Friday, 11/20/09

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.

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Friday, 5/25

NYS 9:06
LAT 5:35
NYT 5:20
Jonesin' 4:10
5/11 CHE 4:02
CS 2:43

WSJ (see Saturday post)
Reagle mia this week

(updated at 11 a.m. Friday)

Ah, Friday! Or rather: Ah, Thursday evening! When the weekend's themeless puzzles begin to burst like fireworks! Although every other week, the Sun's Thursday puzzle is themeless. But you know what I'm getting at if you find yourself either thirsting for or dreading themeless crosswords.

The Sun Weekend Warrior by Byron Walden seemed a bit easier than his last NYT puzzle, and yet still considerably harder than I was expecting. The NYT crossword by Mike Nothnagel looks like a Saturday-tough slog based on the early applet solvers' times, and yet I found myself on Mike's (and/or Will Shortz's) wavelength tonight.

First up, the tougher nut to crack (for me, anyway), Byron's puzzle, blogged in bulleted list form (thanks for the lesson, Dave!). Note that this grid's got just four 3-letter entries.

• Favorite clues: [Classic loafer] for LOTUS EATER (I had shoes on the brain); [Ducky] for JAKE; [Bar exam?] for TRIVIA QUIZ; [Beethoven et al.] for ST BERNARDS; [Starting five?] for the TORAH; [One doing the lord's work?] for LIEGE; [Cuban cubo] for OCHO (as in dos to the third power); [Fraction of a mil] for THOU; [It might be found on a sweep hand] for SOOT (chimney sweep's hand, not a second hand on a watch); [Tick, for example] for MARK; and [Zenana] for HAREM, as one of those obscure words I learned via crossword clues long ago.
  
• Favorite entries (besides those mentioned already): DIDI clued as Gogo's pal in Waiting for Godot (short for Vladimir and Estragon); the Hungarian town of SZEGED (a Karen Traceyesque geographic name); POP BOTTLES.
  
• Things that befuddled me: The PARADE LAP at Indy; oh, Byron, motor sports befouling one of your puzzles? Tch. A BUSTED FLUSH is a crappy poker hand, not a broken crapper. The museum AUDIO GUIDE was fresh in my mind from all the museum-going, yet eluded me because I'd put in dusty TEAL instead of AQUA, mucking up the top left. [Ballpark figures, for short] is STATS, but I opted to disregard the "for short" bit and go for STABS crossing B CELL, but the clue for 19-Across signals T CELL with its allusion to a "neck gland" (t cells come from the thymus). [Intro to many a colon] had so many reasonable 4-letter options: IS TO? No. Oh, then maybe HOUR? No. There's a T in there, so it must be ATTN, then. No, not that either. It's HTTP. ANTAL Doráti's name didn't leap to mind. And [Quattro competitor] had me thinking of Audis rather than Schick razors, so the Gillette SENSOR took ages to shave the stubble of ignorance from my brain. (Is that metaphor too much?)
  

Mike's NYT puzzle threw a few "Huh?" clues at me, but they were outnumbered by the clever ones that I figured out, albeit often with the help of plenty of crossings.

• Trouble spots: Well, how about 1-Across? [Actor with an L.A.P.D. auditorium named after him]. Huh? Okay, JACK somebody. Jack Lord? No, LORD is over there in the opposite corner. Turns out to be JACK WEBB of Dragnet. I've wielded plenty of [Double daggers, in printing] in my time, but don't recall ever seeing them referred to as DIESES. [World's second-highest capital]? Well, crosswords have taught me that Lhasa, Tibet, is the highest; #2 is QUITO, Ecuador. (QUITO's Q is joined by another in the dead center of the grid, plus two Zs, an X, a J, and a pair of Ks.) I have no idea how NOB and [Cribbage jack] relate, and don't care to look that one up. [Erstwhile grp. of 15] is SSRS rather than an organizational acronym, as I'd first thought. [Marxist leader?], 3 letters ending in O, sure looks like MAO but for the question mark; I think I had the N in NEO soon enough not to fall in that trap. I did stick my paw in the [Put on a pedestal] trap, going past tense with IDOLIZED before figuring out it had to be IDEALIZE. A pained spot for other reasons was MY LAI.
  
