NYT 6:23
LAT 2:47
CS untimed
BEQ 8:08
CHE—9/18 puzzle available here, but I'm not blogging it
WSJ 7:52
Robert Doll's New York Times crossword
I feel slightly like I've been run over by a bus—you know how you feel when a cold first settles in, and the sinus pressure and overriding malaise compete for attention? Let's see how much of this 70-worder I can chat about before the enticing arms of Morpheus beckon me.
Updated Friday morning:
Randall J. Hartman's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "The French Connection"—Janie's review
We know the formula for this theme very well: the first word of the well-known theme-phrase can follow a word hinted at or spelled out in the title to create another well-known phrase. In this case, it's that word French that makes the connection happen. I know—you were thinking this would be a puzzle related to William Friedkin's 1971 film. But no. The closest this puzzle gets to that would be the clue at 7D [Bong producers]. But the correct fill there is GONGS and not a reference to the head-shop paraphernalia you can see in the link... Let's take a look at the lively phrases and images Randy has given us, both before and after:
The liveliness of the theme fill finds a complement in much of the non-theme fill as well. I especially liked the colloquial clue/phrase pairs: ["Hear! Hear!"]/"I AGREE!" and the snarky (also [Impertinent] / FORWARD) ["Shut yer yapper!"]/"ZIP IT!" This is something you never want to say to the [Head honcho]/MR. BIG. Unless you're hoping he DEMOTES you.
I liked seeing ASTA clued as [Hammett hound]. So often that pooch is clued in connection with either The Thin Man or Nick and Nora Charles—and I think we forget that that book and those characters were the creations of the hard-drinking master of the noir-genre detective story, Dashiell Hammett. I also liked seeing O'NEAL [Ryan of "Peyton Place"] (that would be the '60s television series...] crossing NEIL [Rocker Young] (who's been rocking since the '60s...).
Finally, my two fave combos, both a tad on the, uh, "randy" side. One would be [Moon shot?] for RUMP; the other (this is the best), [Secret target?] for ARMPIT. ["Good going!"] "NICE!"
The decongestant is doing nothing for Orange's sinus discomfort, so the remainder of this post will be brief.
Kurt Mueller's Los Angeles Times crossword
My eye just read 57A: SNEAK INTO as SNEAK KIN INTO, which is what's happened to the theme entries. [Gear up for Halloween?] clues PRIME THE PUMPKIN, building on "prime the pump." "Bump on a log" + KIN = BUMPKIN ON A LOG, or [Yokel resting in the woods?]. [Steals the dinner cloth from Garfield's lap?] clues TAKES A CAT NAPKIN ("takes a catnap"). Hmm. Now, there's no underlying reason to insert KIN into these phrases, the KINs appear at the end twice but in the middle the third time (inconsistent structure), and the NAPKIN one seems too surreal. Is Garfield depicted as having a napkin on his lap? Cats don't have laps.
Dan Fisher's Wall Street Journal crossword, "There's an App for That"
Each theme entry is made up of APP + a familiar phrase, yielding something entirely different. Favorite examples: 82A: [What a mattress salesman might do?] is APPROACH MOTELS, and the juxtaposition of mattresses and roach motels is suitably creepy. 33A: APPROVING EYE is [Favorable look?], reworking "roving eye."
I had no idea that JADE was a synonym for [Harlot]. Y'know, with JADE also being a green gemstone and a verb meaning "to wear out, as by overuse," why on earth go with archaic sexist words? Pfft. Really, women don't need extra reminders of sexism
I'm deducting a couple points for ENDS ([They may be loose or tight]—good clue) appearing in the same puzzle as theme entry APPEND TABLES, based on "end tables"...although the theme answer has APPEND and not END, I know it's in there.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Barbershop Quartet" (19x19)
The theme is barbershop-related puns on song titles. The songs are split into two or three entries apiece, so there's a lot of hopping around the grid to assemble the titles. My favorite's GOD SHAVE / THE QUEEN, or [Barber's song about taking care of Elizabeth's mustache?]. Next favorite is the [Barber's song about nothing but passion for his work?], TOTALLY CLIPS / OF THE HEART. Why? Because of these videos. Always loathed the song, but these videos bring joy:
And this one, for which embedding is disabled—a Welsh men's choir, Only Men Aloud, singing the song over a Lego version of the video.
The other theme songs are HAIR THERE AND / EVERYWHERE and DAMN, I WISH I / WAS / YOUR LATHER.
September 24, 2009
Friday, 9/25/09
April 03, 2009
Saturday, 4/4
Newsday 13:31 (two Googles)
NYT 5:26
LAT 3:16
CS 2:49
Matt Ginsberg's New York Times crossword
It doesn't often happen that a crossword's theme eludes me completely. I've finished Matt's themed (!) Saturday puzzle, and I see that 10 answers in symmetrical spots are the opposites of their clues. The middle answer, 33A: LAST LETTERS, is clued [Explanatory information about this puzzle is revealed by reading these in the clues]. I tried all sorts of permutations of the last letters—in each clue, in each theme clue, in each word—and none of it was panning out. Now, what I should have done is considered that this answer might be the opposite of what its clue asks for because that is in fact the gimmick here—read the first letters of the clues and you get a full explanation. "Any clue for a word of eight or more letters is the opposite of the word to be entered." So there you have it—the middle answer and the other eight long answers are all opposites. (Thanks to Michael S. for the rescue.)
