NYT 3:47
LAT 3:25
Tausig untimed
CS untimed
Vic Fleming's New York Times crossword
It looks like a Thursday puzzle—word count of 74, so more white space and longish answers than we expect earlier in the week. But the clues felt a little easy for a Thursday. The theme is straightforwardly HAWAII (43D), and we are spared POI, a UKE, a LEI, and DON HO. Instead, we get assorted Hawaii trivia:
• 17A. BETTE MIDLER is the [Entertainer born 12/1/1945 in 25-Across]. I don't believe it. I'm going to need to see her birth certificate.
• 25A. That's HONOLULU, the [Capital whose name means "sheltered bay"], where Midler was born.
• 34A, 36A. IOLANI / PALACE is the [only official residence of a reigning monarch now in the United States].
• 44A. Geotrivia! [Measured base to peak, the world's tallest mountain] is MAUNA KEA. That base is beneath about 20,000 feet of Pacific Ocean waters.
• 54A. BARACK OBAMA is a noted [Politician born 8/4/61 in 25-Across].
I wonder if Vic hoped for this puzzle to run around August 21, the 50th anniversary of Hawaii's statehood. There doesn't seem to be any particular rhyme or reason for running this theme now, but two months ago? Perfect.
Highlights in the fill: [Seven-time Wimbledon champ] PETE / SAMPRAS gets his full name in the grid too, but split into two entries. CHERUBIC is just a cute word ([Innocent-looking]). The [German warning] ACHTUNG is part of a U2 album title, Achtung Baby. IOWA CITY is clued via [it's west of Davenport]; it's further west from Chicago. DEAR ANN is the [Start of a letter to Landers]; "Dear Abby" feels a little more in the language to me, but that could be because I just saw that phrase in another crossword.
The short stuff in the grid is mostly unremarkable. I wonder how many people wind up Googling the Roman numeral clues—XLI, or 41, is the [Year Caligula was assassinated].
Updated Thursday morning:
Tony Orbach's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Take the El Train"—Janie's review
Yet another CS puzzle that's SOLID [Like a rock]. Today's theme involves a sequence (or train) of words (the first one in each of four theme phrases) from which the letter L has been taken out—the double L, to be precise. It took me a while to figure out the gimmick, but I was delighted to have a second puzzle in the same week with a "take away" theme, especially one that builds on its predecessor by removing a letter pair. What the 'ell—let's take a look at the theme fill!
• 17A. MA OF AMERICA [Founding mother?] has its source in Bloomington MN's super-sized (4 million square feet!) Mall of America. O. M. G.
• 33A. CEO CONCERTO [Corporate bigwig's musical composition?]. The base phrase here, of course, is cello concerto. This was the theme fill that triggered the "aha" for me and remains my fave. There's something very natural about the before-and-after feel to it. This link'll get you started with Jacqueline du Pré's performance of the Elgar Cello Concerto.
• 42A. PI DISPENSER [Geometry teacher divulging the secret of a circle?]. Never knew you could do so much with a pill dispenser!
• 57A. SEERS MARKET [Crystal ball store?]. Another really strong entry. As with cello..., the letters to be removed are contained by (and don't lie at the end of) the base word. I think this adds to the delight of realizing the base phrase is seller's market.
I'm pretty much HOG WILD [Enthusiastic to the extreme] for this puzzle. Why? Because the fill is all-over DYNAMIC [Full of life]. From the [Crazy] crossing of LOCO with LOONY [Bats], to the beautiful 10-letter BANANARAMA [Girl group with the 1986 hit "Venus"], there's a fresh feel to the fill. And a clue like [Lusty deity] gives us an attitude about SATYR. Attitude is good in this case.
It comes across as well in all the colloquial/conversational fill:
• ["I'm] ONTO [you!"]
• "MOI?" ["Who, me?"]
• "DITTO" ["Same here"]
• "IN A FEW" ["Any sec"]
• ["Don't] ASK [!"]
• "I BET!" ["Yeah, right!"]
We get a [Toy on a string] not-once-but-twice, with YO-YO and KITE. A [Stand-up's zinger] is a ONE-LINER; but [Puts in stitches] is SEWS. And I also like the way the [La Brea product], TAR is followed in the grid by TARP [Grounds crew's cover]. It's the little things... (And speaking of "little things," let me not overlook FLEA precisely portrayed as a [Minuscule circus creature].)
