGBEAN is a [Tall, thin person]. An [Insignificant person] is a PEANUT. A [Show-offy person] is called a HOT DOG. BUTTERBALL is a [Chubby person]. A [Crazy person] is a FRUITCAKE, and I'm pleased to note that I have encountered no literal fruitcake this holiday season. A [Weak person] may be called a CREAMPUFF. If you ate too much of that stuff, you might be hankering for ROLAIDS ([Ad answer to "How do you spell relief?"]). Other food-related answers include QUIZNOS, TUNA, Seven SEAS salad dressing, LIMES, SALAD, and the AGRIBIZ that provides some of this stuff. There's such a thing as GENOA salami, but the answer gets clued non-foodly as [Port south of Milan]. Non-theme answers of note: SAPPHIC, [Like some odes]; SHEILA E., [Former percussionist with Prince]; and NOZZLES, or [Hose spouts], with a double Z.
Updated Monday morning:
The Across Lite version of the LA Times puzzle isn't posted yet at Cruciverb, so check back this afternoon for that one.
Nancy Salomon's CrosSynergy crossword, "Midafternoon," finds PMS—[Afternoons, briefly (and hint to this puzzle's theme)]—in the midst of the long answers:
I'm still waiting for PMS = premenstrual syndrome to be deemed acceptable for daily crosswords. It's not cancer, it's not scatological—it seems fussy to have it always be the plural of P.M. in crosswordland. Does mention of PMS really make anyone squeamish?
Good fill includes DR. PHIL, POP-TOP, the UPSHOT and LAY-UPS, and TEAM USA, the [2008 women's basketball gold medalists]. Salomon took a gamble on cluing RENO as [Betting setting] three answers before the [Skeptic's snort] I BET.
Updated Monday evening:
David Kahn's LA Times crossword was super-easy—all five long theme answers are "[name] THE [job]" monikers. When the clues and theme let you fill in a third of the puzzle with just five clues, everything else is bound to fall into place quickly too. The theme answers are:
You might think that OMOO ([Melville novel]) and ORONO ([Maine college town]) are out of place in an easy Monday crossword, but the rest of the fill is straightforward and familiar enough that these shouldn't have given anyone too much trouble.
December 22, 2008
Monday, 12/22
Sun 8:57
LAT 5:04
NYT 4:07
CS 4:00
(Updated at 9:30am Monday)
Hi, everyone. PuzzleGirl here. If I had only done a little better on the Sun puzzle, you probably would have thought I was Orange. I mean, 4:07 is pretty good, right? Okay, I realize it's not Orange good, or Howard good ... or Tyler good, or Dan good, or ... Oh whatever — I'm holding my head high today! 4:07!
Lynn Lempel's super-easy New York Times crossword — and I only say it's super-easy because of my incredible time — has theme answers that start with hopping animals. We start out with John Updike's Rabbit Run, which I haven't read. Trying to remember if I've read anything of his. Oh sure, Witches of Eastwick. I understand the sequel, Widows of Eastwick, has just been published and it's supposed to be pretty good. Next, we move on to CRICKET PLAYER, which is a [Batsman at a wicket.] Have I offered you my obligatory "Sports Night" reference in the last few days? No? Well, here it is. All I can remember about the episode "Ten Wickets" is that Jeremy hears about a phenomenal accomplishment by a professional cricket player and everybody's like, "Okay, sure. Great, Jeremy," because they know absolutely nothing about cricket. The summary for the episode also says that "Natalie continues to refuse to break up with Jeremy," so I guess Jeremy is not having his best day. Moving on to the next hopper — ooh! that would have been cool to have Dennis Hopper in this puzzle somewhere! — a holder of an unfair trial is a KANGAROO COURT. Well, that's odd. I thought the proceedings themselves were called the kangaroo court. Who is the holder exactly? Man, I can get caught up in the minutiae. I think we'd better move on. Next is TOADSTOOL. Apparently, there has never been a consensus on the exact difference between a mushroom and a toadstool.
What else?