Sometimes the puzzles in which the words in the clues are necessarily restricted by a gimmick feel so nutty that you kind of know something is up. Usually Will Shortz and his constructors manage to smooth things out well enough that one can be duped without suspecting a thing—at least, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
And now for the theme action, the answers that are at least 8 letters long and opposite in meaning to their clues:
The bizarro-world theme answers weren't so hard to figure out, thanks to the crossings being more gettable than they are in typical Saturday NYTs. My favorites among the non-theme clues (which had perhaps less leeway for playfulness than normal because the clues had to start with specific letters) and answers:
How can you clue LAVA with a clue beginning with L? Why, with [Leucite source]. I'll be amazed if any non-geologist gets the answer based on that clue rather than the crossings. That crossword stalwart AMO is clued as [Domitian's "I love"]. I've never heard of Domitian, but I'm guessing that famous Latin speakers from ancient Rome whose names start with D are hard to come by.
There's a little more duplication than usual. The first letters of some clues spell out OPPOSITE when OPPOSITION is in the grid, and there's an IN HERE ([One possible answer to "Where are you?"]) across the way from HERE'S TO ([Opening of a toast]). And GET EVEN ([Take vengeance]) glances over at EVENNESS, one of the theme entries.
Updated Saturday morning:
Robert Doll's Los Angeles Times crossword
My full write-up of this puzzle is posted at L.A. Crossword Confidential. The short version: This is one of the easiest themeless puzzles I've ever done. Rich Norris's temporary easing-up of clues (to reduce the chance that readers of the Chicago Tribune and other papers that ran the old TMS puzzle would barrage the papers' editors with angry letters about the "new" puzzle being too hard) is in full force today. I miss the harder Saturday LAT puzzle, and look forward to its return in a few weeks.
In blogging the puzzle for the other site, I noticed just how much foreign stuff there is this time—over a dozen answers from Romance languages (including Latin). None of it was anything I'd never seen before, but I imagine this didn't sit too well with some folks. The crossing between SCENA ([Extended operatic solo]) and CORNU ([Latin horn]) might've been the trickiest square to fill. CORNU may look strange in the grid, but cornucopia—"horn of plenty"—is certainly a familiar word. Too bad the adjectival form of that isn't cornucopious (it's cornucopian).
The middle 37-Across answer, BOOK 'EM DANNO, is clued as a ["Hawaii Five-O" order]. A couple years ago, there was discussion on Cruciverb-L as to whether it's spelled Danno or Dano. If I recall correctly, there was compelling evidence for both versions.
Favorite clue: [Wear and tear, e.g.] for RHYMES.
Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Roller Coasters"
The theme isn't about thrill rides, it's about phrases that end with "roller":
I mixed up my snakes and dances when it came to answering [Mambos' relatives]. I was thinking of the black mamba and waited for the crossings to tell me what 6-letter snake might be pluralized here. Oh! Mambos, relatives of CHA-CHAS.
Merle Baker's Newsday "Saturday Stumper" crossword
Well! This one's in the running for toughest puzzle of the year—and, if we gave prizes for that, most unpleasant solving experience of the year. I got utterly mired in the rightmost third of the puzzle and just wanted to end things, so I Googled two things and still ended up with some problematic squares. (Full solution here.)
I liked 15A, HAS A SHOT AT or [Just might get]. Four-word entries are fun to mis-parse—HA! SASHO TAT! I liked the trivia in 2D [Language whose name means "normal"], or MAORI. I liked the three-word AT IT AGAIN, 12D [Back to one's old tricks]. I liked [Group of Xers?] as the clue for PEDS, or pedestrians (think PED XING signs). And that's about it for the plus column.
Now, I should've remembered this from another recent puzzle, that UTNE is the [Independent Press Awards bestower]—but with a likely initial U in place, I couldn't help thinking it would be the U.S._._. even though there was no abbreviation signal in the clue. I Googled that one, and I also Googled [Kay Kyser band vocalist]. Ginny SIMMS? Are you kidding me? Google tells me that she didn't record albums or appear on screen after 1960, and I honestly don't think she's one of those "enduring fame" people. This clue seems custom-made for those who were music fans in the 1940s, which would be solvers in their 70s on up.
I ought to have Googled a couple more things that were left mangled in the grid. ["Gone With the Wind" composer] is STEINER, but I had a bad D at the end of that because [Hit back?] sounded way more like the verb REAR-ENDED than the noun REAR-ENDER. In English, we don't customarily append adjectives after a noun, do we? STEINER's I crossed [Chief Justice after Chase], or WAITE. There was another piece of trivia I didn't know, but its crossings were more pliable for me—SHATNER [swears in Judy Garland in "Judgment at Nuremberg"].
I also frowned on 42A, [Disapproves of] leading to FROWNS AT. "Frowns on" is utterly in the language in a way that "frowns at" isn't quite. And then I frowned at [Capital starter] for ADDIS. Is that a clever way to clue part of Addis Ababa, or an annoying one? It annoyed me. I had A**IS for a while, as DEI being a [Word on a shilling] wasn't so obvious and TINKER'S DAM for [Trifle] just didn't want to come together. "Tinker's dam" is a bowdlerization of "tinker's damn."
