NYT 6:24
LAT 3:52
Newsday untimed (but not too tough by Stumper standards)
CS untimed (solved with "Downs")
Karen Tracey's New York Times crossword
I had just done the Saturday L.A. Times crossword and appreciated it for its KarenTraceyosity, so it was a lovely surprise to launch the NYT and find a bona fide Karen Tracey puzzle. It's got her hallmarks—Scrabbly letters, names, geography, lively phrases. Highlights:
One demerit: 31D: BLAS could've used a Gil Blas clue rather than [Panama's San ___ Islands] since SAN is in SAN REMO, [Italian city with an annual music festival].
This puzzle seemed of standard Saturday difficulty to me, but I'm seeing some uncommonly long finishing times on the applet. Where did people get hung up? I'm guessing it was the northwest corner.
Updated Saturday morning:
Lynn Lempel's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Poetry Reading"—Janie's review
Do you remember the first time you realized that you really liked poetry? For me, it was in my junior year of high school English and the introduction to Walt Whitman as part of our American Literature unit. Whitman was very free with all of the elements I'd previously understood to be part of "good poetry"—and what a great discovery that was! The elements in question? Why, you'll find them at the end of each of today's theme-phrases:
Poetry not your thing? Don't worry. Lynn also gives you sports fans the ASTROS [Houston celebs] and PLACE [Come in second at the track] to contemplate, or musical genius (madman?) Peter Schickele a/k/a [J.S. Bach's fictional descendent] P.D.Q. for you music lovers.Two households both alike in dignity
All definitions, by the way, courtesy of the glossary in Poets and Poems, edited by Herbert Goldstone and Irving Cummings.)
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene...
But I gotta tell ya, I admire the poetic balance in such clues/fill as: [Loads]/LOTS and [Loads]/TONS; [Word on a Lipton box]/TEA and [Word on a Lipton box]/PEKOE; the two (possibly CATERED) events, BBQS [Many summer cookouts] and the LUAU [Maui meal]; and [Emits forcefully]/SPEWS and "BLAST IT!"/["Rats!"].
This morning I'm going to HIE TO the SUBWAY [Underground railway] headed for Queens, for Ryan and Brian's Lollapuzzoola 2. Given the PACE of my solving "talent," it won't take a TAROT reading to predict my results. But it'll be great to socialize-and-solve on what's predicted to be a pretty soggy Saturday here in NYC!
Peter Wentz's Los Angeles Times crossword
I loved the fill in this puzzle. I know my fondness for having people's names in the grid is not a universal fondness, so this crossword might drive some solvers nuts...but I love it. The juxtaposition of [Leader with a bouffant hairdo]—not Margaret Thatcher but KIM JONG-IL—with LIL JON, the ["Crunk Juice" rapper], is inordinately pleasing to me. "Kim Jong-il and Lil Jon, together again!" Throw in the [Stadium vendor's cry] "COLD BEER!" and the cheesy '80s Shatner series T.J. HOOKER, not to mention the JEB BUSH/TED DANSON combo, the slanginess of "You BETCHA!" and RECKON/[S'pose], and cool words/phrases like THWART and KNEE-JERK, and you've got yourself a winner.
More on this puzzle in my L.A. Crossword Confidential writeup.
Merle Baker's Newsday "Saturday Stumper"
(PDF solution here.)
This one felt like it relied heavily on word endings. -ED x 5, -S x 19, -ER x 3 (UTTERER and AIRER are seldom used in English), -EST x 2. See? It's a 66-worder, and those are hard to make without tacking on word endings. Patrick Berry's 66-word Friday NYT crossword had 11 such endings, vs. this one's 29. I don't know how Berry does it.
Ten clues/answers:
August 21, 2009
Saturday, 8/22
January 13, 2009
Wednesday, 1/14
Sun 5:50
BEQ 4:40
Tausig 4:17
Onion 3:55
NYT 3:53
LAT 3:13
(updated at 1:10 p.m. Wednesday)
Between a condo board meeting and watching the VH1 tribute to The Who (including a rare set from The Who themselves), TiVoed from the Palladia HD channel, it sure has gotten late, so I'll be quick here.
The New York Times crossword by Oliver Hill seems on the hard side for a Wednesday, doesn't it? Still shy of Thursday, though, so I guess that makes it a Wednesday puzzle after all, but a hard Wednesday. The theme entries have homophones for clues, and the answers are phrases that normally wouldn't pass muster as crossword fill—sort of a clue/answer reversal, with the 11- and 14-letter answers being suitable clues for the 3- and 4-letter clues, which are common crossword answers. Here they are:
Fair enough. But good gravy, what on earth is EXEGETE doing here in the middle of the week? That's an [Expert at interpreting a text], apparently. I wonder if anyone's messed up that T by not knowing that OTAY is [Buckwheat's affirmative].
Among the more interesting entries are these:
Peter Wentz's Sun crossword has a strong streak of lunacy to it. Most of the theme spells out what the theme is: 62-Down is THE AVERAGE / SCRABBLE SCORE OF / ALL THE LETTERS IN / THIS PUZZLE, or in other words, TWO. You've got your standard quantity of vowels, plus six Z's, two X's, plus all sorts of other letters, and they somehow all average out to 2 points per letter using Scrabble tile values? I'm thinking that was no mean feat, constructing this puzzle so that the average isn't,say, 1.83 or 2.07 instead. (I'm assuming it works out to a total Scrabble score of twice the number of white squares—no way am I going to check Peter and Peter's work!) The fill includes entries like JUDE LAW, BOHEMIA, and the X PRIZE for added oomph. There's also some weird stuff, like Italy's LA SPEZIA, an OBLIGER, and a HIERARCH, some of which makes this puzzle also feel supra-Wednesdayish. I haven't looked at the Thursday and Friday Sun puzzles yet, but if they're harder than this puzzle, oof! Are we in for a workout.
Updated:
Michael Langwald's LA Times crossword honors the Lizard King (Jim Morrison), sort of, with a puzzle that includes a SALAMANDER ([Amphibian that can regenerate its limbs]). Morrison led THE DOORS, a [1960s-'70s group, and this puzzle's theme], and each of the other theme answers begins with a kind of door:
A few miscellaneous clues and answers:
Speaking of music downloads, I'm digging the iTunes "genius" option. Pick a song that matches your mood, click the genius button, and get a playlist of 25 compatible songs. The only down side is that it can be hard to do crosswords and type blog posts when danceable songs are playing or when you can't help singing along with an '80s Human League song.
Matt Gaffney's Onion A.V. Club crossword plays a quasi-cryptic game, with the cryptic crossword–style clues instructing us to put an actor's name inside another word to create a new made-up phrase. In each case, it's a 2-letter word getting sandwiched around the person's first name, with the last name left as is. Here's how it plays out:
If you enjoyed this theme (as I did) but haven't dared to venture into cryptics, you might want to give them a try. With 70 words and four corners packed with 7-letter answers, this puzzle also has a little of the challenge of a themeless crossword. Two clues that slowed me down: [The NBA's Zydrunas Ilgauskas, e.g.] needed a 3-letter answer. Hmm, LITHUANIAN is too long. I had *AV and of course there are two basketball teams whose nicknames fit that pattern, the CAVs (Cleveland Cavaliers) and Mavs (Dallas Mavericks). Then there's [Take in Tolkien, e.g.], which I was reading with "take" as a noun, and I was at a loss. The One RING? No, "take in" is a verb phrase, and the answer is READ.
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "A Turn for the Worse," replaces key words in certain phrases with their opposites, all with negative connotations:
Solid theme, not too tough. Highlights in the non-thematic answers and clues:
It's going to take me all day to do today's Brendan Emmett Quigley crossword. Why? Because instead of looking at the whole puzzle, I'm going the diagramless route and waiting for Brendan to parcel out the clues, one by one, in his Twitter feed. So far he's given the first four Across clues, and I think the grid's just got a standard crossword layout and symmetry, so I think the first six Acrosses are all 7-letter answers stacked beside one another at the top. I can't make fast progress because I won't get the 1- to 14-Down clues until after all the Across clues have been tweeted. I could cheat and Google 1 Across, [With 8-Across, "A Punk" rock band]—but where's the fun in that?
Updated again:
Commenter Squonk actually read Brendan's post today and informed me that the Twitter feed has clues for Friday's puzzle. (You can see the tweets in the sidebar of Brendan's blog if you don't want to sign up for Twitter.) I suspect this is the first instance of a crossword being provided in 160-character (max.) chunks. Anyway, today's puzzle is untweeted, just a regular puzzle, no diagramless option unless you cut out the grid yourself. The "Ow! Aargh!" title hints at the sound change in the theme entries. I don't know how to use the international phonetic alphabet to render the sound change, so I'll let the theme entries demonstrate it instead:
Juicy clues and answers:
June 03, 2008
Wednesday, 6/4
Onion 4:42
Tausig 4:29
CS 3:59
NYT 3:47
NYS 3:46
LAT 3:21
D'oh! I lost a good 30 seconds on Billie Truitt's New York Times crossword thanks to a typo. Every so often, a few voices cry out for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament to switch from paper-based solving to computers. To that, I say "noooo, thank you." I am considerably less likely to write ADAGOO with a pencil than to type it on a keyboard. Anyway...this puzzle's got five theme entries, four of them described by the one in the middle, THINGS THAT BREAK. You've got breaking CURVEBALLS, clued in a non-baseball context as [Tricky, unexpected questions]. Except the metaphorical curveball doesn't break the way one thrown by a pitcher does. This one needed a baseball clue, albeit one without the word ball in it. The [Vampire's undoing], DAYLIGHT, KIDS' TOYS ([Stairway hazards, in some homes]), and OCEAN WAVES ([View from the shore]) are three other things that may break. Favorite tidbits: TWO-WAY, or [Involving give-and-take]; [Source of bread, for short] for ATM; and NEWSDESK, or [Bulletin-creating department]. Yesterday's Sun puzzle had SMITHIES and the Truitt puzzle has a [Place with a forge], just one SMITHY.
Continuing the blacksmithiness, Peter Wentz's New York Sun crossword, "Cross References," has an ANVIL, or [Smith's block]. But that's not what the puzzle's about. The theme entries refer to one another in a circular fashion: 17-Across is [What 25-Across has]. What is 25-Across? [What 43-Across has]. Which is what? Well, 43-Across is clued [What 57-Across has]. And 57-Across tells you [What 17-Across has:
FIVE VOWELS (I, E, two O's, and an A) can be found in the phrase NINE CONSONANTS (those nine being THRSLLBLS), which are found in THREE SYLLABLES, and TEN LETTERS has three syllables while also describing what FIVE VOWELS has. I like individual answers that are hyper-literal like this, so an entire theme that works this way is right up my alley. This puzzle is 10-Down (STELLAR).
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "Hitting the Sauce," dishes out a feast of Reaglesque puns. Four theme phrases fill up six long spaces in the grid. [Cacao flower?] is MOLE BLOOM, playing on Joyce's Molly Bloom and mole sauce. The [film on sauce that's been refrigerating for a very long time?] is a frosty RIME OF THE / ANCIENT MARINARA. (Although technically, a jar of marinara left in the fridge for a long time after opening is going to sport a moldy rind more than an icy rime.) [Sauce held in safekeeping?] is BANK HOLLANDAISE ("bank holidays"). And the movie Weekend at Bernie's becomes WEEKEND AT / BEARNAISE, [film about a brief sauce-based getaway?]. I especially like the NW and SE corners of the grid, where 9-letter theme entries (or parts thereof) appear in 9x3 stacks.
Francis Heaney's Onion A.V. Club puzzle doubles a letter in each theme entry to good effect. A standard lap dancer gets upgraded with another P: A [Performer accompanied by Finnish folk music?] might be a LAPP DANCER. A [PR problem for a Virginia senator?] is a WEBB MISTRESS, combining Sen. Jim Webb with a female webmaster. [Explanation from one who doesn't care for anal sex?] is "BUTT NOT FOR ME." And mad skills, as in "Yo, Francis gots mad crossword-constructing skills," references Mothers Against Drunk Driving in MADD SKILLS, or [Ability to encourage people to use designated drivers, say?]. Other stuff I liked: SNOWDROP, or an [Early spring flower] that might bloom before crocuses; [Non-goths, to goths] for NORMALS; "WHAT THE..."; and UKRAINE clued with [Country whose name was commonly preceded by "the" before 1991]. Why did we drop the "the" before "Ukraine"?
Updated:
Allan Parrish's LA Times crossword hitches a ride in a yellow car, with the theme entries beginning with the synonymous TAXI (TAXIDERMIST), CAB (CABINET MEMBER), and HACK (HACKNEYED PHRASE) embedded within longer words. Favorite morsels: HOOPLA crossing MOOLAH; BErSERK ([Destructively out of control]); the always-tasty KIT-KAT bar; and the stack with SARCASM, ONE-A-DAY vitamins, and PBS-pledge TOTE BAGS.
