Onion 5:39
BEQ 4:54
Tausig 4:38
Sun 3:25
LAT 3:15
NYT 2:51
The theme in Michael Langwald's New York Times puzzle feels a decade out of date. Four theme entries begin with the words MAID INN TIE JUAN, which sounds like "made in Taiwan," which this crossword tells us is a phrase borne by a CHILD'S TOYS. Nope, those almost all say "made in China" these days. You have to look long and hard to find a toy that's not from China. The answers whose beginnings sound of "made in Taiwan" are:
This crossword boasts 10 long answers (7 to 9 letters) in the fill.
Gary Steinmehl's 15x16 Sun crossword, "On With Its Head," puts a head on top of four vertical theme entries
See the H-E-A-D that modifies the four original phrases? I've circled those letters in my grid. [Three-time Gold Glove winner Minnie] MINOSO walked past my cousin's dining room window, walking his dog, while we were having Thanksgiving dinner in November. His car has MINOSO vanity plates, and he looks good for 83.
Updated:
Sometimes ACRE gets clued as [Part of a plot], and presumably some solvers first interpret the clue as being about a scheming plot rather than a plot of land. Robert Morris's LA Times crossword plays with that by making ACRE the [Secret plot found in 17-, 26-, 44- and 55-Across]. Those four answers include words ending with A before words beginning with CRE, embedding an ACRE in each:
This theme might seem a little "so what?" or lackluster if not for the "secret plot" twist that imparts a little oomph.
Byron Walden's Onion A.V. Club crossword has SPEED DATE clued as [Encounter shared by the four celebrity couples in this puzzle]. Each of these "speed dates" uses a celeb's name as part of a pun on a specific sort of race:
Highlights: (1) SPEED DATE intersects two of the theme entries. (2) Word count's low enough to be a themeless, so there are lots of long answers here. (3) My favorite letter, Z, makes three appearances. (4) Zingy clues and fill. Why, look: here's DILDOES, clued as [Junk kept in drawers by the bed?]. Slangy HATED ON, clued as [Disparaged, slangily], is of a piece with NO YOU completing ["Oh ___ di'n't!"]. "SIC 'EM, BOY!" means ["Attack, Rex!"]. [Black-and-tan, say] doesn't mean the Guinness-and-Harp drink this time—it's DUOTONE for the two colors mentioned.
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "The Last Shall Be First," has a terrific theme with a whopping eight theme answers. In each of them, the first and last letters swap places:
What elevates this theme—besides the fact that there are eight of 'em and two pairs have answers stacked alongside one another—is the freshness and flavor of the original and modified phrases and their clues. A love child, Fritos, Mr. T, bleacher bums, and Pop-tarts? You won't find more than one of those in most crosswords (Mr. T, I'm looking at you).
Brendan Emmett Quigley's puzzle today is called "Connecting Flights," and he combines pairs of airlines into made-up phrases. My favorite of the three theme entries is AMERICAN VIRGIN, clued as [Yankee who's never been to third base]. An [Estuary in Phoenix] or SOUTHWEST DELTA is mighty implausible, and the CONTINENTAL US is indeed [Everything but Alaska and Hawaii]. Favorite fill: JOAN MIRO, ["The Tilled Field" painter]; MR. BILL, [Old "S.N.L." character currently in MasterCard's "Priceless" ads}; THE MAMBO, a [Dance invented by Cachao], whoever that may be; and exactly THAT GOOD, or [As great as everyone says].
January 27, 2009
Wednesday, 1/28
November 30, 2008
Monday, 12/1
Sun 3:47
LAT 3:14
CS 2:48
NYT 2:47
(post updated at 10:05 Monday morning)
December! What the...? How did that happen?
Vielen Dank to the Rätsel Mädchen, or Puzzle Girl. I just got home this evening and haven't had a chance to do any Sunday puzzles yet, so I haven't read her post about those crosswords. I'll bet it kicks ass, though.
