BEQ 4:54
LAT 4:36
NYT 4:35
CHE 4:05
CS untimed
WSJ 7:02
You're probably here because you like the harder crosswords that are published later in the week. If so, Peter Gordon's Fireball Crosswords will be right up your alley. For just $10, you can get one puzzle a week, mostly hard themeless crosswords by Peter himself, for pretty much all of 2010. For more money, Peter will work the answer of your choice into a puzzle. See the Fireball subscription page for details. Tell your friends! (The smart ones.)
Alan Olschwang's New York Times crossword
This is a weird puzzle for me. Part of it feels super-fresh and part of it feels like a retread or homage with old answers. What do I mean by the latter? It goes beyond ZOLAESQUE, which was the dramatic linchpin answer in the 2005 ACPT and the documentary Wordplay. There, in Byron Walden's tournament finals puzzle, it was clued as [Stark and richly detailed, as writing]. Here, it's [A la the founder of literary naturalism]. Then there was Bob Klahn's Saturday NYT monster, 12/27/07, in which [Mob rule] clued OCHLOCRACY. Here, [Ochlocracy] clues MOB RULE. Yesterday's Hinmorwitz puzzle had three answers including UP, and so does this one: To REUP is to [Extend one's service life] in the military, [Indicates that one is in] clues ANTES UP, and to [Squirrel] away your nuts is to STORE UP. Last, there's JAZZERCISE at 1A, clued as a [Tae Bo alternative], and the clue weirdly echoes 61D, TAE, or [Inits. of a noted "Wizard"] of Menlo Park, Thomas A. Edison.
What I liked:
• The high-octane Scrabbliness of the fill. Three Zs, three Qs, a pair of Ks, and an X? Me like. Speaking of Scrabble, in a Lexulous game (that's the loose facsimile of Scrabble on Facebook) tonight, I bingoed by playing DOODIES, and twigged the S off CRAP so that CRAPS and DOODIES cross. Isn't that lovely? I thought so, too. Speaking of potty words, PEE is clued as 44D: [Top finisher?] because P is the last letter of "top." Heh.
• 15A. ONE OVER PAR is clued with [It's not bad for a duffer].
• 22A. Trivia! Lech WALESA is the [Only private non-American to address a joint session of Congress (1989)].
• 26A. [Season opener, say] is an EPISODE of a TV show. Were you thinking of sports? Bzzz!
• 28A. [Lions might score one]—are you thinking of sports, the Detroit Lions? Bzzz! The Lions are terrible at scoring. But out on the savanna, a lion might bring down a GNU. Nice to see a fresh (if gruesome) GNU clue.
• 29A. [Foul territory?] is a STY. Were you thinking of baseball? Bzzz! Gotta love having three consecutive clues that aren't about sports but might fool sports nuts.
• 45A. An OTO may be a [Chiwere speaker]. As with the GNU clue, I like the new twist on an old 3-letter answer.
• 58A. [Ones who might get service calls?] are military RESERVISTS. It would be lovely if the RESERVISTS had no war to attend.
• 64A. EAT ONE'S HAT is a great phrase, balancing out ONE OVER PAR in the grid. [Be forced to backpedal] is the clue.
• 66A. Three Ss in a row! DRESS SHOES are a [Pair for a suit]. Not playing cards, but haberdashery.
• 3D. I needed crossings for ZEB, ["The Waltons" grandpa]. ZEB! I never knew Grandpa Walton had a name.
• 6D. [Proofs] clues REREADS. Hey, that's my line of work there.
• 10D. [1990s White House chief of staff Bowles] has an even cooler first name than Grandpa Walton: ERSKINE. There's also author Erskine Caldwell.
• 11D. Ornithology! The [Umbrella bird's "umbrella"] is a CREST atop its head.
• 24D. Never heard of [Irish statesman Cosgrove], but LIAM is a guessable Irish name (and the lovely name of my cousin's baby boy).
• 32D. Like 58A, this sounds like it's about appliance repair, but it's not: ORS, or operating rooms, are [Where some parts are repaired, briefly].
• 33D. PETRI DISH is clue by way of [Germs grow in it]. See also 29A.
• 42D. In some places, NO TURNS is a [Rush hour restriction]. In my neighborhood, that restriction is reserved for the arteries within a half mile of Wrigley Field around game time.
• 45D. Didn't we have a clue like this not so long ago? The OZARKS are your [Buffalo National River locale], but Buffalo smacks of the Great Plains and the state of New York.
