Newsday 8:13 with one blank (bookmark this link for free puzzle access)
NYT 7:18*
LAT 3:05
CS untimed
*Yes, the applet says 7:30. I'm not including the 12 seconds it took to communicate with the server.
My kid's school field trip was to see a Polish movie, "The Magic Tree," at the Chicago International Children's Film Festival. The movie's director, Andrzej Maleszka, was there for a long Q&A with the kids. No, I did not ask him if Eugene Maleska was any relation.
Robert Wolfe's New York Times crossword
This puzzle has run afoul of...something. I enjoyed one answer: 28A: [Johnny Depp title role] clues ED WOOD, and that movie was a hoot. (Okay, two answers: Also TRAVOLTA, 4D: [He played a governor in "Primary Colors"].) But there's a big danger in making 58-word crosswords, and that danger is that the fill's quality will be sorely compromised in order to get the challenging interlock to work. Structurally, this grid is bound to give some solvers fits—if you don't get solid footholds in the NW and SE quadrants, only 26A and 28A are going to feed you any help from the rest of the puzzle.
I have groused before about what I call "roll your own" words: words with tacked-on endings or prefixes providing handy (for the constructor) letters to fill in space. Here, 15 answers have an S added to the end. One of 'em includes an -ER, too: SNEERERS, or 48A: [Disdainful bunch]. It's gettable, sure, but hardly anyone is using this particular form of sneer. There are also a couple -EDs and an -EST, and don't get me started on the -ERs. SERENER is bland but OK, FISHIER is decent, but MARRER? 38D: [Graffitist, e.g.] is a MARRER? The MARRER and his friends the SNEERERS have marred this grid. Then there's TERRENE, or 50A: [Earthly], which my dictionary labels archaic, and the wow-I-can't-believe-it's-in-the-dictionary-as-an-"also"-spelling INDORSED (7D: [Supported: Var.])—this one the dictionary calls dated. Throw in your ESTERS and ORRIS OIL, your DENATURE and AIR MOTOR, and you've got an abundance of fill that doesn't do anything to engage me.
All right, let's roll through some clues and answers:
• 15A. GANTRIES are [Spanning frameworks]. Not a word in my daily vocab.
• 17A. [Upstate New York town where I.B.M. was founded] is ENDICOTT. Does everyone know this tidbit? Am I the only one who didn't?
• 18A. HEAVEN is a [Good resting place?]. I don't care for clues presenting religious tenets, even with the question mark.
• 23A. HUSSARS were [Brilliantly dressed cavalrymen]. Camo is probably a little more practical on the battlefield, no? Dictionary says hussars were 15th-century Hungarian "light horsemen," so the term predates Prussia, which I always pair it with in my head in the category of "old European things with USS in them."
• 41A. [Axial skeleton parts] are STERNA, plural of sternum, your breastbone. "Axial" because it's in the middle of your body? I was first thinking of SPINES with an S plural rather than a word with a Latin plural.
• 46A. An AIR MOTOR is a [Pneumatic power producer]. There are things called air motors?
• 50A. KALES are [Mustard family members]. My family has a long-standing feud with the Mustard family. The feud dates back generations, to when Colonel Mustard shot my great-great-granduncle in the back...in the conservatory.
• 5D. [Like the 2 in "x squared"] seems like a long way to go for SUPERIOR. Do mathy types call it SUPERIOR, what I call superscript?
• 12D. It really is time to retire the fleet of SSTS from the crossword puzzle. [They had adjustable noses] is as good a clue as you're going to get for this answer, but it still doesn't fix the fact that the answer is here. It's in too many puzzles.
• 14D. SENTA is clued as [Wagnerian hero]. Austrian actress Senta Berger needs a better agent so she can get all the SENTA clues. I just Googled her, and she looks great for 68 but was a stunner in her younger days. (I kinda thought she was in the same category as Pola Negri and Perle Mesta, long-dead crosswordese people. But no! Not so old at all.)
• 15D. Ooh, I don't think I like the GEISHA clue. [Companion abroad]? I also have deep reservations about the geisha tradition. Women spending hours to look a certain way and devoting their working hours to entertaining men? Eesh.
• 25D. This one's weird. SHOE STORE is clued as an [Establishment with many horns]. My son and I went to a good indie shoe store with a large staff of experienced salespeople, but there can't have been that many shoehorns in the entire place. (The guy did use one on my son, though.) Most shoe stores these days pretty much leave the work to the customer, and I don't think they make a point of stocking shoehorns for our use.
• 29A. WATER OAK is a [Tree of Southeastern swamplands]. I don't spend much time in Southeastern swamps.
• 37D. I wanted the [Unrequited lover of legend] to be DAPHNE, since the ****NE fit. It's ELAINE. Which legend is this? Whom was she pining for?
• 39D. [It may be under enamel] clues a coat of PRIMER under enamel paint, not the dentin under your tooth enamel.
So often, a low-word-count puzzle just makes me wish the constructor had instead strived for the liveliest, most colorful and interesting fill. I'm sure the 58-worders have their fans, but I'm not one of them. (Exception: Well, Patrick Berry can pull off the holy grail: low word count with lively fill.)
Updated Saturday morning:
Tony Orbach's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Witchcraft"—Janie's review
What a happy Halloween Tony has made this. (Wicked) "Witchcraft" is filled with a variety of wordplay in the four theme entries (this would be the "trick" part), plus bonus fill and non-theme fill that is loaded with high-scorin' Scrabble letters (all of which makes for a very nice "treat"). First, the tricks, which take all-things-ordinary and transform them into all-things-occult:
• 16A. Add a letter. [Like cookies at a witch's fundraiser?] which would be not oven-baked, but COVEN-BAKED, a coven being an "assembly of witches." Some definitions specify 13 witches. Think there's any significance in that?...
• 26A. Change a letter. [People who can sniff out a witch's concoction?] are the olfactorily-gifted POTION DETECTORS. Sensors that can register a witch's activity would be motion detectors.
• 43A. "Sounds like." [Announcement at a witch's market?] is "SPELL IN AISLE TWO!" Announcement in your market (in the aftermath of the marinara display's descent to the floor, say...): "Spill in Aisle Two!" (I was also thinking that spell might have been the way the word special sounded over a muffled p.a. system...)
• 59A. Add a letter. Ooh, good—another one, and this time [Witch's mobile sound systems?] yields up BROOM BOXES. No mere boom boxes for our gal!
In addition to the theme-fill itself, the "treats" also include bonus theme-fill: BREW, clued as [Cauldron contents, perhaps] and which harkens back to potion, that "witch's concoction" in the clue at 26A; SKELETON for [Halloween costume]; and how perfect is this?, "BOO!" [Interjection heard on Halloween] as the very last of the Down fill. Nice.
Then there're all those lively words with the scrabbly letters, like:
• JOKE [One-liner], which shares that "J" with, and whose meaning relates to, JAPED [Made fun of]; JEDI ["Star Wars" knight], too;
• ZILCH [Zip], which is synonymous with [Zero] NONE and which shares a "Z" with ZONK [Nod off, with "out"];
• KUMAR (who went to the White Castle with Harold), PECK [Little kiss] sharing its "K" with CLINK [Lockup], and LOCKET [Keepsake holder];
• AVERSION [Strong dislike]; and
• IN-BOX [E-mail receptacle] (though I confess I was surprised to see this word in the same puzzle with broom boxes...).
And just because I enjoyed them in the puzzle, let me also point out "SPLAT!" as the [Sound of dropped ice cream] and [Former U.K. airline] BOAC, British Overseas Airways Corporation (sometimes a/k/a "Better on a Camel"...), which will always be associated in my mind with the opening lyric of the Beatles' "Back in the U.S.S.R."
