Jonesin' 3:33
NYT 2:54
LAT 2:34
CS untimed
Apparently one of Matt Gaffney's recent weekly contest crosswords duplicated a theme previously used, unbeknownst to Matt, in another puzzle by Mike Shenk. Matt demystifies the process of building a crossword to explain how such accidental mimicry can and does occur at Slate.
December? Whoa.
Jonah Kagan and Vic Fleming's New York Times crossword
BREAKFAST gets parsed as "break FAST" and the other four theme entries begin with FA and end with ST:
• 18A. FAIRY DUST is a [Magical powder].
• 22A. FALCON CREST was a [1980s soap opera set at a winery]. I am reminded of those '80s prime-time soaps every time I see the principal at my kid's school.
• 35A. FATHER KNOWS BEST was a [1950s-'60s sitccom that ran on all three networks]. One at a time, I presume? Not during the same season?
• 49A. [Occasion for pumpkin picking] is the FALL HARVEST.
What else is in this puzzle? There's ILO-ILO, the [Repetitively named Philippine province]. Speaking of repetition, [Mine treasure] is both ORE and a LODE. One [Wine container] is a CARAFE, while other [Wine containers] are CASKS. The [Turkish headgear] called the FEZ joins the ILIAD, CAIRO, and EGYPT for today's Mediterranean fill, and the REED that's a [Papyrus plant, e.g.] might grow in EGYPT too.
The fill's not pangrammatic (no J), but there are Scrabbly letters in BOUTIQUE, ZEROES, and ALEX, [The"A" in A-Rod]. You know you've been doing too many crosswords when you try to complete that last one as ALER.
Updated Tuesday morning:
Randall J. Hartman's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Dam Break"—Janie's review
The title tells us from the get-go that somehow we're going to see the word dam in each of the theme phrases and that the word'll be broken up—but exactly how Randy would do that remained to be seen. Would the letters bookend the phrase or would they fall between two words? As is turns out, it's the latter. Now, while I find the gimmick and the theme fill a tad on the dusty side, I really liked seeing that in each case, the "D" falls in the same spot in its respective row, so that all three of the DAMs are aligned in the grid. That's a nice touch. And here are they are:
• 20A. ROALD AMUNDSEN [First person to reach the North and South Poles].
• 40A. SECOND AMENDMENT [Constitutional protection for gun owners].
• 55A. BLIND AMBITION [1976 tell-all book by John Dean].
There are other nice touches throughout, both in the fill and in the cluing. I liked starting out with the rhyming RAGS/[Scandal sheet] and WAGS/[Witty ones]. And there was something pleasing in seeing "NEAT IDEA!"/["Great thought!"] and GOOD DEED [Samaritan's act] running vertically down the grid. Ditto WOODWIND and BLEAK HOUSE. GO TO PIECES/[Lose it] at first made me think of Patsy Cline, but she fell to pieces. Peter and Gordon ("British Explosion" [light-] rockers), on the other hand, did "Go to Pieces."
Speaking of Brits, ADELE [2009 Grammy winner for Best New Artist] was a complete unknown to me. Go ahead. Tell me I'm living under a rock. Here she is singing "Right as Rain"—not to be confused with Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen's "Right as the Rain." (Harburg also wrote the lyrics to the song ["If I Only] HAD [a Brain"].) Other women with an artistic bent to get a shout-out today include NORA/[Director Ephron], REESE [Witherspoon of "Walk the Line"] and LIZA [Entertainer Minnelli], who first came on the scene in a little Kander and Ebb show called Flora, the Red Menace, but that Flora was not today's FLORA, which was clued as [Lady's-slipper and baby's breath]. And notice the lovely way IRIS/[Spring bloomer] crosses flora. Quite a little nosegay in that SW corner.
Props, too, to [Mail for King Arthur] for ARMOR, [Moon shot?] for TUSH and [Punk rock?] for PEBBLE. Took me a while to experience the "aha" for that last one. But it was worth the wait.
Not that this is a heinous offense, but even though it's clear they mean different things, I wish Randy had avoided including both A LOT / [Gazillion] and LOT [Auction unit] in the same puzzle. This repetition could have been avoided in any number of ways. Lot shares a final "T" with BEAT, so that letter could have been a D, M, N or U; and it falls from the final "L" in DUAL, so there was also the option of changing that shared letter to a D. Whether or not this gets changed for some other incarnation of this puzzle, life as we know it will go on. Just sayin'.
Dave Hanson's Los Angeles Times crossword
I don't recognize the name in today's byline. A debut for Dave Hanson? If so, congratulations!