Overall, there's much to appreciate in the puzzle, even with that handful of blast-from-the-past answers. Lots of good clues today.
Updated Friday morning
Randall J. Hartman's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Opposite Beginnings"—Janie's review
Well, here's a nice thematic change of pace. The first two words of each of today's theme phrases (their "beginnings") are also pairs of opposites. The first example uses words that are adjectives; the other two, prepositions. These two not only make for lively fill, but they stretch the conceit as they aren't opposites contextually. They certainly add a measure of fun, however. We've got:
20A. LITTLE BIG MAN [1970 Dustin Hoffman film]. You don't need me to point out the opposites...
36A. OFF ON A TANGENT [Straying from the subject].
56A. OUT IN THE OPEN [Transparent].
If this idea isn't a serious ENIGMA [Something hard to grasp], it is fresh—and fresh is greatly to be desired. The last thing anyone wants from their solving experience is a SNOOZER [Real bore], one that would cause the puzzler to SNORE [Saw logs]. Oh—and nice cluing there, too, with [Saw logs], where saw is the present tense verb related to the activity (of sawing...) and not the past tense of "see."
Other clues that made me pay attention: the punny [Slop talk] for OINK, the folksy [Give what for] for SCOLD, the 19th century-sounding [Dastard] for FIEND (which we love, of course!), and [Labor party] for MOM. All I have to say about that last one is "ZOUNDS!" [Gadzooks!"]. I also liked the nod given to the humble writing irons: [Pencil end] for ERASER and [Pen end] for NIB.
And in a mini-thematic way, Randy goes in for a bit of globe-trotting today. From Turkey there's the [Ottoman muck-a-muck] or SULTAN (and another colorful clue, no?); [Turkmenistan neighbor] IRAN; a SIBERIAN [Novosibirsk native] (Russia's third-largest city after Moscow and St. Petersburg. I'd no idea.); the NORTH SEA, that [Body of water between England and Norway]; ASTI, an [Italian wine region]; and BALI [Island near Java]. There's even (bear with me...) AMERIKA [Kafka novel], IOWAN [Waterloo resident] and a tip o' the Stetson to the American West, with ALL IN [Texas Hold 'Em bet], SSW [Dallas-to-Austin dir.] and RODEO [Cheyenne Frontier Days, notably], an annual event since 1897.
Michael Blake's Los Angeles Times crossword
Wow, is it just me, or is this the first Friday LAT in ages that's been ever bit as hard as the Friday NYT? The first theme entry I figured out was the fourth one, which led me astray because LEGO CRAZY, or [Nuts about Danish toys?], looked like the Prince song, "Let's Go Crazy," minus the TS. Then I moved back to the top of the grid and got LENO LIMIT, or [Maximum tolerance for a stand-up comic's jokes?]. Wait, where's the missing TS? Oh, I see: It's +LE, not –TS. (Edited to add: Oh, yes. There's also the explanatory entry ADDLE, to be parsed as ADD "LE.")
The other theme entries are LEON TELEVISION, or ["All Trotsky, all the time" channel?]—that's so goofy, I love it—and LEASH WEDNESDAY, or [When dogs can't run loose?].
Favorite clues/answers:
• SNARF is a slangy word meaning [Wolf (down)].
• LOLA is a [1970 hit by the Kinks]. I like this LOLA much better than a Damn Yankees or Falana reference. I don't suppose we'll ever get [Filipino grandma]?
• [You can count on a lot of bucks from] one...hmm, 6 letters? THE ATM? No, a buckin' BRONCO.
• BERN, Switzerland, is the [Capital northwest of Rome]. Why couldn't I remember this city? I had Berlin on the mind.
• ["___ behold!"] clues the partial LO AND. I don't usually enjoy a partial, but my mom's always been a big "lo and behold" sayer.
Jayne and Alex Boisvert's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Mark My Words"
Cute theme. The central entry, ACCENTS, explains what's going on: [They're missing from the clues for 17, 23, 50, and 58 Across]. Those four answers have one-word clues, which need acute accents in order to correspond to their answers. Without the ACCENTS, the clue words are entirely different words:
• Pliés are BALLET MOVEMENTS, but [Plies] is a verb or the plural of ply.
• The clue is the verb [Resume], but it's a résumé that is a JOB-HUNTER'S NEED.
• Gold lamé is a METALLIC FABRIC, while [Lame] is an adjective and verb.
