(I'm borrowing this from a comment I wrote at the Rex Parker blog.)
Some of my favorite themeless constructors have a certain flavor to their work, hallmarks that they use more often than not.
Karen Tracey likes Scrabbly letters and insane-named geographic entities—an exotic curry, perhaps.
Byron Walden likes to build a puzzle around one or two entries with a showy batch of letters in them, and frosts them all with devious clues—imported bittersweet chocolate with nuts, a smoky whiskey.
Harvey Estes tends toward fill that feels light and droll (even in his cryptics in Games), with a smattering of churchy words—a rich soufflé, not something to rush through like a dish of pudding.
Constructors like Bob Klahn and Sherry Blackard seem to go more for straight-up wicked difficulty, like Scotch bonnet peppers. Patrick Berry, perhaps a slightly milder hot pepper.
What flavors do your favorite constructors' styles embody? (And no fair picking someone who bores you and likening their work to Wonder Bread.)
December 09, 2006
Mmm, taste the cruciverbal goodness!
December 08, 2006
Saturday, 12/9
NYT 5:56
Newsday 4:16
LAT 4:12
CS 3:18
(post updated at 9:00 a.m. Saturday)
I bided my time during Ben’s two hours of after-school activities by solving about 15 themeless crosswords. Just 3 1/2 months to Stamford! Training continues apace. And I’ve already bought my plane tickets. Nancy Shack tipped me off to a great airfare ($120 round-trip!) so I couldn’t resist. Tyler Hinman’s booked on the same flight as Nancy and me…so it occurs to me that Ellen Ripstein’s whole “If somebody’s plane couldn’t make it, I wouldn’t be too upset” thing, well, what if somebody’s plane made it, but one passenger wasn’t allowed to board? Ah, but that’s not nice. Plus, Tyler and I have discussed the idea of a Tipsy Tournament—tackling crosswords under the influence after the wine reception on Friday evening. Who’s in?
Moving right along…Ah, delicious! Another themeless puzzle in which the grid’s got two quadrants with only a single word connecting them to the rest of the grid. I like the extra challenge that structure imposes. This time, the constructor is Robert H. Wolfe, and he’s packed this 58-worder with plenty of “Huh?” stuff (as we expect on a Saturday). To wit: Things I didn’t know, but which make sense after they’re pieced together. The [Mathematical grouping] COSET and light-emanating RADIANTS; the CYCLECAR of a century ago; and the British military’s Taps, LAST POST, and [Tax, in Tottenham] for CESS. Unfamiliar names, such as baseball Hall-of-Famer Joe CRONIN and LEONID Andreyev, a Russian writer [famous for his horrific tales]. Now, one thing I did know was [Auriga's brightest star], CAPELLA, but only because it killed me eight weeks ago in a Byron Walden puzzle. Clues I liked include [It can be carved out] for CAREER, [Write seperately, say] for MISSPELL, [Shade provider] for COLORANT, and [Note] for EMINENCE (as in "person of note"). On the minus side, there are a few of those words that end with -ER or start with RE-, but hell, it's a gnarly 58-worder, so who cares?
Updated:
The day's other themeless puzzles, by Matt Skozcen in the LA Times and Daniel Stark with the Newsday Saturday Stumper, were considerably easier. I tend to prefer those with stacks of 9-, 10-, or 11-letter entries to those with a slew of interlocking 7's. Why? Because the longer an entry is, the more likely it is to be seasoned with the zesty herbs and spices that are good multi-word phrases. The Skoczen puzzle, for example, has CHA CHA CHA, LADIES' MAN, ODD MAN OUT (and no, honestly, I don't care that MAN's in there twice, and didn't notice it while solving—so it would appear that both Will Shortz and Rich Norris are OK with good puzzles containing a little duplication [solvers take note]), AMOS 'N' ANDY, SEA OF AZOV (I do like me some geography), MOHS SCALE. The Saturday Stumper, on the other hand, has just a handful of phrases amid a slew of 7-letter words. Another difference between Newsday and the other newspaper puzzles I solve are that Newsday clues tend to be much shorter. Sometimes I like that elegance, and sometimes I prefer long, trivia-packed clues.