The theme is really icky, or should I say "ICKy." Each theme entry contains two ICKs but in four different ways:
• 20A. [Dickens hero with "papers," as he is formally known] is MR. PICKWICK, with a "MR." in addition to the two *ICK syllables.
• 51A. [Unflattering Nixon epithet] is TRICKY DICK, with the adjectival -Y sneaking in there.
• 10D. [Surprise football plays] are QUICK KICKS, with a plural not seen in the other theme entries. Is this a familiar term to football fans? I don't know it.
• 29D. [Girls-night-out film] is an unadorned CHICK FLICK.
There were some random ICK sounds lurking in the grid, presumably by chance. John Milton's EPIC, ODIC [Like many Keats poems], mind-reading PSYCHICS, and the CHICLE that's in gum. I haven't had Tiny Size Chiclets in years, but the word chicle always makes me want some. And then I start thinking about those sacks of gold nugget gum. If they would make sugarless versions of both, I tell you, I'd always have one or the other on hand.
RARA isn't in as many crosswords as it used to be, but when it is, it's often clued with [___ avis], Latin for "rare bird." Today the clue is 15A: [Not often seen, to Caesar]. Least familiar answer: OUT YEAR, or [Annual period beyond the current one]. There's actually a lot of fill here that seems tough for a Tuesday, but the crossings are generally easy. This puzzle might require a little more back-and-forth eyeballing of crossings to piece everything together.
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Bank Job"
I like the title of this puzzle better than the theme entries—73A: SNOW is a [Word that can precede either word in] the theme entries, but unlike "Bank Job," the four theme answers are made-up phrases:
• 17A. [Macho way to say "dandruff"?] clues MAN FLAKES. Okay, that's funny.
• 66A. PEAS DRIFT is [What somehow happens to the vegetables in your TV dinner?].
• 11D. TIRE BLOWER is clued as [That sharp nail in the road you just ran over?].
• 30D. [Tool used to clean out the pits in kiddie playlands?] clues a BALL SHOVEL. Actually, I think massive quantities of disinfectant would be better than a shovel.
Favorite clues/fill:
• SHAFT is clued with the lyrics ["He's a complicated man / but no one understands him/ but his woman"]. True story: My good friend Amy danced with Richard Roundtree, the actor who starred in Shaft, when she was about 5. She told the tale on public radio a couple years ago.
• ["Liquid sunshine"] is a lie. That ain't what RAIN is. Dang, I thought the answer was going to be something like TEQUILA.
• O'HARE is clued as a [Frequent site for fligth layovers]. Do you know I have never once had a flight layover in Chicago? True story. And living in a centrally located hub means I can get a direct flight almost anywhere I want to go.
November 30, 2009
Tuesday, 12/1/09
November 23, 2009
Tuesday, 11/24/09
Jonesin' 4:42
NYT 3:20
LAT 2:56
CS untimed
Vic Fleming and Bonnie Gentry's New York Times crossword
The three multi-part theme entries in this 16x15 crossword made an especially cohesive set for this solver, as I'd recently read this Language Log post refuting the idea that phrases like "at the end of the day" were management-speak. (Turns out everyone else is using these phrases, too.) The theme entries were split up into two or three chunks apiece, with cross-referenced clues flailing all over the place. This provided a rather choppy solving experience rather than a nice Tuesdayesque flow.
The theme pieced together three phrases that mean [everything considered]. 19A and 64A spell out AT THE END / OF THE DAY. 34A, 43A, and 48A say WHEN ALL / IS SAID / AND DONE. And 4A's clue is [After "in", and with 44-Down, everything considered], which is a crazily stilted clue. THE FINAL / ANALYSIS really wants its introductory IN to appear with it in the grid.
The fill's got some sparkle to it, particularly in the longer answers:
• 1A. [Eucalyptus] is the GUM TREE, as in "Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree..." Not to be confused with the sweetgum tree.
• 30A. ALAN BALL is the [Oscar-winning "American Beauty" writer] who went on to create the show Six Feet Under.
• 67A. Hey, look, it's ONASSIS, [The "O" of Jackie O.], rather than crosswordese ARI.
• 23D. A small [Traveling bag] is a VALISE. This word has always amused me. "Set down your valise, dear, and have a seat on the divan." Does anyone call it a VALISE these days?
• 47D. V.P.'S are [#2's, for short]. Can we start calling #2 pencils "V.P.'s"? Who's with me?
