NYS 3:23
LAT 2:55
CS 2:48
NYT 2:31
I don't watch much football these days, but I caught the last few minutes of the Giants/Cowboys game this evening. Seeing the Cowboys lose is even more rewarding than watching the Yankees lose. The Cowboys are the only NFL team I've ever been able to summon up any antipathy for. It must've been that whole overplayed "America's Team" nonsense.
Robert Dillman had a better day than quarterback Tony Romo, with the Sunday-evening release of his Monday New York Times puzzle. The theme is [Good sign at/on a...], with END ROADWORK (hooray!), FREE KITTENS (uh, I'll pass), VACANCY (well, if it's the Bates Motel, that's actually not such a good sign to see), JUST MARRIED (mazel tov!), and PRIZE INSIDE a candy box. A candy box? Boxes of candy have prizes? I can't think of any. Cracker Jack and breakfast cereal, yes. The candy is the prize. Surely my readers know examples of candy with a prize inside and will share. I like the Japanese restaurant vibe with SUSHI and SAKE, not to mention PLUMS (which are used to make sweet plum wine) and a TEA SET. Slangy PLUNKS and WEENIE liven up matters. There's a [Despotic ruler] called a SATRAP, which was just a tangential subject at Rex's blog last Monday.
"Pushing the Envelope" is the subject in Mark Feldman's New York Sun crossword. A group of LETTERMEN is represented by its star players: actor TERENCE STAMP, writer NORMAN MAILER, and aviator WILEY POST. Highlights: GOOGLED and RUGRATS, along with the high-Scrabble-count letters throughout the grid (two Js, two Xs, a Z, a Q, a K). Just once, though, I'd love to see MAXIS clued as [Thin ___].
Updated:
Thomas Schier's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Clean Slate," fills in the blanks with blank, or synonyms of blank—a BLANK EXPRESSION, WHITE SALE, EMPTY NEST, and CLEAR CONSCIENCE. One utterly unfamiliar name in the grid—children's author ELISA Bartone. Her Peppe the Lamplighter is a Caldecott Honor Book.
Doug Peterson's LA Times puzzle is a little aloof. I WANT TO BE ALONE unites a DETACHED GARAGE, COOL ONE'S HEELS, and REMOTE CONTROL. One wonders if the 10-letter answers have any connection: Do the COSA NOSTRA enjoy BOARD GAMES?
January 13, 2008
Monday, 1/14
October 02, 2007
Wednesday, 10/3
NYS 4:37
LAT 3:43
CS 3:26
NYT 3:20
Wow, Steven Leckart's Cool Tools recommendation of my book really goosed the book's sales at Amazon today. How to Conquer the New York Times Crossword Puzzle climbed up to become the second best selling title in the Crosswords category. (Curse you, People Puzzler, for hogging #1!)
Matt Ginsberg gets a little possessive in his New York Sun crossword, "Hey! That's Mine!" The 10 theme entries aren't labeled as such, but they're essentially fill-in-the-blank clues that are missing the "___'s" part—[Web] is CHARLOTTE, as in Charlotte's Web, and [Ark] clues NOAH, for example. The possessive phrases included run the gamut from pop culture (GILLIGAN's Island, PRIZZI's Honor, and more) to geography (MARTHA's Vineyard) to literature (UNCLE TOM's Cabin and other books) to business (VICTORIA's Secret) to anatomy (ADAM's apple). I do like names in crosswords, and this puzzle's got a slew of names both in and out of the theme. Good fun!
Robert Dillman's New York Times has a theme that is entirely out of sync with my interests. [Call in roulette], [Call in blackjack], [Call in many a betting game], [Call in draw poker], and [Call in craps]? I say "bleah" to all five! The answer phrases are fresh enough, I suppose (well, FOURTEEN RED doesn't make my cruciverbal heart go pit-a-pat), but most of theme didn't leap into the forefront of my mind when I read the clues. "Hit me," yes, but HIT ME AGAIN, less so. I have grumbled before about poker themes, but I will now expand my Meh List to include craps, blackjack, and roulette themes.
Updated:
Rich Norris's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Rated PG," features six 8- to 10-letter theme entries with a PG in the middle. Favorite of those: LIP GLOSS, a [Cosmetic that may be flavored]. How well I remember junior high and Bonne Bell Lip Smackers and their other super-sticky lip gloss, available in flavors like watermelon, strawberry, and root beer. (Ew.) And [Chicago pro] is CUB—ah, the Cubbies. They'll lose in the first round of the playoffs, I reckon. They like to do just well enough to get long-suffering fans' hopes up, and then they dash those hopes. Hakuna matata, baby. Hakuna matata. Hate, hate, hate one clue/answer combo here: [Sorority members] for COEDS. If you simply can't fill your grid without the noun COEDS, for Pete's sake, why not clue it as an [Outmoded term for college women]? Actually, that's incorrect. It's not outmoded at all. Heavens, no. If you Google "coeds," you'll find more hardcore porn sites than you can shake a stick at. That's how the word's being used today. So let's look at the case for COEDS: It's a pre-feminist term that marginalizes women in college, and it's popular in porn? This word hates women. Constructors and editors, please keep it out of my crossword puzzles, or clue it in a way that shows you're not (a) living in the 1950s or (b) really into porn. Please.