The Monday New York Times crossword by Eric Platt is built around the phrase TURN ON A DIME. Inside my head, "stop on a dime" is the far more common phrase, but Google disagrees with me. In each of the other theme entries, a DIME turns around within. I'm not sure that "turn on a dime" is an apt description of "what the insides of 17-, 27- and 43-Across do"—the DIME turns, but the phrases sit there perfectly happy, DIME or no EMID. I like the mixed bag of theme answers: BETTE MIDLER, [The Divine Miss M]; a NURSE MIDWIFE, who is not just a [Birth mother's helper] but also a provider of routine gynecologic care in some jurisdictions (you wanted to know that, I'm sure); and an adjective, SEMI-DETACHED, or [Connected on only one side, as a town house].
I think this crossword may mark Mr. Platt's debut—nice work, as the fill includes some lively longer answers, such as RIGMAROLE and a LIFE-SIZED STERNUM.
Updated:
My favorite Monday puzzle this week is Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy crossword, "Do the Twist." This one features three 15-letter theme entries, a fairly low word count for a themed puzzle (74 answers), six 9-letter answers stacked with or crossing the theme entries, and smooth fill with accessible, Monday-grade clues. The theme answers all end with a word that does a "twist": UP AROUND THE BEND is a [1970 Creedence Clearwater Revival hit] I don't think I know. [Forward-thinking] means AHEAD OF THE CURVE. And [Says something inappropriate] is SPEAKS OUT OF TURN. In the fill, STOMACHED is clued [Put up with] and might just as easily have been TOLERATED. [Ironman competition parts] are MARATHONS. And look at the non-crosswordese river in the grid—the EUPHRATES is a [Major Iraqi river] that doesn't get much play in crosswords.
Tony Orbach's Sun crossword, "Five of Twelve," expands to a 15x16 grid to accommodate a 6-letter theme entry in the center. Each of the five theme entries is a famous person whose first or last name is also a month. AUGUST WILSON, the [Pulitzer-winning "Fences" playwright], was my only gimme. I can't say that I've heard of LEE MAY, the [Baltimore Orioles player who led the A.L. in RBIs in 1976]. The three actors—FREDRIC MARCH, JANUARY JONES, and JUNE LOCKHART—made me work from the crossings more. Did you notice that the theme entries appear in calendar order, with JANUARY at the left and AUGUST on the right? Nice touch.
Robert Morris's LA Times crossword has four theme entries that begin with a kind of LANE (50-Down):
Favorite clues and answers: [Homer's wife] is MARGE Simpson, but I was thinking of Homer's character Odysseus's wife, Penelope. To [Put a previously tested system into operation] is to GO LIVE. FARM AID is an [Annual agricultural benefit concert]. The colloquial "I'M DEAD" is clued ["It's curtains for me"].
October 26, 2008
Monday, 10/27
Jonesin' 4:44
Sun 3:11
NYT 2:31
CS 2:45
LAT 2:42
Andrea Carla Michaels and Michael Blake have teamed up again for a Monday New York Times crossword puzzle. The theme is 55-Down, SPIN—they've put an SP at the beginning of three 13-letter phrases to convert them into 15-letter phrases:
I have the sense that most themes involving question-marked clues for nonexistent phrases don't manage to have such simple clues. This trio is short and sweet, with two-word clues conveying all the sense they need to. There are a number of answers that new solvers need to commit to memory if they don't already know them:
The Sun crossword is called "The Old College Try" and it was constructed by Joon Pahk. Three theme entries end with IVY LEAGUERS. The band KING CRIMSON corresponds to the Harvard team, the Crimson. HEY BULLDOG is a [Song on the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine" album], but I've never heard of it. You know how Yale students are in the crossword all the time as ELIS or YALIEs? Their official nickname is the Bulldogs. The Princeton Tigers show up in PAPER TIGER. It's a little distracting to have another team name in the grid—Whittier College's bad-ass POETS, not of the Ivy League. I like how the '80s band ERASURE sits beneath KING CRIMSON. (Wikipedia tells me Erasure is still recording and touring. Who knew?) Favorite clue: [Strong suit?] for ARMOR.
