NYT 3:41
LAT 2:58
Tausig untimed
CS untimed
Patrick Blindauer's New York Times crossword
I didn't read the Notepad entry for this puzzle, and it's just as well or I would have been sidetracked from the task of answering the clues. I finished the puzzle, then read this: "When this puzzle is completed, one letter of the alphabet will appear 22 times. Shade in its square everywhere it appears. The result will be an image suggested by 36-Across." 36A is INVISIBLE MAN, so there's a hidden drawing somewhere...and look, his torso is at 25D: SSSSSSS, the [1973 horror flick about a doctor who turns his assistant into a cobra]. I should've known SSSSSSS was there for a grander purpose! This now-visible man seems to have a freakishly long torse relative to his limbs. Poor guy. Must be impossible to find jackets that fit.
I'm tired and distracted, so let me resort to a scarcely annotated list:
• 16A. [Canine care grp.?] is ADA, canines being teeth and the ADA being the American Dental Association. I used to freelance for them, you know.
• 18A. ROSES ARE RED is the [Start of a lover's quatrain]. ...Irises are purple. If you're ill-bred, you call it a nurple. Is that how it goes? Looks like a theme entry because it's long, but no. All that's thematic are those symmetrical-in-the-grid Ss.
• 33A. Why isn't this clue [___ wazoo]? UP THE [___ ante] is boring.
• 34A. OSTIA, [Port of ancient Rome], crosswordese, an S where Patrick needed one for the drawing.
• 55A. MONKEES was the [#1 album for 13 weeks in 1966-67, with "The"]. I had BEATLES. Seriously.
• 60A. [Eliminates undesirable parts]...hmm...CIRCUMCISES fits. So does CLEANS HOUSE. "Parts" is a dangerous word.
• 64A. Are you kidding me? [Panties, old-style] were called STEP-INS? Never heard that term before. The Ss are the man's feet.
• 65A. LAE is the [Pacific port where Amelia Earhart was last seen]. I hear Amelia is a boring movie. LAE I know from Kevin Der's record-breaking grid, where it was perhaps the ugliest answer.
• 2D. Robert Randolph and the Family Band miss out here. RANDOLPH is clued as [Air Force base near San Antonio].
• 6D. [19th-century James] is vague. First name? No, last. JESSE James. He should've known better than to rob the Northfield, Minnesota, bank.
• 8D. [Filly] clues LASS. Gag me. "Filly"?
• 21D. RISHI is a [Hindu sage], and the S is the man's hand.
• 38D. ENATE means [Maternally related]. Hoary crosswordese.
• 45D. Showtime at the APOLLO! [New York theater on the National Register of Historic Places, with "the"].
• 51D. MENSA, [Indicator of brightness]. Is there a reason it's not clued [Indicator of social skills]? I don't get Mensa. I liked the newsletter when my mom was a member for a few years in the '70s, but since then? Nah.
Okay, so I lied. That was more than scarce annotation.
Good night!
Updated Thursday morning:
Raymond Hamel's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "For Your Protection"—Janie's review
For a puzzle that yields theme-fill of a highly industrial nature, this puppy sure has a lot to recommend it. Each of the five theme-phrases is clued identically: [It's worn for your protection]. The five theme-answers are:
•4D. WELDER'S MASK
•18A. HAZMAT SUIT
•25D. KNEE PAD
•27D. CRASH HELMET
•60A. FLAK JACKET
But look how nice and scrabbly the fill is. And there's a lovely assonance thing going when you say the words aloud: mask, hazmat, pad, crash, flak jacket. You can also hear it as well in such non-theme fill as CACKLE [Witch's outburst], AT LAW [Words on a shingle] and the cleverly clued CLARA [Bow on the screen] (so that's a long "o" in "Bow").
I think this may be the first time we've seen E-BOOK clued as a [Kindle download] in a CS puzzle. And it looks like this is the first time ROZ has been clued as [Cartoonist Chast] here. Love Roz Chast's observations on the details of everyday life.
Also love such lively fill as SCHNOZ (with it's lively [Honker] clue), which shares that "Z" with TABRIZ [City in Iran]. Tabriz is Iran's fourth largest city, and Iran sits right across the Persian Gulf from SAUDI Arabia (though today Saudi comes to us by way of the clue [Arabian leader]). Lotta desert land in that part of the world, so thank goodness for the OASES [Places for camels to drink].