• [Attaches] is a verb, but attachés are people who are DIPLOMATIC AIDES.
Favorite clues:
• [Cylindrical opening?] is the word's first letter, a SOFT C.
• J. CREW is often clued as an L.L. Bean competitor, just because of the initials thing. But it's more accurate to call it a [Gap competitor].
• I learned a new word in the clue [Like many dactylology experts]. Dactyl- means "finger," so it's DEAF people who use sign language.
Randolph Ross's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Faculty Meeting"
Randy Ross's puzzle is a nice counterpart to the Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, thanks to the light faux-faculty theme. Most of the theme entries are non-academic jobs clued as if they're very specific types of faculty. For example, a military DRILL INSTRUCTOR might also be what you call a [Faculty member at a dental school?]. A couple are academic positions, but clued with a different sort of angle—ENGLISH TEACHER is a generic [Faculty member at Eton?] in England rather than a teacher of the English language, and RHODES SCHOLAR becomes a [Faculty member with expertise on a Greek island?]. I like that last one best. Second favorite is STAGECOACH clued as [Member of the drama faculty?]. Least familiar: PAST MASTER is clued as [Faculty member in the history department?].
I like the way the 11 theme answers are distributed throughout the grid, with Across trios and Down pairs running in alternate rows. Favorite fill: [Giant star] sounds like it's astronomy, but it's crosswordese baseball legend MEL OTT making a rare full-name appearance. Also "THAT'S WHY," or ["Here's the reason"]. I think I probably say those words to my son a lot.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "To Your Corners"
Remember playing FOUR SQUARE on the playground with a classic red rubber ball? In each corner of the grid, Brendan adds a FOUR-square layout spelling out FOUR clockwise from the corner. That gives a third level of checked letters to the answers in the corner, which came in handy with KRONUR, the [Icelandic coins] plural. The gimmick is implemented well here.
Favorite clue: [Meadow in New Jersey] is Meadow SOPRANO, Tony's daughter, and has nothing to do with the Meadowlands. Great mislead.
Last square filled in: The X in SIX/[Volleyball side] and XED/[Ticked off]. I was running through the alphabet and made it to P before the X possibility occurred to me.
Most potty-mouthed answer: PEE is [Whiz]. I was thinking of ACE or PRO and wasn't sure what the last letter of RATLIN* ([Ship's ladder step]) was until PEE finally trickled out.
Worst and best neighbors: Strained APISHLY beside juicy, tart KUMQUAT.
November 19, 2009
Friday, 11/20/09
October 21, 2009
Thursday, 10/22/09
NYT 4:11
Gordon* 3:31
LAT 3:05
Tausig untimed
CS untimed
*Remember what Tuesday Sun crosswords were like? Sort of like Wednesday NYTs but with zingier clues? This summer, Peter Gordon ran into stand-up comic Lee Camp in a bookstore's puzzle section. Peter steered Lee towards one of his books, and in turn Lee gave Peter a disc featuring some of his stand-up. So Peter based a crossword, "Campy Humor," on one of Lee's jokes (that link is a JPEG of the puzzle). Enjoy!
Exciting afternoon in Chicago! I went to my local indie bookstore, Unabridged Bookstore, and saw my book, How to Conquer the New York Times Crossword Puzzle, there for the first time. Their crossword selection is so teeny, I despaired of their ever stocking my book. So I signed the one copy they had and the guy smacked an "Autographed Copy" sticker on it. I took a picture of it with my phone but I'm too lazy to download the photo right now.
Joel Fagliano's New York Times crossword
Kudos to Mr. Fagliano. Not only is this his NYT debut (and maybe his everywhere debut), but when I took the time to fully understand the theme, it knocked my socks off. (Figuratively.) Rarely does a theme elevate the black squares to a starring role, so it's fresh and interesting. Here's how it plays out:
• 27A, 52A. [Wild guess...or what the answer to each starred clue has?] is A SHOT IN / THE DARK. The DARK is the black square before or after the starred entries where the SHOT is hidden.
• 5A. [Jigger] is a shot GLASS.
• 17A. ["That's way off"] clues "NOT BY A LONG shot."
• 38A. This is the first of three "shot in the dark" entries in a single row. A [Photo] is a SNAPshot.
• 39A. A JELL-O shot is a [Colorful party drink]. Is this the first time the seamy little Jell-o shot has been featured in the NYT crossword?
• 40A. The same black square is called into action a second time. Shot DOWN means [Rejected].