• Fabulous entries: I'M ON A DIET; the FOXHOUND chasing the MACAQUE; HIRELINGS (we need more -ling words! Who's with me, solvelings?); AXEMEN (slang for guitarists); the this-should-help-you pairing of GRADE A'S and A MINUS (unless you've been trained to assume such repetition is taboo—if you've embraced that taboo, Will Shortz repeatedly flouts it in small ways, so it'll help you to forget that "rule" when solving the NYT crossword); and the centerpiece, BEGS THE QUESTION (that link will help you fight on Vic Fleming's side in one of those usage JIHADS).
  
• Favorite clues: [It can have its charms] for ANKLET (just two letters different from AMULET—tricky!); [One's native land] for SOD (I confused my kid by saying it was good to be back on the old sod at O'Hare last weekend); [Key letters] for CTRL (not PHIS!); [Jazz greats, e.g.] for NBA STARS; [It's less than perfect] for A MINUS; [Lulu] for CORKER; and [2006 Oscar winner for his first film] for GORE.
  

So, if you've tackled both of these crosswords, did you find one markedly harder than the other?

Updated:

The Across Lite version of Merl Reagle's weekend puzzle (labeled as the Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle) actually comes via LA Weekly, which is skipping (an issue? the puzzle?) for the holiday weekend. And the Wall Street Journal puzzle gets converted to Across Lite by Lloyd Mazer, but the puzzle wasn't on the WSJ website early enough, and Lloyd's daughter is getting married this weekend, so we may not see that puzzle either. Use the free time to get outside and relax!

Today's LA Times puzzle by Donna Levin challenged me. Lots of vagueish clues, like [Does some field work] for BALES, and some tricky ones, like [Emile's uniform?] for EGAL (the French adjective, not a noun). The theme entries involve puns on Russian/Soviet region words/names. PUTIN ON AIRS = "putting on airs," MIR BAGATELLE = "mere bagatelle" (a phrase I love), COSSACK STAN = "Kazakhstan," and KIEV SEA MAJOR = ...what, exactly? I don't understand this one at all. The race is on: Will writing those words crack that synapse open in my brain, or will somebody else explain it to me first?

I flew through Randall Hartman's CrosSynergy crossword, "Greenbacks," in nearly Monday-Newsday-level speed. Filled in all the theme entries right off the bat after a couple crossings gave me the first one, which almost never happens. Kinda fun that way!

The May 11 Chronicle of Higher Education puzzle is by Jack McInturff. (How much do I love the Chronicle puzzles? So much! Crosswords expressly designed for an academically accomplished audience, no sops to beginning solvers—they're not for everyone, no, but if you crave smart puzzles and aren't doing the CHE crossword each week, you're missing out.) The theme is "Antinovels," so each theme entry swaps out a word in a novel's title for its opposite. Fun for the literary crowd!

This week's Jonesin' puzzle by Matt Jones is called "A Ghost of a Chance." Five long answers spell out four clues, the answers to which are ghost characters from the classic video game, PAC-MAN (67-Across); all four chase Pac-Man, whom the player controls, and the player's job is to eat dots and avoid getting caught by the ghosts. Favorite entry: 51-Down, MULVA, which people who don't care for Seinfeld probably don't know. Fun puzzle!

(I think I just used up the rest of my allotment of exclamationn points for the month.)

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Wednesday, 5/2

NYS 5:04
NYT 3:45
CS 3:40
LAT 3:20

(updated 9:30 a.m. Wed.)

Richard Silvestri's Times puzzle has a New York state of mind, in a way: The theme entries have NY tacked onto the end. For example, a fountain pen becomes a FOUNTAIN PENNY, thrown for good luck. The fill includes SKUA, and wouldn't you know it? There was a passel of skuas in Happy Feet that menaced the young penguin hero of the movie. The skua's Latin name is awfully close to stercoraceous (which is a word that merits wider use: "Dixon, the strategic plan you presented...it's absolutely stercoraceous."). The other fill tells a story, the PERILS of ETHEL, in which our heroine drapes a FICHU around her NAPE to repel a RAKE, who had OGLED her. OOH, NO ONE wants that sort of DRAMA, not even the NUNS!