Finally, a word of warning: if the SCREW CAP [Feature of many wine bottles] on your wine bottle has begun to OXIDATE [Rust], it's probably time to chuck it. It may not have been sold before its time, but its time has come...
Todd Gross's Los Angeles Times crossword
As it happens, the very last answer I filled in—hadn't even seen the clue until the end—is 48D, which ties everything together. [A type of one begins the answers to starred clues] points towards a WRENCH, and I didn't have a clue that's where the theme was heading. What the heck is a CRESCENT (ROLLS) wrench? Time to Google—oh, it's the adjustable wrench I've always had in my toolbox, but I've never heard it called a crescent wrench. The other WRENCHes include PIPE (DREAM), MONKEY (BARS), and ALLEN (GINSBERG). Provided you know the wrench varieties, it's a good theme.
I'm feeling a little bloated and queasy thanks to the northeast corner—SWOLLEN ([Puffed up, as a sprain]) beside NAUSEATE ([Make queasy]) makes this the Misery Corner. Also in that corner is DO SO, clued as ["Take care of it"], but I can't say I've ever heard anyone issue that short command. Next to that is INCL. with an ugly clue, ["Batt. not ___"]—but it Googles up OK. Valid, but ugly.
Highlights in the fill include several phrases and compound words—OPEN MIND, SKYLINE, RED TAPE—as well as MANDARIN, the [Official spoken language of China], and a CARNIVAL, or [Traveling show]. When the answer to ["Way to go!"] starts with an H and is 6 letters long, I'm never quite sure whether I need HOORAY (my preferred spelling and pronunciation), HURRAH (also decent), or HURRAY. Hooray for HOORAY today! I suspect some of the nation's solvers will be Googling [Variously colored flower] today. It's a PANSY here, but...there are a zillion plants with variously colored flowers. Roses. Mums. Tulips. Crabapple blossoms (my favorite scent). Irises. Violets. Lilies. Daisies. See what I mean? And many of those also come in two-tone blooms, like pansies.
Am I just slow this morning, or is this puzzle actually landing square in the Wednesday difficulty slot rather than the Monday/Tuesday of recent weeks? Judging from the other times on the leaderboard this morning, I'm just slow this morning.
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "Pop Filter"
Do you know what a pop filter is? It's placed between a microphone and a person to dampen the popping sound from aspirated plosives when people say "P" words. So the "Pop Filter" in this puzzle takes out the P sound in the theme entries' base phrases:
• 17A. Movable Type is a blogging platform and movable type is what Gutenberg used with his printing press. MOVABLE TIE is [Unfixed neckwear?]. Hmm, a delivery food order might be movable Thai.
• 25A. [Where Satan's secretary sits?] is HELL DESK (help desk).
• 39A. Presumably there's a Clash album called Give 'Em Enough Rope. GIVE 'EM ENOUGH ROE is the [Clash album about being a generous sushi chef?]. Ideally, the clue wouldn't reference both the base phrase and the theme entry, but Give 'Em Enough Rope is perhaps not familiar enough to serve as un unexplained basis for a play on words.
• 51A. Hope chest turns into HOE CHEST, [Where weed-removing heirlooms might be kept?]. The "heirloom" aspect of the clue again references the base phrase. I should've noticed that when test-solving this puzzle.
• 64A. [What a really exciting yoga instructor provides?] might be CHI THRILLS (cheap thrills). Cute.
I liked the medical terminology crossing just fine, but could see how that might stymie some folks. ATAXIA is [Lack of coordination, clinically] and EXOCRINE is clued as [Like sweat glands]; endocrine glands do their secreting inside the body (endo = in, exo = out). [Trippy M.C.] isn't about trip-hop at all; it's trippy visual artist M.C. ESCHER. The NEVA River, one of the leading crosswordese rivers in Russia, gets a trivia clue, [River into which Rasputin was thrown], to bring it to life. Ben editorials abou American IDOL: [Show that's broken scores of generic, melismatic singers, familiarly]. ZIT is clued via teenagerly texting: ["ZOMG! n RIGHT b4 prom!!!" thing].