Then there's VERDANT [Green] (to keep things fresh) and POOL TOY [Inflatable raft, say] (though I'm not sure a floating raft qualifies as a toy...). When you (or your raft) are [Drifting on the briny], you're ASEA, where "AVAST!" is a [Gob's stopper]. In addition to those two clues, I enjoyed [Not dis] for DAT, [Do a do] for PERM and [All you need, according to the Beatles] for LOVE. (And remember, they're the ones who declared "money can't buy me love!" For guys who sang that they "don't care too much for money," they sure managed to amass quite a bit of it. Ah, well, it was a dirty job and somebody had to do it...)
Xan Vongsathorn's Los Angeles Times crossword
Xan Vongsathorn's debut puzzle was in the New York Times, while his second puzzle (that I know of) comes to us from the West Coast. The theme hovers around four [Non-speaking line?]s, tied together by SILENCE IS GOLDEN, the [Apt adage for this puzzle]. The other four phrases are MY LIPS ARE SEALED, I'M ALL EARS, WORDS ESCAPE ME, and NO COMMENT. Now, they don't all mean exactly the same thing—I won't blab, I'm listening, I can't describe it, I refuse to answer—but they loosely fall under the SILENCE IS GOLDEN rubric. You'll note that although there's a MY, I'M, and ME, there are no repeated words in the theme answers.
TATTLE, or 21A: [Spill the beans], is practically the opposite of MY LIPS ARE SEALED. Any other talking answers in the fill? MEOW is a [Cat call], not a human word. "DUH" and "I'M GONE" are spoken language for people. And OBAMA is clued as [President with a Grammy], for his Spoken Word Book.
Ice cream! [Country where Haagen-Dazs H.Q. is] is, of course, the USA.
I guess we're still in the holding pattern waiting for Thursday L.A. Times puzzles to inch up in difficulty. Or maybe Thursdays will remain Tuesdays and only Friday and Saturday will be tougher? I'm not sure. I'm not finding much to talk about in this puzzle. Well, you know what they say—silence is golden.
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "Silent Treatment"
Ben puts a different spin on silence, adding a silent letter to each of five phrases to change the meaning but not the pronunciation:
• 17A. [Totally sweet depth-checking gadget?] is a SUGAR PLUMB. Have any of you ever had a sugar plum? I have not.
• 26A. [Architectural piece in "Where the Wild Things Are"?] clues MONSTER JAMB. What is Monster Jam, you may wonder. Monster truck derbies. I always call such events "Truckasaurus" after The Simpsons.
• 39A. Freestyle rap yields FREESTYLE WRAP, or [Improvise with some ribbons and bows?].
• 52A. [Olfactory reward for leading a good life?] is HEAVEN SCENT.
• 62A. A latex dental dam becomes DENTAL DAMN, or [The curse of the orthodontist?].
Miscellaneous fill and clues:
• AREPAS are [Some Spanish small-plate items]. I've never had arepas, but Chowhound knows a few places I might try in Chicago. More South American than Spanish, apparently.
• You gotta know your political figures to nail all of Ben Tausig's puzzles. Don NICKLES of Oklahoma was the [Senate Majority Whip before Reid] and after Lott. How would he fare in a battle with Don Rickles?
• [Soul backing band named for their singer] is the JBS, after James Brown. I did not know this one.
• [Bygone TV award] is the CABLE ACE Award. Didn't people joke about those during the Emmys this fall?
• [Macedonian city where Mother Teresa was born] is SKOPJE, Macedonia's capital. It wasn't called Macedonia when she was born. Ben's original clue, [Mother Teresa's birthplace, today] was impossible for me, so if you got this one, you can thank me. I was guessing KOSOVO based on the old clue. Wikipedia tells me that when she was born, it was called Üsküb, Ottoman Empire. Her family was Albanian, and modern-day Albania and Macedonia share a border.
• [Discount travel agency for students] is called STA. I don't think this existed when I was a student.
• [Tries to look bigger than one is, in a way] clues BSS, short for "bullshits."
• [Due times cinquanta] is CENTI. I gather cinquanta is Italian for 50?