[Narrow margin] was tough because NOSE fit so nicely, as in "win by a nose." So the N gave me...NUH-UH for ["I don't like that at all!"]? Turns out it's a HAIR crossing HUMPH.
These two answers belong together: DANDIFY, or [Turn into a dude], and SOTTISH, or [Bibulous].
March 17, 2009
Wednesday, 3/18
Onion 4:31
BEQ 3:49
LAT 3:03
NYT 2:51
CS untimed
Tuesday's puzzle had a theme centered on the 1940s to '60s. Robert Doll's Wednesday New York Times crossword doesn't have a theme that skews old, but much of the fill transported me to the crosswords of 30 years ago. The theme takes two-word phrases that begin with a GR- word and remove the initial G. If this puzzle had a title, it could be "A Case of Gout."
I thought the puzzle was mighty easy for a Wednesday NYT, but I was also struck by a preponderance of fill that used to be seen more often than it is nowadays. I've done puzzles long enough that those answers were gimmes, but I could see a lot of newer solvers getting a case of the grumbles with these:
With [Orange feature] cluing NAVEL, my eyes started seeing NAVELs everywhere in this grid. INANE ([Cockamamie]) looks sort of like INNIE, IN-LAW ([Acquired relative]) had the first two letters, and INNER ([Word before city or child]) was also close.
Favorite clues:
Updated:
Ed Sessa's LA Times crossword includes a title as the last theme entry, 63-Across GOON SQUAD. Who's part of the goon squad? The punk, mug, hood, and tough at the end of these theme answers:
Good riff on the phrase GOON SQUAD. Did ALDO Ray play goons? For a change, a clue for ALDO gives me some information that's of interest. [Actor ___ Ray known for macho roles]? Hey! Now I know some context for Aldo Ray other than being given the title of an old movie I'll never see. Other clues:
When I open a puzzle in Across Lite, usually the timer starts going automatically. I didn't notice that it sat quiescent when I opened Nancy Salomon's CrosSynergy crossword, "Space Invaders," so I have no solving time to report. Probably a smidge below 3:00, if I had to guess. The theme hinges on calling sentient entities (...not quite anagrams, those two words) from outer space ALIENs, CREATUREs, and BEINGs:
As with the Doll NYT puzzle, some of this crossword had a retro feel. The trusty old ADITS are [Mine entrances]. There's a mineral/rock store called Open Adit; the site takes pains to provide a definition for the term. ADIT used to show up in many more crosswords than it does these days. STYE, or [Eyelid ailment] was in plenty of old crosswords, and alas, it is still in plenty of current crosswords. ESSO often gets clued as an outdated or non-U.S. brand, but here it's the [Tiger-in-your-tank brand], no hint of anachronism; the phrase still bubbles up in various ways. [Supreme Diana] and [Karl of "The Streets of San Francisco] appear one after the other, as 42- and 43-Down; Ms. ROSS left the Supremes in 1970 and KARL's show aired from 1972 to '77. [South Yemen port] is ADEN; this is one of those ageless crossword answers that I've known forever and will probably see in the last crossword I do in the old-age home some decades hence. The bottom row dispenses three more classic crossword answers: EPEE, a [Fencer's blade], along with ERTES, or [Some Art Deco pieces], and ESSEN, a [City on the Ruhr].
The quartet of 9-letter answers in the fill are good. TAILGATED means [Followed too closely on the highway]. LET IT SNOW is [One third of a winter refrain]. ORATORIOS are [Handel's "Messiah," et al.]. And the PAST TENSE is clued with [History is written in it]. I also like SKEETERS, or [Bloodsuckers, colloquially]. Did you know that South Africans and Australians and their ilk call mosquitoes "mozzies"?
This week's Onion A.V. Club crossword was constructed by Ben Tausig. The theme entries take words that end with a Z sound and change the pronunciation to an S sound, forcing a variety of spelling changes. The new phrases are clued with question marks:
The theme idea's a good one, but I only liked the first two entries. Here are 10 other clues and answers:
Pop culture rules the day in Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Hand Jive: Five songs to help you get a grip." Brendan used a book of lists about music as the seed for this puzzle, with five song titles that fit into symmetrical spots of the grid and are all about masturbation:
The rest of the puzzle has some good stuff—there's a small corner with GAWKS and RITZY stuffed into it. There are longish answers like GIRL TALK and HAT TRICK, BY CHANCE and SO SORRY. And two corners with three-abreast 7-letter answers, marred only by the inclusion of the woeful ENSTEEL, or [Strengthen]. Wait, is that word thematic (for the theme entries other than the Divinyls song)?
February 19, 2009
Friday, 2/20
WSJ 6:45
LAT 6:20
NYT 6:17
Sun 6:00
CHE 5:20
BEQ 5:02
(post updated at 5:22 p.m. Friday)
My Friday-morning blogging time will be cut short by a date with a Tribune photographer. Features writer Patrick Reardon interviewed me Thursday for an article to run sometime next week—he had an odd assortment of questions about crosswords, not the standard sorts of questions I've been asked before. Here's hoping that he can extract some semi-coherent quotes from my ramblings. The Vegas bookmakers are now taking bets on whether the headline or first paragraph will include the clichéd "What's a seven-letter word for..." bit.