If you didn't know that 68D: [Soul: Fr.] is AME, make a note of it. This is Franco-crosswordese and while it doesn't come up often, you'll probably see it again. I needed all the crossings for 55A: LAIRD, [Melvin of the Nixon cabinet]. And I was briefly thrown by the 4-letter Roman numeral, 3D: [The year 1450], or MCDL. We don't often see 4-letter Roman numerals without an I, do we?
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Initial Reaction: letters, not words"
The five theme entries change the first word of (semi-)familiar phrases into the single letters whose names sound the same:
• 17A. [Valentine sentiment to the 80-89% crowd?] is "B, MY LOVE" instead of "be my love." Does B MY LOVE make sense to you? It's eluding me. Is it "B, be my love" or "B, (you are) my love"? Is B the letter grade or a person who earns that grade?
• 26A. [Thankful thought toward a universal blood type?] is "O, WHAT YOU DO TO ME" (swapping O for oh). Wouldn't you be thanking O for what she/he/it does for you rather than to you?
• 32A. [Cloud shaped like a small Roman numeral?] is I IN THE SKY (swapping an I for an eye—wait, has that theme been done, or maybe "an eye for an I"?).
• 41A. [Tagline of a rap-oriented cologne slogan?] is "G, YOU SMELL GREAT." Urban Dictionary helps explain "G" if you don't grasp that part. I was hoping for an evocation of Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific shampoo from the '70s-'80s.
• 53A. [Hassle at the local community gym?] is a Y BOTHER ("Why bother?"). My favorite among the quintet of theme entries.
The biggest "WTF" clue was right up top at 1A: [Numerical classification of some World War II U-boats]. As luck would have it, 1A intersected the second biggest "WTF" clue, 5D: [Surname of four generations of French painters in the Louvre]. Did not know of the TYPE VII boats, nor the VERNET artistic dynasty. I could see 39D: VALJEAN/["Les Miserables" surname] meeting 52A: ABUJA/[Current capital of Nigeria] mucking things up for some folks. Did anyone else want 43D: [North Africans disputed in a "Seinfeld" Trivial Pursuit question] to be the MOOPS rather than the MOORS?
Updated Tuesday morning
Randolph Ross's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "On the Up and Up"—Janie's review
Synonyms for something or someone "on the up and up," include legit, honest, sincere. Today's puzzle easily qualifies—and is a great deal of fun as well. The word "UP" can be found embedded twice in each of Randy's theme phrases. There are five of them—and in the first two and the last two, there's an overlap factor of eight letters, which I do consider a BIG DEAL [Something worth making a fuss over]. The "UP"-camouflaging phrases are:
• 17A. PU-PU PLATTER [Appetizer assortment at a Chinese restaurant]. A tasty start to the proceedings—and also a little deceptive. Because of the phrase's initial "P," I first thought that all of the UPs were going to be reversed (cryptic-style, as if going ↑). This particular phrase supports that theory. But it didn't take me long to see that my hunch was wrong, wrong, wrong...
• 20A. SUPPORT GROUP [Alcoholics Anonymous, e.g.]. See what I mean? In this example and all the remaining ones, the UPs are not only separated out, but are clearly meant to be read from left to right.
• 35A. CUP OF SOUP [Lipton offering]. Or at 38%, more like Cup of Sodium...
• 55A. "SUPER TROUPER" [ABBA hit album and single of 1980]. Omg. That's almost 30 years ago! Um. Time flies when you're having fun? Even longer ago,
• 59A. "STUPID CUPID" [Connie Francis hit remade by Mandy Moore]. Here's Connie's version, 1959...
There was more in the puzzle that AMUSED [Entertained] me as well, and fave clue/fill pairs include:
• [They're set and broken]/RECORDS;
• [West of Nashville]/DOTTIE—so that's the country singer and not the direction. Now there's someone who made a lot of records (of the vinyl variety, that is);
• [Standing]/REPUTE (the noun and not the progressive tense verb form is what's required here);
• [Beat to the tape]/OUTRAN (because that gives me a good mental image)
• [Back for front?/IER → frontIER (as in "the wild West" [the region of the country and not Dottie...]); and
• [Great service]/ACE (tennis, anyone?). John McEnroe and [McEnroe rival] Bjorn BORG are both known to have put away their share of aces.
Also loved seeing the word NASCENT [Just starting to develop], which has great aesthetic appeal for me. EEL POT [Conger catcher]? Not so much. HONORER [The president at a medal ceremony, e.g.]? Not at all. Though I rather enjoyed UNFUNNY [Bad adjective for a comedian], because I'm still surprised to hear talk show hosts introduce "a very funny comedian." Who brings a comedian on national television and introduces him or her any other way? But one of these days......
