NYT 7:10
LAT 2:58
Tausig untimed
CS untimed
Matt Ginsberg and Pete Muller's New York Times crossword
Whoa, somebody forgot to issue a "Saturday comes two days early this week" warning about this puzzle's difficulty. If you struggled mightily with this one, you are not alone.
I test-solved an earlier version of this puzzle—I think that one had more of the "all roads lead to Rome action" than this one, and they might've been (semi-)famous roads rather than words that can preced "road." See the four diagonal roads leading to the ROME rebus square in the middle? LOGGING road, PRIVATE road, UNPAVED road, and WINDING road. Those make a solid foursome. The ROME is wedged into a DENVE{R OME}LETTE, or 37A: [Dish with ham], crossing 36D: [Cry from Juliet], O {ROME}O. I like the way the gimmick plays out here.
The single rebus square and the roads don't account for the brutality of this Thursday puzzle, though. No, that distinction belongs to the bottom middle. Good lord, EARBOB? What sort of 49D: [Bit of jewelry] is that? (Dictionary says it's chiefly a Southern U.S. term for "earring.") 70A: [Lot] is GOB but could be other words, like TON. 67A: [Base figure, for short] is an NCO, but there are other 3-letter military abbreviations out there. 54D: [Scammed] is STUNG. I looked up the definition of pizzicato to figure out 60D: [Not pizzicato], or ARCO (played violin with a bow vs. by picking the strings with the fingers). I was also stuck for a long time on 64A: [Michael Jackson genre]. URBAN POP? That's a music genre? When a gazillion MJ fans live in suburbs and small towns, and Jackson's lyrics weren't so heavy on "urban" themes? Hmph. I just Googled "urban pop" and among the first few hits are one for an Aussie mix master and one in which it's reported that Lindsay Lohan billed her upcoming (in '07) album as "urban pop." (For what it's worth, I'd love to see URBAN CONTEMPORARY in a Sunday-sized grid any time.) This zone killed me.
There are plenty of other unusual entries in the grid, but I managed to work through the other sections without so many hitches. Oddball answers:
• 17A. [Restricted zone] is NO-GO AREA.
• 22A. VOIT is a [Big brand in basketballs] and also the name of my grandma's dentist.
• 23A. MARY II is the [English monarch who shared the throne].
• 45A. For [Hare follower], I thought of fabulous tortoises instead of Hare KRISHNA.
• 53A. [Connection means, for short] sounds like it's looking for something more technical, more about wires and modems and whatnot, than ISPS.
• 61A. KONICA is a [Classic camera].
• 71A. ["Mi casa __ casa"] clues ES SU. "My house is your house." I messed myself up a bit with IS SU, which made A AND E, the 56D: [Cable choice], harder to tease out.
• 4D. [Howard the Duck prop] is a STOGY. I prefer the "stogie" spelling.
• 11D. ["Absolument!"] clues "OUI, OUI!" "This little agreeable piggy cried 'oui, oui, oui' all the way home."
• 13D. Roll-your-own word PETTER is clued as an [Attentive dog owner]. No "heavy petting" ramifications here.
• 18D. AGIO! My long-lost crosswordese friend! It's an [Exchange premium].
• 32D. [The "H" in Hanukkah] is called HETH.
• 40D. EOHIPPUS! I love that little old pre-horse. This prehistoric [Ancestor of the modern horse] was much smaller than today's equines and lived in the Eocene epoch.
• 45D. KRAKOW looks great in the grid, doesn't it? It was the [Polish capital, 1038-1596].
I fret that the EARBOB zone may overshadow the whole "all roads lead to {ROME}" gimmick, which is just sort of there for appreciation rather than something that had to be grappled with while solving. Agree or disagree?
Updted Thursday morning:
Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "In the End"—Janie's review
In the end, what holds this puzzle together is that today's theme phrases end with words that rhyme with in. While there's nothing more that unifies the theme, the four phrases are definitely on the fresh side and there's some ear-appeal in saying them aloud as they're all (essentially) dactyls (three syllables with the stress on the first one). Today's guilty parties are:
• 20A. RECYCLE BIN [Curbside container]. And of course, this one (with four syllables...) is the exception. But I think of that first syllable as a pickup to the more metrical remainder of the word.
• 33A. SAFETY PIN [It may secure a cloth diaper]. Apparently Pampers and Huggies haven't completely put diaper service companies out of business. I'm glad to know that.
• 41A. MUFFIN TIN [Baking pan for cupcakes]. And a COFFEE TIN can be a baking container for date-nut bread. I saw the double Fs and TIN emerging and that's what I (smugly) entered. That's what I get for thumbin' my nose at the clues!
• 52A. BATHTUB GIN [Prohibition spirits]. Love this fill. For any DIYers out there, this one's for you. At your own risk. Don't want anyone out there becoming a [Sidewalk stumbler]/WINO...
The subject of alcoholic beverages is a nice segue to pointing out my favorite cross today. Note the repeated word in the clues (both nouns) and you'll see why I enjoyed seeing the juncture of BREWS [They may be found in coolers] and BRIG [Cooler at sea]. In another example of a repeated word in the clues, one is a verb [Board] for GET ON, and one is a noun following TOTE [ ___ board (track fixture)]. That first one took me a while to understand.
There isn't a lot of long fill in today's grid—though I did like seeing SNOWBALL [Winter missile]. And while the preponderance of the grid is made up of four- and five-letter words, note that there are only four three-letter words in the mix. Nice!
Barry Silk's Los Angeles Times crossword
The puzzle's got a straightforward theme type, but there's some juice in the theme entries:
• 17A. ["Imagination at work" company] is GENERAL ELECTRIC. GE is selling NBC to Comcast. What's going to happen to 30 Rock's "East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming" division when GE ceases to be a factor at NBC? (Alec Baldwin's JACK, a [Stranded motorist's aid], is the vice president of that division.)
• 26A. An ELEPHANT EAR is a [Fried-dough carnival treat].
• 43A. Ah, the Doors! "LIGHT MY FIRE" is [The Doors #1 hit covered by Jose Feliciano]. Say what? When did that happen? Totally missed it. I'm guessing it is best to keep the Doors rendition foremost in my head.
• 55A. It's a fairly easy puzzle, but this answer nudges the fill away from the early part of the wek: DAME MURIEL SPARK is ["The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" author].
• 63A. PLUG—[Ad, or the word that can follow the end of] the theme entries—generates an electric plug, ear plug, fire plug, and spark plug.
Did you know AUNT JEMIMA is a [Quaker Oats trademark]? I stay away from Aunt Jemima and Mrs. Butterworth and their ilk. Fake maple-flavored corn syrup smells like headaches to me, but real maple syrup? Yum. Speaking of sweet and sticky viscous substances, HONEY is a [Drambuie ingredient]. I believe the other ingredients are peat moss and haggis.
VIRTU ([Artistic merit]) is a good word to play in Scrabble because you can add an E or AL or OUS to it. I think one of my Lexulous (the Scrabble variant on Facebook) opponents played SKEG, a [Surfboard fin].
CLETE ([1950s-'60s Yankee Boyer]) reminds me of Cletus on The Simpsons—my son was just asking my husband what "yokel" meant, and the kid correctly tied the description to Cletus.