Paula Gamache's New York Times crossword is classic Gamache: a bunch of 10- and 11-letter answers stacked together, smooth fill featuring plenty of interesting words and phrases, and a Saturday-puzzle vibe. Ahhh. Who doesn't love a Gamache?Here's the stuff that delighted me:
Now, it's not all fun and games. This puzzle also has a bunch of gnarly answers whose clues don't make things easy:
Jeremy Horwitz constructed Oscar Week's final Sun crossword, "Oscar-Winning Roles." The theme is a tough one: the names of the fictional Oscar winners who have populated various movies. I've only seen one of the four movies in question, so I was working the hell out of the crossings here. The Bodyguard's fictional Oscar winner was named RACHEL / MARRON. Is that Whitney Houston's character? The internet says yes. I had no clue. I mean, there was a long clue for it, but it meant nothing to me because I never saw the movie. TUGG SPEEDMAN is from Tropic Thunder. Is that Robert Downey Jr.'s character? No, it's Ben Stiller. True story from commenter "chefwen" over at the Rex Parker blog the other day: Her dog ran away and the family that picked him up was Ben Stiller's. Her dog spent a night in the bed belonging to Stiller and spouse Christine Taylor. VICKI LESTER was a character in A Star Is Born, the new stage name of Judy Garland's character Esther Blodgett; never saw the movie, but Wikipedia filled me in. I liked In & Out but couldn't remember the name of Matt Dillon's actor-character without a bunch of crossings; it's CAMERON DRAKE.
My favorite clues and answers:
Janet Bender's Wall Street Journal crossword is yet another in the series of WSJ puzzles that are a good bit easier than a typical Sunday NYT. The "C Plus" theme is better than average (har!), with a C getting added to various phrases to give them new meanings. My favorite theme answers are the ones that took the C at the beginning of the first word. Does that mean those entries were more successful than the ones with a C added to a subsequent word, or just that those are the ones that grabbed me? Here they are:
In the non-theme fill, we get a couple two-part names that seldom show up in the grid in their entirety: Actress TYNE DALY is a [Winner of six Emmys and a Tony], and the ENOLA GAY was a [Famous B-29]. Or maybe that should be [Infamous B-29]. There's a shiny new clue for ERIC: [Attorney General Holder]. I like that he's stirring things up already, and not because there's a topless statue in the building. We can only hope that he, too, will eventually write and perform songs.
Samuel Donaldson's Chronicle of Higher Education puzzle, "Seeing Stars," has a theme that is of little help when solving. Four of the longest answers contain CONSTELLATIONS in their midst. The [Psychological term for a stepmother's sexual attraction to her stepson] is the PHAEDRA COMPLEX, with Draco hiding inside it. The professional's HOURLY RATE splits Lyra between its two words. Leo is prowling inside LITTLE ONE, or [Toddler]. And there's some constellation within NATIVE LAND. I started Googling my way to the stars—Tivel constellation, no. Tivela constellation, no, but Google asks if I meant Vela, so that's it. Physics and astronomy fans, this puzzle's for you. Law-school grads, this clue's for you: [Order of the ___ (honor society for law-school grads)] is COIF. People who've taken a stats class, this one's for you: [Way to determine if a sample is indicative of the norm] is the T TEST. College admissions staff, this one's for you: [___ code (identifier on a SAT score report)] is CEEB.
Updated:
The theme in Robert Doll's LA Times puzzle confused me for the longest time. The theme answers all run in the Down direction, and their clues all include the word "literally." Eventually I saw that the answers were fractured and sometimes reordered phrases with missing prepositions—those prepositions have been replaced by moving words around. We had a similar theme in a Merl Reagle Sunday puzzle last year, and I can't help thinking that a title for the puzzle might help reveal the theme. Without further ado, here's how Doll's theme works:
Plenty of tough clues make it that much harder to piece together the theme entries if you haven't figured out how they work. Among the tougher ones are these:
Today's Brendan Emmett Quigley crossword is a pun puzzle called "Heathens." The theme entries are SQUARE PAGAN, / A ROUND HOLE (punning on "square peg in a round hole"), NO REST FOR / THE WICCAN ("no rest for the wicked"), and WITCH WAY IS UP ("Which way is up?"). I give this theme a solid "meh" today because I've been a garden-variety heathen my whole life, with no affinity for the pagan/wicca/druid bent. I know the dictionary definition for "heathen" includes polytheistic pagans as well as folks who belong to no religion, but still. Favorite answers: ONSTAR, the [Safety device for GM vehicles]; THE WIRE, that [TV series whose theme was "Way Down in the Hole"], a show that everyone still raves about but that I've never seen; REYNARD the [Fox of fables], because Reynard is so close to Reynaldo; and a TOWNIE who is a [Nonuniversity type]. Tougher nails: QIN is the [Dynasty during which much of the Great Wall of China was built]; [Actress Tilly of "The Good Earth"] clues LOSCH; COZ is a [Family relation, for short], meaning "cousin"; and beneath COZ is KAZ, or [Middle fielder Matsui], a name I know only from a Byron Walden crossword (in which KAZMATSUI was stacked on or under its near twin, HAZMATSUIT).