Nothin' remotely BLAH [Boring] about a puzzle with this kinda fill. This one has a real [Zing]/KICK to it!
Orange/Amy back on the clock. I've seen the Harold & Kumar movies and yet my first impulse was to have Harold & MAUDE Go to White Castle. Who among us wouldn't want to see that movie?
Sam Donaldson's Los Angeles Times crossword
This easy themeless sat in stark contrast to the NYT today. As I was saying at L.A. Crossword Confidential, I'm partial to grids with four quadrants of stacked, longish answers. This one's got just two such quadrants, but they have quad-stacked 9s rather than the standard triple-stacked fill. The puzzle combines lively and fresh words and phrases with a lot of ordinary fill, which stands in contrast to the Saturday NYT crossword, which had lots of uncommon but not exciting fill. Sure, TESTS and EMOTE are pretty boring words, but I'll take them over this MARRER business. Ideally, of course, a themeless/freestyle puzzle will be packed with juicy stuff, low on the MARRERs, and full of tricky clues for the ordinary words. The L.A. Times puzzle has been laboring under a push for easier clues, so we haven't got the tricky clues today. But soon, maybe!
Highlights:
• 1A: War and more (CARD GAMES). I didn't see that one coming. Even with GAMES in place, I was still thinking of actual war.
• 15A: Strain (OVEREXERT). I like the X, but wish it had been put to better use—the crossing is the partial AXE TO.
• 17A: Place with trays (CAFETERIA). Super-easy clue, no?
• 32A: Cosmetic surgeries (NOSE JOBS). Again, easy clue—but crispy crossword entry.
• 40A: Sherry, often (APERITIF). OK, this is my cue to look up this word, and probably not for the first time. Turning to the dictionary...aperient, "(chiefly of a drug) used to prevent constipation"...wait, just, a little further...here it is. Apéritif is from a French word which draws on the Latin aperire, "to open." You drink it before you eat to whet your appetite. You eat an appetizer for the same reason, purportedly, but the two ap— words are unrelated. Appetite stems from Latin words meaning "desire for/seek after." Not that anyone asked, but I think sherry is gross.
• Here's the nutty Star Wars zone. 47A: Film that's out of order? is a PREQUEL, while 13D: End of a pentamerous serial is PART V. If you're lucky, that is, PART V is the end of the series. Crazy George Lucas went for VI.
• 53A: Seeking advancement at any cost (ON THE MAKE). I almost went with ON THE TAKE, but TAKE has another home in this puzzle.
• 60A: Eastern Canadian province grouping, with "the" (MARITIMES). I'll bet the people near Canada's Pacific coast wish they could be called the Maritimes, too. The Maritime Provinces are Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. How many of you have been to any of those? I've hit Ontario and British Columbia and that's it.
• 62A: Smithsonian collection (AMERICANA). Hey! I went to the National Museum of American History for my first time this summer. A C-3P0 costume is Americana, you know. Don't believe that Tattooine hype. There is no museum of Tattooineana.
• 4D: Cologne crowd? (DREI). "Two's company, but three's a crowd."
• 9D: Child actor's chauffeur? (STAGE MOM). Alternatively, a virtual mother who's going to the party alone is a STAG E-MOM.
• 11D: Tolerates teasing gracefully (TAKES A JOKE). See? This could also have been MAKES A JOKE, though that would be a fairly flat answer, and ON THE MAKE could've been ON THE TAKE. I find that the most of the time when someone says "Can't you take a joke?"—really, that person was being a jerk and the jokee should not be expected to "take a joke."
• 27D: Unwavering (FOUR-SQUARE). Not a term I use. Isn't "four square" also a playground game using a ball?
• 38D: One with immunity (DIPLOMAT). I blew my son's mind when I told him that people with diplomatic plates on their cars can probably get away with parking illegally.
Newsday "Saturday Stumper" by Anna Stiga, a.k.a. Stan Newman
(PDF solution here.)
Don't freak out when Newsday.com invites you to pay for access when you look for this puzzle—just bookmark Stan's site and get the puzzle there. Stan's page loads faster than Newsday's busy site did, too. Win-win.
I had no idea which vowel belonged in the 54A/50D crossing. [Personal-finance guru Dolan] turns out to be DARIA, but for all I knew it was a less common DORIA or something. SAO is clued as [Neptune moon discovered in '02] and I, for one, do not follow the news about small moons orbiting distant planets. There are certainly less esoteric ways of clueing SAO.
Likes:
• The TEMPURA/TEMPERA crossing. Don't care for TEMPURA's clue, [Seafood serving], being reused for BISQUE. TEMPERA's a [Type of paint].
• A LA MODE is clued as [Apple-pie order] but involves actual apple pie and not the idiom "in apple-pie order," meaning "tidy."
• MR. SLATE is [Fred Flintstone's boss]. Took a zillion crossings for me to remember his name. What better to draw a blank on than SLATE?
• TWADDLE, or [Horsefeathers], is a great word.
• ["...the Flying Trapeze" guy] is LEOTARD.
• Who's the best athlete? PELE is [IOC's Athlete of the Century], while Muhammad ALI is [SI's Athlete of the Century]. Did you see the Flip Wilson–as–Geraldine clip with Muhammad Ali that Rex posted at L.A. Crossword Confidential the other day? Funny stuff, and Ali was such a cutie in his younger days.
Dislikes:
• EATEN AT is clued as [Annoyed]. "This puzzle has eaten at me"?
• I like SPATULA, but the clue, [Kitchen blender], feels off to me.
Neutral zone of clues I needed lots of crossings to get:
• [Toon teen in an '89 film] is ARIEL, the Little Mermaid. Never saw it.
• [Five-petal flower] is SEDUM. There are others with five petals, I'm sure.
• [Quarters with buttons] are PUP TENTS. They have buttons? Google tells me the old military pup tents buttoned together...up to World War II. We need to know 1930s tent technology now?
• [Huckleberry's father] is his PAP. Don't be dissing him, now. We don't want any pap smears here.
October 30, 2009
Saturday, 10/31/09
February 27, 2009
Saturday, 2/28
Newsday 23:08
NYT 9:58
LAT 6:01
frank longo's new york times crossword is a cranium-crusher of exactly the type you would expect from the author of cranium-crushing crosswords. the word count is only 66, and 16 of those are 8+ letters. my favorites were:
i actually solved most of the puzzle pretty quickly (it really helps when i can get 1a), but the SE region of the puzzle did me in. everything to the east of BAFTA was blank for a while, because i didn't know:
several anatomical terms are growing in this grid: a TRUE RIB; [Alveoli, e.g.], or AIR CELLS; DIGESTIVE tracts; and the ILIUM. there were also a bunch of little foreign words: ESSA is italian for "she," SCENA is an [Elaborate solo vocal composition], and [Heads of Italy] are CAPI. GAI is french for "happy," and is an unpleasant reminder of the time TOUJOURS GAI prevented me from finishing a saturday NYT about a year ago. (i didn't keep track of constructors at the time, but why am i not surprised to go back and find that it was brad wilber?) and AMO gets a very erudite clue: [Catullus's "Odi et ___"], which means "i hate and i love."
favorite clue: [It might be kicked after being picked up] is a HABIT.