Raymond Hamel's Sun puzzle, "Galoshes," kept me guessing all the way to the bottom, where the last Across entry was the unifying word, RUBBER, which can precede both the first and second words in each theme entry. Rubber DUCK, rubber STAMP, check. Rubber CHECKS and TIRES, check. Rubber CHICKEN, rubberNECK, check. Rubber MATCH, I had to Google; it's a sports term. And rubber GAME? Ditto. Well, six out of eight ain't bad; I passed the test. There were other clues that were complete mysteries to me (1-Across's Black Knights, Lady ENID Hillcrest). Liked [9-3 and 9-5, e.g.] for SAABS; [Werewolves have hairy ones] for PALMS (guess my first thought when I had *AL*S); the Giro d'ITALIA bike race; and SCHMEAR (though I prefer that to mean cream cheese rather than a [Bribe]).

Updated:

OBESE alert! Wendy at the Rex Parker blog has called for a moratorium on obesity in crosswords, or rather, the ferquent use of OBESE in the grid. While it should be noted that OBESE never complains that the crossword squares are too confining, the word does seem to pop up a lot. It's [Much too big for one's britches?] in the NYT, and [Like most sumo wrestlers] in Randall Hartman's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Grout" (in which the theme involves dropping out a starting GR from a few phrases).

James Sajdak's LA Times puzzle features ___ GO ___ phrases culminating in the colloquial DON'T GO THERE. The phrase is played out and should be used only ironically now, but I still love it as a crossword entry. Liked PARSLEY hiding behind the clue, [Decorative greens], and the other 7- and 8-letter entries (in my REVERIES, ERIC IDLE eats a RICE CAKE and experiences more ECSTASY than a MASSAGE would offer—does such a rice cake exist?).

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Tuesday, 4/24

Tues NYS 4:17
LAT 3:28
Mon NYS 3:02
NYT 2:58
CS 2:47
Tausig tba
Onion tba

(first update, 8:50 a.m. Tuesday)

• It's my son's birthday tomorrow, and we haven't started wrapping his presents yet. Hmm, maybe in the morning while he's at school? Not in the mood to wrap now.

• Speaking of birthdays, happy birthday to not one but two pals who are crossword constructors. Am hoping there is a powerful zodiacal tug that encourages those born on April 24 to be cruciverbally inclined, because nobody ever sings songs that say, "Mamas, don't let your boys grow up to be crossword constructors."

• Received two advance copies of Ben Tausig's book, Mad Tausig vs the Interplanetary Puzzling Peace Patrol: A Fiendishly Fun Puzzle and Mystery Book for Kids. Will send one to a smart 10-year-old nephew, and will dither about the recipient of the other copy long enough for my 7-year-old to beg me to let him keep it (so far, he doesn't evince much interest in puzzles). The book's got crosswords, anagram puzzles, an acrostic, a picture sudoku, and other pencil puzzles aimed at (according to Amazon) 9- to 12-year-olds, and there's sort of a propulsive storyline that urges kids to work their way through all the puzzles to crack the code.

• Ellen Ripstein sent me a link to the contestant application for the upcoming game show, Let's Do Crosswords. The show's slated to be taped here in Chicago. Anyone know anyone who's working on the show?

• Wife Swap is also looking for a crossword family (!) to appear on their show. If you're a crossword nut with a spouse or cohabiting partner and at least one kid aged 6 to 18, and you'd love a chance to open up your family's lifestyle to critical inspection on national TV, this could be your big chance! Just think: If you got to be the traveling wife, you'd have the opportunity to make somebody else's kids...do crosswords.

And now, the crosswords. The Tuesday NYT is by Brendan Emmett Quigley. The theme is "famous men with *ZZY first names" so it's super-Scrabbly, with two names from sports (DIZZY DEAN and FUZZY ZOELLER) and two from music (OZZY OSBOURNE and D.J. JAZZY JEFF of "Parents Just Don't Understand" fame). If those Z's weren't enough, there's also a double-X word (EXXON) in the fill. TZAR (clued as [Russian autocrat: Var.]) pops up here, as a rare exception to the "it's always gonna be TSAR" rule of thumb in crosswords; the more standard spelling, CZAR, appears in crosswords much less than TSAR but far more than TZAR. (Yes, that's the sort of hard-hitting research I did while working on How to Conquer the New York Times Crossword Puzzle.) You know who would use the term SISSY or [Girlie man]? BOORS and other [Rude sorts]. (Hate that sort of mockery, insulting men by likening them to women, implying that that's a bad thing and urging boys and men to instead be macho nitwits.) Not much else to say about this Tuesday puzzzzzzzzle, is there?