January 15, 2009
Friday, 1/16
Sun 5:50
LAT 4:50
NYT 4:27
CHE 3:50
BEQ one day (diagramless, with Acrosses and Down clues up to 26-D)
WSJ 7:38
Mike Nothnagel is one of those themeless constructors whose bylines I'm invariably pleased to see. Why? Because of stuff like this in the Friday New York Times crossword:
Lively fill that tells a story (in my head, anyway): YOU KNOW WHO is an [Unnamed individual], but forget this anonymity, let's call him MR. UNIVERSE ([Arnold Schwarzenegger, four times]). I bet he met a lot of women at a SINGLES BAR (a [Match point?]) in his heyday. You have a question for the bartender there? "OK, SHOOT" is her [Response to "I have a question for you"]. "Do you sell Pimm's?" "YES, WE DO" is the [Reply to "Have you got that in stock"]. "Forget about the Pimm's. I'll have a Scotch. It's an IMPULSE BUY. Make it a double," you say. (PEAT is a [Scotch flavorer, you know.) "LESS IS MORE" (["Keep it simple"]), the bartender cautions, "IN THAT you've had enough. Let me pour you a HOT MILK instead." (That's a [Bechamel sauce ingredient].)
Proper nouns: Some folks hate finding names in their puzzles because they fall in the category of "either you know it or you don't," and when it comes to, say, contemporary pop culture or non-major geography, they can be hopelessly mired in a seemingly insoluble square. Me, I like the names. I didn't know that YING was the name of [Soprano ___ Huang], but pieced it together from the crossings. ETHAN HAWKE is our [Oscar nominee for "Training Day," 2001]; he did a good job looking skeered and conflicted. Gay TALESE is ["A Writer's Life" writer, 2006]. Fictional KATO [fought Robin on an episode of "Batman"]; isn't there another Kato in superhero land? David HUME is ["An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals" philosopher], and he sits atop Verne TROYER, a.k.a. [Verne of Austin Powers films]; he's an actor of short stature who later appeared on reality TV too drunk not to pee on the floor. There's ANKE [Huber of women's tennis]; no other famous Ankes come to mind, so her position in crosswords is a lock. [Israel's Weizman] is named EZER. And there's poet Alexander POPE, [who wrote "Hope springs eternal in the human breast"].
Places in the grid include Michigan's ALMA College, WASHOE County in Nevada, HENLEY-on-Thames ([Regatta setting]), the [Aleutian island] ATKA (I know a lot of you had ATTU there, as I did). There was a a SWEDE ([Uppland inhabitant]) keeping company with a KURD ([Many a Kirkuk native]). Speaking of people in other countries, there are some foreign-language answers here, too. [Cul-___] DE SAC came from the French but is solidly English now. NOTRE is [Our counterpart in France?], or more exactly, "our" counterpart. [Is in Spain?] is "is" in Spain: ESTA. SANS [___ fil (wireless, in Paris)] explains itself.
Other answers/clues I was fond of (or feel slightly ranty about): There's an HOURLY RATE, clued with the hint [A raise may raise it]. [Tinseltown is a part of] SHOW BIZ. I love the word (but not the feeling) ANGST, [Not just jitters].
A couple clues are not PETA-friendly: OPEN SEASON for hunters is [When many shots are taken], and LASSO is clued as [Ringer of some necks]. The ERNS, [Birds with "meat cleaver" bills], do what they can to defend themselves. Those flying geese are on their own, though. PETA probably wouldn't object to ALL OK ([Perfectly good]), but it doesn't feel like it makes the grade as crossword fill.
Barry Silk's Sun "Weekend Warrior" felt easier to me. I tackled this one right before the NYT, and much preferred Barry/Peter's clue for OPEN SEASON: [Animated film of 2006]. I see a lot of the cartoon movies because I have a kid, but this one...I can't remember if it was the one with a bear and a snack machine or the one with the suburban incursions. Wait, it was the bear. The other one was Over the Hedge. Two 2006 cartoons about forest animals starting with O*E* words? Crikey. Getting back to the crossword: My favorite clue was one of the last ones I figured out. [Leaving while the iron is hot?] sure sounds like it has to do with the idiom "strike while the iron is hot," but it's a FIRE HAZARD, leaving the house with an iron still plugged in. Two people merit the full-name treatment here: TALIA SHIRE and LEANN RIMES. I first opted for HOOVED for [Like pigs' feet]; I imagine our porcine friends are less than pleased about BRINED feet. I'm not a POTSTICKER fan, but it sure looks cool in a crossword. I noted to myself that all the GPS clues, like [GPS display], seem to have displaced AAA clues for RTE. Whoops, the GPS display is a MAP this time...and RTES are [AAA suggestions] up above.