updated 3:00 pm:
stan newman's Newsday Saturday Stumper was all very gettable except for the two longest entries, one of which i felt was clued unfairly, and one of which was a fictional character i'd neeeeeever heard of. CAUSTICALLY is an adverb, but [Emulating Mencken] seems not to be. how does everybody else feel about this? i don't think it passes the substitution test. and the [Oscar-nominated role of '50] is apparently ELWOOD P. DOWD. um... yeah. google tells me this is jimmy stewart's role from harvey, but even if the clue had been [Jimmy Stewart's role from "Harvey"] i would have needed every single crossing. working out the central part of this grid took me about the last 10 minutes of the 23 i spent on this puzzle. and although 23 minutes is a pretty typical time for me on the stumper, i felt i was doing pretty well until i hit an absolute wall in the OOH/DOE area. part of the problem was SPRAINS for [Stretches, in a way] instead of SPRAWLS, which led me to guess that the mystery name might be ELIOTT P. DOWD. then i tried ELINOR P. DOWD, but CREDN looked much wronger than CREDO.
stuff i liked:
i quailed a little when i opened up today's LA Times crossword and saw brad wilber's name in the byline. but this turned out to be a very smooth and enjoyable saturday solve, with none of the pull-your-hair-out moments i associate (fairly or un-) with brad's puzzles. the highlights:
gnarly/unfamiliar bits (fewer than usual for a wilber, but there were still some):
January 02, 2009
Saturday, 1/3
Newsday 19:52
NYT 7:53
LAT 5:37
CS 3:19
(updated at 12:24 p.m. Saturday)
The Peter Wentz who constructed the Saturday New York Times crossword is probably not the same person as rocker Pete Wentz who married Ashlee Simpson and named a baby Bronx Mowgli—but I'm looking forward to the first crossword to include BRONXMOWGLI in the fill. (It wouldn't have been out of place in this puzzle, actually.) At this writing, the top solver on the NYT online applet is Byron Walden, and this makes perfect sense because he used 3-Down, the [1993 hit for the R&B duo Zhane], in a 2006 Sun crossword—it's HEY MR. D.J. I still don't know what the song sounds like, as I know it only from crosswords. Overall, I liked Wentz's puzzle a lot—it's chock-full of interesting answers and clues that made me think.
My favorite fill:
And now, the clues that caught my eye:
[With 41-Down, cheap fast food offerings] make up the VALUE / MENU.
Things I didn't know:
Other factoids:
Updated:
Either Stanley Newman's Newsday "Saturday Stumper" clues were significantly more oblique than usual, or I'm a little off this morning. (Solution here.) Not only did it take me twice as long as the toughest NYT Saturday puzzles, but I also Googled one clue and had one incorrect square. The clue I Googled was [The story of Astorre Viola], which turns out to be Mario Puzo's 2000 novel OMERTA. I call foul, because I'm skeptical that this character is familiar enough to point the majority of us who've never read the book anywhere near the right answer; it's hardly got the degree of traction in the broader culture that, say, Harry Potter characters have. I figured the answer was likely to be an opera.
My wrong letter was a P in lieu of the C in CLEAT, or [Gangway securer]. Raise your hand if you didn't know that gangways and cleats had any interaction. I checked two dictionaries and see no support for this. Who likes a clue that requires you to pick up the unabridged dictionary (the third one I checked!) to find an uncommon usage for a common word? Boo! Hiss! Takes the fun out of a tough crossword. PUT IN isn't too far off for [Interrupt], though I guess CUT IN is a notch better.
There was plenty of good stuff in the puzzle, so it didn't all spur resentment. The [Only Welsh-born Batman] portrayer is Christian BALE; why did it take me so long to remember the most recent Dark Knight? I was all set to like the gender neutrality of [Repairperson], but then the answer was the very male HANDY ANDY. [Sports retiree of 2008] is Monica SELES—and here we all thought she'd retired years ago. Whatever comeback she might have had apparently didn't make much of a splash. GAINS ON is clued as [Tries to catch]. NEE is clued as a [Form of "naître"]; I like the French lesson. "OH, PLEASE" is an [Impatient plaint]. I kept thinking of domesticated animals for [It was domesticated in the Andes about 4,000 years ago]—the answer is the LIMA BEAN. [Do as the Romans do] is GO NATIVE. I'm fond of nutty little bits of trivia, like MACON being where the kazoo was invented.
I had a number of wrong turns that kept me mired in this puzzle. [Battery, for example] is a TORT, but I stuck with Battery PARK for too long. [Seven-Oscar nominee in the '80s] is ALIENS, but I put STREEP there. [Quacks] were POSERS instead of FAKERS. I kept those ones written into the grid even when not a single solid crossing emerged from them—whoops. I just plain didn't know this: [Most of it became a unit of Cal State] clues FT. ORD. Some of Fort Ord's space is now the home of California State University, Monterey Bay. The campus gets foggy.
I don't like STATINS for [Doctor's prescriptions] because it's too damned arbitrary; statins are merely one class of medication, and the clue lacks any specificity. ANAT., or anatomy, is the study of all the body's parts—[Organ study: Abbr.], yes, but also the skeleton, muscles, vascular system, nerves, etc. This clue's too specific.
Overall, Michael Wiesenberg's LA Times crossword was much more yielding than those other two themeless puzzles, but I still don't know why [Brewer of lore] is CRONE. I trust one of you readers can explain this to me? It took me a long time to figure out why [Crane part?] was HOGAN—construction cranes? birds?—but I finally remembered actor Bob Crane of Hogan's Heroes. A good "aha" moment after the fact! What else is in this puzzle? Lots of things:
Patrick Blindauer pays a little tribute to Harry Houdini and the tools of his trade in his CrosSynergy crossword, "Houdini's Favorite..." Five things Houdini would supposedly prefer make up the theme:
The fill includes a dozen 7-letter answers, giving the puzzle a smidgen of an easy themeless vibe. I filled in the southwest corner with the Down clues, so I didn't spot ORANGE in there right away. The clue for my screen name: [Its peel makes a good slug repellent]. Good to know!
August 01, 2008
Saturday, 8/2
Newsday 9:06
NYT 4:42
LAT 4:34
CS 4:28
(post finally updated at 5:00 Saturday afternoon)
Karen Tracey's New York Times Saturday crossword took me only a little longer than the Friday puzzle, but it did feel harder and I felt luckier. I wouldn't have been surprised if the applet had snarled at me that my solution was wrong, because the top middle and bottom middle both stymied me to a degree. The roughest spot was at the bottom, where the [Perennial herb with florets sometimes called "ham and eggs"] ran alongside [Dan ___, 1948 Best Actor nominee for "When My Baby Smiles at Me"] and crossed [___ Robbins, co-lyricist of the #1 "Rocky" theme song "Gonna Fly Now"]. Yow! What, who, and who? I was just buying some herbs at the garden center last weekend, and LANTANA was not in the herb section. It was in the flower section, and its multicolored florets are stunning. Indeed, the Wikipedia article I linked to doesn't call Lantana an herb. The actor is Dan DAILEY, and the co-lyricist is AYN Robbins. A non-Rand AYN? My goodness! Up at the top, I wanted SCHNOZZ or SCHNOZZOLA to fit for [Beak], but the less-familiar-to-me SCHNOZZLE turned out to be the answer. Crossing that were SLOANE, [Title role in a Joe Orton play], and AZIMUTH, clued as [Reading from a surveyor's compass]. Is that what those surveyors are doing? Next time I see one, I'll ask what the azimuth is.