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "...Or Not To Be"
Each theme answer loses two Bs:
• 17A. [Headline about the failing health of a former Velvet Underground member?] clues CALE ILL. (CAbLE bILL.)
• 18A. [Contest to see who can read "Cathy" fastest?] is an "ACK!" RACE. (bACK bRACE.)
• 27A. ["OK, tennis students, I want everyone to practice near the net with everyone else"?] clues EACH VOLLEY ALL. (bEACH VOLLEYbALL.)
• 47A. [Expose about the tawdry relations of a 16th-century theologian?] is CALVIN AND HOES. ("CALVIN AND HObbES.")
• 61A. [Ribald yoga mantra?] is DIRTY OM. (DIRTY bOMb.)
• 63A. [Have a flat bottom?] clues the verb phrase LACK ASS. (bLACK bASS.)
Highlights:
• The four corners with triple-stacked 7s.
• [Entomology class?] clues the class INSECTA.
• An ISOGRAM is a [Word with no repeating letters]. Did you know there was a name for that? There are a great many isograms out there. In English, anyway. English probably had a higher percentage of these than Hawaiian does, given our larger number of letters to build words from.
• A HEN is a [Mother clucker].
December 02, 2009
Thursday, 12/3/09
November 10, 2009
Wednesday, 11/11/09
Onion 5:18
BEQ 5:05
NYT 3:21
LAT 3:07
CS untimed
My son will be home with me tomorrow—Veterans Day. Thanks to war veterans old and new for their service. I wish you all peace.
Kelsey Blakley compiles a set of phrases that contain four different letters, which are used ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR times apiece:
• 17A. [User of barley malt] is a BEER BREWER. One W, two Bs, three Rs, four Es.
• 30A. [Emphatic boast of responsibility] clues I DID INDEED. I dunno, feels more like a boast of accomplishment than responsibility.
• 46A. [One way to be armed] is TO THE TEETH.
• 64A. This jingle/slogan meant nothing to me, but the crossings told me ROTO-ROOTER is the ["And away go troubles..." company].
My solving experience was par for the Wednesday course, judging by my solving time, but it felt a little rougher. Here are...let's call it ten. Ten clues:
• 15A. [McGwire's friendly home-run rival] is Sammy SOSA. Have you seen the latest pictures in which his "rejuvenated" skin looks freakishly pale?
• 19A. [Stick in the mud] is the verb MIRE.
• 37A. A street GANG is a [Turf group].
• 38A. [Slo-___ fuse] clues BLO. I can think only of Rainblo gumballs.
• 51A. Never heard of this ORB, the [Marvel Comics villain with an eyeball-like helmet].
• 68A. NORMS? [They're par for the course].
• 9D. [Unbending] clues HARD-LINE. Are you HARD-LINE when it comes to crossword puzzle quality?
• 'Tis the season. 26A: ["Punkin" cover] is FROST and 47D: [Like a jack-o'-lantern] is HOLLOW.
• 32D. [Key shade] is vowel-consonant-O-consonant-Y. EBONY this time; could be IVORY.
Allan Parrish's Los Angeles Times crossword
This theme falls squarely out of my wheelhouse. I listened to top-40 radio in high school (early '80s with an emphasis on new wave) and then went to college, land of R.E.M. and Violent Femmes and college bands. By graduation in '88, I was completely out of touch with the poppiest pop music. So a theme with the titles of one rap cut from 2002 and two pop songs from 1989? Crossings! Easy crossings. The theme:
• 20A. [2002 #1 hit for rapper Ja Rule] is ALWAYS ON TIME.
• 36A. [1989 #1 hit for Paula Abdul] is FOREVER YOUR GIRL.
• 56A. [1989 #1 hit for the Bangles] is ETERNAL FLAME.
I'd never heard of any of these songs, so I took a gander at them on YouTube. I discovered 20A is laced with profanity and not a very feminist cut at all. 36A was poppy with a too-long instrumental portion near the beginning (dance! keep dancing!) and not my style. The only Bangles song I know is...wait, am I thinking of Katrina & the Waves? "Walk Like an Egyptian" is Bangles, "Walking on Sunshine" is Katrina. Yes? The live performance of 56A I watched on YouTube suggests I like the Bangles OK, but I really do not know their oeuvre.
I'm sorry, nobody asked about my musical history. Anyway—I liked a lot of the fill in this puzzle. Check out L.A. Crossword Confidential Wednesday morning for more details.
Ben Tausig's Onion A.V. Club crossword
Either this puzzle's a notch or two harder than usual or I'm a notch sleepier. The nuptial theme celebrates Ben's upcoming (this very weekend!) wedding. 17A/58A BREAKING / THE GLASS is clued as [a Jewish wedding tradition...and the theme of this puzzle]. The three longest answers have a broken GLASS interspersed among their letters.
The toughest spots for me were 7D: [Spanish province]/SEGIA (never heard of it) and 29A: [Sport spun off from James Naismith's game]/NETBALL (never heard of it). The dictionary entry tells me netball is a mostly British game with seven-player teams and a requirement to stand still when in possession of the ball. That must be weird for a basketball fan to watch. Also, down at 43D: ["Orlando Furioso" poet] is ARIOSTO. Why did I need all seven crossings?
Favorite five:
• ESTELLE Getty [was actually a year younger than Bea, despite playing her mother on TV]'s Golden Girls.
• [Oft-knocked-off thing] is a HANDBAG. That's "knocked off" in terms of being counterfeited.
• [Emulates the chicken] clues CROSSES, as in "Why did the chicken cross the road?"
• BABYGAP is a [Clothing store with models who weigh A LOT less than Ralph Lauren's]. Ha!
• LOCA is the [Word rhymed with "mocha," in a 1999 Ricky Martin hit]. I may have stopped listening to most pop music a decade before "La Vida Loca," but some songs are simply inescapable.
Updated Wednesday morning:
Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Proudly They Served"—Janie's review
Perhaps not at first glance, but this is a really lovely puzzle. Not only does it pay Veteran's Day tribute to four U.S. presidents who (as younger men) served in the armed forces during wartime, but the grid is clued in a lively manner that boosts its "oomph." See if you don't agree. The theme fill is pretty straightforward—although you do have to use some "process of elimination" thinking (and/or the crosses...) to zero in on the correct fill. All of the clues name a "war" veteran and end with the phrase [...who served as a U.S president]. In case you didn't know:
• 20A. [World War II veteran...] LYNDON JOHNSON. Also Ike, JFK, Nixon, Ford, GWH Bush. Carter was still at Annapolis; Reagan served in the military but his eyesight kept him from active duty (and full "veteran" status)... Here's the skinny.
• 28A. [World War I veteran...] HARRY TRUMAN (the only U.S. president with that distinction, btw).
• 46A. [Revolutionary War veteran...] JAMES MONROE (ditto Andrew Jackson and some guy named George Washington...). There's a bonus with this war and its heroes by way of [American Revolutionary soldier Nathan] HALE, he of "I regret that I have but one life to lose for my country" fame. Do they make 'em like that any more?
• 57A. [Civil War veteran...] CHESTER ARTHUR (likewise Andrew Johnson, Ulysses Grant, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison and William McKinley).