Gary Whitehead's Los Angeles Times crossword
Spelling! Today's theme centers on a trio of homophones with different spellings that so often get mixed up by people. The homophones appear with introductory words that help clarify which is which, and this puzzle should be required reading for anyone who's had trouble with these words:
• 20A. REFINED PALATE is [Sophisticated taste, foodwise]. The palate that's the roof of your mouth is spelled this way. The word is from the Latin palatum.
• 36A. [Studio item with a thumb hole] is a PAINTER'S PALETTE in an artist's studio, not a film or TV studio as I'd first thought when I read the clue. The word's origin is French: a diminutive of the word pale, meaning "shovel."
• 47A. That rough wooden [Portable shipping platform] is a FREIGHT PALLET, also called a skid. The etymology partners up with that of PALETTE: "Middle English palet, tongue depressor, from Old French palete, small potter's shovel."
Just before doing this crossword, I'd just tweeted about another common spelling mix-up:
My favorite clue is the one for HARE: 49D: [Cocksure Aesopian racer]. Don't see "Aesopian" too often.
Highlights in the fill: 37D: EARL GREY, the [Tea named for William IV's prime minister], and 9D: TEXAS TEA, or [Oil, informally]. The "tea" in the EARLY GREY clue should've been changed to "brew" to avoid the duplication. Also terrific: DEAN'S LIST, or 35D: [Academic honor].
October 14, 2009
Thursday, 10/15/09
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].
September 19, 2009
Sunday, 9/20/09
PI 8:32
BG 8:10
NYT 7:26
LAT 6:22
CS 2:56
Hey, I'm closing in on 2,000 posts! This one is lucky #1,928.
My family spent the day in Evanston, shopping and walking and hanging out with friends. Would you believe we passed a store called Ort Resale? You don't see a ton of crosswordese in commercial use. Ollas "R" Us. Etuis, Etc. Oleo Olio Café.
Michael Ashley's New York Times crossword, "Closing Bell"
Hiding over at 43-Down is the NYSE, or New York Stock Exchange—a [Closing bell place: Abbr.]. Each of the seven longest answers has a "closing bell," or a DING tacked onto the end of a familiar phrase. My favorite of the theme entries is 88D: [Question from a campaign committee?], or "AIN'T WE GOT FUNDING?" Love it! Second favorite is the play on '60s TV bear Gentle Ben, which becomes GENTLE BENDING, or [Exercise for beginning yoga students]. In each theme answer, the +DING word is entirely unrelated to the original word, so you get a nice reorientation with each one.
It's late, so let me just round up a handful of favorite answers from the grid:
Were there a lot of people's names in this puzzle? I feel like they're jumping out at me now, but I do like names in a puzzle so I wasn't as conscious of them as I went through the grid as someone who loathes name-heavy crosswords would be.
Updated Sunday afternoon:
I was out all day and evening yesterday, and then this morning too. Am late! Will do quick blogging and outsource where possible.
Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer crossword, "School Days" (also the L.A. Calendar puzzle this week)
Cute theme, with assorted classroom-related puns. Nine theme entries occupy about 130 squares, which feels like a lot and may account for a few compromises in the fill (RESTOLE, BESTUD, and the I-think-it's-little-known LACOMBE, Lucien). Overall, it's par for the Merl course. For more, see PuzzleGirl's post at L.A. Crossword Confidential.
Bonnie Gentry and Vic Fleming's syndicated Los Angeles Times crossword, "Signs of Burnout"
Bonnie and Vic don't just co-construct the occasional crossword—they've also teamed up to edit the Random House Casual Crosswords series. Volume 7, the first under their leadership, just hit bookstores a few weeks ago. If you're fond of easy crosswords or need a gift for someone who does, check out Casual Crosswords.
So, Vic and Bonnie's L.A. Times puzzle is, like LATs of recent weeks, on the easy side. The theme is phrases with an embedded ASH joining two of the words in the phrase, which sounds like a really dry theme but the theme entries themselves have plenty of spark to them—in particular, TEXAS HOLD 'EM, HAVE A SHORT FUSE, BIG MOMMA'S HOUSE, MARIA SHRIVER, and HANG OUT A SHINGLE. Smooth fill overall. For more commentary on this crossword, I refer you to PuzzleGirl's post at our other blog.
Henry Hook's Boston Globe crossword, "Solvin' Time"
Happy (slightly belated) birthday to Henry Hook! (I didn't imagine that, right? Somebody commented on Friday that it was his birthday?)
The theme entries take phrases that end with an N sound and insert a schwa before the N to get an elided -in' verb ending. My favorite theme answer: John Wayne turns into JOHN WEIGHIN', or [Bathroom scale's purpose?].