October 14, 2009
Thursday, 10/15/09
September 12, 2009
Sunday, 9/13/09
NYT 11:33
PI 7:16
LAT 5:45
CS 3:20
BG tba—file not found
Congratulations to Eric Maddy, champion of Saturday's Bay Area Crossword Puzzle Tournament. I haven't heard any other details, such as who the finalists were and whether Tyler Hinman's Sunday-sized tournament puzzle will be published in a newspaper or online. I'll share what I learn.
Todd Gross's New York Times crossword, "Let's Play Bingo"
I've seen a few of Todd Gross's unpublished (or not yet published) puzzles, so I know he's drawn to gimmicks. Gimmicks can be highly polarizing, but I had fun with this one. The bingo gimmick is that a dozen interlocking entries are unclued, and you have to piece them together with the crossings and check to see which letter/number combos on the bingo card in the middle of the grid will fit in those spaces. When you fill in, say, B-SEVEN, you circle B-7 on the bingo card (the clue says Mark your card! for each). Play the crossbingo game right, and you'll get bingo. The last bingo number I filled in in the crossword was N-FORTY at 124-Across, and that won bingo for me. Congrats on your debut, Todd.
The bingo entries lack any sort of wordplay, of course, as you're looking at the bingo card to see what those answers could be. They are:
Suddenly I feel like I'm blogging about sudoku...but I did enjoy teasing out the bingo entries. Plus, I got bingo, so I assume the New York Times will be sending me my prize money shortly.
Returning to crosswordland, the least familiar word in the whole puzzle was in the 119A clue: [What an aurilave cleans]. That is a dreadfully obscure word! But the auri- root shouts EAR, and -lave covers the washing part of the word. Also on the unfamiliar side is 33A: [Third year in 31-Across's reign]. Cross-referenced Roman numeral clue? Good gravy! The year is LVI, for NERO, the 31A: [Emperor who married his stepsister]. (Ick.) Then there's 44A: [Manfred ___, 1967 Chemistry Nobelist] EIGEN. And I'm not sure I've seen NET TV used; that's 50A: [Hulu, e.g.], a website on which you can watch TV shows and clips. DARE ME as a 13D: [Statement of self-confidence] sounds weird, too. Moreover, I hadn't heard of either of the early 20th-century pop culture bits—94D: [Popular 1940s radio show "___ Alley"] is ALLEN'S, and then there's 100D: ELSIE [___ Janis, star of Broadway's "Puzzles of 1925"].
This could be a horrible class of clues, but I dig genealogy and geography so I liked 26D: [Second-most common Vietnamese family name, after Nguyen] for TRAN. If you're curious about the most common surnames in various countries, Wikipedia has a compilation.
Ooh, U.S. Open play has resumed after lengthy rain delays. Must go!
Updated Sunday morning:
My husband offered to pay me a dollar if I'd take his turn putting the kid to bed so he could watch tennis. I fell asleep before the kid and missed the dramatic end to the S. Williams/Clijsters match. Oh, well. I still think Serena is a phenomenal athlete.
Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer crossword, "See You in September"
It's September, and the "See You" of the title can be read as "C.U."—the letters that begin the words in each two-word phrase in this theme. Although the entertainment oomph of such initials themes can be lacking, most of the phrases here qualify as lively fill. Merl being Merl, the top and bottom pairs of theme entries are stacked.
I did this puzzle last night, so it's not fresh in my head and I can't think of anything else to say about it. Onward to other crosswords!
Pamela Amick Klawitter's syndicated Los Angeles Times crossword, "Rainbow Connection"
Whoa, nelly—the only Sunday puzzles I've finished this fast are Frank Longo's Premier King crossword and the Newsday puzzles. The sixth clue I read was for RED HERRING, and with the title, I skipped to the next long answer and filled in the ORANGE through INDIGO theme entries right away. Didn't see the VIOLET one and couldn't have filled that in with no crossings, but it made a huge difference to have the theme entries anchoring large swaths of the grid. Here are the theme answers:
Not all of the fill was so easy (particularly the lesser-known names in the grid), but the color spectrum theme was a romp in a way very few themes are. It's kinda fun (sometimes, not all the time) to have a puzzle that's markedly easier than the norm, isn't it?
Paula Gamache's themeless CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge"
This grid's anchored by the four 14-letter answers that criss-cross around the center square. (Do you see the spirit of Paul Lynde in that black square?) Today, though, let's focus on the entries that evoke other languages.