In addition to this little history lesson, we get a lotta lively clues and clue/fill combos to keep things peppy. There's:
• [To-do] for FLAP;
• [Do to do] for OCTAVE—so here, do is pronounced "doe," as in "...a deer, a female deer...";
• ["Zip-] A-DEE [-Doo-Dah"]. An example of do to do in "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah": that first "Zip-" is do and the final "Doo-" is the do that's an octave higher;
• [Usher's creator] for POE. As in the short story from 1839, "The Fall of the House of Usher" and not Usher the entertainer... Never read the story? Want to re-read it? Here'a a link. (Public domain and the internet. A heady combination, no?);
• [Zaire's Mobutu] SESE [Seko], a bad leader with a great crossword puzzle name whose regime had the dubious distinction of being synonymous with the concept of kleptocracy;
• ["Dagnabbit!] for "NERTS!";
• [It's good to make them meet] for ENDS;
• [Not a cutting edge blade?] for EPEE; and my fave
• [It's more in an adage] for LESS, as in architect Mies van der Rohe's minimalist observation: "Less is more."
I only wish the long but clinical INANIMATE and GERMICIDE, clued as [Lifeless] and [Disinfectant] respectively could have been given the same clever treatment as these shorter entries; ditto KNEECAP [Triangular leg bone]. Better is ARMOIRE with the visual [Where shirts and ties may be kept] or the active [Dangled a carrot in front of] for TEMPTED.
As for not only our leaders, but all of our men and women who have served in the armed forces and seen active duty—our most profound respect and appreciation is yours. And not only on Veterans Day.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Wednesday"
All right, I gotta feed my kid breakfast and oversee some homework, so let me head straight to the list of favorites.
Favorite word: TRENCHANT, or [Sharp-edged]. I need to use this word more often.
Favorite clue: [People mover?] for a NEWSSTAND that moves a lot of issues of People.
Favorite fill: MAO JACKET atop AQUA VELVA, goofy YACHT ROCK, KLIBAN the ["Cat" cartoonist].
Other clues I liked: [Thelonious Monk supporter] is his PIANO STOOL. Gloria STEINEM is the [Feminist who wrote "Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions]. [Mythical realm on one end of the rainbow bridge Bifrost] is ASGARD; I don't know a ton of Norse mythology but it's so appealing.
October 18, 2009
Monday, 10/19/09
BEQ 4:38
LAT 2:40
NYT 2:32
CS untimed
Lynn Lempel's New York Times crossword
Like the theme in Merl Reagle's syndicated Sunday puzzle, this theme is sort of an oddball. Not a variant on the usual sorts of themes, but something fresh: Lynn takes those little crosswordese interjections OOH and AAH, combines them into the far-superior OOH AND AAH, and gathers up a bunch of wildly disparate words that have an OOH sound in the first syllable and an AAH sound in the second:
• 16A. [Backwoods locale] is the BOONDOCKS. The etymology traces back to the Tagalog word bundok, meaning mountains. My mother-in-law grew up in the bundok boonies.
• 27A. A NEUTRON is [Particle with no electric charge[.
• 49A. GOULASH is a [Stew made with paprika]. Yep, we shot right past the middle of the grid without having a theme entry there. The shortish theme entries are split between Acrosses and Downs, with the 8- and 9-letter ones intersecting and the 6s and 7s hanging out in separate areas.
• 3D. The MOON SHOT is clued as [Apollo 11, 12 or 13, e.g.].
• 10D. HOOPLA's a [Commotion]. Fun to say—even more fun than GOULASH. BOONDOCKS is right up there, too.
• 39D. A [Teased hairdo] is a BOUFFANT.
• 48D. [Home of the University of Arizona] is TUCSON.
Pretty much the only answer that raises a "This is a Monday puzzle?" eyebrow is ORFEO, or [Monteverdi opera hero who descends into Hades]. I'm not sure all the information in that clue provides much help to the average solver, aside from giving them more key words to Google if they wish.
Lynn once again demonstrates why she's on so many people's lists of favorite Monday constructors.
Updated Monday morning:
Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Baby Talk"—Janie's review
Oh, baby, did I enjoy this puzzle. This was one smooth solve, from its well-developed and -executed theme (which draws on those adorable babbling sounds that infants make—some of which constitute "first words"— to the lively non-theme elements. There are 62 squares of theme-fill in eight theme-entries—two 10s, two 13s and (in the corners, thank-you-very-much) four 4s. The four longest all incorporate creative people whose names or nicknames identify family members. There's:
•17A. MAMA AFRICA [Soubriquet for Johannesburg-born singer Miriam Makeba]. This clip is from 1966 and only begins to tell the tale of this singer and civil rights activist (married to Hugh Masekela) who died last November at 76.
•23A. PAPA HEMINGWAY [Nickname for Pulitzer-winning author Ernest]. Everyone knows him, right?
•45. NANA MOUSKOURI [Prolific female recording artist born in Crete]. Ms. Mouskouri turned 75 just last week; she has sung and recorded in 15 languages. Here she is in 1972 (very Euro-poppy) singing "Soleil, Soleil." In French...
•56A. DADA ARTISTS [Jean Arp or Max Ernst]. Was this movement the Euro-trash of its day? That's not meant as a put-down. These artists and their colleagues lived to shock, to awaken people from their complacency. It's probably no coincidence that while the iconoclastic dadaist aesthetic rears its head still, its peak years were those surrounding World War I.
And the four corners are anchored with those "nonsense" sounds:
• 1A. GA-GA [Totally smitten].
• 10A. "TA-TA!" ["Cheerio!"]. (I also like the way ATTA [Lead-in for boy or girl] is an anagram of ta-ta...)
• 61A. [In] LA-LA [land (spaced out)].
• 63A. ["Divine Secrets of the] YA-YA [Sisterhood"].
All of which—when said aloud—makes me laugh (ha-ha!). Really, all that's missing is Zsa Zsa (Gabor) and Baba Wawa...
As I mentioned at the top, the non-theme fill delivers in lively ways as well. There's a whole musical sub-theme that builds on the presence of Ms's Makeba and Mouskouri. Is this serendipity or is it all part of Sarah's GAME PLAN [Carefully thought out strategy]? EXHIBIT A [First piece of evidence...], is of the avian variety, with TANAGER [Brightly colored songbird] (beautiful pix, btw!). Examples of the human sort then appear by way of Mel TORME [Singer known as "The Velvet Fog"] and ALMA [Soprano Gluck], who recorded prolifically in her day (in the first quarter of the 20th century, at a time when the recording industry was very new). For three years she really did sing in several [Met productions] OPERAS. And she was the mother of Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., too. That's just one FACTOID [Bit of trivia] I picked up today!
A trio of canine clues/fill show up with [Command to Fido]/"SIC 'EM!," [Food for Fido]/ALPO and [Word after dog or tin]/EAR. (Hmm. That last one also hearkens back to the music theme, too.) And a pair of crossing media mavins also contribute to this puzzle's overall coherence: LIANE [NPR host Hansen] and OPRAH, here clued in connection with her being a [Book club name]. Ditto the two contasting bursting combos: SALVO/[Artillery burst] and FOAMS/[Bursts into bubbles]. Not to mention the PAELLA [Saffron-flavored Spanish dish] that's certainly prepared in GRANADA.