The title of Robert Doll's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Two-Letter Entries," makes it sound as if the puzzle will violate the standard interdiction against crossword answers with just 2 letters. The first three theme entries each have two words occupying 11 or 12 letters, though—but in the NATO ALPHABET (that international phonetic alphabet), those two words stand in for single letters. The elegance comes in the choice of letter-words: FOXTROT TANGO stands for FT, and both words are names of dances. [Two male nicknames], MIKE CHARLIE, fill in for MC. And Shakespeare's ROMEO JULIET make up RJ. O gets transmitted as "Oscar," who doesn't partner up with another letter in this puzzle—but there's an OH-OH and the movie OH, GOD, combining in my head into Oh, Oh, Oh, God, which would be a considerably more alarming movie. Oh, and look who's here—the NYT had Verne TROYER and here's VERNE, only he's not clued with reference to Mr. Troyer but rather, [Captain Nemo's creator] Jules.
ESSO update:
Joon's comment reminded me that I wanted to mention the ESSO clues. In the NYT, it's a [Brand named after the pronunciation of its parent company's initials], S.O. or Standard Oil. (If you didn't know that, it makes for a nice little "aha!" moment when it clicks.) The Sun clue is [Sinclair alternative], but it's the NYT clue that has that "long clue providing a piece of trivia" vibe we associate with Peter Gordon and the Sun.
Updated Friday morning:
Tracey Snyder's LA Times crossword adds an -EL to a familiar (or semi-familiar) phrase to create each theme answer:
A number of clues threw me for a loop in this puzzle. I immediately thought of hens for [Sound heard after a lot of brooding?], and CLUCK. Uh, no. Oh! Chicks. They CHEEP. No, guess again. CHIRP, from any bird whose mama did that sitting-on-eggs thing. ["The Conspiracy Against Childhood" author] clue upends convention—usually LESHAN is included with the book title in a clue for the writer's crossword-friendly first name, EDA, and "Eda" was omitted from this clue. For [Corona alternative], I thought of other Mexican beers, but Corona is also a cigar, as is the answer, PANATELA. For [Spew out], I started with ERUPT instead of EGEST. [Flour sometimes used in naan], an Indian bread, is ATTA, and though I've had naan I didn't know the flour's name. Two bits of older crosswordese came to me much faster (a true sign of having done an excessive amount of crosswords): ARETE is a [Rugged ridge] and OGIVE is a [Pointed arch]—the latter answer not to be confused with an OGEE, or S-shaped molding (though centuries ago, the two words were synonymous).
Randy Ross's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Cabinet Meeting," calls a meeting of various phrases that include the names of eight of the U.S. cabinet departments. My favorites are GO INTO LABOR, clued as [Visit a cabinet department building?] but evoking childbirth, and BRINGS TO JUSTICE, clued as [Delivers to a cabinet department?]. I liked the Asian geography sprinkled throughout the puzzle—THAI crosses MALAYA (this [Former Asian nation] makes up part of modern-day Malaysia, but Singapore was spun off to be its own country), and BURMA was a [Japanese conquest of 1942] that has since been renamed Myanmar. And there's crowd favorite Jerry ORBACH, [Briscoe portrayer on "Law & Order"]. [Give a hand?] clues SLAP, which is too question-marky for me, too much of a stretch. I went with CLAP, which wouldn't merit a question mark in that clue, which made it hard to see what [Encase] was—SHEATHE, not CH- anything.
Brendan Emmett Quigley's crossword for Friday is called "Corner Stones" and it's a themeless. On Wednesday and Thursday, Brendan parceled out the clues one at a time in his Twitter feed so solvers could go the diagramless route if they wanted to. Knowing that it'd be available as a regular crossword come Friday, I figured it would have standard crossword symmetry and not look like those kooky diagramless puzzles, and it turns out that this makes it easier to solve without a diagram. Hell, I finished the puzzle before BEQ had posted the Down clues from 28-Down to the end. I didn't know this could be done, but there you have it. (Am patting self on back now; definitely have earned a cookie.) In Brendan's accompanying blog post, he says another constructor nudged him to load a puzzle with the sort of entries he wanted to see in a crossword. So this puzzle includes these answers:
more animals
- LOLCATS is clued misleadingly as [Pictures of pussies on the Internet]. A lot of folks think those LOLcats pictures are moronic. I love 'em.
- [Mini covering] clues an IPOD SKIN.
- [Tweet source] is TWITTER.
- If you go [All out], you're going WHOLE HOG.
- I'LL TELL is a [Playroom threat]. This one took me forever to figure out. Mentally inserting that apostrophe was the key. If your playmate tells on you, you might throw a HISSY [___ fit].
- I needed the Down clues to figure out 1/8-Across, VAMPIRE WEEKEND, ["A Punk" rock band]—I'm guessing that combo was another of those things Brendan wanted to work into a puzzle.
December 18, 2008
Friday, 12/19
NYT 28:04
Sun 24:03
WSJ 22:21
LAT 21:51
CHE 10:24
CS 5:30
(Updated at 9:45 pm Friday)
I'm going to put this here above the cut just to make sure she sees it. Happy Birthday, Mom!