No shortage of excellent entries in Karen's 68-worder:
Favorite clues:
Other clues of note:
Updated:
Today's themed CrosSynergy crossword is by Bob Klahn, so it's tougher than usual. "Ay, There's the Rub" has a quip theme: IT'S EASIER TO / START FROM / SCRATCH IF / YOU HAVE SOME. (Scratch is also slang for money.) My favorite clues:
My favorite answer in Robert Wolfe's 70-word LA Times crossword is DOG EAT DOG, or [Ruthless]. Props to Mr. Wolfe and editor Rich Norris for cluing EMOTES with [Works in plays]; yes, not overacting, just acting and conveying emotion to the audience. PAISANOS, or [Pals], is nice too. I'm less pleased by OPEN A SHOP, or [Get started in business]; that seems more like ordinary language and less like the kind of idiomatic phrase that stands alone (compare "open up shop"). THE WAY serves more or less as a 6-letter partial here, clued as [Something to show or lead?]. THE WAY as a standalone phrase has plenty of other cluing options. Clues that may be apt to stymie solvers:
Stan Newman, writing as "Sally R. Stein," constructed this week's Newsday Saturday Stumper, a 72-worder. It wasn't such a hard puzzle, really, but my brain was set on lackadaisical mode when I solved it. My favorite part was the stack at the bottom with NYPD BLUE ([Three-time Emmy winner of '99]) atop AU GRATIN ([Literally, "with the scraping"]) atop SPAMBOTS ([Automated address collectors]). [Lou Grant's paper], obviously, was the TRIBUNE. Except that didn't work—it turned out to be THE TRIB. Other nice entries and clues include:
Weird entry: ECOLABEL, clued as ["Dolphin-safe," for one]. Not familiar with the term ECOLABEL.
July 04, 2008
Saturday, 7/5
Newsday 10:14
LAT 6:03
NYT 5:31
CS 4:05
Here's a wordplay question for you: What 8-letter word for a big wine bottle turns into a 6-letter [Leaping desert rodent]? That rodent has leapt into Karen Tracey's New York Times crossword—it's a JERBOA (the bottle's a jeroboam). I think the ratio of "Karen Tracey themelesses I like" to "Karen Tracey themelesses I'm not wild about" has risen to something like 30-to-1, since I liked this one quite a bit. I did grumble to myself to see [Staunch] as the clue for STEM; I'm a purist when it comes to the stanch vs. staunch issue. Aside from that, there was much to admire. My favorite answers:
There are a lot of names populating the grid. I tend to enjoy having a plethora of people in a crossword, but I know it drives some solvers bonkers.
Other clues I liked:
Updated:
I just saw the TRAVELERS Insurance logo onscreen during the Wimbledon women's final—that's the [Big name in insurance] at 3-Down in Karen's crossword.
Robert Wolfe's themeless Los Angeles Times crossword is anchored by three 15's: MUST I SPELL IT OUT, or ["Are you dense?"], PUT IN A WORD OR TWO, or [Comment], and THIS IS NOT A DRILL, or [Scary announcement]. I needed all the crossings for some answers: CLEM, [Civil War's Johnny ___, youngest-ever Army noncom (age 12)]; MAUER, [Joe ___, first A.L. catcher to win a batting title (2006)]; ACID SALT, or [Sodium bisulfate, for one]. Favorite clue: [One might make a novel] for BOOK CRITIC.
Patrick Blindauer's CrosSynergy puzzle, "It Takes Two," embeds TWO inside four theme answers. STUNTWOMAN is an [Action movie employee]; GRANT WOOD was a [Painter from Anamosa, Iowa] (he did "American Gothic," with the pitchfork farm couple); FORT WORTH is a [Texas city whose motto is "Where the West Begins"]; and one sort of [Shrewd employee] is a FAST WORKER. That [Pillsbury specialty] in the fill is activating my sweet tooth—yum, CAKE MIX!
May 30, 2008
Saturday, 5/31
Newsday 40-some minutes, with liberal Googling
NYT 9:15
LAT 6:34
CS 2:24
Ach, headache. (Pre-crossword.)
You know how 1-Across can set the tone for a crossword puzzle? Robert Wolfe's New York Times crossword has an odd phrase there: [Porky] clues FAT AS A HOG. If you're like me, you had PIG there and eventually changed it to get crossings to work; if you're like me, you then Googled "fat as a hog" to see if it's an in-the-language phrase. Er, it's not. At least not in the internet age. Just 921 Google hits this evening—compare that to the 34,200 hits that misspelled Gremany gets. The adjectival THREE-TON, [Like some adult hippos], also clunked. Here's the rest of the rundown in list form, starting with the Acrosses:
Moving along to the Downs:
Updated:
Well! Time flies when you go out for Blackberry Bliss Cakes for brunch and then shopping for summer clothes. It was hard to summon up the urge to shop for sleeveless when the lakeside temperatures were limited to the upper 50s.
That Newsday "Saturday Stumper" by Stan Newman (writing as Anna Stiga, "Stan again") was a killer. It's definitely in contention for the year's toughest crossword, what with taking me a good 40 to 45 minutes in a couple solving sessions and at least 10 different Google searches. I know it took Byron Walden a fourth as long as it took me, but that's still a considerable amount of time for a solver of his caliber. I can't say I enjoyed the puzzle, though. It felt largely obscure and oblique rather than twisty and clever. [Richard Burton subject] is ALI BABA? Apparently it's this guy, an explorer, and not the actor. [It's usually played sitting down] is BASS SAX—never knew there were saxes besides the tenor and alto. [Declination declaration] means "WHAT DO YOU MEAN, WE?" Er, okay. [Mary Collins, familiarly] is BO DEREK; you know how many other Mary Collinses come up ahead of her in Google? [Resort founded by Chet Huntley] is BIG SKY? So what? And a [Beef by-product] is OLEO OIL? (a) That's not remotely a lively answer. (b) It's sneaky because oleomargarine/oleo is a vegetable oil product. (c) It's not a fun sneaky. ["Princess Bride" name] is CARY because Cary Elwes is an actor in it. Now, that seems like a weird way to clue that. So, tell me—what was your experience with the Stumper this week?
Lynn Lempel's LA Times crossword, in contrast, had a bunch of clues with pleasing little "aha" moments when I deciphered them. To wit: [Canal problem] is EARACHE; [Hit the bottom?] is SPANKED; [Where one might be held up?] is a SEESAW; [Head of the line?] of royal succession is SIRE; [Place between Virginia and Tennessee?] refers to the Monopoly board and ST. JAMES Place; [AA or AAA] is an ORG., or organization (also small bra cup sizes, battery sizes, and minor league baseball levels); and [One living off the land?] is a SEAMAN on the water. Other favorite fill includes BYGONES, NOT MUCH TO LOOK AT, GETS DOWN and [Parties], and the Nike SWOOSH.
Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy crossword, "You Tubes," is a bit easier than most CrosSynergy offerings, which is fine with me given the Newsday beating. The theme entries begin with words that can precede tube: PICTURE POSTCARD is a [Tourist's memento], and picture tube is part of a non-flatscreen TV. Test tubes link to TEST MARKETING, or [New product sales offering]. And tire innertubes join INNER MONGOLIA, or [Region of northeast China].
May 02, 2008
Saturday, 5/3
Newsday 8:05*
LAT 5:52
NYT 5:03
CS 4:03
Psst: There's a poll in the sidebar! Let your voice be heard. (Thanks.)