ENAMEL, GONDOLA, ACT TWO—all of these add to strength of the fill today. Am going out on a limb here with ON BAIL [Having posted bond]. This little clip is kinda un-pc but, um... if you're ever arrested/locked up in Baltimore, who ya gonna call?! Oh, baby, indeed!
Mark Bickham's Los Angeles Times crossword
I think this might be Mark Bickham's debut as a crossword constructor for the mainline newspaper venues. His puzzle is Monday-easy, and the rest of you probably found the theme to be ridiculously obvious but I swear I didn't catch onto the theme until I reached 65D: [Computer feature that ends each of the five longest across answers], a KEY. But of course! Seems utterly obvious in retrospect. The theme entries are DO NOT ENTER, a ["Keep out" sign]; PICK UP THE TAB, or [Pay for everyone's dinner]; NO MEANS OF ESCAPE, or an ["All exits are blocked" situation]; CROWD CONTROL, or [Throng management]; and STICK SHIFT, clued as [Four-on-the-floor, e.g.], a clue that meant nothing to me. I've always been an automatic shift type. If this were a Mac-centric theme, we would've needed a STOCK OPTION and either CHAIN OF COMMAND or TAFFY APPLE to cover the other keys on the left side of the keyboard. Seven theme entries is too much for a Monday puzzle, though.
TWIXT, or [Between, quaintly], reminded me of this game I liked as a kid. It hasn't been made in years, has it?
The fill includes two 10-letter answers going Down, intersecting two theme entries apiece. CARNY is a cool word, too; it's clued as a [Traveling show worker]. Anyone watch Heroes, with the new batch of carnies with superpowers? Overall, the fill is quite Monday-friendly, with the exception of a few "better learn them now because you'll be seeing them again" words: STEN is a [WWII submachine gun] used by the British; the ODER is a [German river], one of many 4-letter European rivers in crosswords; and the proofreading term STET is clued as [Printer's "let it stand"].
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Monday"
List time! My favorite answers and clues:
• 35A. DRINK THE KOOL-AID. Awesome. It's to [Become a firm believer], generally in something others mock.
• 12D. "I AM SO DEAD" is a [Nervous sentiment after wrecking the parents' car].
• 31D. [Politician who launched "Citizens for McCain"] is Joe LIEBERMAN? Heh. Remember when fancied himself a Democrat? McCain ≠ MCLAIN, a John Wayne character intersecting with LIEBERMAN. McCain and Lieberman are senators, but not the hockey-playing kind in the HOME ICE clue, [Senators' advantage in Ottawa].
• 37A. CAESURAE are [Pauses in poetry]. Pretty word, isn't it?
• 30D. [Cause to diminsh] clues CRANK DOWN, as in "Can ya crank down the sound? My ears are bleeding."
• 19A. Defense secretary ROBERT GATES gets his full name in the grid. A few months back, Merl Reagle clued GATES as [DOS boss], and I thought it was an adjacent-key typo for [DOD boss], but Merl had Bill G. in mind, not Robert.
September 28, 2009
Tuesday, 9/29/09
NYT 3:02
LAT 2:52
Jonesin' 4:15
CS untimed
Paula Gamache's New York Times crossword
Would you look at that? I learned something from a Tuesday crossword's theme. All five starred theme entries are phrases that have traveled far beyond their nautical roots.
The British site Phrase Finder lists other nautical phrases. Among the most charming or useful: batten down the hatches, broad in the beam, give a wide berth, high and dry, know the ropes, shake a leg, three sheets to the wind, and the cut of your jib. Now, that's the sort of nautical language I like to see in a crossword. The nouns for random sailing gear? Not so much.
10D: "NO, NO, NO" is a rather goofy answer, but I kinda like it. Its clue is ["That is completely the wrong way!"].
Also good: 4D: AD-SPEAK, or [Marketers' "language"]. Ooh! Don't miss the documentary, Consuming Kids, about the insidious ways marketers have targeted children since the 1980s. You can watch it here, in a series of YouTube segments; it's about an hour long.
Most-likely-to-be-Googled clue: 8D: [War aid program passed by Congress in 1941] for LEND-LEASE. Under the program, the U.S. gave war material to its allies, who repaid the U.S. in various ways. The U.K. made its last installment payment in 2006.
Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword
Dan Naddor brings the food for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a night at the game in four 15-letter "___ and ___" phrases:
Lots of people in the puzzle today. NEIL Armstrong and ALAN Greenspan, RAUL Julia and Dan MARINO, Ho Chi MINH and Wernher von BRAUN, two IANS and that horrible Bob SAGET, CYD Charisse and DEION Sanders, and the fictional Mr. MOTO and ETHAN Frome. Lucky for me, names in a crossword don't make me SKITTISH ([Apt to shy, as a horse]).
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Chance Collisions" (themeless)
A few times a year, Matt's Jonesin' puzzle is themeless, but the difficulty level is usually not far off from what it is for his themed puzzles. Coolest answers:
Less familiar terms: TAIL SKIDS are [Supports at the end of planes]. [Like a lot of European cathedral architecture in the 16th century] clues LATE GOTHIC. PETTICOATED is indeed an adjective (who knew?) meaning [Wearing an underskirt]. CLINOMETER is a [Tool in forestry to measure slope, vertical angles and tree heights]; it's not related to words like incline and recline, which have Latin roots as opposed to CLINOMETER's Greek root.
Updated Tuesday morning:
Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Odd Fellows"—Janie's review
No, not the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the fraternal organization that's been around since the 18th century in the U.S. (and the 17th in England), but four well-known phrases ending in a word that can also be a man's name. With the first word now describing a person rather than a thing, Sarah introduces us to another side of a wide variety of celebrity-types, namely:
Other fill (and clues) that caught my fancy today includes:
September 06, 2009
Monday, 9/7/09
BEQ 5:24
LAT 3:12
NYT 2:51
CS 4:57 (J—paper)
Sorry to be late (and brief) with the writeup—am visiting with an old friend. Her brother, by the way, had the best reaction of anyone to seeing my July 5 NYT crossword (co-written with Tony Orbach)—there was exuberance and there were swear words. It was richly rewarding. People should swear aptly more often.
Andrea Carla Michaels and Ashish Vengsarkar's New York Times crossword
Andrea and Ashish's joint byline is so long, what I see on the applet is that the puzzle's editor is "Will Sho." Still, Ashish's previous byline with his friend Narayan Venkatasubramanyan still wins for longest. A&A's theme includes GO FISH, TAKE THE BAIT, OPEN A CAN OF WORMS, GET REELED IN, and [Hook, line and ___] SINKER. I can't quite decide if the long Down answers are definitely thematic or just quasi-thematic: UNDER THE SEA sounds good, but MARINE GREEN as the [Algae color] seems less fishing-centric. (Marine green is a color?) If they are part of the theme, it's a ginormous amount of theme material for a Monday puzzle.