November 04, 2009
Thursday, 11/5/09
May 14, 2009
Friday, 5/15
CHE 5:10
BEQ 4:51
NYT 4:04
LAT 3:40
CS 10:34 (J—paper)
WSJ 8:34
Xan Vongsathorn's New York Times crossword
You don't see a lot of constructors whose names would look terrific in the grid, but newcomer Xan Vongsathorn has that unusual initial X. His debut features a mini-theme:
I believe puzzles with a mini-theme are still termed "themeless" but perhaps they should be called "mini-themed" instead. The rest of the puzzle takes the standard themeless form, with four corners and a middle with lots of white space, some interesting fill, and a smidgen of iffiness. Overall, it felt easier than the usual Friday puzzle—the clock was at 3:59 when I went to click the "Done" button, and I don't break 4:00 on Fridays too often. The highlights as I see 'em, mingled with the tough stuff and the iffies:
For more on the genesis of this puzzle, see Jim Horne's interview with Vongsathorn at the Wordplay blog.
Updated Friday morning:
Randolph Ross's CrosSynergy puzzle, "School Supplies"—Janie's review
Remember the board game "Go to the Head of the Class"? With my solving time today, clearly that's not where I'm headed, but as the school year winds down, this puzzle does leave me well-equipped for (remedial...) classwork. What's in my backpack? Randolph Ross has made sure I've got these five items:
And for the record, all but the last are making their first appearance in major puzzledom. The last is, though, making its CS debut. That's four out of five brand-newbies and that makes for some mighty fresh theme fill.
Why was I so draggy in solving this? For starters, apparently I was over-thinking 1A's [Make up (for)] and didn't enter ATONE until very late in the game. I saw the -AGE of 1D and decided that with the clue [Soothe], the fill had to be MASSAGE... So the entire NW was pretty much bollixed up, TOPPLING last. (TOPPLING, btw, along with RENOVATE and SAME DAY in the NE corner, are all making their first CS appearances.) YIKES for YIPES didn't help much either... Had never heard of coach John Wooden (at 57D) and had to give the area around it some thought, but when I see a 4-letter [Sch.] ending in "A," dollars to donuts it's gonna be UCLA, and that was exactly the case today.
Neat grid-bits include the way the [Justice Dept.'s crack team?] DEA sits atop the PERP or [Cop's collar]. (Those are two terrific clues, too.) Then there's the crossing of LOCA with LOCAL; and the REDHEADS that grace the the grid at 66A and 67A. I especially like the three sixes that run down in the NE corner: IN DEEP, CHERIE and SLAP ON. That feels like an especially lively corner to me.
A few more standout clues: [Splash and dash] for ECLAT, [Ripple tippler] for WINO, [Babe from Hollywood, e.g.] for PIG, [Symbolic kisses] for XES, and [Words set in stones] for EPITAPHS.
I was a bit let down by seeing both WASHER and AWASH in the same puzzle, since A-TEST or APISH could have replaced the latter without wildly skewing the level of the puzzle. I'm sure there's a reason why the duplication occurred (and I suspect it was a deliberate choice), but I'm not sure that it'll ever be shared. (RR: this is your cue to chime in! )
Hmmm. Any references to my hometown today? Well, whaddaya know: birthplace of Parker POSEY? Yup. The "Big 'B'" it is!
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, the themeless "Word Processing"
Brendan confuses some solvers by giving a variety of titles to his themeless puzzles. How about changing the subtitle to "a themeless crossword," Brendan? This particular puzzle's got 68 words, (1) some terrific fill, (2) some weird stuff (PEASECOD is a [Type of pod]? I have no idea what this means), (3) some traps, and (4) some fresh clues.
Example of category 4 ALGER strays from Alger Hiss and Horatio Alger and is instead clued as [Fanny ___ (purported first wife for Mormonism founder Joseph Smith, Jr.]. AWW can mean ["Is that you as a baby?"]. LEAR is clued as an [Aribert Reimann opera], which I've no familiarity with (not the opera, not the composer—but I can guess at the story line).
I fell into one category 3 trap: a 7-letter [Lager alternative] starting with P? Must be PILSNER. Nope, it's a PALE ALE. Which Brendan was just expressing his fondness for in a previous post, so I should have known. If you're just doing the BEQ puzzles but not reading his blog, you're missing some cues that can help you with his puzzles.