Updated:
Matt Jones has crafted a puzzle with an unusual gimmick in it. This week's Jonesin' crossword, "Early and Often," includes a ballot of sorts, and instructions to MARK AN X for whichever one YOU PICK. Each "candidate" entry is 14 letters long—FIRST CANDIDATE, ANOTHER NOMINEE, and THE THIRD OPTION—but appears with a blank 15th square (those 15th squares are supposed to be circled, but the circles were missing when I downloaded the Across Lite version of the puzzle). If you X in one of those squares, you change the crossing word, but the answer will be correct with or without the X:
Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Have a Good Time!", has five different "good times" at the start of the theme entries. One [Pome variety], and a tasty one at that, is a GALA APPLE. SOCIAL WORK is a [Profession intent on improving living conditions. One [Joint type] is BALL AND SOCKET, as in your hip and shoulder. A RAVE REVIEW is a [Pan's opposite]. And a PARTY LINE is a [Tie-in to another telephone customer, as well as a tie-in to this puzzle's theme]. I wonder if anyone younger than me has first-hand experience with party lines—when I was a kid, my grandparents had a party line, and they gave out their phone number prefix as HEmlock-7 rather than 437. Old school!
Updated Monday night:
Well, the LA Times crossword hadn't been posted as of lunchtime today, and after it was posted, I didn't get a chance to solve it before late evening. Robert Morris's theme is PAPER, which precedes the first word of each of the four theme entries:
One of the 8-letter answers in the fill was unfamiliar. RANGE WAR is clued as a [Big beef over big beef?]. Wikipedia explains that range wars can also involve sheep herding and water rights.
April 22, 2008
Wednesday, 4/23
NYS 5:17
NYT 4:01
CS 3:34
LAT 2:50
Yep, that's right. I haven't done any of the Wednesday puzzles yet, and it's too late now. Am out the door to trivia in a minute. Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves in the comments if you've done the New York Sun and/or New York Times crosswords—I will try to remember not to read those comments before I've done the puzzles. And if I should spoil my solves by reading comments first, I will have no one to blame but myself—unless someone else offers to take the blame.
Late Tuesday night:
I started reading the blog comments after coming home from trivia (we took second place and are positioned well for the new six-week cumulative points total prize chase—$600 for our team if we come out on top after six weeks), and Alex said he would accept the blame for spoiling—and that's as far as I got. Thanks for the save, Alex! I was going to blithely read comments until I regretted it, but you saved me.
Stephen Edward Anderson had his debut puzzle quite recently, and here's his second New York Times crossword already. Way to go, SEA! He's an expat living in Europe (and a semi-regular on the NYT forum), so of course his theme is ur-Americana: cowboys and their horses. QUICKSILVER, CHART TOPPER, HAIR-TRIGGER, and TALENT SCOUT all end with famous horses, and 30- and 27-Down spell out RIDE 'EM / COWBOY. W-w-wait, TOPPER? Wha? Google tells me that's the name of Hopalong Cassidy's horse. SILVER goes with the Lone Ranger, TRIGGER is Roy Rogers, and Scout is...let me look this up...the horse belonging to Tonto, the Lone Ranger's pal. I'm quite fond of an OKAY GUY ([Nice enough fellow]) in the fill.
Robert E. Lee Morris's New York Sun crossword, "Alcohol Containers," has a theme I didn't see while solving. What is it? Let me take a look. Aha! Embedded within the five theme entries are kinds of liquor. RIVER MOUTHS, LAST OUTLAW, NUMERIC KEYPAD, VAPOR TRAIL, and TWIN-ENGINED split some alcohol between two words. (Edited to add: Reader Joon notes that the last theme entry is also serving GIN.) The [2004 Israeli film set during Sukkoth] was a complete mystery to me: USHPIZIN. I am far too sleepy to remark further.
Updated:
Stella Daily and Bruce Venzke's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Spin Doctoring," puts TURN at 63-Down to tie the theme entries together—each phrase's final word can follow "turn." Having actress JULIA STILES among the ordinary nouns in the theme adds a little élan. With actors JOSH Duhamel, ILKA Chase, Lotte LENYA, and Esther ROLLE and L.A. Laker player Lamar ODOM in the fill, this really felt like an LA Times crossword.