Super-smooth fill and light clues abounded. Favorite bits: [Instill with the three R's] for EDUCATE (my son returns to school on Tuesday); adjacent Simpsons characters APU and NED; and BLAH directly opposite an ETUI (editorializing?). The closest thing to a rough spot is COR as an abbreviation for corner ([Where streets meet: Abbr.]).
That's all for now. Thanks for an entertaining Monday puzzle, A&A.
Updated Monday morning:
Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Chips Ahoy!"—Janie's review
Can't remember how long it's been since I breezed through a puzzle the way I breezed through this one. Certainly my time was a personal best, but even if it hadn't been, I'd still have had the pleasure of the smooth solve this puzzle provided. Not unlike a Wheel of Fortune "Before and After" puzzle where two phrases may be blended into one, here the word chips follows the last word of each theme phrase, yielding two phrases for the price of one and a fine choice of chips in the process. And so, in the example:
If we DELVE further into the puzzle, we come across some more excellent fill in the descriptive if somewhat disparaging DWEEBISH for [Nerdy]. The SUPERHERO [Captain Marvel or Batman] definitely has the UPPERHAND [Controlling position] here—but what I like best is the way these longer words words INTERACT [Work together].
I semi-question the clue [Brilliantly colored fish] for OPAH. Take a look at that baby. While there're those red-orange fins, that is one shiny, metallic-looking body. It's not a "terrible" clue, but some of the fish on this page (the angelfish or the tigerfish, e.g.) better conform to my idea of being "brilliantly colored."
And in the almost-totally-useless-information department, take a look at the two names in the SW: there's ANNE ["Green Gables" girl] atop TODD [Broadway's "Sweeney ___"]. A search of the internet and IMDb turned up not only Ann Todd, an actress and third wife of director David Lean, but also 1940s child star Ann E. Todd.
Finally, if you're ever at a loss to know just where you are, I can tell you with certainty, ["You are ___] HERE."
Los Angeles Times crossword by "Teri Smalley"
"Teri Smalley" anagrams to "it's really me," a.k.a. editor Rich Norris.
The theme is about things done in the NFL (61D: [Org where you can see the first words of 20-, 38- and 55-Across]). You PASS the ball, RUN with it, and KICK it, and those words begin PASS JUDGMENT ([Give one's verdict]), RUN INTERFERENCE ([Create a distraction]), and KICK UPSTAIRS ([Get rid of by promoting, as an employee]). What's sticking in my craw here is that the word INTERFERENCE is used in football, but it's not part of the theme because JUDGMENT and UPSTAIRS aren't thematic. It would've been good to have a RUN ___ phrase that didn't mix in another football term.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Monday"
Hey, you've got until midnight Tuesday to enter Brendan's crossword contest.
Lots of Scrabbly stuff (ALEX COMFORT, QUARTZ CLOCK, FUZZIER, BON JOVI, CHEEK BY JOWL, JOB BOARD), but more small pieces of awkward fill than you might expect in a 72-worder (ENLS, SDA, U NU, CERT, plural ORZOS). The last square I filled in was the I in AIGLET (33A: [Decorative bow]) and LOUIS II (2D: [Holy Roman Emperor known "The Younger"]). I know the spelling teasel, but not TEAZLE (21D: [Plant with lavender flowers]); the dictionary tells me teazel is also legit.
August 19, 2009
Thursday, 8/20
NYT 4:23
LAT 3:33
CS untimed (downs only)
Tausig untimed
Elizabeth Gorski's New York Times crossword
If only the word PARALLELOGRAM—[What's revealed by connecting the special squares in this puzzle in order]—weren't so long, it would fit inside the connect-the-dots parallelogram formed by joining the numbered rebus squares. Yes, that's right: Liz has once again crafted a smooth puzzle with a visual kick. (Edited to add: Those numbers in my grid? I put 'em in after the fact. The NYT applet doesn't accept numerals. I used the first letters of the numbers, O, T, T, F, and F to get the applet to accept my solution.) The entries containing those number rebuses are as follows:
The number rebus bits usually refer to the number; only in EAS{TWO}OD and DR{ONE} are they used as non-numeric chunks of letters. Remember the Eastwood flick, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly? Here, I'll present The Good, The Weird, and The Unfamiliar.
The Good: [The fool in "A fool and his money are soon parted"] is the ANTECEDENT, grammatically speaking. [Tube top] clues CAP, as in a toothpaste tube. You don't need the number in the clue [Eight producers?]—those are ICE SKATERS making figure eights. [Hawaiian strings?] with a question mark aren't UKES, they're LEIS. INVITE plays the part of a noun today: [You might get one before a party]. Frank LANGELLA is the [Tony-winning "Frost/Nixon" actor]. [P.D.Q. Bach's "Sanka Cantata" and such] are PARODIES; leave it to violist Gorski to go with classical PARODIES rather than Weird Al Yankovic. Lots of showy longer answers in this puzzle—I like that.
The Weird: "I DON'T DRIVE" is an odd phrase to see in a crossword; it's clued as an [Excuse given for asking for a ride]. Also odd: "BE ORIGINAL," [Advice for essay writers]. These are weird entries, but I like having stacked pairs of 10-letter answers. [Free of charge] clues AS A GIFT, which is much less in-the-language than a phrase like "as a rule" or "as an example."
The Unfamiliar: IRENA [___ Szewinska, Olympic sprinting gold medalist of 1964, 1968 and 1976]. Who? Never heard of her. But look what a rock star she is: She medaled seven times in four consecutive Olympiads (and also competed in a fifth Games) and in five different events, and during her career she broke six world records. Good gravy, crosswords should be including this notable IRENA all the time!
I also didn't know NED [Washington in the Songwriters Hall of Fame]. He wrote the lyrics for "Rawhide", the theme to the EAS{TWO}OD TV series. [Constellation] clues ASTERISM, which I've seen before but very seldom. SARANAC is a [Beer from upstate New York]; I recognize Saranac as a geographic name but still had to wait for crossings to finish the word. The [Final words of Numbers 5:22] are AMEN, AMEN, they say. I know ABBIE Hoffman and newish actress ABBIE Cornish, but not the [Old comic strip "___ an' Slats"] sort of ABBIE.
Updated Thursday morning:
Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Paper Trails"—Janie's review
I'm gonna say this at the start and get it over with: I didn't ADORE this puzzle. I didn't hate it or find it anything short of professional—the theme fill has some fine rewards for the solver—but on the whole, I felt it lacked some needed TANG.
What dragged it down? Now this may be the biggest challenge of constructing "easy" puzzles, but most of the cluing was of the most straight-forward variety: [Pecan or cashew] for NUT, [Unit of land area] for ACRE, [Foal's mother] for MARE, e.g.; and clinical/technical fill like UTERI, MACRO and NACRE, and old-school crosswordese like ATTAR, ERRS, NEBS and AGUE.
What did ELATE me? The more lively BOUNCES and KARAT, the colloquial "NO WAY!," and a clue like [Digs in Derby] for FLAT; the almost word-ladder result of finding A NET, NEBS, NUBS and NUTS in the grid. Ditto NARC, NACRE and MACRO (yes, even with that less-than felicitous fill...).