It would appear that the neocon newspaper the New York Sun is so keen on celebrating William Shakespeare's birthday, they didn't get around to posting the week's crosswords on Monday. When they're up, I'll do the Monday and Tuesday puzzles. Fortunately, the Sun's themeless puzzles arrive late in the week, or I'd be awfully antsy on a Sunless Monday.

Updated:

Randall Hartman's CrosSynergy puzzle goes geographic with five different seas alluded to in the theme entries. Have I mentioned that I enjoy geography themes? I have, and I do. Not crazy about [Had problems with a shylock, perhaps] for OWED; is it necessary to evoke a touch of anti-Semitism in a crossword clue? It is not.

David Kahn's LA Times puzzle is akin to his CHRISTMAS CAROL puzzle that ran in the New York Times on December 21, 2005—the one that filled an entire grid using only the 10 letters in that theme entry, and that had several pertinent theme entries that followed the alphabetical limitation. Kahn's done it again, using only nine different letters (though it's got to be easier to fill the grid when one of the nine is an E). Each of the two 15's intersects with 9- and 7-letter theme entries. The honoree of the puzzle has a birthday today, too. (Birthdays everywhere!)

Again:

The Monday Sun crossword by Pancho Harrison, "R&B Singles," has a terrific and subtle theme with seven representatives (four Downs and three Acrosses, clues marked with asterisks). I won't give it away here, but if you don't grasp the theme quickly, note the crossword's title; this site (with sound—don't click the link with your speakers turned up loud) should give you a huge hint. I liked the fill, too, particularly those two words with a double-A that intersect...but not at an A.

Kelsey Blakley's 15x16 Tuesday Sun, "Books That Aren't Spaced Out," condenses three book titles by squeezing the initial A into the word that follows. Aptly, A Bridge Too Far becomes ABRIDGE TOO FAR. That title's both a book and a movie. I had Shel Silverstein's wordplay-ridden poetry book, A Light in the Attic, when I was a kid. And I'd never heard of A Rose in Winter. Know why? It's a romance novel, and I haven't read one of those in over 20 years. You can read an excerpt here. The sports clue about the Jets referred to the WINNIPEG Jets, the NHL team that moved to Arizona, scarcely a hockey hotbed.

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Monday, 4/16

NYS 3:35
LAT 3:10
NYT 2:47
CS 2:39

(updated at 8:40 a.m. Monday)

The Monday NY Sun crossword treads where the Gray Lady dare not go. What's funny is that the Sun is a conservative paper and the Times is more liberal, but the Times crossword is somewhat more bound by delicate sensibilities than the Sun. To wit: Mark Feldman's Sun puzzle, "Spa Treatments for Miss World," includes three geographically named spa treatments, SWEDISH MASSAGE, FRENCH MANICURE, and BRAZILIAN WAX. You know what's probably markedly less uncomfortable than a Brazilian wax? A wrestling BODY SLAM. Both may be considered NEAR-FATAL. Other zippy fill here includes CYBERSEX and SHAZAM (rumor has it a script is in the works for a Shazam movie). I PASS is clued here as [Nonparticipant's declaration]; what states other than Illinois have an I-PASS system for paying tolls?

The NYT crossword by Randall Hartman has a theme centered around famous people with *ARR last names swapped into phrases that start with *AR words, such as FARR-FETCHED. Hey! I think this theme is a tad far-fetched. It is not, however, star-shaped, carpooled, or bartended. Fill I like: TOM SWIFT, TRIFECTA, I'M SET, ZING (clued as [Get but good]), and THE BOSS. When I came to [Naval affirmative], the entry was A*EA*E—does anyone in the Navy ever say AT EASE (which I know isn't an "affirmative")? Odd to have two militaryish remarks with four letters in common.