A few oddball entries in the fill: DEPEW is a [Suburb of Buffalo] that I'd never heard of, UPDART ([Rise suddenly]) is unfamiliar, and I can't say I've thought about DEMIST ([Rid of condensation]) before. Favorite fill: CHIA PET ([The first one looked like a ram]); LA-Z-BOY ([Recliner name]); and ZILLION ([Ginormous amount]).
Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge"
Aw, come on! Is it just me, or has the Sunday Challenge been markedly easier in recent months than it used to be? And the Saturday L.A. Times puzzles have been eased up, plus the New York Sun ceased publication about a year ago. The universe of "themeless puzzles that put up a fight" seems to keep shrinking. If the themeless Sunday puzzle takes less time than the themed ones the rest of the week, why the heck is it still called "Sunday Challenge"? Just change the name to "Easy Themeless" and be done with it. Truth in advertising!
All righty, then. What's in this crossword? Two triple stacks of 15s with a staggered stack of 11s in the middle. Mostly solid stuff, not a load of sparkle. I like the middle 11s best.
July 24, 2009
Saturday, 7/25
NYT 5:59
Newsday 5:23
LAT 4:00—fantastic themeless, don't miss it (Across Lite at Cruciverb.com, applet at latimes.com)
CS 7:16 (J—paper)
Guess what? When there's an outdated crossword clue about nurses, they notice. And they don't like it. Must reading for crossword constructors and editors.
Edited to add: Writer Dean Olsher (his book, From Square One, is in bookstores now) will be blogging the Sunday puzzles for us.
Vic Fleming's New York Times crossword
Vic's puzzle is anchored by a 15-letter answer running down the middle and criss-crossed by three more 15s as well as two 11s and four 10s. It's an unusual grid layout. The fill isn't very Scrabbly, perhaps because of the constraints of this layout. Overall, the cluing was more lively than the fill, I thought. Highlights:
What I don't quite get or didn't much care for:
Updated Saturday morning:
Randall J. Hartman's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Ow, Ow—That Hurts!"—Janie's review
Nuthin' like a fine array of percussive sounds to generate a headache, is there? BANG! BOOM! KNOCK!—and what's the upshot? "Ow!" Double the cacophony and "Ow, ow!" Randy plays with these sounds in today's puzzle, but I don't imagine you'll need to take two aspirin once you've solved it. Additionally, he's given us three grid-spanning theme fills of the very fresh variety: the first two appear to be major-publication firsts, the third a CS debut:
In the STAT department, I loved seeing today's one J, two Vs, three Zs and six Ks. Back to comedy... I'm reminded that in Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys, funny-man Willy Clark ZINGS:"Fifty-seven years in this business, you learn a few things. You know what words are funny and which words are not funny. Alka Seltzer is funny. You say "Alka Seltzer" you get a laugh . . . Words with "k" in them are funny. Casey Stengel, that's a funny name. Robert Taylor is not funny. Cupcake is funny. Tomato is not funny. Cookie is funny. Cucumber is funny. Car keys. Cleveland . . . Cleveland is funny. Maryland is not funny. Then, there's chicken. Chicken is funny. Pickle is funny."
We get two references today to the changes we've seen in automobile manufacture over the years: OLDS [Automaker until 2004] and NASH [Bygone auto]. The last of these rolled off the Kenosha, WI line in 1969. [It's a gas] is neither a way of describing a particularly funny experience nor something along the lines of neon or nitrous oxide. No, ARCO is a brand of gasoline to put into your auto of choice. Glad it's summer in the Northern Hemisphere, where there's little chance that a leisurely Sunday spin will lead to an encounter with BLACK ICE [Winter driving hazard].
The [First name in mausoleums] is TAJ and two crossword-friendly last names (because of their constructor-friendly vowel sequence] are CAAN and KAEL. (And funny, too!) There's some fine slang in the fill GONZO, here clued as [Eccentric] (but which I think of more often as meaning extreme as in the gonzo journalism of Hunter S. Thompson); and SHAG, here clued as [Catch fungoes]. "Fungoes" (great word in itself!) are fly balls "hit for fielding practice by a player who tosses the ball up and hits it on its way down with a long, thin, light bat," so in sports jargon, SHAG=catch. In BritSpeak, SHAG=have sex with.