More oddball category 2 answers: Let's see...hmm, NOTER is mildly awkward. That's an [Observer]. That's about it other than that PEASECOD thing. There's also OTARU, the [Hokkaido port], but I've seen that one enough by now that it's become a gimme. SMALL AD is a little clunky, and the [Tiny plug] clue didn't make it go in any more easily. Wait, there's also the unusual [Philosopher Chu ___] HSI, which seldom appears in crosswords.
And saving the best for last, the goodies in category 1: the AIDS QUILT at the bottom was Brendan's seed entry, and who deliberately puts a Q and U in the bottom row? That's where words like SETTEES and REASSESSED normally live. SPINAL TAP and LISA LISA provide the musical vibe. Have some CHIANTI ([It comes in a straw basket]) with your PAD THAI. Peek out the FRENCH DOORS and get serenaded by a cheeseball whose best line begins, "ROSES ARE RED."
The [Ancient Italian city founded by Ascanius], ALBALONGA, makes me wonder if particularly nerdy fans of Jessica Alba say "Alba longa, vita brevis."
Doug Peterson's L.A. Times crossword
Doug's theme tacks on a COM at the beginning of familiar phrases:
The theme entries are bracketed together in pairs by the longer Down fill—ATOMIC AGE ([Era that began with a blast?]) and a COAL MINE ([Montana resource site] is a weird clue, as the coal mines I've heard of are everywhere but Montana) on one side, and COLERIDGE (["Kubla Khan" poet]) with MS. PACMAN on the other. There are 6's and 7's binding those theme entries together, too. [Either of two notable jumpers] is Evel KNIEVEL or his son, for example, and up top there's a HOT TUB rhyming (halfway) with THE HUB.
For more on this puzzle, see Rex's post at L.A. Crossword Confidential. The blog's especially useful for newer solvers, as we strive to be educational. For example, here's an informative tidbit from Rex: 50D: "Thin Ice" star, 1937 (Henie) - the "ice" part was the giveaway. HENIE is 60% vowels and thus crossword gold. He started doing crosswords much more recently than I did, so he's more attuned to such crosswordese. I've been seeing the HENIE/ice skating combo for 30 years, so sometimes I forget that such things aren't necessarily familiar to people who haven't been doing crosswords long and aren't old enough to have seen Sonja Henie movies. (She had three Olympic gold medals, too.)
Todd McClary's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "I After E Except After C"
Todd upends the spelling mnemonic "I before E except after C" by gathering together four two-word phrases in which both words run contrary to the rule:
I'm guessing the constructor and editor Patrick Berry noodled around with a lot of possibilities for this theme. Who knew you could find a foursome of phrases that fit this theme and were of proper lengths for a symmetrical crossword? I haven't got all that much to say about the puzzle other than that I love this theme. It combines trivia ("Name an '80s teen comedy that violates the 'I before E except after C' rule twice") with enjoying the craziness of the English language. You'll note that the two vowel digrams can be pronounced in a multitude of ways. EI is a schwa, a long A, sort of an E sound before an R (sorry, I don't know the linguist lingo), and a long I. IE is a long E, schwa, long I, and long E/short E combo. It's a wonder anyone's a good speller, I tell you.
Peter Gordon's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Who Let the Dog Out?"
Wow, I haven't seen a 21x21 puzzle by Peter Gordon since I did his book of the NYT puzzles he constructed from 1993 to 2003. (NYT crossword subscribers can get all those puzzles for free via the NYT but it's nice to have them in book form, especially when the book's from Sterling.)
It felt like it took forever to grasp the theme, but the light dawned when I reached my fourth theme entry—the OBAMA (118A) family's pet dog BO has been "let out" from each theme answer. Here's where the BO's were extracted: 25A boDICE RIPPER; 43A PRO boWLERS' TOUR; 67A boUGHS OF HOLLY; 87A BoXER REBELLION; 109A MADAME BoVARY; 5D PICAbo STREET; 50D BABY boOM; 60D CROSSboW; 74D COLORING boOK. I found there were plenty of "aha" moments to be had among these nine theme entries. Smooth, lively fill—you've got your BRONX ZOO and your arts-and-craftsy GLUE GUNS, SET A DATE, and so on. Rock-solid clues to boot.