Today's Sun crossword raises the question on everyone's mind: What the heck is a Triple Crown in baseball? Okay, maybe not everyone's. Peter Gordon, for instance. I'm sure he knows. For those of you who, like me, were trying to think of a horse with a three-letter nickname, let me look it up for you. According to Wikipedia, in baseball the Triple Crown refers to "1. A batter who (at season's end) leads the league in three major categories — home runs, runs batted in, and batting average, and 2. A pitcher who (at season's end) leads the league in three major categories — earned run average, wins, and strikeouts." The triple crown for batting is less common than the triple crown for pitching. In fact, the last time someone achieved it was in 1967 and guess who! Our buddy Carl Yastrzemski, otherwise known as YAZ. The last time a batter lead both leagues in the three categories was 1956. Anyone have a guess who it was? That's right, Mickey Mantle. The only two-time winners of the Triple Crown are Rogers Hornsby (1922, 1925) and Ted Williams (1942, 1947). Are you bored of the baseball talk? Sorry about that. What else is going on in this puzzle? Oh yeah, the theme! I'm not really sure how to explain it coherently so I'll just give you the theme answers and you can figure it out on your own.
So you don't need me to come up with actual words to explain that. You've got it, right? Good. You know what? There's lots of good stuff in this puzzle, but I got so distracted with the baseball info that I'm pretty much done for today. Go ahead and fawn over this puzzle in the comments. TECATE and GO-GO GIRL crossing COCO CRISP and RAVEL? Good stuff! I'll be back later with the rest of today's puzzles.
(Updated:)
Edgar Fontaine's L.A. Times crossword pays tribute to the classic Rock, Paper, Scissors game. My husband calls the game rochambeau, which I had never heard until I met him, but shows up quite prominently in the game's Wikipedia entry. I also recall reading an article once about how people in Japan use this game in otherwise serious social contexts with strangers — for example, two shoppers might play R-P-S to determine who gets the last ... I don't know, Indiana Jones action figure on the shelf at Target. Do they have Target in Japan?
A couple tough ones for a Monday:
Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy crossword reminds us that today is the first day of Hanukkah. It defines [MENORAH] as a CANDLEHOLDER, [DREIDEL] as a SPINNING GAME, and [LATKE] as a POTATO PANCAKE. All things associated with the FEAST OF LIGHTS. In the spirit of this puzzle, I'd like to share with you an ... unconventional version of the Dreidel song. Enjoy!
I'll be back tomorrow with your Tuesday puzzles. PuzzleHusband has been lobbying hard to "help" me blog tomorrow, so come on back and see what kind of foolishness he wants to talk about.
October 12, 2008
Monday, 10/13
LAT 2:59
NYT 2:51
Sun 2:48—via "Today" link at Puzzle Pointers
CS 2:32
Ginormous thanks to PuzzleGirl for giving me a whole day off. Yesterday I met up with a crosswordy friend (Dean Olsher—look for his book, From Square One: A Meditation, with Digressions, on Crosswords, in the spring), and my mother was spending the night at my house. This morning, my husband and I went downtown for the Chicago marathon with our "Ovation Pavilion" tickets. Breakfast and lunch buffets! Limited-access bleachers and portapotties! Respite from the sun in a tent with TVs! Not a bad way to partake of a sporting event (though we also watched the lead packs at mile 13.) During this time, was I writing about crosswords? Not at all. So thanks again, PuzzleGirl, for the rejuvenating break.
The Sun crossword's new subscription dealio doesn't appear to be in place as of Sunday night. I know there's a Monday Sun puzzle out there waiting for me, but I can't get to it until I subscribe. I shall be patient, because the Sun's worth waiting for, isn't it?
I like to think that Anthony Salvia's New York Times crossword is a tribute to Kenny Mayne: Each of the theme entries ends with a homophone of "Mayne."
Among the livelier fill in this crossword, we have a QUADRATIC [Kind of equation graphed as a parabola] (shout-out here to those who cannot abide the "kind of ___" clues in which the answer is not itself a kind of the thing in question. You'd better hit the books, because ROLE MODEL and STUDY FOR are sitting right next to each other in the grid, not too far from SCHOOL. Don't just hit the sauce—there's hard CIDER, or [Fermented apple juice] (nonalcoholic cider's not fermented), along with a MIMOSA. There's some music in this crossword, too—TINA Turner's "We Don't Need Another Hero" and the Police's "EVERY Breath You Take."