Yesterday, BLONDIE appeared in the puzzle as a [Chic Young creation]. Today, the wife of her husband Dagwood's boss (Mr. Withers) joins the party. Hello, CORA. You're in excellent company with RAVI [Sitarist Shankar] OLEG and IVAN. Glad to see this last one clued in reference to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's ["One Day in the Life of ___ Denisovich"]. It woulda been really easy to clue him as [Tennis great Lendl], partnering him with ILIE [Tennis bad boy Nastase].
Brad Wilber's Los Angeles Times crossword
This one's been short-listed for the annual Oryx honors for the awards panel's favorite themeless crossword. It's got an abundance of fresh fill that really crackles with liveliness, plus Scrabbly letters up the wazoo. Holy frijoles, did I ever like this puzzle. Here's what I like best in a themeless puzzle:
The edges of Brad's crossword feature a dozen long answers, stacked three deep in each corner. There are all sorts of nutty entries I've never seen in a crossword before. And once I got MALT LIQUOR at 1-Across (clued with a brand of malt liquor, Colt 45, e.g.), I began to suspect there'd be all sorts of Scrabbly goodness lurking throughout.
Favorite answers and clues: I'll pick and choose and leave out some of my favorites, because dangit, there are just too many today.
Overall, this crossword really wasn't too tough, not as themeless Saturday puzzles go. There were a couple short answers that kept me waiting for crossings, though. There's 2D: Hypothetical particle (AXION), which I've never heard of. (Physics is not my forte.) And the abbreviation DAU. was kinda painful; it's clued as 31A: Abbr. in a genealogy volume, so I surmise that it's short for "daughter." You really have to expect to see some things you simply have no way of knowing in a Saturday puzzle, so you really can't call foul on these. And their crossings were rock-solid—it's not as if we had to guess a letter in DAU that crossed an Armenian river, you know? This puzzle is eminently fair in addition to being a sparkly marvel of yumminess.
(Writeup adapted from my post at L.A. Crossword Confidential.)
Adam Cohen's Newsday "Saturday Stumper"
(PDF solution here.)
I think Adam Cohen's new to Stumper constructing, though his work has been published in the NYT every day from Monday through Saturday. This Stumper was decidedly non-stumpogenic as Stumpers go—I finished in a Friday to easy Saturday NYT amount of time. He's a promising addition to the Saturday Newsday crew.
Things that made me go "ooh":
Things that made me go "huh?" or "meh":
January 31, 2009
Sunday, 2/1
NYT 10:56
LAT 8:48
PI (untimed, but easyish)
NYT diagramless (untimed, but easier than many diagramlesses)
BG 5:55
CS 3:59
Don't miss the post just before this one—the Oryx Awards honoring the best achievements in the cruciverbal arts for 2008.
It appears that a beer with dinner and the Sunday New York Times crossword are not an optimal combination...though I didn't muck things up with any typos, so it wasn't so terrible. (Should've gone with a margarita.) "Grid-Irony" is the joint creation of Vic Fleming and Matt Ginsberg, and there are 10 other theme entries that relate to 81-Across, SUPER BOWL SUNDAY. Those 10 phrases are football terms, but they're all clued as if they've got nothing to do with the game:
I'm fond of both Vic and Matt, but guys, this football theme does nothing for me. I'm sure many others are enchanted by it. Let's see...what else is in this puzzle?
Updated:
This week's syndicated Sunday Los Angeles Times crossword is Dan Naddor's "Buried Treasure." Each theme entry is a made-up phrase concocted in order to bury a gem in its midst:
I like the find-the-hidden-gems game here. Anyone else misread [N'awlins sub] as [N'awlins suburb]? Boy, that made PO' BOY hard to dredge out. I thought [Babe in the woods] was skewing figurative and not literal—that one's a BEAR CUB. I don't know that I'd call NEOCONS [Political interventionists]—that clue kept me wondering for a while. Strangest-looking word in the grid: BINAL, or [Twofold].
Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer crossword, "Study Group," reimagines the meaning of various "study of ___" words, to humorous effect:
Favorite clue: [What Pop has that the Pope doesn't] for a SHORT O sound.
Paula Gamache constructed this weekend's Second Sunday NYT puzzle, a diagramless crossword. The theme entries take five phrases that end with a plural S and insert an IE before the S, thereby altering the meaning:
It's unusual for me to have no idea where 40% of the theme entries came from, at least if it's not a sports-themed crossword.
Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon's online-in-Across-Lite Boston Globe crossword, "Ready for '09?," ushered in the new year with 10 theme entries (9 to 11 letters apiece) that end in IX, the Roman numeral equivalent of '09. I didn't know that SPONDULIX was slang for [Bread, moola, clams], and money, but the crossings in this entire crossword had easy clues. The theme entries were clued straightforwardly, which also eased things up a bit. Good gravy! I rarely crack the 6-minute mark in a Sunday-sized puzzle. (There are some weekly Sunday puzzles, like Frank Longo's Premier King syndicated puzzle, Sylvia Bursztyn's LA Times magazine puzzle, and the Sunday Newsday crossword, that are usually about this easy—but I'm not in the market for more easy puzzles. I hanker for more tough puzzles.) Having heard of activist Dorothea Dix, [1930s advice columnist] DOROTHY DIX gave me pause.
Will Johnston's themeless CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge" includes a lattice of eight 15-letter answers, four Across and four Down:
Of the 72 answers in this grid, 44 are 3- and 4-letter words, many of them lacking that je ne sais quoi that produces crossword joy. NORN (that's a [Norse goddess]) and SMEE, OOO and LTRS, REE ([3M's mancala game "Oh-Wah-___"]) and EOE, NEN and EIKS. I do lean towards themelesses with juicy 8- to 11-letter answers rather than marquee 15's or a slew of 7's.
December 02, 2008
Wednesday, 12/3
Onion 5:30
Tausig 4:02
LAT 3:50
Sun 3:44
NYT 3:23
CS 3:09
(updated at 9:20 Wednesday morning)
I enjoyed both the Sun and NYT crosswords I just solved. Michael Blake's New York Times puzzle has a FOUR-WAY STOP tying together the other four theme entries, in each of which an initial S becomes a P (an S-to-P change, four ways):
In the fill, there are plenty of names. COUNT BASIE, the ["Jumpin' at the Woodside" composer/bandleader], is the showiest, but he's keeping company with Pia ZADORA (since when is Pia in the clue and ZADORA in the grid?), the late YMA Sumac, Muhammad ALI, KRIS Kringle, Tiny TIM, RICKI Lake, Francis LAI, IRMA Rombauer, URIAH Heep, ANG Lee, DARYL [Hall of fame] (great clue!), [Winner of 2008] Barack OBAMA, ELSIE the [Borden cow], and ERIK, the [Edgar-winning writer Larson] (he wrote The Devil in the White City). TOM'S is clued as [___ of Maine toothpaste], a natural brand (not to be confused with Tom of Finland beefcake photography). Carrot Top is a person, while CARROT CAKE [often has cream cheese frosting]. [Floride, e.g.] looks like a misspelled word from chemistry, but it's un ETAT, the state of Florida in French. The [2006 Nintendo debut] is the WII game console.
Vic Fleming's Sun crossword, "Breaking the Fourth Wall," isn't about TV characters talking straight to the camera—it's about crossword answers breaking through that 15x15 wall that usually pens them in. Three answers go one square too far beyond each wall (the long one in the center breaks two walls):
Definitely a cool gimmick, and not such a hard one to figure out if you've seen other crosswords that play with the format in similar ways.
I don't think the clue for ANEMIA is on target. It says [What a deficiency of folic acid causes]. What's commonly called anemia is a hemoglobin deficiency. (Remember Evonne Goolagong and her '70s vitamin commercials with talk of "iron-poor blood" in an Australian accent?) Folate deficiency can cause, Wikipedia tells me, macrocytic/megaloblastic anemia, and that is treated with tons of vitamin B-12 and folic acid rather than with iron. Is there a doctor in the house? Does the clue work for you?
The Sun puzzle's fill is pretty Scrabbly, with a HAJJ and a QUIZ, EXEMPT and a TV SET, UNTUCKED and a PB AND J sandwich.
The Onion A.V. Club crossword by Byron Walden has a whimsical political theme. The theme answers in this 16x15 extra-wide puzzle occupy pairs of 8's, 9's, and 16's, and they spell out assorted "White House items bequeathed from 43 (Bush) to 44 (Obama):
Other presidential content: [W., e.g.] is an INITIAL. [Like 43 but not 44] clues ODD (as in odd numbers, not odd men). Campaign SIGNS are [Yard objects, at election time].
Favorite clues: [Defense establishment?] is an ALIBI. Your [Duff] is your REAR, while Hilary [Duff rival, once] was Lindsay LOHAN. GIRD is clued [You can do this to your loins]. [You can believe it's not butter] clues OLEO; damn straight.
Oniony stuff: A [Cougar, perhaps] may be a MILF. Your BFF, or best friend forever, is a [Chum, in modern shorthand]. ["Keep it in your ___"] clues PANTS. [Dick caught while urinating outdoors] is ANDY Dick. [Vomits] is used to clue SPEWS.