Hi. I was going to try to fool you. But you knew it was me, didn't you? You could tell by the big numbers up there. At first you panicked, thought you had stumbled onto the wrong blog somehow and were losing your mind. Or that something terrible had happened to Orange and she amazingly, inexplicably, began sucking at crossword puzzles. Then it hit you. You thought: "It's just that speed solver wannabe PuzzleGirl again. Why, oh why, does she continue to humiliate herself by publicly advertising her dismal solving times every chance she gets?" You know, that's an excellent question. I'm gonna think about that one and get back to ya! For now, though, I'll just warn you that I'll be here all week while Orange is off on a big boat somewhere in the sun. Sounds great, right? Yeah well, she won't have the kind of internet access she's used to. And she's so much like me, I can tell you what she's doing right now. Her eye just started to twitch. She's pacing frantically. Pretty soon she'll be breathing into a paper bag. It's sad really. Where technology has taken us. And by us, I mean, Orange and me. None of you are that nutty, right? Okay, enough jibber-jabbering, onto the puzzles.
Did everybody else love Natan Last's New York Times crossword? It wasn't just me, right? I mean, how can you not love a puzzle that includes AZERBAIJANI and GUITAR HERO?? A lot of misdirection in this puzzle — had to be careful with verb tenses, not get locked into obvious pronunciation, and beware the dreaded First Word Proper Noun Trick. I need to catch my breath here because I just don't know where to start. Well, Pinocchio's exuberant cry "I'M A REAL BOY!" was the first thing I placed in the grid. I could hardly believe my luck that it fit. Oh, hell, let's run down the best of the misdirection:
Other random good stuff:
Robert A. Doll's Sun crossword, "Position Papers," is a fun newspaper-themed rebus, with some lovely symmetry thrown in for your solving pleasure. We've got the Globe at the cross of GOLDEN GLOBE and GLOBETROT; the Star joining John McCain's SILVER STAR and Nancy Reagan's STAR CHART; the Sun at arguably the strangest theme crossing in the puzzle, juice brand CAPRI SUN and SUN YAT-SEN, the father of modern China; the Bee brings together Clara Edwards's friend AUNT BEE and Richard Gere's "BEE SEASON"; and smack-dab in the middle, we've got the Times at the cross of MANY TIMES OVER and 1978 #1 Commodores hit THREE TIMES A LADY. Just stop a minute and admire the symmetry. Seriously. Close your eyes and picture it. It's beautiful, isn't it? Take another minute or two if you need it. I'll wait ....
And we're back. I always enjoy the pop culture references in crossword puzzles, particularly when they involve music and sports, so I loved seeing three-fourths of the Fearsome Foursome today. L.A. Rams MERLIN Olsen, Deacon Jones, Rosey Grier, and Lamar Lundy, terrorized their opponents throughout the 1960s. I would venture to guess that there was never a quartet of famous tough-guys with weirder first names.
Speaking of weird names, I was tripped up quite a bit in the SE corner with EVIE [Val and Joan's mother in the comic strip "Stone Soup"], Olympic swimmer DARA Torres, and reliever Robb NEN. Throw in an ancient warship I've never heard of down there and, well, I'm sunk. TRIREME? Really?
I also had a hard time remembering that vie means life in French, to which EAU (water) is indispensable. ROSEBUD was [Charles Foster Kane's dying word] in "Citizen Kane," one of those movies I can't believe I haven't seen. (It's in pretty good company with "Casablanca" and "Gone With the Wind," though.)
That's it for now. Back later with more Friday puzzles....
In Dan Naddor's LA Times crossword, an s (representing the word it's) is added to the beginning of familiar phrases to create new phrases à la the Gershwin classic "'S Wonderful."
I can't believe I'm going to admit this to you, but I had a lot of trouble with 1 Down. I got right away that the clue — ["Come on down!" announcer] — referred to "The Price Is Right" game show. Without thinking, I entered PARDO, realizing an NSEC later that it wasn't right. I erased it and heard Bob Barker in my head: "Who's our next contestant, Johnny?" Johnny... Johnny! ... Johnny who? What the heck is Johnny's last name? Couldn't get it without the crosses. His last name? Yep, pretty much the same last name I had for the first 35 years of my life: OLSON. Ack!
Olio:
I always get a little nervous at the prospect of solving the Chronicle of Higher Education's crossword. It's often chock full of academic-type stuff and my brain hasn't worked that way in a long time. A few of the theme answers in today's John Lampkin offering, "Physical Romance," were a little too scienc-y for me to understand, but I looked them up for you. It's just one of the services I offer. You're welcome.
I'm running out of time here. Have to get over to a thing at the kids' school. I'll leave you with "The ANVIL Chorus" from "Il Trovatore." If you're just dying to talk about the CS and WSJ puzzles, knock yourselves out in the comments. I'll be back to add my no doubt fascinating perspective later on today.
Hey, guys. Sorry to do this, but this day has been a lot crazier than I expected. I'm going to go ahead and post the completed grids for the WSJ and CS puzzles, but I haven't had time to pull my thoughts together and there are still a few more things I have to do before that makes it to the top of my list. Speaking of which, where the hell is my list?!? Oh, here it is. Anyway. Sorry about that.
Trip Payne's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Following the S&P," adds the letters SP to the beginning of familiar phrases to create new amusing phrases.