As it turns out, it would have been pretty easy to get COEDS out of this puzzle and avoid my wrath. Change POP to ALP, OKED to OKRA, and FOPS to FOOT, thereby substituting AERO for PEEP and CLEAT for COEDS, et voilà.
Thomas Heilman's LA Times crossword works out the mental muscles with phrases that end with exercises: CYBERSQUATTING (for the legs and butt), NUMBER CRUNCHING (abs), and TONGUE TWISTING (obliques). I like the theme, but I love a lot of the fill. Three fictional names—CORLEONE, MR. SULU, and BANQUO. A dessert—TIRAMISU. Mississippi's state tree, the MAGNOLIA. Writer Margaret ATWOOD. That's great stuff, all of it. My favorite clue: [Cultured fare] for YOGURT (I wanted it to be some sort of ART, but no).
August 01, 2007
Thursday, 8/2
NYS 6:02
NYT 5:22
LAT 3:33
CS 2:46
(updated at 10:30 a.m. Thursday)
Crikey, this collapse of the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi is highly distracting. I solved the Sun crossword with WCCO's live TV coverage playing in a browser window in the background. (I think a local TV station's website can be a better source than, say, CNN when it comes to a local story.) Anyway, our thoughts go out to anyone who's affected by the bridge disaster or just freaked out about it.
The New York Sun puzzle is Kelsey Blakley's "Serving Spoonerisms," and who doesn't like spoonerisms? The theme entries are—surprise, surprise—spoonerisms in which two words swap initial sounds. A bolt cutter, rabbit-hole, litter box, Citigroup, poster boy, and fruit flies are transformed into the oddly equine COLT BUTTER, which you could spread on a HABIT ROLL and top with some BITTER LOX. Don't miss the GRITTY SOUP course (yum!). And get your carbs with BOASTER POI and FLUTE FRIES. See what they all have in common? The spoonerisms all become foods. This, mesdames et messieurs, is what we call a tight theme. The puzzle's got three Xs in it, which is foxy. Favorite clues: [Coxcomb] for BEAU (love the word coxcomb, and didn't know that beau also means "a dandy; a fop"); [Round dance participant] for BEE; [Series opener] for MINI (as in miniseries); [Character voiced by Justin Timberlake in "Shrek the Third"] for ARTIE (I knew this one!); and [Head cheese?] for EXEC. I learned a new Hawaiian word, mele, in [Dances to a mele] for HULAS; mele has come to mean song. I also enjoyed the flipflopping of 31- and 32-Down: [Golda's successor...] and [Eban's predecessor as Israeli foreign minister] refer to ABBA Eban and Golda MEIR.
Robert Dillman's New York Times crossword substitutes chemical symbols for five metals included in various phrases. We have GET THE PB OUT (lead), GO FOR THE AU (gold), AG BELLS (Silver Bells), SN PAN ALLEY (tin), and CAST-FE ALIBI (iron). I felt like it took me much to long to figure out that there was a cute gimmick at play here, but when I did get the gist of it, I was impressed. Seeing [Minneapolis suburb] in the clues is probably rattling some people not expecting to be reminded of the news while working a crossword (EDINA is on the other side of town, though). Favorite clues: [Target of some testing] for STEROID (I stared at ___ROID blankly, wondering if fibroid, Metroid, or android somehow made sense); [Like old Rome] for IMPERIAL; [Ticks off] for FROSTS; [Uncombed, say] for WILD (My son took his thick bedhead to day camp today, where some wondered if he might've encountered an excess of voltage. Hmm, guess I forgot to wet his hair down. He's due for a haircut.); and [Kitchen coat] for TEFLON. Cribbage is not my bag; here's the definition of NOB.
Updated:
Randall Hartman's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Sensational Solving," is a fairly easy crossword that has four theme entries that start with words that mean "sensational." The second words are MILE, FOUR, TOWN, and COMPROMISE, so the theme is fully contained within the first words.
Do keep an eye out for crosswords in which the theme doubles up. We've seen a few recently where both halves of each theme entry are involved. For example, Matt Gaffney's Onion puzzle had a BEFORE TAXES theme in which both halves of the theme entries (e.g., LUXURY FLAT) could be teamed with TAXES: luxury tax, flat tax. Other "tight" themes apply a consistent trick to a set of theme entries that cohere in another way, as in today's Sun puzzle: Spoonerisms resulting in food. Spoonerisms alone can make a fun theme, but there's extra elegance when the theme has another layer of consistency.
The theme in Dan Naddor's LA Times crossword is an ordinary one: Four wildly unrelated things (NBA DEFENSE, GARLIC SQUASHER, DRY CLEANER'S AID, and PRINT MEDIA) that all mean [PRESS]. Who doesn't like the word SQUASHER? The fill gets off to a good, Scrabbly start in the upper left corner with JAVA atop IRAQ. Overall, the fill is mainly unexceptional—just the sorts of words one expects to see in a mid-week crossword. But I truly enjoyed this puzzle because the clues were so good. My favorites: [Island that will wake you up?] for JAVA; the geographically educational [Asian country slightly larger than California] for IRAQ; [Opposite of able?] for ELBA (as in the palindrome, "Able was I ere I saw Elba"); [Dandy guy?] for JIM (anyone else leap at FOP despite the clue's question mark?); [Place for quarries] for HIDEOUTS; and [Something in your eye] for both RETINA and GLEAM.