• 62A. [Quick hitch-up] is a shotGUN WEDDING.
• 71A. A SLINGshot is a [Y-shaped item].
• 10D. [What "fore" may precede], in golf, is your TEE shot.
• 61D. The shot PUT is a [Track-and-field event].
Most of the theme answers would, with the inclusion of their "shot" part, make for lively crossword fill, and not a one of 'em is the slightest bit iffy.
Despite the wildly out-there 37D (NORVO, or [Red of early jazz]), the puzzle wasn't too tough at all. I would've had a Wednesday solving time if I'd bothered to read the clue for 23A when I filled in EMMITT instead of EMMETT for 11D: [Daniel Decatur ___, composer of "Dixie"]. I blame Emmitt Smith, of course.
Favorite clues:
• GUAM was a [Stop on Magellan's circumnavigation of the world].
• [Cuisine with sen yai noodles] is THAI. I had the Rama chicken tonight myself. What are sen yai noodles?
• [El numero de agosto] is OCHO, or eight. The other day, I caught part of a phone number on a Spanish-language radio commercial. "Uno ocho ocho ocho..."
• To SPOT is to [Give a handicap of]. Don't you think I should be SPOTted at least 50 points when I play Lexulous (the Scrabble variant on Facebook) against a lexicographer? I do.
• OK, this one's a favorite answer and not a clue. RUTABAGA! It's a [Vegetable that's peeled]. The word's from the Swedish dialect rotabagge. I also like KNURL, a [Small ridge on the edge of a button or dial].
• [Nick name?] is SANTA, or St. Nick.
• [Rat Island resident] sounds fictional, doesn't it? It's an ALEUT.
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "Action!"
This one's got an elegant theme: Familiar phrases ingest an -ING that turns a word that's not a verb at all into a gerund, but in each case the -ING word has a context entirely different from the original context. This explanation seems not remotely clear to me. "Show, not tell":
• 18A. [Sport for people apt to wear their gloves upside down?] is IDIOT BOXING, building on the idiom "idiot box," meaning television.
• 24A. The computer spell-check morphs into Tori Spelling. SPELLING CHECK is a [Search for Tori on IMDB?].
• 39A. [Lingerie shopping assistants, at times?] might be STOCKING HOLDERS (stockholders).
• 51A. [November cooking school program?] is GRAVY TRAINING, getting set for Thanksgiving gravy. The gravy train is "used to refer to a situation in which someone can make a lot of money for very little effort," per the New Oxford American Dictionary folks. You know what? I don't like gravy.
• 61A. [Sign that Cuba is near?]...well, on my cruise last winter, it was big waves rocking the ship. But Ben's answer is GOODING OMEN, combining a good omen with Cuba Gooding.
I liked the inherent surprise in each theme entry, with the before and after versions having such different connotations.
1A is clued [Alternative to smoking]. You wanted NON, right? But instead, it's nicotine GUM, or any old GUM that satisfies the oral urge. At 20A, WEBMD is clued as a [Site that kept telling me I either had sunburn or cancer, when I had food poisoning]. I learned a little German when ACH was clued as 57A: ["Die Wurst ist ruiniert!"] ("the sausage is ruined"). How about 34D: [Power trio member?]—were you thinking of Rush, the Police, or Cream? The answer is the HOLY GHOST. YUGOS are 52D: [Reviled cars that ceased production last year]. If you haven't seen Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, you should rent it—Michael Cera's enormously appealing character drives a yellow Yugo that is practically a character in the movie.
Updated Thursday morning:
Randolph Ross's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Keep Your Shirt On"—Janie's review
When someone [Puts the pedal to the metal], s/he STEPS ON IT. This driver is in a hurry—and while the expression is often used to calm someone down before an argument ensues—we also say "Keep your shirt on!" when we mean "Slow down!" Not only on the road—but even sometimes as we solve, in order to appreciate the multitude of pleasures a well-made puzzle can provide. Like today's—where we have 70 letters of quality theme-fill in six phrases: two 15s with two nines (overlapping in their entirety), and two 11s. All of it top-notch. The last word of each of the phrases is a component part of a shirt and can also follow the word shirt. Here's how it all comes together:
•13A. HOT POCKET [Microwaveable turnover]. At your own risk...
•16A. ACE UP ONE'S SLEEVE [Secret advantage]. And one lively phrase, with its card-playin', Wild West conjurin' roots.