Hey! What unexpected fun! I mean, sure, I generally expect a Saturday New York Times crossword to be something I enjoy, but a gimmick theme in lieu of a themeless puzzle is a surprise. Patrick Berry still kept the word count to a themeless-level 72, but there are six short theme entries in which a word's replaced by the letter that sounds like it. For consistency, each theme entry ends with an S. The theme entries are:
Favorite clues:
Clues whose answers I didn't know:
Updated:
Brad Wilber's LA Times puzzle features a few titles. [Work that begins "Hail...blithe spirit!"] is Shelley's "TO A SKYLARK"; [Anne Tyler novel set partly at the Church of the Second Chance] is SAINT MAYBE; and the [1990 #1 rap hit] is the zero-rap-cred"ICE, ICE BABY." Favorite answers: REPLY HAZY, the [Magic 8-Ball words]; ACT FIVE, or [When "Alls Well That Ends Well Ends"], as a change from the usual Roman numeral acts; and SAL SODA, promoted beyond [__ soda] cluing with [Grease-dissolving cleanser], teaching me a fact about sal soda that might be used in a clue some day. I'm not crazy about another ENZO (["La Gioconda" tenor]); the [Siberian city established under Boris Godunov], or TOMSK (not to be confused with Russian city OMSK, which is not to be confused with Russian city OREL, which is not to be confused with Utah town OREM), or MEL clued as [Allen in the Radio Hall of Fame] (I swear I've never heard of him—and here's why. Yankees play-by-play? Pfft).
Stan Newman, using the "S.N." byline, constructed today's Newsday "Saturday Stumper." I thought I finished the puzzle in 8:05, but the asterisk is there because there was that one square I left blank but didn't notice. It's at the intersection of [MG F alternative] and ["Iliad" goddess]. I should've guessed that MIA*A was best filled with a T, but "MG F" didn't really shout "sports car" at me, and of all the clever ways to clue ATE, this way is just difficult. Favorite clues: [Invention patented in 1858] for MASON JAR (once you get enough crossings, it makes perfect sense, doesn't it?); [Captain Hook, for one] for ETONIAN (that's a new on on me!); [Word on some Euro coins] for SUOMI, or Finland; [Money from music] for EDDIE Money; Isaac Bashevis [Singer's tongue] for YIDDISH; [Literally, "resplendent land"] for SRI LANKA (geography + etymology!); ["Sorry"] for NOPE (pretty much the theme of missteps while solving this puzzle...); [Site of the World Islands] for DUBAI (here's an illustration of the man-made archipelago); speaking of islands, BIMINI is a [Pre-Columbian name for Florida], apparently, though it's not an easy factoid to track down; and a SARI is a [Dravidian outfit] (not to be confused with the R-less Branch Davidian sect). [Scouts, often] are TENTERS? Meh. TENTERS is an inelegant word. One last question about this puzzle before I head out this morning: Why is a MAP a [Face, so to speak]?
Mel Rosen's CrosSynergy crossword, "Supersize It!", has a quip theme: YOUR EYESIGHT / IS GOING WHEN YOU / NEED LARGE-PRINT / ALPHABET SOUP. I am not crazy about quip themes, as regular readers know.
April 04, 2008
Saturday, 4/5
Newsday 9:05 (in the Newsday applet)
NYT 5:35
LAT tba
CS tba
I liked Rich Norris's Saturday New York Times crossword. The three 10-letter answers stacked across the upper left corner start all with adjectives—SHORT STRAW, MEDIUM RARE, and TALL...no, wait...IRON MAIDEN. I couldn't believe that last one—an early '80s music clue ([Band with the 1982 platinum album "The Number of the Beast"]) I needed a bunch of crossings to get. Metal is not my genre. All righty, let's get straight to the business of the trickiest clues:
- [Not a very good drawing] is a SHORT STRAW.
- [A little red] means MEDIUM RARE (hmm, maybe OIL PAINT shouldn't be clued as [Medium in a tube], even though they're different senses of the word?).
- The [View from the back seat?] is the NAPE of the neck of someone sitting in the front seat.
- The vague [Certain code] is TAX LAW; April 15 is 10 days off—if you haven't filed your tax return yet, get a move on!).
- [Get ready to take off] means STRAP IN, as a pilot or airline passenger might do, while [Connecting flight] involves STAIRS rather than air travel.
- [When Arbor Day is observed: Abbr.] is SPR, short for spring, rather than APR, short for April.
- The seemingly plural [Recent developments] is the LATEST.
- [The other shoe, e.g.] is a MATE, not just something that's expected to drop.
- [Bean product?] is a BRAINCHILD.
- [Upsetting types] are DARK HORSES in the race.
- [Twist things] is the plural noun, RINDS (as in "a twist of lemon") and not a verb, while [Saves, e.g.] is a baseball STAT and not a verb ending in S.
- The vague [Test] is a TRIAL RUN.
- [It's hard to do this barefoot] is WATERSKI, but my first thought was TAPDANCE.
- [Fountain requests] are WISHES when you throw a coin in, and not soda fountain orders.
- A [Standard] is a YARDSTICK you measure something against.
These ones are "just the facts, ma'am" clues—straightforward factual clues you may or may not know the answers to, many of 'em interesting:
- [Da capo ___ (Baroque piece)] is filled in by ARIA (solo singer plus instruments).
- The [River past the ruins of Nineveh] is the TIGRIS; across the river from Nineveh is Mosul, Iraq.
- A [10th-century exile from Iceland] is ERIC THE RED.
- [Bygone New York daily, with "the"] is HERALD.
- From the land of math and science, we have RADIXES ([Base numbers, in math]) and TRIVALENT ([Like some chromium and arsenic]).
- DEPAUL University's team are [The Blue Demons of the N.C.A.A. Big East], and I can't believe I waited for crossings to reveal...my parents' alma mater.
- Lake TITICACA is the [Two-part lake connected by the Strait of Tiquina], and it's everybody's favorite body of water from Trivial Pursuit.
- [1996 Emmy-winning role for Alan Rickman] is RASPUTIN; totally forgot this, though I feel like I saw part of it on TV a couple years ago.
[Question answerer] is a POLLEE—I don't recall seeing the word before, but it is a valid noun derived from the verb poll. My eyeballs want this to transfigure itself into actress and director Sarah POLLEY or POLLEN, but then we'd lose the DARK HORSES.
The first name of [Choreographer Lubovitch] is LAR—this is the second time I've seen his name and I hadn't remembered him, so it was time to read up. He's a couple weeks younger than my mom (like her, born in Chicago), founded his own dance troupe in '68, and choreographs ballets, Broadway shows, and ice-dancing routines. Maybe I'll remember the name now.
I don't get why [Thai relative] is VIET. According to the Wikipedia articles on those languages, they're in different language groups, and the countries are separated by Laos and Cambodia. Is this clue akin to cluing ITALIAN as [German relative] because they're both European? I await enlightenment.
Updated:
Barry Silk's LA Times crossword has a lot of good stuff in it, but alas, I am running out of blogging time this morning (the subsequent paragraphs were written first). Favorite bits: [Dutch for "hidden river"] for SCHUYLKILL (crazy letter sequence + Dutch etymology = winner); IRAQ is followed by IRANIAN OIL ([Japan and China are its biggest importers]); [Mass transit unit] is both a TROLLEY CAR ("Clang, clang!" It's Mister Rogers' Neighborhood!) and a TRAM; [Settler, sometimes] is a CREDITOR; [Capital east of Bangor] is HALIFAX, Nova Scotia; [Where pa'anga are spent] is TONGA; and Christina AGUILERA ([2000 Best New Artist Grammy winner] crosses EGG SALAD ([Sandwich spread]), which amuses me for some reason.