I also liked the theme fill, which is comprised of four phrases (two grid-spanning 15s and two 11s) whose last word can follow ("trail"...) the word "paper." And the guilty parties are:
I really was able to solve this one on the basis of the "downs" only—but not without a dopey mistake. For reasons simply not worth investigating deeply, I'd entered CUSP where BUSY lives. This gave me CARB for BARB and GORP of GORY. I couldn't find BUSY in my brain, and all of the letters interlocked to make actual words. But ya know, sometimes that's just not enough!
Todd McClary's Los Angeles Times crossword
In this MIDDLE EARTH themed puzzle, four other theme entries contain EARTH in their midsections, broken among two words in the three longer ones but not in the 7-letter 26-Down. BEATRICE ARTHUR! Who doesn't love the late great ["Maude" actress]? CLEAR THE AIR and I DIDN'T HEAR THAT also have a middle EARTH, as does the central down entry, 26D: DEARTHS, or [Scarcities]. I think I'd like the theme better without DEARTHS' interruption of the theme's consistency; let's leave DEARTHS (or HEARTHS) as the answer to a word puzzle about which word contains just two other letters wrapping the name of a planet. You know some people's lips would start moving as they pondered whether SMERCURYX and MURANUSE were words.
Favorite clue: [Sound quality?] for SANITY. Love it!
For more on this crossword, see PuzzleGirl's L.A. Crossword Confidential post.
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "Really Too Bad"
Fun theme! What's "Really Too Bad" includes the worst movie, TROLL 2, crossing 2 AM, which is [When bars close, in most U.S. cities]. There's a bar in Chicago, Carol's Pub, that's open 'til 5 a.m. on weekends. I bet some people opted for TROLL 3/3 AM here. The worst TV show of all time, some say, is THE JERRY / SPRINGER SHOW. Taped in Chicago! [The worst song of all time, according to Blender], is Starship's "WE BUILT THIS CITY"; I cannot disagree. MOOSE MURDERS is such a woeful Broadway play, I'd never heard of it before this crossword; what's the worst long-running Broadway play? And is CARRIE indeed the worst musical ever? Teen vampire novel TWILIGHT is [The worst book of all time, according to GoodReads.com readers]. "Worst of" lists are always fun, so I liked this theme.
I like the trio of German filmmakers' first names: UWE [Bolll whose films are so badly reviewed that he challenged his most severe critics to a boxing match]; WIM, or ["Buena Vista Social Club" director Wenders] (he also made the memorable Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire); and LENI, ["Triumph of the Will" filmmaker Riefenstahl]. There aren't many good ways to clue UWE, WIM, or LENI aside from these three people, are there?
July 28, 2009
Wednesday, 7/29
Onion 4:55
BEQ 4:11
NYT 3:40
LAT 3:17
CS 7:44 (J—paper)
Tim Wescott's New York Times crossword
Themes with circled letters aren't too tough to figure out. This time, the circled letters spell out various MLB team members. And despite the constraints of having (1) six theme entries (2) occupying 70 squares (3) with each Down theme entry intersecting two Across theme answers, the fill's pretty smooth. Here's the theme:
I gotta dock Mr. Wescott a couple points for one of the six theme players (RAY) being embedded inside a single word when the other five are split between two words. The only other baseball reference I noticed was 71A: [Like Yogi Berra, physically] for SQUAT. SHORT and STOUT were my first two guesses. Oh, wait, there's also 22A: SAC [___ fly (run producer)].
Football interjects itself. Talk about your manly-man sports-nut puzzles, eh? There's an ONSIDE kick, a Denver BRONCO (...clued as the horse, [It's most useful when it's broken]), and SCHULZ, the [Charles who created Peppermint Patty], who was fond of Charlie Brown, who could never quite manage to kick the football. There's also a DEKE fakeout from hockey.
Assorted crosswordese repeaters rear their ungainly heads here. The ERNE, or [Fish-eating raptor], crosses EIRE and NÉE. NORA of The Thin Man meets IRMA la Douce. Better are the longer fill answers, such as ONE-SIDED [Like a Mobius strip] and a slew of 6s. Does ONE-SIDED duplicate ONSIDE too much? I know that tie the knot is 100% "in the language, but to literally take a rope or shoelace and [Finish lacing up] by deciding to TIE A KNOT...I'm not sure TIE A KNOT is a lexical entity unto itself.
Updated Wednesday morning:
Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Direct Overhead"—Janie's review
"Direct overhead" is a business term that refers to the "expense directly associated with the production of goods of services," such as the cost of electricity, maintenance or rent. As a kid, I had no idea what it meant, but I think I first became aware of the word "overhead" in the commercials that used to run for Robert Hall clothing stores:When the values go up, up, up
Sarah Keller's "direct overhead," however, has no association with matters financial, though (broadly speaking) there is a sartorial connection. Here we're dealing literally with items that go on (or in one case, over) your head. I like the way none of the cluing tips Sarah's thematic hand and the fill itself is quite nice. In this way:
And the prices go down, down, down.
Robert Hall this season
Will show you the reason
Low overhead! Low overhead!
I don't have lots and lots to add today. The remainder of the fill is perfectly fine, mind you, just not particularly sparkly. There's nothing wrong with PETER OUT, NADIR, LESSENS, RESIDUE, and ABSENCE individually—but seeing all of them in one puzzle weights it down some.
We do get an array of names: AGNES [Choreographer de Mille] (niece of Cecil B., too!); AMOS ["Famous" cookie maven]; ELSAS [Martinelli and Lanchester] (the former was a model before enjoying a small screen career, the latter a first-rate character actress); EMIL ["The Last Command" Oscar winner Jannings] (and Marlene Dietrich's co-star in "The Blue Angel"); and CLARA [Barton or Bow]. But AMOS aside, there's something dated in the feel here that, once again, grounds the fill.
Where we do get some lovely leavening is in the cluing: [Good, in the 'hood] for BAD; [Musical firsts] for DO'S; [Left on a map] for WEST. Now that's more like it!
Jerome Gunderson's Los Angeles Times crossword
My longer L.A. Crossword Confidential writeup is over there. The theme, in 25 words or less: Synonyms for "tease" are embedded at the start of four phrases, within longer words. JOSH, RAZZ, RIB, KID. Highlight: RAZZLE-DAZZLE!
Brendan Quigley's Onion A.V. Club crossword
Brendan's muse this week is the abbreviated phrase, "WTF?" That's clued as ["Huh?"...and the theme of this puzzle]. The five theme entries do not include the standard WTF with the F-bomb in it, but rather, are phrases with W.T.F. initials:
Too bad 11D isn't clued as the singer/poet JEWEL (rather than [Ring binder?], which doesn't quite work for me—the ring binds the jewel, the jewel doesn't bind the ring). Then the upper right corner could be filled wall to wall with famous people in the Down direction. OLIVIER! COLETTE! KID ROCK! Is this KID ROCK's crossword debut? Certainly it must be WIIWARE's debut—that's a [Nintendo download service].
I hear the A.V. Club constructors peer-edit their puzzles. Wouldn't you think that with eight smart people checking over this puzzle, JOCK wouldn't be clued as [High school type with cache, often]? A one-syllable cache is a stash. The two-syllable cachet is the word that connotes prestige.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Wednesday"
Yay! Themeless Monday is followed by Themeless Wednesday! This one's got 20 long answers (7 to 15 letters), including five 15s. HENRY LOUIS GATES, sans the "Jr.," is a perfect 15. He's clued as the [Educator who once famously compared the lyrics of 2 Live Crew to Shakespeare's (sic) "O my luve's like a red, red rose"].