Updated:

Harvey Estes' CrosSynergy crossword, "AAA List," includes three definitions of AAA. One adjacent pair of 8-letter entries are BASEBALL and APPLE PIE (crossing DELAWARE—as in the first state or as in crossing the Delaware?).

The LA Times crossword by Mike Burlisen has a 15x16 grid that accommodates six theme entries, and after you get theme entries 1 and 2, the rest practically fill themselves in. Highlights: JUST SAY NO biding time next to TUPAC, the clue [Drink mixer] for BARTENDER (doesn't the clue put you in mind of tonic and soda rather than the people who mix the liquids together?).

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Saturday, 4/14

Reagle 6:55
LAT 6:17
Newsday 4:35
NYT 4:11
CS 3:48

(updated at 9:30 a.m. Saturday)

Hey! What's this Friday puzzle doing in the Saturday New York Times? Usually Sherry O. Blackard's one of the toughest themeless constructors I encounter, but this crossword seemed quite pliable. 1-Across yielded immediately, and 1-Down followed—and that's not how most Saturday NYTs kick off. [Dessert preference] shouted A LA MODE at me, and while I'm no expert on poetic feet, I do know that ANAPESTIC starts with an A. From a construction standpoint, I reckon it's tremendously difficult to fill a grid like this one (just 60 words and 24 black squares) without making use of a number of common letters at the end of the entries. People and things with an -ER ending here include PAMPERER, NONUSERS, REGRETTERS and SIGHERS (aptly abutting), SILENCER, SENDERS, ANIMATERS, and a RECTIFIER—all of which make it easy to fill in a couple squares as toeholds. My favorite tidbits: [Proof provider] for ACID TEST; [So-so series] for OCTAVE; [Benjamin's love in "The Graduate"] for ELAINE (not because it's a tough clue, but because I like being reminded of that movie); the words CASTIGATES, STRAIGHT-EDGES, and MUDPIES; EGOMANIA (I would dearly love it if someone would write a limerick rhyming egomania with Romania); [Novel price, way back when] for TEN CENTS; [Places to put some bags] for TEAPOTS; [Not gauche] for ADROIT; [Nejd natives] for ARABS (I was guessing it was Slavic until the crossings helped me out); and [Single component] for SIDE A. Also, note that this grid has just two 3-letter entries and four 4-letter entries. That's impressive, Sherry! (But Will, you should have run this one on a Friday even though the empty grid looks fearsome.)

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Randall Hartman's CrosSynergy crossword, "Mixed Martial Arts," has a theme of 11-letter anagrams. Fun!

Doug Peterson's Newsday Saturday Stumper was fairly straightforward, though one entry was a complete mystery: the answer to [Vic's wife] was SADE. I Googled up the Wikipedia article on the old radio show, "Vic and Sade"—it began in 1932 and eventually found its way to television for seven weeks in 1957...before my time. If I could choose one kind of pop culture to eradicate from crosswords, it'd be old-time radio shows.

Vic Fleming and Bruce Venzke's LA Times themeless contains TIRAMISU, and who doesn't like that? (Well, I don't. Coffee, ick.) [Near failure] had me trying to think of a noun for far too long, when the answer was D-MINUS. And [Red crawlers]—not ANTS, but EFTS! Here's a red eft. Here's some info about the red-spotted newt—after the egg and larva stages, this newt has a "terrestrial eft" stage that lasts for 2 to 7 years before the eft metamorphoses into an aquatic adult. And the eft—so small! Today's long-overdue lesson (I really should have looked this stuff up years ago) about the top amphibian in crosswords is brought to you by no-longer-an-Eft Gingrich.

Merl Reagle's Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle ("Zip! Nada!"), which I couldn't access during yesterday's solving/blogging session, has Seinfeld's IT'S ABOUT NOTHING plus 24 theme entries (unless I miscounted) with fill-in-the-blank clues that include the word nothing, zip, or zero. These theme entries, which range from 4 to 15 letters apiece, are not all symmetrically placed (though the long ones are), but the theme clues are CAPITALIZED so they're easy to spot.