•28A. WHITE COLLAR [Kind of crime]. Think "Bernie Madoff"... A blue collar worker is a skilled laborer, and here are some "other collars of the rainbow" (not my locution—dang).
•37A. PANIC BUTTON [It's pushed under stress]. And its opposite number...
•53A. SPOKE OFF THE CUFF [Gave an extemporaneous speech]. Another very lively phrase.
•57A. DOVETAILS [Meshes]. More like this, which is related to this. As the OED defines the term dovetail joint (and shifting to the noun form), it's "a fastening or joint composed of tenons cut in the shape of an expanded dove's tail, fitting into mortises of corresponding shape."
Impressive, no? And the non-theme fill holds up its end of the bargain quite convincingly as well. Allow me to ADD TO [Expand upon] this by pointing out:
•COSMIC [Way out there], which is also a good way to describe the way Michael Richards portrayed COSMO [Kramer on "Seinfeld"];
•A cushy INNERSOLE [Podiatrist's recommendation] may make it more comfortable for "Leadfoot" to put that pedal-to-the-medal. Let's just hope that's not the way the [Prom night rental] LIMO is handled. Or the BMW [Audi alternative] or even any remaining OMNIS [Bygone Dodges];
•A PEEKER is [One who looks in advance]—though my first thought for this was (the too-long) SEERESS. Nice seeing peeker next to PEERESS [Lady in the House of Lords, e.g.];
•[Came through slowly] is SEEPED IN; HIE, on the other hand, carries with it the connotation of speed [Get going]. It's also a homophone for high, which is something you might get on LSD [Psychedelic drug]—and which overlaps hie;
•In the animated series based on the book, LILAC [Purple shade] is also the name of Harold's dog. He of the purple crayon. He was a COLORER [Child with a box of crayons] (or one that we know about anyway...) with a penchant for purple;
•BLITHE is a beautiful word, isn't it? And it's clued beautifully, too, [Like a carefree spirit]; finally, a question to ponder:
•What kind of shirt is worn under a G-SUIT [NASA gear]? (I'm thinking a t-shirt. With a v-neck...)
Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword
Alas, there's not a familiar phrase that ends with lewd, so the five rhyming spellings we get are UED, OOHED, EWED, UDE, and OOD:
• 17A. [Lost it] clues CAME UNGLUED.
• 25A. POOH-POOHED means [Dismissed out of hand].
• 37A. [Like Starbucks coffee, every 30 minutes] is FRESHLY BREWED. Rumor has it the coffee will still taste burned no matter how fresh it is.
• 48A. "BUMMER, DUDE" is clued with ["That's too bad, man"].
• 60A. TAKEOUT FOOD is an ["I don't feel like cooking" option].
With a half dozen 8-letter answers (plus a bunch of 6s and a couple 7s) in the fill, we don't have the same tired 4x4 chunks of grid. Highlights: the [Austin Powers catchphrase] "Oh, BEHAVE!"; SPANDEX, that [Stretchy fabric]; and FRÄULEIN, a [German miss]. Sound-wise, I also like IGLOO crossing UNGLUED.
May 14, 2009
Friday, 5/15
CHE 5:10
BEQ 4:51
NYT 4:04
LAT 3:40
CS 10:34 (J—paper)
WSJ 8:34
Xan Vongsathorn's New York Times crossword
You don't see a lot of constructors whose names would look terrific in the grid, but newcomer Xan Vongsathorn has that unusual initial X. His debut features a mini-theme:
I believe puzzles with a mini-theme are still termed "themeless" but perhaps they should be called "mini-themed" instead. The rest of the puzzle takes the standard themeless form, with four corners and a middle with lots of white space, some interesting fill, and a smidgen of iffiness. Overall, it felt easier than the usual Friday puzzle—the clock was at 3:59 when I went to click the "Done" button, and I don't break 4:00 on Fridays too often. The highlights as I see 'em, mingled with the tough stuff and the iffies:
For more on the genesis of this puzzle, see Jim Horne's interview with Vongsathorn at the Wordplay blog.
Updated Friday morning:
Randolph Ross's CrosSynergy puzzle, "School Supplies"—Janie's review
Remember the board game "Go to the Head of the Class"? With my solving time today, clearly that's not where I'm headed, but as the school year winds down, this puzzle does leave me well-equipped for (remedial...) classwork. What's in my backpack? Randolph Ross has made sure I've got these five items:
And for the record, all but the last are making their first appearance in major puzzledom. The last is, though, making its CS debut. That's four out of five brand-newbies and that makes for some mighty fresh theme fill.
Why was I so draggy in solving this? For starters, apparently I was over-thinking 1A's [Make up (for)] and didn't enter ATONE until very late in the game. I saw the -AGE of 1D and decided that with the clue [Soothe], the fill had to be MASSAGE... So the entire NW was pretty much bollixed up, TOPPLING last. (TOPPLING, btw, along with RENOVATE and SAME DAY in the NE corner, are all making their first CS appearances.) YIKES for YIPES didn't help much either... Had never heard of coach John Wooden (at 57D) and had to give the area around it some thought, but when I see a 4-letter [Sch.] ending in "A," dollars to donuts it's gonna be UCLA, and that was exactly the case today.
Neat grid-bits include the way the [Justice Dept.'s crack team?] DEA sits atop the PERP or [Cop's collar]. (Those are two terrific clues, too.) Then there's the crossing of LOCA with LOCAL; and the REDHEADS that grace the the grid at 66A and 67A. I especially like the three sixes that run down in the NE corner: IN DEEP, CHERIE and SLAP ON. That feels like an especially lively corner to me.
A few more standout clues: [Splash and dash] for ECLAT, [Ripple tippler] for WINO, [Babe from Hollywood, e.g.] for PIG, [Symbolic kisses] for XES, and [Words set in stones] for EPITAPHS.
I was a bit let down by seeing both WASHER and AWASH in the same puzzle, since A-TEST or APISH could have replaced the latter without wildly skewing the level of the puzzle. I'm sure there's a reason why the duplication occurred (and I suspect it was a deliberate choice), but I'm not sure that it'll ever be shared. (RR: this is your cue to chime in! )
Hmmm. Any references to my hometown today? Well, whaddaya know: birthplace of Parker POSEY? Yup. The "Big 'B'" it is!
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, the themeless "Word Processing"
Brendan confuses some solvers by giving a variety of titles to his themeless puzzles. How about changing the subtitle to "a themeless crossword," Brendan? This particular puzzle's got 68 words, (1) some terrific fill, (2) some weird stuff (PEASECOD is a [Type of pod]? I have no idea what this means), (3) some traps, and (4) some fresh clues.
Example of category 4 ALGER strays from Alger Hiss and Horatio Alger and is instead clued as [Fanny ___ (purported first wife for Mormonism founder Joseph Smith, Jr.]. AWW can mean ["Is that you as a baby?"]. LEAR is clued as an [Aribert Reimann opera], which I've no familiarity with (not the opera, not the composer—but I can guess at the story line).
I fell into one category 3 trap: a 7-letter [Lager alternative] starting with P? Must be PILSNER. Nope, it's a PALE ALE. Which Brendan was just expressing his fondness for in a previous post, so I should have known. If you're just doing the BEQ puzzles but not reading his blog, you're missing some cues that can help you with his puzzles.
More oddball category 2 answers: Let's see...hmm, NOTER is mildly awkward. That's an [Observer]. That's about it other than that PEASECOD thing. There's also OTARU, the [Hokkaido port], but I've seen that one enough by now that it's become a gimme. SMALL AD is a little clunky, and the [Tiny plug] clue didn't make it go in any more easily. Wait, there's also the unusual [Philosopher Chu ___] HSI, which seldom appears in crosswords.
And saving the best for last, the goodies in category 1: the AIDS QUILT at the bottom was Brendan's seed entry, and who deliberately puts a Q and U in the bottom row? That's where words like SETTEES and REASSESSED normally live. SPINAL TAP and LISA LISA provide the musical vibe. Have some CHIANTI ([It comes in a straw basket]) with your PAD THAI. Peek out the FRENCH DOORS and get serenaded by a cheeseball whose best line begins, "ROSES ARE RED."
The [Ancient Italian city founded by Ascanius], ALBALONGA, makes me wonder if particularly nerdy fans of Jessica Alba say "Alba longa, vita brevis."
Doug Peterson's L.A. Times crossword
Doug's theme tacks on a COM at the beginning of familiar phrases:
The theme entries are bracketed together in pairs by the longer Down fill—ATOMIC AGE ([Era that began with a blast?]) and a COAL MINE ([Montana resource site] is a weird clue, as the coal mines I've heard of are everywhere but Montana) on one side, and COLERIDGE (["Kubla Khan" poet]) with MS. PACMAN on the other. There are 6's and 7's binding those theme entries together, too. [Either of two notable jumpers] is Evel KNIEVEL or his son, for example, and up top there's a HOT TUB rhyming (halfway) with THE HUB.