INFOMANIA is clued as a [Continual and excessive quest for knowledge]. This has got to be a shout-out to Brendan's demi-celeb fan, Sarah Haskins. She's a comedian who makes incisive and funny videos about the crap the media and advertisers put out there for women. Click that link for access to Haskins' "Target Women" videos as well as a bunch of InfoMania videos that...I never watch. But do watch the "Target Women" clips. My personal favorite is the one about the sexification of cleaning product commercials.
Least familiar answers: URIM is clued [___ and Thummin (Judaic objects)]. [Longtime Beatles "road manager" Evans] was named MAL. CARA is the [Oldest daughter on "Jon & Kate Plus 8"]. I know about A-1 steak sauce, sure, but AONES clued as [Some steak sauces] had an unfamiliar feel to it. [___ prole (without offspring)] clues SINE.
Today's "Ask a Medical Editor" science lesson: BACILLI are rod-shaped bacteria. Viruses are not bacteria at all. Thus, [Virologist's subject] is not a good clue for BACILLI. [Antibiotic targets, sometimes], sure. [Troublesome rods], sure. But [Virologist's subject], 7 letters, wants to be VACCINE.
July 12, 2009
Monday, 7/13
BEQ 6:54
NYT 3:02 (click here for Jim Horne's link to unlocked Across Lite version)
LAT 2:26
CS 5:16 (J—paper)/2:27(A—Across Lite)
C.W. Stewart's New York Times crossword
I felt a little meandery when doing the NYT puzzle on the applet. Unfocused, distracted. Not really trying to move my fastest. Not really paying much attention to the puzzle. So let me focus my eyeballs here and see what we've got.
Ms. Stewart's theme is Monday-simple, sure, but ambitious—four noun phrases that illustrate 59A ALL TUCKED IN in that ALL is "tucked" inside each phrase, joining two words:
- 17A. MANUAL LABOR is clued as [Ditch digging, e.g.]. Nice touch having a HARD LIFE cross this, clued as [What a serf led].
- 24A. [Money borrowed from a friend, e.g.] is a PERSONAL LOAN.
- 37A. [The Dalai Lama, e.g.] is a SPIRITUAL LEADER. Hey! This was just in another NYT puzzle...
- 47a. [Slash symbol, e.g.] is a DIAGONAL LINE. This was probably the toughest one to clue, no?
Let's count the ways this 61-square theme is "tight," or consistent: (1) There are four noun phrases beginning with adjectives, (2) they split AL/L each time, and (3) the theme clues end with "e.g." It's not super-duper tight, because certainly there are other ___AL L__ phrases out there that might also have been used—sacrificial lamb, medical license, etc. But for a Monday, a smooth and uncomplicated theme that's both meaty and consistent is a good thing.
Other pluses:
- 11D, 12D. For [Clog-busting brand], I was thinking of clot-busting drugs. The answer was DRANO—plumbing, not cardiology. And then the very next clue was the AORTA, or [Main artery]. There's my cardiology.
- 24D, 40D. Two of Henry VIII's mostly ill-fated wives are included. PARR is the [Last name of Henry VIII's last], Catherine (one of three Catherines). ANNE is the [First name of Henry VIII's second], Anne Boleyn, and the fourth, Anne of Cleves. Henry VIII was rumored to have gout, and I'm a brand-new gouter myself. Foot pain's been distracting me from the puzzles for 10 days now.
- 43A, 26D. NITA! You could say that [Silent screen star Naldi] doesn't belong in a Monday puzzle, but she's gonna be back, so we might as well plunk her in a Monday puzzle with easy crossings to introduce her to the crossword newbies. Likewise, APSE. This [Cathedral recess] is a word to learn. To this day, I'm never quite sure if the cathedral part I'm looking for is APSE or NAVE.
- 8D. The ROBIN is a [Harbinger of spring]. Except the occasional robin decides to winter over in a cold climate. I saw a robin on my block this winter while there was snow.
- 45D. ZINC is the [Next-to-last element, alphabetically], before zirconium.
Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Starting Ends"—Janie's review
Gee, I had fun solving this. It wasn't very difficult (so my time was pretty speedy—for me...), but more to the point, it's loaded with lively fill of both the thematic and non-thematic variety. Taking a look at the former, the title refers to words that can precede the word end; and these are the starting words of the four theme-phrases:
- 17A. DEAD CENTER [Smack dab in the middle]. The result yields something like this. My one complaint is that this appears to be the fourth time this same clue/fill combo been used in a CS puzzle. A little variety couldn't hurt...
- 28A. SPLIT SCREEN [Two images on one television]. Hmmm. Since some TVs give viewers the option of picture-in-picture, wouldn't it be more accurate to clue this as [Two images side-by-side on one television]? Regardless... Looking a great deal like a magnified image of an insect leg, here's the visual to demonstrate the result of the wordplay. Please: don't forget to use conditioner!!
- 43A. FRONT LOADER [Certain washing machine type]. While I suspect the intention was to summon up the front end of an automobile, there also a tractor that's a front end loader—so it looks like this (apparent major-puzzle first) fill also gives us a 2-for-1 proposition.
- 58A. DEEP FREEZE [Suspended animation]. How can this CS-debut clue/fill not summon up Walt Disney, the man who refined the art of cinematic animation—and all those stories of how he's being maintained cryogenically in a state of suspended animation? Clicking on the link should answer a lotta questions—though it does give a whole new meaning to Disney on Ice. Off the Deep End is Weird Al Yankovic's seventh album—in case Walt wasn't weird enough...
Unknown to me was AGENA [Rocket stage], so I was very glad to fill it in from the more accessible crosses.
There's a trio fit for the dining table: LASAGNES, STEW and its synonym, OLIO, clued today as the not-food-specific [Mélange]. And back in the 1960's Clairol did all it could to make women believe that they should answer the question "Is it true BLONDES have more fun?" Now, I DON'T KNOW about you, but this brunette was busy enough enjoying herself to ever feel the need to conduct personal research to find out.
Especially charming to me was the trio from the nursery: "IT'S A girl!" followed by (CS-debut) DIAPER, aptly clued as [It's changed on the bottom], followed by TUCK IN [Put to bed, as a child]. And in one of those cases of crossword synchronicity, today's NYT offers up ALL TUCKED IN, clued as [Comfily ready to sleep]. Cool.
James Sajdak's Los Angeles Times crossword
The theme nearly eluded me. What unifies:- 17A. SOCIAL BUTTERFLY, or [One who goes from party to party],
- 37A. SECURITY BLANKET, or [Comforting carry-along for kids], and
- 58A. NUMBER TWO PENCIL, or [Test taker's writing implement, often]?