Updated:
I enjoyed the theme in Mike Peluso's LA Times crossword. You know how a clue like [Queens stadium] could be either ASHE (tennis) or SHEA (baseball)? Shea's being razed and replaced with something called Citi Field (which is "citified" with an L added to it), so present-tense stadium clues can't be for SHEA any more. Anyway, ASHE and SHEA are anagrams, so [Two Queens stadiums] are ASHE AND SHEA. The other three theme entries are related word pairs that are also anagrams:
Tom Schier's CrosSynergy crossword, "Coming to America," marks COLUMBUS DAY—[October 13, 2008 celebration]— with a holiday theme. That holiday accounts for this morning's inattention to my blog, as my son is off school and his grandmother is visiting us. Anyway, the remainder of the theme entries are:
When I try to access the Sun crossword via Will Johnston's Puzzle Pointers page or Cruciverb.com, I get this error message: Whoops, you've tried to access the Sun Crossword using the new URL format. The cruciverb.com site is undergoing construction in order to support the Sun puzzle. We hope to have the puzzle available very soon. If you managed to download the puzzle, would you please share the link that worked for you? Updated: The "Today" link at Puzzle Pointers works, but apparently not the links in the "2008 new" calendar page.
The Sun puzzle by Ogden Porter, a.k.a. Peter Gordon, is called "Human Pretzels" because that's what you turn into when you play TWISTER. The theme entries begin or end with things found on the spinner in the game of Twister—the spinner has left and right hand and left and right foot quadrants, each with red, yellow, green, and blue sections. Depending on what you spin, you've got to place that extremity on a spot of a particular color, and you end up entwined with the other people playing. MY LEFT FOOT was the [Best Picture nominee of 1989], starring Daniel Day-Lewis. 
SOYLENT GREEN was the [1973 Charlton Heston movie set in Manhattan in 2022] in which the titular foodstuff turns out (spoiler alert!) to be made from people. RIGHT-HAND MAN is a needlessly gendered term for an [Indispensable assistant]. RED LOBSTER is the [Restaurant chain "for the seafood lover in you"], and boy, do I hate that ad jingle. Too bad the RIGHT HAND and RED bits aren't also parts of movie titles here.
October 07, 2008
Wednesday, 10/8
Tausig 4:47
Onion 4:17
Sun 4:00
NYT 4:00 (minus 10 seconds)
LAT 3:52
CS 3:01
(updated at 10:40 a.m. Wednesday)
Upcoming event alerts:
On October 23 at 6:30 p.m., the Japan Society is hosting a discussion, "Puzzling the World: Sudoku & Crosswords." NPR's Liane Hansen will moderate the chat between Will Shortz and Maki Kaji, described as "the godfather of sudoku." Kaji is the president of Nikoli, a puzzle company that publishes a lot of logic puzzles. Details here. ($10 admission, $5 for seniors and students.)
Also, this Saturday, October 11, the Boston Cru is having a "Saturday Solve" event featuring two crosswords by Pete Mitchell. Details here.
And now, the puzzles:
I'm starting my presidential debate viewing an hour late, and if I don't want to be up 'til midnight, I'll need to curtail tonight's write-up.
Peter Collins' New York Times crossword opts to SHUFFLE (40-Across) THE DECK (42-Across). Each of the other theme entries includes in its midst the letters in the word DECK, scrambled:
There are some gnarly bits in this crossword. SPADS are [W.W. I French fighter planes]. ELISA is a [Girl in a "Paint Your Wagon" song], and me, I'm not well-versed in musicals. [Rail site] kept me wondering for too long —it's the STAIR. (Really a whole staircase and not just a single stair, but sometimes stair is used to mean a group of steps.) ON POT is an odd-looking answer; it's clued [High, in a way]. Drugs! FIRPO was [Dempsey's 1923 opponent].
Fun stuff: TOO-TALL is the [Nickname for former N.F.L.'er Ed Jones]. (The Times has gotta ditch that period style. NFLer doesn't want to have four pieces of punctuation in it.) "PLAY BALL!" is an [Umpire's shout]. LEE strays away from Ang and Robert E., getting the clue [Rock's Tommy, ex-husband of Pamela Anderson].