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Monday, 3/12

NYT 3:39
CS 3:19
NYS 2:57
LAT 2:52

(post updated at 10:50 a.m. Monday)

Another constructorial debut in the NYT, if I'm not mistaken—the byline reads Kevin Der, and his crossword is pretty smooth. There's plenty of lively content in the grid aside from the theme, which takes five warnings you might see on packing boxes and puts them in human contexts. Thus, KEEP DRY becomes an exhortation to a recovering alcoholic, and THIS SIDE UP is [Sign for a sunbather?]. Elsewhere in the puzzle, there are two dull words, ATTENDEE and HOST, livened up by being placed alongside one another (though the crossings kind of ruin their party: AHAB and the YETI brought plain TOFU cubes; at least the DESSERTS are waiting down below). TATTOO and OP ART evoke visuals, while LET ME SEE and ANYHOO evoke conversation. SCHTICK evokes Yiddish, which ties to HIGH DAY (which I Googled because I wasn't sure it was "in the language" without a HOLY in the middle; Googling high day Jewish gave plenty of examples of the usage).

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Randall Hartman's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Send in the Clones," has a so-so theme (sound-alike pairs like MINER MINOR for a [Coal-digging 16-year-old?]), but it had other high points. The past-tense SPAMMED, which is a word we see often enough these days, but it hasn't shown up in the Cruciverb.com-indexed crosswords since 1999 (when Brendan Emmett Quigley used it in a Sunday NYT). [Promise to a chef?] as a non-stale clue for OLEO. Although what chef is using Promise in her cuisine, really? That reminds me, though—recently read that bakers are having a hard time complying with strict limits on trans fats because butter—tasty, perfect butter—contains a small amount of natural trans fats. So baked goods made with butter instead of partially hydrogenated vegetable oils are off-limits at Starbucks, whereas saturated palm oil and certain hydrogenated margarines are A-OK, except that really, wouldn't we all prefer butter to palm oil when it comes to pastries? This crossword—see? I remembered I'm writing about crosswords—also includes SPACEMAN, which is the name of the quack doctor on 30 Rock, only he pronounces it "spuh-CHAY-man." I just got hooked on 30 Rock and downloaded all the episodes I've missed from iTunes. It's smart-funny and silly-funny, with plenty of throwaway lines that are gems. Less whimsical than Arrested Development, but with a similar appeal.

Edward Alch and Eric Platt's Sun puzzle, "Here's the Story..." (the comma is not happy with the ellipsis in quotes, so it asked me to insert a parenthetical remark to give it some breathing room), features the BRADY bunch in three vertical entries. You may ask yourself, why are the adults CAROL, ALICE, MIKE listed in that order? Well, that's where they are in the Brady tic-tac-toe grid, and the kids are also listed in Brady grid order (oldest to youngest from top to bottom). That is nifty. I think there were other parts of this crossword I wanted to mention, but I'm too out of it this morning to remember what they were.

Ray Fontenot's LA Times puzzle has five TV WESTERNS clued out of that context, so [Sudden windfall] is BONANZA, and [Lone dissenter] is MAVERICK. DR RUTH and MAZEL TOV are there to liven up the fill, too.

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Wednesday, 2/21

NYS 5:13
NYT 4:41
CS 3:30
LAT 3:06

(post updated at 8:50 a.m. Wednesday)

Just as Tuesday's puzzle felt a little Wednesdayish to me (though there were others who posted obnoxiously Tuesdayish applet times), Elizabeth Gorski's NYT Wednesday crossword took me a Thursdayish amount of time. The theme, which is both deddy- and doddy-free, includes WHO'S YOUR DADDY (which I think of as more a "jeer from the opposing team's fans" than a [Slangy question from a benefactor, maybe]), the song DO WAH DIDDY DIDDY, and an OLD FUDDY DUDDY. Look at all the down entries that rock: BOTSWANA! GOO GOO! HOW-TO BOOKS (yes, I have that link bookmarked)! PEDAGOGY AT DAWN! (That's two entries, and that's also too early for class.) You'd hold a GRUDGE if you HATED something. Favorite clues: [Wine and dine, say] for WOO (anyone else go for WOW first?), [Thing that doesn't go off without a hitch?] for U-HAUL, [Soreness?] for GRUDGE, [In great disfavor] for HATED, and [20-20, e.g.] for DRAW.