Tough stuff: [Rover's irritant] is a FLEABITE. [Dharma teacher] is a LAMA. The [Absurdist genre associated with Jasper Johns] is NEO-DADA. TOP UP means to [Fill to the brim, in a pub], and is also the phrase my Volkswagen uses when I'm low on wiper fluid: "Top up wash fluid," it says. ACCUTANE is the [Brand name for the acne drug isotretinoin].
The fill's got six chunky zones of themeless-style white space, lots of Waldenesque long answers interlocking.
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader puzzle, "Bear With Me," echoes Tuesday business headlines with 58-Across. DOW DROPS answers the clue [All-too-frequent headline these days, and the inspiration for this puzzle]. Each of the other four theme entries drops a DOW from a familiar phrase:
My favorite answers: BRAND-NEW, "NO CAN DO," DAWDLE, Judge WAPNER, DONE FOR, and GARBANZO beans. And look! It's [Tennis star Goolagong], or EVONNE. I hadn't seen this puzzle yet when I mentioned her earlier in this post. Zestiest clues: ["The Dead ___ Scrolls: The Lost Teachings of Hip-Hop"] is missing EMCEE. I'd never heard of the Saul Williams book of poetry before, but the title is great. IRONIC is clued as [Like none of the scenarios in a certain Alanis Morissette hit]; the song is called "Ironic." [Israeli coinage] is SHEKELS, actual coins, and not coined words.
Updated:
Dan Naddor's LA Times crossword describes things by where they fall in a list of similar entities:
I don't recall seeing a theme like this before. In the fill, ASIAN is clued as [Afghani, for one]. "Afghan" is the predominant word used to refer to a person from Afghanistan, and [Afghan, for one] would have been a much trickier clue—some solvers would have thought of blankets and Afghan hounds rather than people. (Missed opportunity in cluing mayhem.)
Ray Hamel calls his CrosSynergy puzzle "Fodder Time" because each theme entry ends with some farm animal fodder. The first two are verb phrases and the second pair are nouns:
Have you seen a crossword answer that's got six vowels and no consonants before? ["Absolutely, monsieur!"] clues OUI, OUI.
September 24, 2008
Thursday, 9/25
NYS 5:19
NYT 4:33
LAT 4:27
CS 2:47
(updated at 9:30 a.m. Thursday)
Vic Fleming's New York Times crossword contains eight theme entries, all with the same clue, [Draws]. The theme answers are short, but they criss-cross in pairs in all four quadrants.
Wow, I drew a blank on the [Tony player on "NYPD Blue"], and all I could think of was Jimmy Smits and his Bobby Simone character. Eventually ESAI Morales percolated up to the surface. Knowing that there's a Clearwater, Florida, I almost put FLA for [Home of the Clearwater Mtns.], which of course are not in the very flat Sunshine State—they're in IDA., or Idaho. I don't quite feel that a HEEL is a [Sole support]; doesn't a shoe's heel support, well, the heel? I had zero idea who the [Female companion in "Doctor Who"] was—LEELA is also the name of one of the main character's in Futurama. [Board with a couple seats] isn't a corporate board—it's a SEESAW. Although any investment bank's board probably feels like a seesaw right about now—or maybe a precipitously steep corkscrew slide. Favorite answer, on account of its sheer weirdness: SPURGE, or [Poinsettia's family].
The "Themeless Thursday" puzzle in the New York Sun is by Jeffrey Harris. Medium difficulty as these things go, no? Favorite answers and clues:
Updated:
Scott Atkinson's LA Times crossword walks us through the dramatic solving process of an overconfident crossword solver:
In defense of crosswords, I must point out that the puzzles I blog about will almost never fall in the category of "stupid puzzle." There are crappy puzzles out there with mistakes, terrible fill, or bad clues that will irk even the aptest solver, but they're not the ones I blog about. If solvers find themselves grumbling, "Stupid puzzle," they're usually just mad that their skills weren't up to the challenge. But those skills are definitely amenable to improvement. (By reading my book, following the blogs, looking up unfamiliar answers and clues, and making a point of remembering those short words that are so crossword-friendly.)
In the fill, I got slowed down by [Catalogued compositions]. The word opus was already in the OCTETS clue, [Mendelssohn's Opus 20 and others], so it couldn't be OPUSES...except that it was. Having done a quick test-solve/edit of PhillySolver's puzzle that's posted at the Fiend forum, I learned that I wasn't at all attuned to catching that kind of duplication between clue and fill words. D'oh!
Patrick Blindauer's CrosSynergy crossword, "Splitting Airs," hides the word SONG (67-Across) inside each of the four otherwise disparate theme entries:
Favorite fill and clues:
