NYT 5:23
LAT 4:00
CS 5:47 (J—paper)
Ink Well untimed
Gary & Stephen Kennedy's New York Times crossword
All right, I'm gonna have to piece together this theme while blogging about this 15x16 puzzle. I see that Baha Men's overplayed [Hit song from 2000...and a hint to 10 symmetrically arranged Across answers], WHO LET THE DOGS OUT, pertains to some "___ dog" phrases. I see two of the five pairs of symmetrical entries, and expect to encounter the rest by eyeballing the grid. Oh! I see now. The 10 extra answers need to include the DOG in order to match up with their clue. Give a solver enough wine and she will only notice one of the 10 clues doesn't quite work for the given answer.
Now that's I've scrounged up those 10 answers—nine of which I did not look askance at while solving but certainly ought to have!—I'm ready for bed. What a workout! Before then, 10 clues:
Updated Thursday morning:
Patrick Blindauer's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Metal Detection"—Janie's review
Patrick tests our mettle today by filling his puzzle with 60 squares of theme fill―six words and phrases each containing the name of a familiar metal. Ready? There's:
Not only has Patrick given us a lot of fresh theme-fill (marigolds looks to be a CS debut, and Phil Silvers and Copperfield major-puzzle firsts), but look how he's paired the precious metals gold and silver; the ferrous metals (iron-containing) iron and steel; and the alloy brass with its major component, copper. Additionally, note the bonus fill we get with of RUST [Oxidize]. Those ferrous metals especially are subject to oxidation. All of which is to say, between the quality of the fill and the placement of the fill in the grid, this is one tightly executed theme.
But all metal-work and no play makes Patrick a dull boy. Happily, with Patrick's puzzles, play is usually not far behind. Today's is no exception. In addition to the thematic "...MARIGOLDS," we also get HAMLET [Play set in Denmark] and ["It Might as Well be Spring" musical] STATE FAIR, which came into being as a movie and was later adapted for the stage. Another movie in the mix is ["Cat] BALLOU" [(1965 Fonda/Marvin film); and while the clue doesn't reference this small-screen series, [Top guns] does yield (The) A-TEAM.
Where there are plays, there're gonna be players. Joining PHIL SILVERS in the spotlight are ["Amadeus" star Tom] HULCE, [Actor Milo] O'SHEA, [Raymond ...] BURR, and LON [Chaney of "The Monster"].
You may recall that yesterday's puzzle also featured singer/actor Olivia Newton-John. Now just take a look at the nifty way Patrick's clued that old stand-by SIR: [Title for Olivier, Newton or John]. Love it. (For the uninitiated, that's Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Elton John.)
Btw, our prolific constructor references his own puzzle (yesterday's NYT) not only with OXIDE but in spelling out the first name AES, ADLAI [Ike's opponent, twice]. Of course, that's Ike as in "I LIKE [___ Ike" (campaign slogan)].
And, goin' out on a limb here... ASIAN for [Like some elephants] reminded me of the joke about a particular post-bank robbery exchange:Detective: Can you describe the robber?
Teller: Like I told you—it was an elephant!!
Detective: Okay. Okay. So—was it an Asian elephant or an African elephant?
Teller: Wuh...?
Detective: Look—the Asian elephant has small ears; the African elephant has big ears. So...?
Teller: How would I know?? He had a stocking over his head!!
Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword
My full writeup is across town at the other blog. No time this morning for more than a sentence:
The theme is phrases that you wouldn't necessarily expect to see in a crossword grid that can be clued with [Take___], where the blank is filled with in/out, on/off, and up/down; 72 theme squares have, alas, forced some compromises in the fill.
I'll be back this afternoon to talk about Ben Tausig's Ink Well puzzle.
Okay, so I lied. It's Thursday evening, not afternoon. Long day.
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "J Play"
The theme: H changes to J in six phrases. A blanket hog becomes BLANKET JOG, or [Run taken in the extreme cold?]. I'll take the blanket, hold the jog. Playing on Hot or Not, we have JOT OR NOT, [Rating site that asks users whether they would use a given notepad?]. A group hug turns into a GROUP JUG, or [Big wine vessel passed around?]. The funniest-sounding theme entry is JELLO DOLLY, or [Hand truck for carting around a certain no-bake dessert?]. Remember Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly!? It was just in the news that Johnny Depp wants to play Channing in a musical biopic, and that she's given her blessing. It's the natural evolution for him, going from Willy Wonka to the Mad Hatter to Carol Channing. Anyway...back to the puzzle. The two Down theme answers are JAIL SATAN, a [Chant from a crowd angry at the Antichrist?], and ICE JOCKEY, [One who plays music at skating parties?].
Ben likes the concept of the word at 12-Down, but boy, that one is tough. I needed all seven crossings and still didn't recognize it as a word. PANEITY is [The state of being bread (!)]. A television has much less PANEITY than a bagel, but does the TV have more PANEITY than air does?
Top answers and clues:
The tough stuff is concentrated in the PANEITY corner. We get the E-less spelling variant ABSINTH for [Wormwood plant product now legal in the U.S.: Var.], [Challenger passenger Judith] RESNIK, arbitrary ABAA for [Simple rhyme scheme], ETHYL [___ alcohol], and Sen. KYL, the [Jon who's junior to John McCain, in Arizona].
July 22, 2009
Thursday, 7/23
February 11, 2009
Thursday, 2/12
Sun 6:28 (and I took advantage of the Across Lite solution)
LAT 4:07 (saw spoiler for one answer)
NYT 3:41 (...sort of)
It pays to heed the clock. Here I sat, looking to kill some time before the next day's New York Times crossword would be released online, so I navigated over to Jim Horne's blog. Of course, the moment the puzzle is released, Jim's blog post on it is published, and it took a surprisingly long time for it to dawn on me that the puzzle I was reading about was the one I was about to do. (Sigh.) It's not as if Gary and Stephen Kennedy's theme would have stumped me anyway, given that earlier this evening I'd read a different blog post about CHARLES R. DARWIN and ABRAHAM LINCOLN's shared February 12 birthdate (each guy is a [Notable born 2/12/1809]). I do want to call a foul on the inclusion of Darwin's middle initial—in contrast to Samuel L. Jackson and Harry S Truman, we don't commonly refer to him with a middle initial in place. (Jackson and Truman, of course, always called him Charles R.)
The theme also includes Darwin's ORIGIN OF SPECIES and Lincoln's REPUBLICAN PARTY. The central entry, SNACKS like [Cheese and crackers, maybe], ties everything together because Darwin and Lincoln were both inveterate noshers. Yes, I just made that up out of thin air. Other non-thematic material:
Sun crossword editor Peter Gordon moonlights as Sun constructor Ogden Porter. The "Happy Birthday!" puzzle's theme will be no surprise to anyone who's already solved the NYT puzzle for February 12. Peter has just three theme entries—14-letter ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 13-letter CHARLES DARWIN sans middle initial, and their birthdate of 12 FEBRUARY 1809. Having just three theme answers didn't mean taking the easy way out, though—Peter used the numerals as numerals in their crossings, so there's no "sometimes I, sometimes 1, or sometimes letter O, sometimes zero" muddling. I really needed the clue for 59-Down to be drop-dead obvious, though. [Bond] is, after all, a common-enough verb and noun as well as being the surname of fictional spy James Bond, Agent 007. What killed me here was the intersecting aviation answers: [Pioneering Boeing planes] are S07'S, the puzzle tells me, and an [Air Force stealth jet] is F11S. Wait, that S must be short for 6 or 7. Oh! Okay. Boeing 707'S and an F-117, which...meh. I refuse to memorize military jet model numbers. I don't know how I ended up with that S there, as 55-Down wasn't a plural.
Admirable bits:
Updated:
Dagnabbit, I read a comment giving away an answer in Don Gagliardo's LA Times crossword before I'd done the puzzle. Commenters, please refrain from listing answers for puzzles that have not been blogged about yet. "What's up with 28-Down?" is safer than a "What's up with JOOK?" remark, for example. On the plus side, seeing that answer before I did the puzzle allowed me to not fester in that spot of the puzzle, doubting that JOOK could possibly be correct, which I surely would have done sans spoiler. [Joint for merriment, slangily] is a JOOK? I've not seen the word before. This dictionary defines it thus as a spelling variant of juke:juke (jūk, jʊk) Southeastern U.S.
Learn something new every day, eh? The theme in this crossword is a numismatic one, all about the LINCOLN HEAD CENT, a.k.a. the penny. The other four theme answers end with words that double as things that appeared on the original Lincoln penny:
also jook n.
A roadside or rural establishment offering liquor, dancing, and often gambling and prostitution. Also called juke house, juke joint.
intr.v., juked also jooked, juk·ing jook·ing, jukes jooks.
To play dance music, especially in a juke.
To dance, especially in a juke or to the music of a jukebox.
[Probably from Gullah juke, joog, disorderly, wicked, of West African origin; akin to Wolof dzug, to live wickedly, and Bambara dzugu, wicked.]
This puzzle grid has three circled letters in it, VDB. The note accompanying the puzzle says "Victor David Brenner designed the Lincoln Head Cent. His initials (circled in the grid) appeared on the 1909 coin at first, were removed as a result of controversy, and then restored in 1918."
December 16, 2008
Wednesday, 12/17
Tausig 4:12
Onion 4:10
Sun 3:55
LAT 3:15
CS 3:08
NYT 3:02
(updated at 10:23 a.m. Wednesday)
John Farmer works a mnemonic into his New York Times crossword, but he does a good job of hiding it. There are five circled squares, the ones that begin the longest Across answers and the central Across answer. All of those letters—E, G, B, D, and F reading downwards—are NOTES, or [Staff members, and what the circled letters in this puzzle represent] at 65-Across. The five EGBDF answers start with words that are used in a common mnemonic for remembering the order of those notes: EVERY GOOD BOY DOES FINE. Now, the way I learned it, every good boy deserves fudge, and I'm feeling a little ripped off that Farmer didn't bring the fudge. (I kid!)
John Farmer likes to do it up fancy, so the first and last theme answers are accompanied by stacked pairs of 9-letter answers and crossed by triple-stacked 7's to boot. The fill is rather Scrabbly as well. My favorite parts:
Now, this puzzle's not all fudgy goodness. Abbreviations and quasi-crosswordese answers include RGS, or [Some football linemen: Abbr.]; EZIO, [Opera singer Pinza]; DSL, the [Alternative to dial-up] (I like this abbreviation, though); the FAA, or ["Black box" regulator: Abbr.]; OMY or "o' My," clued as ["Peg ___ Heart"]; DJ'S and BB'S and CD's; the [U.K. honor] known as the OBE; the [Onetime Mideast letters] UAR, or United Arab Republic; AOL and DNA; DAWS, or [Crow cousins] (as in jackdaws); and AZO [___ dye].
The Wednesday Sun crossword constructor is Stephen Kennedy, an unfamiliar name. Perhaps "Bawdy Parts" marks his debut, and it's a good puzzle. The theme entries end with words that sound like body parts.
Two corners of the grid are wide open. In one of those corners, ["Casablanca" director Michael] CURTIZ appears. Why is that name so unfamiliar? (No, it's not his original name.) This puzzle seems to have quite a bit in the way of X's, Z's, and K's. There's also Erik ESTRADA, who is on my TV screen right now. He's playing a cop (a California highway cop, as luck would have it) on the kid show, Drake and Josh. (He looks the same, but with a bit of a paunch.)
Updated:
The first theme entry in Bill Ballard's LA Times crossword is COME AS YOU ARE, clued with ["It's a party! Informal, so ___..."].Great, a whole theme of Nirvana songs! I'm playing the song as I write this, but no, the rest of the theme entries were not Nirvana songs but party invitation phrases: NO GIFTS, PLEASE. KEEP IT A SECRET. And BRING YOUR OWN bottle. There are some pop culture references in the puzzle, though. FLIX is clued as [Net attachment?], as in Netflix. [Paul's "Exodus" role] was ARI (that's Paul Newman). Sam COOKE was the ["You Send Me" singer]. [Spike TV, formerly] was called TNN. SNL is the [TV show that had recurring "Killer Bees" sketches]. James ARNESS was the main ["Gunsmoke" star]. And Garfield's housemate ODIE is the [Slobbering comics dog] in question. There's one answer I've never seen before: ASSUROR is clued as an [Underwriter].
Tom Schier's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Who's Who," gathers a party of people with the initials W.W.:
I didn't know the [Driver in the most favorable position at the start of the race] was called a POLE SITTER; I know about pole position and the old flagpole sitting craze, though. Favorite entry: WET BLANKET, or [Enthusiasm dampener]. Knit your own wet blanket with [Balls of yarn] called CLEWS. There are a few place names mapped out on the grid. ATTU is the [Farthest of the Near Islands]. [Fort ___ (U.S. gold storage facility)] is Ft. KNOX. LANAI is a [Neighbor of Maui], and the Pacific has many a [Coral island], or ATOLL. ALGIERS was a [Former Barbary State in Africa]; from the 16th to 19th centuries, Algiers, Tunis, Morocco, and Tripolitania (Tripoli) were the Barbary coast divisions. AKRON is the [Rubber hub in Ohio].
Brendan Emmett Quigley (who's got a new blog where he dispenses crosswords on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays) constructed this week's Onion A.V. Club puzzle. It's a quote theme, but the quote is a famous Bushism, so it was easier than usual to fill in the quote without needing crossings. The quote begins with the clue, [Start of an ironic quote from a certain Yale graduate]: RARELY IS / THE QUESTION ASKED: IS / OUR CHILDREN / LEARNING? Two more answers relate to the theme: LEFT / BEHIND is clued [With 63-Across, how those among 54-Across who speak like their President might end up].
Favorite answers and clues:
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, ""Holding Water," holds some H2O in each theme entry:
Among the more interesting clues and answers are these:
That's a lot of good stuff there. Tougher words: [Spinning round?] is a DJ SET. [Ottoman dynasty founder] is OSMAN. [Hip parts] are ILIA, plural of ilium. [2002 Literature Nobelist Kertesz] is IMRE Kertesz. [Belligerent Chinese dynasty until 1125] is LIAO.