The Sun crossword is by Fred Sabanella (is this a debut?). It's called "Now Showing: Best Picture Oscar Winners," and the five theme entries have an Oscar-winning movie title embedded within. I like the assorted doubling-up: Nick Charles' dog ASTA and wife NORA; OUGHTA and OUTTA; PAMELA and SHARON (neither clued as [Girl's name popular in the '50s], but rather as a book and a statesman). The clue for EDEN, [Garden of good and Eve?], puts me in mind of Grant Goodeve, the dreamboat in the back row of this picture of the Eight is Enough cast.

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Doug Peterson packs an easy LA Times puzzle with an armoire's worth of lively fill.

Randall Hartman's "Ott Couples" puzzle from CrosSynergy switches a double-D to a double-T. Most of the theme entries had obvious roots, but BETTING PLANT left me at sea. "Bedding plant"? So I looked it up: bedding plants are those annuals that bloom like mad and are used to pack a flower bed with color. Think of impatiens, petunias, and marigolds, sold as plants that are ready to go rather than as seeds or seedlings that have to develop for weeks before blooming.

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Monday, 2/19

CS 3:40
LAT 2:41
NYT 2:37
NYS tba

(post updated at 9:45 a.m. Monday)

Happy Presidents/President's/Presidents' Day! If you have the day off, I hope you find something fun to do—whether it involves a day of action, hitting up the sale at Guitar Center, or sleeping late.

Monday's NYT crossword is by Andrea C. Michaels. The theme is Run, Lola, Run, or three-word phrases in which the first and last words are the same. Can you think of other candidates for this theme besides the three that were used (BOND, JAMES BOND; HOME SWEET HOME; TIME AFTER TIME)? Timely to have a Britney Spears clue (I'M A as part of a song title) so soon after she was in the headlines. Okay, so she's seldom been out of the entertainment headlines for the past year. But now it's because she shaved her head! (Being bald makes her nose look bigger, doesn't it?) Perfect Monday puzzle here, with tons of easy and crap-free 3-letter entries. Okay, maybe beginning solvers don't instantly associate Swedish air travel with SAS, but they've gotta learn it soon enough if they want to get better at solving crosswords.

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Randall Hartman's LA Times puzzle marks Presidents Day with actors who played fictional presidents in the movies. Fun Monday puzzle.

Rich Norris's CrosSynergy puzzle startled me by including the word GOOK, clued as [Icky stuff]. I don't care if it's in the dictionary with that meaning (as a variant of guck). Its more prominent meaning (definition 1, in fact) is as a racial slur used against Asians and Asian-Americans. Here's a historical look at the word. And no, it hasn't lost its punch. It's alive and well, as this link from just last week shows.

The way I see it, if SCUMBAG and SCHMUCK have no place in the NYT crossword because of their used-condom and Yiddish-penis roots, a hateful word like GOOK—offensive not because it pertains to sex, but because it is used against a group of people—certainly should be off-limits. If you're a constructor and GOOK bails you out of a tough corner, I ask you to keep working on the fill. If you're an editor, if you can't find a way to rework the fill to eliminate that word, don't publish the puzzle. You'd reject anything with the N-word, wouldn't you?

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Monday, 2/12

NYS 3:26
CS 3:25
LAT 3:02
NYT 2:28

(post updated at 10:20 a.m. Monday)

Happy Lincoln's Birthday! Usually I'm not too thrilled about a day off school (quality time with the kid cuts into blog-related leisure activities, y'know), but when it's cold out, the sidewalks may be snowy, and I've got a head cold? I treasure the chance to sleep in and stay warm.

It's always a treat to see Lynn Lempel's byline. Her Monday NYT sparkles with an unusually large number of longer fill entries (17 of 'em are 6 to 8 letters long) and a swingin' theme. Donna Summer's LAST DANCE holds the key to the other four theme entries, phrases that happen to end with a string of letters that are a dance. DON SHULA dances the HULA, the HORA is in the PLETHORA, the fearsome CONGER EEL hides a REEL, and the lively JIG ends THINGAMAJIG. (Extra bonus points for including a word as fun as THINGAMAJIG.)