December 07, 2006
Friday, 12/8
NYT 5:24
NYS 4:42
LAT 4:12
CS 3:07
Reagle 10:41
WSJ 9:07
(post updated 8:30 a.m. Friday)
I'm in that delicate zone between awake enough to enjoy a themeless crossword and too sleepy to be coherent. I was so much more alert at 9:00 when I started Harvey Estes' NYT crossword than I am now, and sheesh, it's 9:18 as I write this.
Harvey's puzzle features six 15-letter entries going across, and they're all glued together by three vertical 15's. From a constructing standpoint, that just looks...fearsome. The nonet of long entries have a fresh feel to them—particularly YOUR PLACE OR MINE. Entertaining clues, such as [Passage leading to Panama?] for A MAN A PLAN A CANAL, [Dollar rival] for EURO, and [Time to draw?] for NOON. Plenty of old-school fill here to facilitate the slew of 15's, but not with the same old clues—for example, RARA, ERAT, and ENOLA all eschew mention of "___ avis,", Q.E.D., and "___ Gay" (though OMOO and IRAE do have more malleable clues—[Novel of the South Seas] and [Dies ___]). And ETUI! Who knew that the Europeans were all about the étuis these days? The clue reads [German iPod holder], and Google turns up a zillion French references (such as the Louis Vuitton iPod étui). ETUI! Hip again! I eagerly await an animated feature film about a feckless anoa making her way through a challenging world. This puzzle's also got some local appeal, with [___Center (Chicago's second tallest building)]. The AON Center used to be the Amoco Building and before that, in my childhood, the Standard Oil Building. Such schadenfreude when they had to replace the entire stone façade a few years back! Anyway...thanks for the puzzle, Harvey and Will.
Karen Tracey's Sun Weekend Warrior wasn't too hard, but it was a classic piece of Traceyiana: A Scrabbly world capital, Chad's N'DJAMENA. Fun stuff like SHLEMIEL, WASABI, and WATUSI (what? no WAPITI to fill out the WA***I possibilities?). Consonant explosions like CBGB and Greta SCACCHI. The clues were interesting but fair—[Husband of Cornelia] for CAESAR, [They may be tragic] for FLAWS, [Blue or bird follower] for FLU. And look! KEN is clued as ["Brainiac" author Jennings]. There's also a dash of ethnic pride inherent in UNITAS, [He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame the same year as Butkus]—ah, two Lithuanian-Americans! (Me, I'm an eighth Lithuanian.) So, thanks for a fun puzzle, Karen and Peter.
Updated:
Randolph Ross's Wall Street Journal puzzle, "Caveat Emptor," warns you away from various members of professions, such as trombonist said to be LONG-WINDED and a drummer who's A LITTLE OFF-BEAT.
Ouch. Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle for this Sunday, "The Same Name Game 2," assembles nine different Floyds, without telling you that's the name they all have in common. Some are real people, some fictional—plus there's Pink Floyd. The first theme entry I filled in completely was PIANO MAN CRAMER, and even after figuring out Floyd can be added to each name, I still didn't recognize the guy's name. (Ouch.) And TV's Floyd the Barber had a last name? I had no idea. GANGSTER PRETTY BOY finally clued me in on the theme.