The theme in Billie Truitt's LA Times puzzle feels like I've seen it before—a vowel progression running through the beginning of five theme entries—but a quick check of the Cruciverb.com database doesn't turn up anything obvious with these particular theme entries. PAPARAZZI has just three prior uses in the database, all in themelesses. The letter P just plain has a fun sound—peppy and poppy—so the progression through PEPPERONI, PIPSQUEAK, POPPYCOCK, and PUPPY LOVE works beautifully. These words/phrases share a consistent vibe—substituting flat entries like PAPER CUTS and PEPPER BOX and PIPE STEMS wouldn't be nearly as effective. Terrific group of theme entries + solid and Scrabbly fill = good crossword.
March 18, 2008
Wednesday, 3/19
NYS 4:45
LAT 3:32
NYT 3:30
CS 3:27
Will be short in posting tonight—
Gary Whitehead constructed the New York Times puzzle. The theme is things that JAM (56-Down): RUSH-HOUR TRAFFIC, a HARD ROCK BAND ([Def Leppard, for one]), and a LASER PRINTER. I like the theme—three disparate things that do fit the category. The fill seems targeted at my son—he likes MAC and cheese, and MILLE Bornes, and FLATBED tow trucks. [Signs of decay] is kind of icky for ODORS; what decaying thing are we supposed to be smelling over our breakfast crossword puzzle? At least MOLDS were for making chocolate and not being found on our bread and EDAM.
The New York Sun crossword's got a quote theme, which is atypical for the Sun. The byline, Ogden Porter, is an anagram of Peter Gordon. The quote's a [Horace Mann quote that's the motto of Antioch College]: BE ASHAMED TO / DIE UNTIL YOU / HAVE WON / SOME VICTORY / FOR HUMANITY. Wouldn't it be terrible to live out an undistinguished life, winning no victories for humanity, and to lie on your deathbed feeling ashamed? Aw. In the fill, KARAOKE BAR is balanced by MR MAGORIUM, the title character played by Dustin Hoffman in that dreadful-looking holiday movie my kid had zero interest in seeing. (Were the moviemakers not ashamed to be ripping off Willy Wonka, winning no victories for humanity or art?) Favorite clue: [Thing studied by a helminthologist] for WORM. Just because.
Updated:
Robert E. Lee Morris's LA Times crossword has a roundabout theme. The central entry is FIT TO A T, which the first words of the four theme entries are said to do. Those words can be fitted to a T to make T-SQUARE, T-BONE, T-TOP, and T-MOBILE. I like the inclusion in the fill of COOLEY High, which I watched back in '75; and of course I didn't miss an episode of "What's Happening." (Shirley Hemphill rocked.) There's a '60s to '70s vibe here, with Tatum O'NEAL and Goldie HAWN's Oscars, Louise LASSER of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, and a TAPE DECK before its near-obsolescence.
Mel Rosen's CrosSynergy crossword is called "First Take!" and it's a good thing. I'm not sure I would have noticed the theme if not for the title. The four theme entries begin with words that can follow "take"—take CHARGE, take ACTION, etc. Best fill: "OFF YOU GO," Fido, to THE POUND. VAL Kilmer is in this grid. The other day I read that he and Wilmer Valderrama are in an upcoming movie together. I hope they entertained themselves on the set by swapping last names and initial letters. Val Valderrama and Wilmer Kilmer! Val Wilmer and Kilmer Valderrama! If they became a tabloid item, perhaps they could be called Kwilmer or Valmer. Valmer Kilderrama! Okay, I'll stop now.