It took some study to discern the theme in Gary Steinmehl's Sun crossword, "Completely Complete." Eventually it dawned on me that the first three themers ended with LOCK, STOCK, and BARREL, while the three on the bottom began with HOOK, LINE, and SINKER. So really, it's two small variations on one theme in a single puzzle. Cool interlocking, too—the majority of the letters in the four theme entries in the middle are linked to another theme entry by the vertical crossing entries. I'm always pleased to see a Poe reference, as in "The CASK of Amontillado" (it was pointed out elsewhere that the Sunday NYT's heart rebus omitted "The Tell-Tale Heart").

P.S. It's Freedom to Marry Week—so it's apt that the NYT puzzle happens to include [Not straight]/GAY.

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Randall Hartman's CrosSynergy puzzle uses a "Monday Kickoff" to morph phrases by added MON at the beginning. ARCHENEMY -> MONARCH ENEMY, K-RATION -> MONK RATION, GOOSENECK -> MONGOOSE NECK, and KEY CLUB -> MONKEY CLUB. I think a theme like that has the potential to be clunky, but I liked how it came out. I also enjoyed the long vertical fill entries FIG NEWTON and NEVER EVER.

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Thursday, 2/1

NYS 5:00
NYT 4:55
LAT 3:41
CS 2:51

(post updated at 10:30 a.m. Thursday)

Wow, February already? Yeesh. Time flies when arctic weather is on the march.

The Sun puzzle, Max Rosmarin's "Triple Doubles," has plenty of juicy clues. The theme has nothing to do with basketball stats. Rather, the theme entries have pairs of triple letters (as in HAWAII INN NAMING). My favorite clues included [Take a shine to?] for GLOSS, [Lose, as a tail] for SHAKE (I was thinking of those lizards that can regrow tails), [Have a date?] for EAT, and [OR setting] for PST.

In Michael Maurer's NYT crossword, I got off on the wrong foot with 1-Across, plugging in the more familiar AIR ACE instead of WAR ACE. The theme sent me all over the grid, as each theme entry was two cross-referenced entries forming OXYMORONS of a type. The word pairs seem to appear in random spots, but taken together, they occupy symmetrical pieces of real estate and account for a veritable boatload of theme squares (75 by my count). Having that many theme squares, of course, tends to force compromises in the fill, so we end up with ERNES singing MIS and flying across the ORNE River, for example. Favorite clues here: the simple [In] for ENTREE, [Choice after a football coin toss] for RECEIVE (Go, Bears!), and the doubling up of [Start to fall], SAG and the month SEP. For my money, Michael COLE has got to be one of the least well-known of famous COLEs: Natalie, Nat King, Gary, Old King, slaw, Porter, the USS, Haan shoes. The TV version of The Mod Squad was largely before my time. I looked up the [Lebanese port] TRIPOLI (being more familiar with the Libyan city), and found this nice tidbit at the end of the Wikipedia article: "Today, Tripoli is also known as Al-Fayha'a, derived from the Arabic verb Faha which is used to indicate the spread of a certain smell. Tripoli was best known with its vast orange orchards. During the season of blooming, the pollen of orange flowers gets carried by the air spreading a splendid odour that can be felt anywhere in the city and its suburbs, hence the name al-Fayha'a."

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Sheldon Benardo’s LA Times puzzle has a fun theme that toys with people whose first names are also cities and whose last names are also nouns. I especially liked [Oregon newcomers?], EUGENE DEBS. Fictionally, Austin Powers could have been included. Any other famous names come to mind? I can’t think of any suitable Pierres. (Moving away from the theme, I thought [Five-sided home?] was a great clue for PLATE.)

Bit of an oddball theme in Randall Hartman’s CrosSynergy puzzle—phrases that contain the letter string NZO—but it makes for a lively trio of 15-letter entries.

Will and Merl's appearance on Oprah's show (which airs in the morning in Oprah's home market) was entertaining. They didn't have the same "wow!" factor as the two brothers doing the Cirque du Soleil act—could you lie on your stomach and lift your feet off the floor if there were a man doing a handstand on your heels?—but Oprah seemed delighted by the personal bits Merl worked into the Oprah-themed puzzle. While the acrobats wore a lot of makeup, even in HD, I didn't see makeup on the crossword guys. But they looked more polished than they did in Wordplay, so maybe the hair and makeup department did do something after all.

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