Other perky bits: 9D is CITY HALL, clued by way of [You can't fight it, in a saying]. 26A is LABOR DAY, an [Early September observance]—we're already about half way from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Summer, slow down! 51A is SHOELESS, which would feel zingier clued with reference to Shoeless Joe Jackson; instead, it's [In one's bare feet]. For more on the puzzle, see Rex's L.A. Crossword Confidential post.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Monday"
Hah! Brendan takes Joe Krozel's asymmetrical broken-heart NYT grid from last Friday and makes it harder to fill by removing a bunch of black squares (from 38 down to 31) and lowering the word count from 64 to 62. The fill must be terrible, right? Actually, it isn't. There's no quasi-thematic fill, which Krozel's puzzle had but which hadn't done much for me.Highlights:
- 1D. [Highest-paid TV actress of all time] is JENNIFER ANISTON. I needed a lot of crossings for this one. Oy.
- 9D, 10D. for 9D [Ashura observers], I tried MOONIES. It didn't work with zip-A-DEE. And then I read the next clue, [Unification Church member, slangily]. Oh, hello, MOONIE! There you go.
- 7D. A [Show stopper?] is a STANDING OVATION.
- 32,33D, 47,49A. This corner's got four verb phrases interlocking, RIDE OUT, YEARN TO, ASKS OUT, and WAS ONTO. I like how the ones that ought to end with -S and -ED end with prepositions instead.
- 25D. My god, what a lovely pile-up of consonants TIM MCGRAW has in his name. He's the [Country and Western singer whose backup band is the Dancehall Doctors].
- 19A. Computer [Program option] is UNINSTALL. Looks like a horrible "roll your own" crappy prefixing, but it's a solidly in-the-vernacular bit of lingo we all use these days.
- 48A. [Squares in a sudoku, e.g.] clues ENNEADS. Yep, those are indeed in groups of nine. Excellent clue.
Usually a low-word-count themeless feels unpleasantly clunky to me. When I was doing this puzzle, I didn't notice that it was similar to Krozel's grid and I didn't notice the word count. I gave it a rating of 4 stars (out of 5)—and then read the blog comments that pointed out the similarity to the broken-heart grid. So now I'm more impressed with the caliber of fill Brendan was able to achieve. No, SADIES and AFTA and BROMATE ([Salt of element #35]—I tried BROMIDE first) aren't good fill. But the clunker quotient was low, so in recognition of the 62-word count, let me amend my rating (in Brendan's sidebar leaderboard) to 4.5 starts.
June 21, 2009
Monday, 6/22
BEQ 3:54
LAT 2:40
NYT 2:20
CS 7:23 (J—paper)
Wow, is it relaxing to have a blogless weekend! Vielen Dank to PuzzleGirl for holding down the fort with her inimitable 4-letter words (brio and élan).
Fred Piscop's New York Times crossword
In Fred's easy Monday puzzle, I only knew 3 and 5/11ths theme entries, but the theme (phrases beginning with "cee" sound-alikes) gave me another 1/11th:
Your DEBIT CARD is indeed a [Quick, cashless way to pay for things]. Don't take it to RENO, the [Nevada gambling mecca], if you are prone to gambling away all your money. In a few more decades, I suspect a concept like [Leisure suit fabric] will vanish from our POLYESTER associations. The top two clues I liked: ARAMIS is a [Fragrance named for a Musketeer] and FALSE is a [Test answer you have a 50/50 chance of guessing right].
Here are some crosswordy things that may be unfamiliar to newer solvers. If you didn't know these ones, commit them to memory. Really, what else are you doing with all that memory? Go ahead and fill it up with common crossword answers.
Updated Monday morning:Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Inside Job"—Janie's review
Embezzlement? A bank heist? Embedding the letters J, O and B in phrases like HOJO BURGER? Nupe. None of the above. Instead, a pert 4-part quip (doled out in 2 15s and 2 10s) about people in radiology. The words of wisdom being:
Kinda makes me wanna cue up this Beatles tune from Rubber Soul.
I enjoyed the quip and don't have lots to say about it or the non-theme fill. Still, the inclusion of the oft-seen FTD did make me question exactly what those letters stand for. I knew it had to do with Flower Deliveries, but in this day and age, I wasn't sure about that "T." It's an acronym with some 44 definitions, but the answer in the context of [Blooming bus.?] is Florists' Transworld Delivery, a service that has been delivering flowers—and saving the butts of procrastinating gift-givers—for nearly a century now.
I do like that clue, too—as well as [Ring toss item?] for HAT (as in,"I've decided to toss my HAT into the ring and run for office"); and [Shed item] for TOOL. This one had me stymied for a while. I kept thinking of the way a snake sheds its SKIN, but that wasn't working and I couldn't come up with anything else along those lines. Got me! Perhaps if I'd paid more attention to those AWLS [Hole-punching tools], I'd not have gone so far down the path of misdirection.
Good morning from Amy! Good gravy, where did this summertime come from? Chicago had three months of April and then suddenly—boom!—it's warm and too muggy.
Donna Levin's Los Angeles Times crossword
Donna's tennis theme felt familiar—three phrases ending in GAME, SET, and MATCH, held together by a timely mention of WIMBLEDON—and a search of the Cruciverb database finds that "game, set, match" has been fertile ground for crossword constructors. This isn't remotely intended as criticism of today's puzzle—Monday themes often tread familiar ground, and the English language has a lot of phrases that end with those three words. What Donna adds is WIMBLEDON, which doesn't appear in the Cruciverb database at all. Here's today's theme:
It's interesting to take a look at the other ways constructors have riffed on the same core idea:
I fully expect to see a September puzzle one of these years with GAME, SET, MATCH, and THE U.S. OPEN.
For more on today's LAT and a giggly Carol Burnett Show clip, see PuzzleGirl's L.A. Crossword Confidential post.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Second Life"
Brendan's still polishing his first cryptic, so we have a quote theme today instead of the cryptic he promised. "A quote theme? Ugh," you may find yourself groaning. Brendan's had a couple quote themes that I've actually liked, though. I think his success rate in making quote puzzles I like is in the 80% to 100% range, whereas the other constructors in the field average about 10%. What sets Brendan's quote themes apart from the rest? As I just commented at Brendan's blog, if he gave a class on the proper construction of quote themes, I think the main lessons would be:
(1) Find a quote with some edge to it. Today's quote is egotistical. Previous BEQ quote themes have had funny lines from current comedians like David Cross and Patton Oswalt.
(2) My god, don't use an old quote. Sure, Mae West and Yogi Berra got off some good lines, but by 2009 they're likely to feel stale.
(3) Shoot for a shorter quote to avoid a large volume of "gotta work the crossings" stuff. Today's quote is 27 letters long, with the theme supplemented by the speaker and the team he owns.
(4) Elevate the fill with more interesting stuff and a lower word count. This one's a 74-worder in which 27 of the fill answers are 6 to 8 letters long.
The quote is "WHEN I DIE, / I WANT TO COME / BACK AS ME." Spoken by MARK CUBAN, owner of the Dallas MAVERICKS.
Brendan rated this one as "easy." I like it that Brendan's easy puzzles settle in at Wednesday-plus level. I don't think Brendan likes making Monday-caliber puzzles much. Hey, that's fine by me!
![the AMOROUS [Lovey-dovey] pair](http://www.qualityartcentral.com/Gallery%20Pictures/POPEYE%20AND%20OLIVE%20Oil.jpg){kind=link}