The Sun puzzle was constructed by editor Peter Gordon's alter ego, the anagrammatic Ogden Porter. The "I/O Device" in the title reflects the six theme entries beautifully arrayed around the edge of the grid, two-part terms that have an I in the first half replaced by an O in the second half. All six follow the __IP-__OP mold. There's GNIP-GNOP (that's ping-pong with the words reversed), a noisy [1970s Parker Brothers game] I liked when I was a kid; TIP-TOP across from HIP-HOP; a political FLIP-FLOP; a horsey CLIP-CLOP; and the less familiar SLIP-SLOP, clued as [Trifling talk]. Favorite clue: [Split personalities?] for CROATS, as in people from Split, Croatia. The O crosses another geographic term, DJIBOUTI, [Neighbor of Eritrea]. If Djibouti gets earthquakes, someone should release a K.C. and the Sunshine Band cover of "Shake Your Booty," changing it to "Shake Djibouti."
Updated:
The LA Times crossword by Dan and Mike Naddor has a theme that managed to elude me until just before I reached the explanatory entry, MAN, at 57-Down: [It forms a superhero when added to the start of the answer to each starred clue]. The grid is crowded with seven superheroes, and I must say I don't know who would come out on top in a seven-way battle royal. The supers include the big three, Batman (BAT MITZVAH, [Occasion to say "mazel tov"]), Superman (SUPERVISOR, [Boss]), and Spider-Man (SPIDER VEINS, [Vascular surgery target]). There are also four others: I don't know Iceman (ICE CUBES, [Rocks in buckets]). I know only a little about Aquaman (AQUA VELVA, [Classic aftershave]). I'm not sure who Sandman (SAND TRAP, [Common term that doesn't appear in the Official Rules of Golf]) is. Oh! That guy from the latest Spider-Man movie.) And then there's Iron Man (IRONSIDES, [Old ___: Cromwell's nickname]), ably played by Robert Downey, Jr., in this summer's blockbuster movie. I'm not a comic-book geek at all, but I think this crossword's theme is terrific. Super, even. BAT MITZVAH, AQUA VELVA...RIGATONI? That's a great sequence there.
Randall Hartman's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Poker Face," has some synergy with yesterday's NYT crossword. [Food often cut into eighths] is PIZZA. Me, I like to ask for an octant of a smaller pizza, but a large is best cut into squares. Hartman's theme is varieties of poker: video, strip, stud, and draw. Those words begin the theme entries:
My favorite part of this puzzle: AW SHUCKS at 37-Down, clued as [Twarn't nuthin'!"].
Matt Gaffney's Onion A.V. Club crossword is packed with lies—white lies reliant on technology to get you out of trouble. [Lie told to someone you forgot to send an important file to] is THE E-MAIL BOUNCED. Sometimes that happens, but not if you never sent the e-mail in the first place. With a digital camera, MY BATTERY'S DEAD is plausible. With cell phones, I LOST RECEPTION. (I LOST THE SIGNAL is also 14 letters. That's what I say, and I swear it's the truth.) The last lie, another e-mail one, is MY NEW SPAM FILTER / ATE IT.
Favorite clues and answers: [You might draw one before getting naked] refers to a BATH. I thought [Tiger's target] was using some cougaresque slang I didn't know, but it's just Tiger Woods and a HOLE on the golf course. [Member of the Tribe, so to speak] is a JEW. And here I thought it had to do with a baseball team.
There are some "only in the Onion (or Tausig or Jonesin') crossword" answers: BOFFS means [Has a quickie with]. SUCKS means [Fails to rock, say]. And to FREEBALL is to [Go commando, as it were], or eschew underwear. LYNN is fine, but here it's clued as [Porn star Ginger]. OBIE ditches the theater awards and is clued as [Rapper ___ Trice].
Ben Tausig's Ink Well, Chicago Reader crossword is called "Tea for Two" because the letter T appears two times instead of one in certain parts of the theme entries. For example, [Elite puppies?] are the LITTERATI, playing on literati. [What to do when your ball is two inches from the hole?] is SIMPLY PUTT (simply put). Favorite clues and answers:
Tricky crossing for those who do not speak crosswordese as a native language—[The "I" in I.M. Pei] is IEOH, crossing DAH, a [Morse syllable].