January 25, 2008
Saturday, 1/26
Newsday 10:10
NYT 6:34
LAT 4:38
CS 2:45
Karen Tracey's New York Times crossword is perhaps a little less showy and a little less fun than her usual themeless work, but then, she's set the bar mighty high because this remains a very good crossword. The longest entries are 9 letters, so there's no pair of headliners really set apart from the rest. Plenty of letters you'd want to make use of in Scrabulous (or Scrabble), to be sure—a Q, Z, and X along with a bunch of Js and Ks. There were two names I just didn't know, and they intersected—the last name of ["Turandot" composer Ferruccio] is BUSONI (not to be confused with Puccini's more famous Turandot), and the actress TANIA [Raymonde, player of Alex Rousseau on "Lost"] is unknown to me, except that I knew Alex to be a female character so I was looking for a woman's name. I don't cry foul on the crossing, because it was likely to be TANIA or TANYA, and BUSONY doesn't look remotely Italian with that Y ending.
I savored a number of the clues. In the Across direction, I especially liked [Cash cache, often] for COOKIE JAR; [Wanton type] for SATYR; [Shout across the Seine?] for the French word CRI; [They don't stay hot for very long] for FADS; [General equivalent] for ADMIRAL; ["New York City Rhythm" singer] for MANILOW (I prefer to forget that he recorded songs other than "Copacabana"); [Weasley family's owl, in Harry Potter books] for a non-Flynn ERROL (I also like documentarian Errol Morris); [Breaking sticks] for pool CUES; [Cold weather] for TEENS (and lemme tell you, that didn't feel good with the wind today); and [Blues guitarist Vaughan] for STEVIE RAY (a great entry—he's instantly recognizable sans last name).
Going Down, there's [They're seedy] for apple CORES (didn't you want to fill in DIVES?); [Hip-hop producer Gotti] for IRV (and no, Gotti's not his real last name); [Peer group setting?] for the JURY BOX; the two-syllable [Peaked] for ANEMIC; [Potential canine saver] for ROOT CANAL (technically, the root canal is merely a canal within the root of a tooth and not the name of any endodontic procedure, but everyone calls it a root canal anyway); the verb [Direct] can mean REFER; [The Yasawa Islands are part of it] refers to FIJI (who knew?); [Review unfairly, maybe] for UNDERRATE; the misleadingly non-plural adjective [Tops] for NUMBER ONE; and the misleadingly canine-sounding [Dalmatian or Pomeranian] for SLAV.
The TREPAN is clued as a [Mine shaft tool]. Heh. It's also handy for boring a hole in the skull.
Who is 14-Down's [Playwright/painter Wyspianski]? His first name is STANISLAW, and I like the paintings displayed on his Wikipedia page; check 'em out. I'd never heard of him before, but ask me for a Polish man's name, and Stanisław (I believe the crossed L is pronounced like our W) comes readily to mind; it was my grandma's dad's name. Also in the category of European writers, we have JEAN GENET (["The Thief's Journal" author]) opposite STANISLAW, so maybe there is a wee mini-theme of sorts. And a pair of wines, RIOJA and MOSELLE, for the writers to sip.
Updated:
It's inadvisable to start a tough crossword in the wee hours, because the brain gets a mite creaky then. I had to put the southwest corner of Doug Peterson's Newsday "Saturday Stumper" aside until after sleep and breakfast. Well, now it's doable, but a lot of the clues in that corner were on the oblique side, there more than in the rest of the puzzle if you ask me. [Iron, e.g.] for golf CLUB seems obvious now, as does the BOSTON fern, but [Have in mind] and TARGET don't seem quite equivalent to me; URGERS is a yucky answer for [Force's sources]; [Staying power] and LENGTH don't feel synonymous to me (LEGS, yes); and I just plain blanked on the concept of a stone CAIRN that might be a [Mountain-summit marker]. I like to think the climber's carried a cairn up the mountain side for just that purpose, rather than finding a rock atop the mountain. Did you know MARIA was the plural for [Lunar seas]? I had the MAR part right. I liked the crossing SWORD SWALLOWING and BRAND SPANKIN' NEW, ONE OR TWO, and [It may keep you up at night] for PAGE-TURNER. With the "turner" part in place, I was lured into thinking of tossing and turning, which was absolutely the wrong sort of turning for this answer.