Eww, I don't care for the Newsday crossword applet one bit. I did the "Saturday Stumper" by Stan Newman (writing as "Anna Stiga") on it, which I never do, and when you start in the middle of a word and reach the end...it just leaves you there. I like to be delivered promptly to the first blank square from the beginning of the word. And using the arrow key to change directions also moved me one square over in the new direction, which I'm not used to. Moreover, in my browser, not every clue was entirely visible, so the ROLEX clue was [BusinessWeek's #1 brand in ']. So! Next time, I will wait as long as it takes for the printer to function before I give up and use that applet. EASY RAWLINS looks terrific in the grid, but ["Cinnamon Kiss" hero] didn't tap anything I know. [Ilene and Rosanna, to Strait] are the EX'S in the George Strait song, "All My Ex's Live in Texas" (I know it only from crosswords). [Coke product] is TAR, from dirty industrial settings, and not TAB soda. The surprise [Romance language] is ARAGONESE...which I do not speak. [Fixin' to] means GONNA. I got DIVESTURE ([Shedding]), but prefer divestiture. As always in the themeless Newsdays, there are some vague short clues, such as [Flights] for AIR TRAVEL—not stairs, flights of fancy, lams, wine flights, or anything to do with birds, but any of those would be a plausible interpretation of the clue.
Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy crossword, "Set Piece," is Monday-easy. The three theme entries have the same clue, [SET]. Set is one of those words with a zillion dictionary definitions and multiple etymologies—two theme answers relate to verb definition 1 and noun definition 9 for set with an Old English derivation; a set of items or a musician's set come from the Latin secta instead. The third theme entry is Set, the EVIL EGYPTIAN GOD. According to this, it sounds like he wasn't so evil—just the victim of a smear campaign.
March 05, 2008
Missed weekend puzzles (not from the ACPT)
Sat. Newsday 14:55
Sun. CS 4:16
Sun. WaPo 7:15
Sun. PI (I don't remember the time)
Sun. BG 8:08
Sun. LAT 10:25
Henry Hook's Boston Globe online crossword, "Contain Yourself," is well worth the trip back to Sunday to download it. The 10 theme entries are words or phrases that include the letters IN in the middle somewhere, and can be split into three-word "___ in ___" phrases. The theme was really funny as these things go—[STY(IDOL)LISH] is a HERO IN CHIC (heroin chic). Heroin chic is not the sort of phrase that pops up much in crosswords! Brainwash becomes BRA IN WASH, and there's more undergarment action with MART IN SHORT. There's also a fresh MUFF IN TOP. Two fun names in the theme—Howard Stern's radio sidekick ROB IN QUIVERS and DUST IN DIAMOND, the guy who played the inimitable Screech on Saved by the Bell.
One of the weekend's themeless puzzles I missed doing until today is Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge." It's sort of a spidery grid, with tentacles of grid spinning out from the center anchored by three vertical 15s. Plenty of fresh fill. Now, why clue OPA as [FDR measure] when [Mutter's vater] or [Göttingen gramps] is there for the taking? Didn't we all take at least a year of German? No?
Liz Gorski's Washington Post puzzle, "TV Foodies," added a word to TV show titles to make up things like NYPD BLUEBERRIES, TIC TAC DOUGHNUTS, and VERONICA MARS BARS. Yummy theme! V. good fill, too.
I solved Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle, "The Five-Picture Deal," a couple weeks ago when it was available on Merl's website and somebody raved about it at the NYT forum. (I think I'll stick to using the Puzzle Pointers/Cruciverb/Ephraim's Puzzle Pointers links rather than getting puzzles on some other schedule at Merl's site. Don't want to run the risk of having none left for a given weekend!) So there's a STALLONE theme, a bunch of Sylvester Stallone movie titles that can mostly be clued as words or phrases (e.g., CLIFFHANGER and COPLAND mean things outside of cinema). The five unchecked squares in the middle are a fictional Stallone movie that could exist if Hollywood wanted Stallone to make more 5-letter movies that have several letters in common: CROAK shares four letters with ROCKY and COBRA, and three with RAMBO, for instance. Kind of a weird endgame, emerging from Merl's fevered wordplay brain rather than reality. Merl waited 16 years for Stallone to make another sequel that was actually entitled RAMBO so this theme could come together with titles rather than characters.
In his syndicated Sunday LA Times crossword, "A Little Bit Off," Dan Naddor drops ITY from the end of a word in a phrase and reclues accordingly. Thus, someone fatally addicted to knickknacks might be said to be DYING OF CURIOS (curiosity). I still haven't caught up on last weekend's missed sleep, so I got really woozy by the time I started this puzzle (and it's not even 7 p.m. yet!). Three puzzles this evening were OK, but the fourth has pushed me beyond my reserves. The Newsday Saturday Stumper will have to wait until after I've had dinner and tried to wake up...maybe tomorrow.
Updated with Newsday:
Stan Newman crafted last weekend's Newsday "Saturday Stumper" under the fake name Anna Stiga. (From here on out, I'm going to imagine that male constructors using female pseudonyms actually wear drag while they're constructing those puzzles. I think of Rich Norris's Lila Cherry as a sweet old lady with cotton-candy hair, a cardigan, and sensible Naturalizer shoes.) Back to the crossword: Crikey! That was hard. So many vague or obscure or oblique clues (but not many funny ones), but in the end, I have to say that everything's fair. I know HOLLAND, of course, but it was a [County of the Holy Roman Empire]? Did not know that. The ["Yes, I'm a Witch" artist] and ["Inside Las Vegas" artist] crossing in the middle—very familiar names, but those aren't remotely their most famous works (YOKO ONO, MARIO PUZO). [A, in a way] is Morse code DOT DASH. [Ensemble's home]? I was too clever to think it was a theater. So I went with DRESSER, only it turned out to be ARMOIRE. [Downing Street dessert] wanted a specific British desssert, I thought, but it turned out to be the general AFTERS. What the hell is a SKID PAD? It's a [Test-track area], apparently. [Polish servings] are the non-S plural, PIEROGI (yum!), but it took forever to suss that out. [Uncle's relative] is not kinfolk, but rather, I GIVE UP. I swear I've seen this clue or something very like it before, an yet it stumped me again. Others have griped before that SALSA DIP is redundant and nobody says the DIP part; but you can make a dip with salsa as one ingredient. Cool crossing between ON VIDEO and TV STAND. This puzzle is definitely in contention for toughest themeless crossword of 2008. Constructors and editors, can you top this one?
February 01, 2008
Saturday, 2/2
Newsday 11:18
NYT 6:10
LAT 5:48
CS 3:17
Young constructor Natan Last plays it a bit Scrabbly with his themeless Saturday New York Times crossword. The structure isn't the same old, same old—two 14-letter Across entries are linked by three long Down entries (a 15 bracketed by two 12s), with plenty of flow from one section to another. I didn't encounter any real trouble spots, other than having a typo in 3-Down and blanking on what the [1979 film with sequels II to VI] could be. I had the STAR part and couldn't get Star Wars out of my head. STAR TREK! ("Khan!!") The long answers included the double-Scrabble JE NE SAIS QUOI and the idiomatic LOST ONE'S COOL bracketing ON TOP OF THE WORLD, crossed by BRING TO JUSTICE and those [Seemingly silent types], VENTRILOQUISTS. AREOLA is clued as an [Interstice]; would you believe I saw one on the way to dinner tonight? Yeah. Surprising to say the least, though at least it was about 30 degrees outside and no longer subzero. [Having the most pizzazz] clued ZIPPIEST, and while I first entered ZESTIEST, I much prefer ZIPPIEST. (And who doesn't like the word pizazz? It's got as many Z's as [Zyzzyva], or BEETLE.) Heck, I use the word zippy here, and I like the zippy stuff in my crosswords. [Meter readers?] are POETS. Did anyone else think [Al-___] was going to be something Arabic? Al-Aqaba, Al-Jazeera? No, it was Al-ANON this time. The [Big bang creator] was merely an N-TEST and not something cosmic. The verb REFEREE was clued as [Enforce the rules]. I never knew that PASCHAL was an adjective (derived from Pasch, which somehow doubles as Easter and Passover). I didn't know the phrase coup d'OEIL or "survey made with a glance"; it's French from stroke + eye. I like RUN FOR IT and ["She's gonna blow!"]. Did you know that the EAR is [Where the utricle is]? I did. Ears! I like me some geography, so DJIBOUTI, the [Neighbor of Somalia], is good stuff. ESPRESSO is a brewed drink, not brewed the same way as beer. I don't think I've heard of [Two-time figure skating Olympic gold medalist Protopopov], first name OLEG—but I love that last name. Sounds like the prototype of a pop-off. I don't eat chicken wings—too much trouble, not enough payoff—so I needed crossings to inform me that an [Option for wings] is CAJUN. I knew TIRESIAS was blind, but I didn't recall how it came to pass that he lost his sight—serves him right for...accidentally seeing Athena naked? By accident? Aw, that's not fair. PAD THAI is a good entry, but I'm not an Asian noodle fan. If there are no typos in this rambling paragraph, I will be astonished. And if there are some, then I cast all blame on the wine over dinner.
Updated:
Well, I had typos and fixed them after Sherry and Nancy e-mailed me to tip me off. They and Patrick B2 are my most reliable typo-pointer-outers, and I'm grateful for their eagle eyes! (Do ernes have keen eagle eyes, too? Maybe these three have erne eyes.)
I woke up this morning with a sore throat and went back to sleep until 9:00. Now I've been up for two hours and I'm...growing tired. That's my excuse, anyway, for a deadly solving time on the Newsday "Saturday Stumper" by Stanley Newman, because a friend finished the same puzzle in just over half my time. Favorite entries: "OUI, MADAME," the [Sommelier's phrase]; MAGIC 8-BALL, [Mattel toy] (unadvertised numeral in the grid!); STAGE-MANAGE, or [Run sub rosa]; AQUA VELVA, [Brut alternative]; TWEEZER, or [Stamp collector's need]; DEMO TAPE, or [Musical intro]; and PTOLEMY I, the ["Savior" king], because of the PT start. Other favorite clues: [Washington group] for PRESS CORPS; ROMA TOMATO [Sauce source] crossing PREGO tomato sauce; [Parlor product, for short] for TAT; [Columbia offering] for PHD; and [Pressing needs] for DELTS (as in deltoid muscles).
Michael Wiesenberg's LA Times crossword seemed a little dry—in my head, I think I'm comparing it to Karen Tracey's Sun puzzle yesterday, with a bunch of names I found fun. Phrases like SEEN AT and IN ANSWER are a tad less vivacious, and one of the names here was unknown to me—LINA, [Soprano Cavalieri, a contemporary of Caruso]. Favorite clues: [Bavarian beef?] for ACH (there's also "GUTE Nacht," or "good night"); [Unholy rollers?] for DICE; and [Hill partner] for MCGRAW (as in the publisher, McGraw-Hill).
Leaving themeless country, we visit Lynn Lempel's Wednesday-level CrosSynergy puzzle, "You Gotta Have Heart." The theme entries start with words that can follow heart—BURN RUBBER yields heartburn, STRINGBEAN gives heartstring, and so on. This puzzle had a very fresh vibe to it, light fill, fun clues. And when I figured out the answer to [Drive back] was BEAT OFF, I laughed heartily because, well, you can see where Answers.com redirects you if you search for that term's definition. Racy! Changing subjects (honest!), there are the cute boys HUGH Grant and GREG Louganis, and a TRYST of a [Hot date]. Favorite clue: [Masters of spin?] for ice SKATERS.
January 04, 2008
Saturday, 1/5
NYT 5:45
Newsday 5:28
LAT 5:03
CS 3:20
Paula Gamache rocks, and so do 70-word themeless crosswords. The Saturday New York Times puzzle doesn't bedazzle anyone because the grid was fearsomely difficult to fill—it bedazzles because it introduces a best-selling book about the vegan diet, SKINNY BITCH, to crosswordland. (It's a [Saucily titled best-selling diet book].) I didn't know about the book until this week's NYT article about the follow-up book. That entry is stacked atop IL TROVATORE and TEACHER'S PET, which I'd like to think is not so often the [Target of a school bully]. Moving clockwise around the grid, other highlights include CREWCUTS (great clue: [Private dos?]); HETEROS ([They're straight]); EL CAPITAN ([Yosemite Valley peak]; FLUORIDE ([Enamel strengthener]); [John of Lancaster] for LOO; NASTY HABITS (great clue: [They really ought to be kicked]); ACUTE ACCENT (great clue: [Sign of stress?]); SAVES THE DAY; Lake TITICACA of Trivial Pursuit fame ([Body found high in the Andes]—and not a cousin of Ötzi, found frozen in the Alps); [Like 1, but not I] for ARABIC (and also in the number family, [It's next to nothing?] for ONE); [No Yankee fan] for REB, going Civil War rather than Major League; another body of water, LAKE TAHOE, [Where Fredo Corleone gets shot]; OXYMORONS ([Passive-aggressive and the like]); and SILICA GEL (the [Common desiccant] found in those little packets in shoeboxes).
Things that gave me pause: [Peggy of "The Dukes of Hazzard"] is Peggy REA, who played "man-chasing Lulu Hogg." Who? What? The lesser Rea of acting, I shall call her. There's a [Ben Jonson poem] called TO CELIA. I don't recognize the title (me! an English major!), but the first line's familiar: "Drink to me only with thine eyes." There is ITALO disco European dance music? All righty. And YVETTE is a [1884 short story by Guy de Maupassant]? I'll take your word for it. The [N.F.L. salary limit] is called a HARD CAP? Okay. And the [___-de-four (hemisphere-shaped vault]) is CUL-de-four; I guessed COL at first. Now, when I say these gave me pause, I really mean they made me pause in solving because I didn't know them and needed the crossings. This pause is not a pause of doubt or distaste. This crossword was a lot of fun, and eminently fair.
Updated:
The Newsday Saturday Stumper by Stanley Newman (a.k.a. "Anna Stiga") is also a 70-worder, this one featuring eight 9s as the longest answers. Best fill: USE-BY DATE, ON HOLIDAY, DIATRIBE, "YES, INDEED" ([Amen alternative]), "NICE DOG," and BOLO TIE. Favorite clues: [Tiger Woods PGA Tour participant] for GAMER (it's a video game!); [Hole-in-the-wall fixture] for ATM; [Inexperienced one] for COLT (I move that Will Shortz rename the ACPT Rookie category the Colt division); [Bugs] for GERMS; [Watering holes] for LOUNGES; [Opposite of "free"] for ENSLAVE; [Get on] for both RIDE and ENTRAIN; [Sort of stole] for BOA; and [Fair pair] for a pair of TENS in poker.
Ed Early's LA Times puzzle has three triple-stacks of 15-letter entries, many not so difficult to tease out. The tastiest: CHOCOLATE-COATED, of course. Favorite clues: [Future event that sounds as if it already happened] for PRIOR ENGAGEMENT; [Political party term signifying diversity] for BIG TENT; and the super-cheesy "Make IT SO" Star Trek: The Next Generation reference.