I really enjoyed this puzzle. When I see Trip's name, I know I'm in for a workout and this puzzle didn't disappoint. Tough stuff for me: [Fielding novel] refers to Henry, not Helen. So that means AMELIA, not Bridget Jones. HOMER is the [Brother-in-law of Patty and Selma] and I can only assume that's a "Simpsons" reference. As many times as I've entered it in crossword grids, I had no idea MENLO Park was in New Jersey. Thought it was a suburb of Chicago for some reason. Never heard of the ELI Young Band. Never knew that [Tastiness] can be called SAPOR. Good thing we learned that a PIT is a [Trading spot] in another puzzle today. [King's domain?] refers to CNN's Larry King. And [Some business partners] are SONS, which reminds me of the Undisputed Number One Best Television Theme Song of All Time. You can hear an awesome version of it here. (Thanks, Wade.)
Raymond Hamel's CrosSynergy crossword, "Game Birds," features four professional sports teams each with a different bird mascot. One football team: the BALTIMORE RAVENS; one basketball: the ATLANTA HAWKS; one hockey: the ANAHEIM DUCKS; and one baseball: the TORONTO BLUEJAYS.
Not a lot to say about this easy, breezy puzzle. I like how the [Hawaiian veranda] LANAI crosses the [Floral neckwear] LEI in the northern California region. We've also got MORAL crossing ORAL there. Looks to me like only a couple things might have tripped people up. The crossing of [Icelandic currency] KRONA and [Big name in headphones] KOSS seemed unusually tricky in this particular puzzle. I can never get [River nymph] NAIAD without the crosses. PuzzleSon is a Cub Scout, so AKELA, the [Cub Scout pack leader], was familiar to me, but I sure would have had a hard time with it a few years ago. And, oh yeah, LPS. For you whippersnappers, that's what we used to listen to music on back in the old days before CDs.
Sorry it took me so long to get today's write-ups done. When Orange gets back, she'll probably fire me. Hey look! It's almost time to start tomorrow's puzzles! I guess this is what it's like living without Super-Human Solving Powers. See y'all in a little bit....
November 25, 2008
Wednesday, 11/26
Tausig 6:15
Sun 3:57
Onion 3:53
LAT 3:20
NYT 3:07
CS 2:32
(updated at 5:25 p.m. Wednesday)
Harvey Estes' New York Times crossword hits the Wednesday sweet spot with an elegant theme, a low word count (72 answers = themeless grade), and colorful fill and clues. 57-Across is OLE, defined as [49-Across, in this puzzle]. 49-Across is THE LAST HURRAH, a [1958 Spencer Tracy film...and a hint to 20-, 30- and 39-Across]. Those three answers all end with a last hurrah, a final olé, and in each one the pronunciation is different:
Here's what I liked best outside of this finely wrought theme;
If you haven't been doing crosswords too long, you might not know that FALA was the name of the [F.D.R. dog], or that a SETA is a [Bristlelike part], such as on a caterpillar.
Alan Arbesfeld's Sun puzzle is called "Catching Some Rays" because each theme entry has some sort of ray or Ray hidden within it:
Did you ever think that NEO CON could possibly be the answer to ["Sweet ___" (2005 Rolling Stones song)]? This came as a complete surprise to me. The song's got a Wikipedia page devoted to it. (Lyrics here.)
Francis Heaney's Onion A.V. Club crossword combines an AEIOU vowel progression theme with an add-some-letters theme with interesting results:
Updated:
Robert Doll's LA Times crossword contains five theme phrases that mean [Vamoosed]: FLEW THE COOP, MADE TRACKS, GOT OUT OF DODGE, HIT THE ROAD, and TOOK A POWDER. All are idiomatically equivalent as well as making for colorful language. Clues that took some work to get:
[Lou "The ___" Groza, memorable NFL placekicker] is nicknamed The TOE. That's apt, but I'd never heard of him.
[Art from Pompeii?] wants you to return to ancient Pompeii, where Latin, not Italian, was spoken. The noun art in Latin is ARS, as in "ars longa, vita brevis."
[Horse variety?] is GIFT, as in "don't look a gift horse in the mouth."
[Providence athletes] are FRIARS? Really? Both the men's and women's teams are the Friars.
Tom Schier's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Interior Living Quarters," hides four different ABODEs (58-Across) inside the theme entries:
We see HOI in the grid with a "___ polloi" clue plenty, but having POLLOI clued as [Hoi ___ (the masses)] is unusual. Old crosswordese ANIL pops up from time to time; here it's clued as an [Indigo-producing shrub].
The Tausig puzzle will have to wait until after this morning's third grade spectacular at my son's school.
Updated again:
I confess it took me a long time to understand the theme in Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader puzzle at all. The title is "The Short List," and here are the theme entries:
So I guess the crossword's called "The Short List" because these phrases build off of five shortened names. I feel old and out of touch having zero familiarity with 40% of 'em.
In the fill, there's a slew of juicy answers. THE VIEW, a DOVE BAR, and STIR-FRY occupy one corner. TV STAR and ACT TWO each have a four-consonant pile-up. GODCAST, a [Neologism for a holy download], is new to me. My dictionary informs me that COMFIT is a dated word—it means [European fruit candy] or, according to that dictionary, a "candy consisting of a nut, seed, or other center coated in sugar." Seeds? Damn near killed me having that M crossing the unknown-to-me M. WARD. BAKR fills in the blank in [Abu ___ (Muslim leader after Muhammed)].