For more on this puzzle, see Rex's post at L.A. Crossword Confidential. The blog's especially useful for newer solvers, as we strive to be educational. For example, here's an informative tidbit from Rex: 50D: "Thin Ice" star, 1937 (Henie) - the "ice" part was the giveaway. HENIE is 60% vowels and thus crossword gold. He started doing crosswords much more recently than I did, so he's more attuned to such crosswordese. I've been seeing the HENIE/ice skating combo for 30 years, so sometimes I forget that such things aren't necessarily familiar to people who haven't been doing crosswords long and aren't old enough to have seen Sonja Henie movies. (She had three Olympic gold medals, too.)
Todd McClary's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "I After E Except After C"
Todd upends the spelling mnemonic "I before E except after C" by gathering together four two-word phrases in which both words run contrary to the rule:
I'm guessing the constructor and editor Patrick Berry noodled around with a lot of possibilities for this theme. Who knew you could find a foursome of phrases that fit this theme and were of proper lengths for a symmetrical crossword? I haven't got all that much to say about the puzzle other than that I love this theme. It combines trivia ("Name an '80s teen comedy that violates the 'I before E except after C' rule twice") with enjoying the craziness of the English language. You'll note that the two vowel digrams can be pronounced in a multitude of ways. EI is a schwa, a long A, sort of an E sound before an R (sorry, I don't know the linguist lingo), and a long I. IE is a long E, schwa, long I, and long E/short E combo. It's a wonder anyone's a good speller, I tell you.
Peter Gordon's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Who Let the Dog Out?"
Wow, I haven't seen a 21x21 puzzle by Peter Gordon since I did his book of the NYT puzzles he constructed from 1993 to 2003. (NYT crossword subscribers can get all those puzzles for free via the NYT but it's nice to have them in book form, especially when the book's from Sterling.)
It felt like it took forever to grasp the theme, but the light dawned when I reached my fourth theme entry—the OBAMA (118A) family's pet dog BO has been "let out" from each theme answer. Here's where the BO's were extracted: 25A boDICE RIPPER; 43A PRO boWLERS' TOUR; 67A boUGHS OF HOLLY; 87A BoXER REBELLION; 109A MADAME BoVARY; 5D PICAbo STREET; 50D BABY boOM; 60D CROSSboW; 74D COLORING boOK. I found there were plenty of "aha" moments to be had among these nine theme entries. Smooth, lively fill—you've got your BRONX ZOO and your arts-and-craftsy GLUE GUNS, SET A DATE, and so on. Rock-solid clues to boot.
February 23, 2009
Tuesday, 2/24
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 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 22, 2009
Friday, 1/23
NYT 7:44
Sun 4:38
LAT 5:20
WSJ 6:49
CHE 5:10
Fri. BEQ #21 6:06
Wed. BEQ #20 4:07
Onion 5:22
Tausig 4:16
I've been up since 3:30 this morning, so I might well be asleep before the NYT puzzle comes out at 9:00 p.m. Central. If so, feel free to discuss that amongst yourselves here until I return. Will I make it through all those puzzles on Friday? Highly doubtful. My son is off school tomorrow and sick, and my husband will be home sick too. You envy my life of glamour, I know.
Peter Gordon's crafted his annual "And the Nominees Are..." Sun crossword featuring the just-announced Best Picture Oscar nominees. I was hoping he'd take a rebus approach, given the unwieldy length of a couple titles, but no, he just split 'em up into multiple entries. But look! It's still a symmetrical 15x15 grid with symmetrically slotted theme answers. The only quasi-cheat was docking "The" off CURIOUS / CASE / OF BENJAMIN / BUTTON and READER. MILLIONAIRE is in the middle with its SLUMDOG opposite CURIOUS. FROST/NIXON balances OF BENJAMIN; MILK, CASE; The READER, BUTTON. It's fitting that the Brad Pitt movie takes up so much space in the grid since it hogged up a lot of nominations too. You'd think the circumscribed fill would make for clunky fill, but no—there's CZARINA, MCRIB, TROJAN, and KRANTZ. Okay, so the puzzle also has RENA and IBERT—but at least the crossings were reasonable.