Nancy Salomon's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Jaws 3," features two phrases that include the name of a large reptile (ALLIGATOR PEARS, CROCODILE TEARS) and one phrase that is the name of a large reptile (CAIMAN LIZARDS. [Fit to serve] clues ONE-A, and Douglas Bass recently shared with me his disgruntlement about ONE-A and other draft classification references in crosswords, pointing out that the draft ended 35 years ago. The majority of ONEA clues in the Cruciverb database refer to the draft classification, but the answer's also been clued as [___-Day Vitamins], which probably resonates better for those solvers under the age of 45.
November 30, 2007
Saturday, 12/1
Newsday 8:06
NYT 7:45
LAT 6:35
CS 2:57
My, isn't that an imposing grid! Robert Wolfe's New York Times puzzle is pushing people towards some uncommonly lengthy solves. Why? Well, for starters, it's a 58-word crossword and two of the quadrants are severed from the rest of the puzzle save for a single answer connecting each to the middle. There were also a number of quicksand traps with multiple tempting answers, obscure references in some clues, obscure names in the grid, and a bunch of "roll your own" words (formed with suffixes, mainly -er here) that don't come readily to mind.
My favorite answer is KARSTS ([Limestone regions with deep fissures and sinkholes]), because I read the clue and knew that I knew it, but at first couldn't remember anything other than that it had a K. It helped kick-start that corner for me. Aside from the sinkholes, where was the quicksand? [Maximally mangy] is SEEDIEST (could be SEAMIEST). [Where much info can be found these days] is ON THE NET (could be ON THE WEB or INTERNET). Once you suspect who the [Dualistic deity] is, you still have to choose the right spelling—here it's AMON-RA, but AMEN-RA is a familiar spelling...and Wikipedia goes for AMUN. (Delicious factoid from Wikipedia: the words ammonia, ammonite {I want to buy a sliced, polished ammonite fossil}, and foraminifera are all derived from Amun/Ammon.) If you figure out that [Prince William, e.g.] is a big brother, you need to choose between ELDER SON (correct) and OLDER SON (wrong). [Comments of annoyance]: DRATS, not DARNS, DANGS, or DAMNS. And [Receive]! It's INCEPT, which one rarely hears outside of inception. ACCEPT, of course, has the same last four letters. Even the [Fawning type]—I went with GROVELER, but it's SLAVERER, which is a word that sounds good with a couple extra -ers tacked on.
Let's run through a few clues in each quadrant. In the northwest: BILLED is not the first thing that comes to mind for [Publicized]. [Baseball Hall-of-Famer Orlando] is Mr. CEPEDA; didn't know him but enjoyed the bio. [Sore spot] is an ABSCESS here. A PIPESTEM is [Something for Santa Claus to bite]. [Gear teeth trouble] means SLIPPAGE. [Bananas] is the clue for MENTAL, and I'd prefer a clue that focuses on cognitive function rather than sort of joshing at the expense of the mentally ill.
In the northeast: Editing papers like this has taught me that PLEURA is the [Lung covering]. The [Phrase of interest] is about the interest rate PER ANNUM. I like the criss-cross of RUMORS ([Products of some "mills"]) and the [Grapevine exhortation] to PASS IT ON. [Wolf __, captain in Jack London's "The Sea-Wolf"] is LARSEN. There are three of what Rex calls "odd jobs": a [Veterinarian, at times] is an ALTERER, [Banes] are RUINERS, and [Merger], which sounds like a union, is UNITER (odd-job clue for an odd-job answer: twice the oddness).
Moving to the southeast: [Webers per square meter] are TESLAS. [John Deere product] is REAPER (aw, no Grim Reaper reference?). [__ Gamp, nurse in "Martin Chuzzlewit"] stumps everyone who never bothered to read that Dickens novel (raise your hand if you've actually read it)—tough clue for SARAH, plain and simple. This corner's other obscure literary reference is SEERESS, ["The Prophecy of the ___" (Eddic poem)]. [Nancy's home] in France is LORRAINE, home of the quiche. I like the word ANTIPODE, [Direct opposite].
Back down to the KARSTS quadrant: Could you fill in the blank in ["The Daughters of Joshua __" (1972 Buddy Ebsen film)]? It's CABE. (And here's a pictorial retelling of the story from this made-for-TV movie, which also featured Sandra Dee and Karen Valentine.) [Pull off] is ACHIEVE—and the reversed clue, [Pull in], appears nearby (ARRIVE). The odd job MOUNTER is a taxidermist. No, a porn star. No, actually, [One who's getting on]. The [Winner's pride] is the TOP SCORE. [Cigarette smoke byproducts] include many toxins, such as ACETONES (which are also helpful for removing nail polish and dissolving plastic). I rather like [Producers of wall flowers?] for CREEPERS (e.g., trumpet creepers).
Updated:
Karen Tracey's LA Times crossword has a lot of juicy stuff in it, including some particularly deft clues. I had no idea who was the ["Oppression et Liberte" author], but I've heard of SIMONE WEIL and with enough crossings, she firmed up nicely. ["Shirley, Good Mrs. Murphy shall follow me all the days of my life" is one] refers to a misheard lyric, a MONDEGREEN. Without Googling it, I can't say what the real lyric's supposed to be. [Day one] is the DAWN OF TIME, which I hear is a phrase oft deployed in lousy college term papers. "Since the dawn of time..." Maybe also on ESSAY TESTS, as [They don't lend themselves to guessing] but padding is tempting. (Also on school papers: [Thesis defenders, at times] may be CITERS.) [One might make you stop and think] is a singular SCRUPLE. LA VIDA LOCA is a nice complement to the J answers (RED JASMINE crossing JORJA Fox crossing a JIFFY, PRIVATE JET crossing TOJO, JAPED crossing MAJUSCULES). I liked the clues for two of those J words—[Twinkling] is a noun meaning JIFFY, and MAJUSCULES is a fancy word for [Capital letters]. Karen previously tormented me with JACQUELINE DUPRE in a grid, so this time DUPRE is [Barbizon School artist Jules]; not any easier, but at least shorter and with easier crossings.
Thomas Schier's CrosSynergy puzzle, another Marcel Marceau tribute, is really easy. Hmm, maybe having done another Marcel Marceau tribute puzzle in the last couple weeks helped me out here.
Well, the laser printer is waiting for my kid's computer to rejoin the household network, so I can't print out the Newsday Saturday Stumper yet. It's almost time for lunch at La Creperie followed by a movie followed by a winter storm warning. If I make it back from the movie (just a mile and a half away), I can do the puzzle later. And yes, I know that the Newsday puzzles are also available in an online Java applet, but I cannot abide the crossword applets other than the Times's proprietary one. (I calls 'em "crapplets.")
Updated Saturday night:
Stan Newman, writing as "Anna Stiga," made the Newsday Saturday Stumper. Best fill: SISYPHEAN (clued as [Eternally frustrating]...which may describe many people's experience with today's NYT crossword), ONE'S OWN MAN, Queen NEFERTITI, LOOSEY-GOOSEY, and CONDE NAST. Least favorite clue: [Not to mention] for TABOO. Give me a sentence in which the two are interchangeable that doesn't sound like it's really stretching it. Clues I liked: [What 1000 may stand for] for TEN AM; [Nickname for José] for PEPE and [Bishop of Roma] for PAPA (no PUPU platter or POPO here, alas); and [Not open] for CAGY and [Close] for STOP, muddling the open and shut doors concept. Did it seem a tad off to have ABE FORTAS in there, first and last name, when the [Blackmun's predecessor] clue includes only a last name?