Robert E. Lee Morris's LA Times crossword has a bit of a Los Angeles vibe to it, with movie titles, UCLA in the clue for ALMA MATER ([UCLA's "Hail to the Hills of Westwood," e.g.]), and the occasional actress name. [His name can be typed using three contiguous keys] has got to be harder for the legions of solvers who aren't working the puzzle on their computer (it's ERTE). I like TAP DANCE clued as [Be evasive], PET NAME crossing HONEY, UNCLE SAM, SAVALAS clued as [Co-owner of the racehorse Telly's Pop], and [Leatherback] for SEA TURTLE. (Why was I thinking of the Marine Corps for that last clue?) Other good clues: [Hot air] for JIVE; [Ring leader?] for boxing CHAMP; [When the U.S. Open ends] for SEPT (tennis, not golf; I think it begins in late August); and [English logician John] VENN (don't know who he is at all, but with the V in place, "Venn diagram" came to mind).
Thomas Schier's CrosSynergy crossword, "Food Groups," tortures a few musical groups with food puns: the GRAPEFUL DEAD, ROLLING SCONES, and OAT RIDGE BOYS. There's nothing particularly grapey, sconeish, or oaten about these groups, is there? Good to have a Monday-easy puzzle this morning, though, since I've got to run!
December 05, 2007
Wednesday, 12/5
NYS 5:04
NYT 3:34
LAT 3:22
CS 3:14
Am I the only one who sees Allan Parrish's byline on a crossword and thinks of Jumanji? (Different spelling of the first name, but it sounds the same in the movie.) The Allan Parrish not portrayed by Robin Williams has constructed the New York Times puzzle for Wednesday. Given the number of typos I'm catching as I write this post, I'm amazed I made it through the crossword alive. The theme, as given in 71-Across, is DEER. The theme entries include JOHN DOE in the middle, HINDQUARTER and STAGFLATION going across, and UNCLE BUCK (I am not ashamed to say I loved that movie) and COREY HART (I would be ashamed to say that I loved "Sunglasses at Night") going down. This time, DHARMA is clued as [Teachings of Buddha] rather than evoking the sitcom Dharma and Greg. A little Scrabbly action with ARNAZ beside OUIJA and QUAILS and JITNEY crossing theme entries.
The New York Sun puzzle by Mark Feldman...I paid no attention to any "Pictures of Pants" theme while solving. It's late, I'm tired, trivia night kicked my butt, there was beer, and it's past my bedtime. The theme entries in this plus-sized crossword (15x16) are movies that end with kinds of pants—STRANGE CARGO, SOME LIKE IT HOT, TWO-WAY STRETCH, and ALL NIGHT LONG, the latter two being movies I swear I've never heard of. Also, my brother-in-law grew up calling pants "long pants," and my sister has (rightfully, in our opinion) mocked this. They're just pants. The Streisand movie does indeed sound Razzie-worthy (i.e., lousy). An IMDb user calls the STRETCH movie Peter Sellers' best, and yet it's completely unknown to me.
Updated:
Robert E. Lee Morris's LA Times crossword embeds NFL (59-Down) in each theme entry. 59-Down's clue is [HBO's "Inside the ___" (and hidden theme in this puzzle's four longest answers)], so there's the extra fillip of the "inside" connection. Those four long answers are CORN FLAKES, IAN FLEMING, SKIN FLICK, and a GREEN FLAG in auto racing. Other flavorful entries and clues: GAS PEDAL, the singer JEWEL, CHILE clued as [Country that's nearly 25 times as long as its average width], JEREMIAH (clued as the Bible book, alas, and not ["___ was a bullfrog"]), SPICE UP, and JANE Austen. I had never heard of the [Prestone competitor] ZEREX, an antifreeze/coolant—but with a Z and and X in it, it is welcome in my crossword.
Bruce Venzke and Stella Daily's CrosSynergy puzzle has a quip theme: I SOMETIMES / STOP TO THINK / AND FORGET TO / START AGAIN / BURMA SHAVE. No, wait, I made up that last part. I Googled I sometimes stop to think and forget and got a grand total of one hit: a 22-year-old Australian's MySpace page.