Updated at 10 p.m.:
Barry Silk's New York Times crossword has plenty of interesting fill that was hiding behind good clues. I slowed myself down owing to sheer exhaustion of the eyes and brain—I didn't see the "H." in [George H. W. Bush, once], so CIA DIRECTOR was the furthest thing from my mind. The only answer that was at all jarring was SNEAK THIEF, or [Lifter], not a familiar phrase to me.
And so to bed.
Updated Friday morning:
Dang, my kid woke me up before 8 this morning. On the plus side, he and his dad are the picture of health today, and the freelance project is done. (It may appear that I have been doing fewer crosswords than usual this week, but really, that extra batch of 25 puzzles counts.)
In Dan Naddor's LA Times crossword, puns are de order of de day: [Support for a formal downgrading proposal?], for example, is I SECOND DEMOTION, playing on "I second the motion." There are six of these "the –> DE" puns in all. I forgot that NENE was both singular and plural for those [Hawaiian flyers]. Speaking of geese, [Goya's goose egg?] is CERO, Spanish for "zero."
Patrick Berry kicks it literary with his Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Unhappy Endings." Edgar Allan Poe was a huge fan of the unhappy ending, so it wasn't so hard for Patrick to find five Poe characters who met dramatic ends in wildly different ways. My personal favorite is FORTUNATO, the [Poe character who gets walled up alive in a crypt] in "The Cask of Amontillado." Now, I thought I knew plenty of Poe, but I didn't know three of the characters here, and if you don't already know METZENGERSTEIN, it's not as if it's easy to guess it from the clue. Super-smooth crossings made the puzzle eminently doable, though.
Liz Gorski's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Whack Job," has a CHOP, CHOP theme: Each of the other seven theme answers joins two words together with a hidden CHOP, as in SANCHO PANZA. The theme entries are a little on the short side, so there's plenty of breathing room for smooth fill and wide-open grid spaces along the top and bottom. Among the livelier entries are "I'M FOR IT," "GO HOME," MAN-TRAP, "OH, GOODY," TOOK A HIT, HARP ON, the ONE RING to rule them all, and O. HENRY.
Ben Tausig constructed this week's Onion A.V. Club crossword. 69-Across, FRENCH, ties everything together: [People inaccurately adjectivized before a word in 18-, 29-, 46-, and 57-Across]:
So this puzzle goes beyond the "phrases with words that can follow ___" theme by including only such phrases in which the French part is a misnomer. Well done, Ben. From elsewhere in the puzzle: LOQUAT is a [Fruit used in Chinese traditional medicine]. BOHEA is a [Fujianese tea]. SORREL is a [Fragrant Jamaican beverage]. Less exotic beverages include NECTAR, or [Godly stuff], and ADE, or [Fruity quaff]. [TV role for Savalas and Rhames] is LT. KOJAK (the Ving Rhames version was on the USA Network in 2005, while the Telly Savalas series was a classic '70s cop show. "Who loves ya, baby?").
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "You Send Me," goes postal. Each theme entry begins with a word that's a mail class. Madonna's EXPRESS YOURSELF is a ["Like a Prayer" single]. MEDIA ELITES are [Bogeymen for Stephen Colbert]. STANDARD OIL is the [Company in "There Will Be Blood"]. And BULK FOOD SECTION is an [Area with nuts and grains, often]. Who doesn't love bulk mail?
Today's Brendan Emmett Quigley puzzle is called "Alternative Medicine" and the theme includes three famous alternative medicine gurus. Actually, I'm not sure that Mehmet Oz qualifies as "alternative." He's on Oprah a lot, he has books, he says some reasonable things—is there lots of alternative medicine in his shtick? My friend Kristin thinks he's hot. Anyway, the theme entries:
Lots to like in this puzzle. [Bouncing all over the place, perhaps] clues BRALESS. Remember that lawsuit brought by a strip-club customer who complained that a dancer's capacious bosom had been used to BLUDGEON ([Beat but good]) him? Another B-word, BREEDER, is [Straight person, in gay slang]. Has VOIP ([Transmission technology used in Skype]) been in an NYT crossword yet? I don't know that it has. [Generating heat] sounds like it wants a word from physics or chemistry, but the answer's EROTIC. [Safari sight] is a POPUP AD, Safari being an internet browser. [Bar order] is A BEER, and while usually crossword answers don't include an indefinite article like this, I like it here.
The Wednesday BEQ has an iPod theme, with the theme entries starting with the iPod varieties TOUCH, NANO, SHUFFLE, and CLASSIC. You don't need an answer grid or discussion here today, do you? You've moved on already?