December 06, 2006
Thursday, 12/7
NYS 5:31
LAT 3:57
NYT 3:47
CS 3:15
Kelly Clark's NYT puzzle and Joy M. Andrews' Sun crossword play around in different ways. I found the NYT offering to be much easier, but then, I'd just been practicing backwards spelling when putting my kid to bed (telling him his backwards name is Nimajneb). So easy-enough crossings combined with DRENS in a [Dummy up?] clue put me in mind of MORTIMER SNERD, traveling upwards. Interestingly, the four theme entries are presented as four consecutive Down clues, [___ up?] or [___ down?] depending on which way the entry runs. To liven things up, there's SEX smack-dab in the center of the grid (we'll overlook GOUT and ODOR here). Fortunately, I'd seen ORACH and ASHCAN in crosswords before, or else that bottom center section might've slaughtered me. You know what I learned in college that helped in this puzzle? My freshman-year RA was from HAVRE, Montana. I'll bet a lot of solvers penciled in BUTTE, which is a Montana town with a Frenchy name, because who's ever heard of HAVRE, Montana? Last comment: This is one of those crosswords in which the editor doesn't stick to the standard limit of 38 black squares.
The Sun puzzle, "Possessive People," has a 15x16 grid, also not the standard. The five theme entries follow the pattern of [famous name]'s [noun], and when you re-parse the entry to plunk that S at the beginning of the noun, you get a last-name-first famous person. Or not so famous—I didn't know the name Sloan Wilson lurking within WILSON'S LOAN (he was a writer; a couple of his books became films). The others are a Stooge (HOWARD'S HEMP—when will Shemp's hairdo make a comeback?), comedian (CAESAR'S ID), director (LEE'S PIKE), and tennis player (SMITH'S TAN). Great theme, plus some great fill—CROP TOP, NEOCONS. Oh, I had to look up Grateful Dead bassist Phil LESH; my tie-dye credentials are iffy.
December 05, 2006
Wednesday, 12/6
NYS 4:33
NYT 3:44
LAT 3:44
CS 3:15
(post updated at 8:20 a.m. Wednesday)
Okay, today's the day I will talk about Patrick Blindauer's Sun puzzle, the one I inadvertently did a day early. (I do try to solve the Sun puzzles on the NYT-solving schedule for ease of timely and comprehensible blogging—not that I lay claim to always being comprehensible.) And also Levi Denham's NYT crossword.
First, the NYT, as it's fresher in my mind 10 minutes after solving. The theme entries hid their commonality from me for a while. First I thought it had to do with double letters, thinking that the great 10-letter entries at 11- and 29-Down (non-theme fill, as it turns out) were part of the theme. It's delightfully showy to work INTERMEZZO and HUBBA HUBBA into the grid just for sport, crossing a couple theme entries apiece. Then I decided the theme was the embedded ERR within each long across entry, but how boring would that be? It turned out to be more elegant than that—with TERRA spanning the middle of five theme entries, it's a "LAND" BRIDGE (the sixth themer) joining each pair of words. Not crazy about NEUR, IBLE, or TIRER, but with a 66-letter theme and the aforementioned long down answers, I'm content overall.
Patrick Blindauer has a style all his own. His themes generally strike me as interesting twists I wouldn't have thought of, and that offer something a little different from what the other constructors do. In the Wednesday Sun crossword, "Getting Personal," Patrick inserts an I, YOU, HE, SHE, and IT into common phrases, and these theme entries appear in that standard grammar-lesson order (first person singular, second person singular, three types of third person singular). The fill includes nice bits like FAT LIP, PLETHORA, and REAGAN in the same corner as ATOMIC and a famous transsexual. Now, regular commenter Barry Weprin bemoans the "Petergordonisms," clues in Sun puzzles that veer toward the obscure to avoid repetition (which may well be written by the constructor and not Peter). The clue for MASH might fit that category: [Richard Hooker book subtitled "A Novel About Three Army Doctors"]. I've never heard of the author and wasn't aware the movie and TV series were based on a book, but isn't that a nifty bit of trivia to pick up? My husband was just mentioning MUIR Woods the other day—the only place I've been where you can't find your way out of the woods by knowing that moss grows on the north side of a tree, as the trees there tended to be mossy the whole way around. Another potential Petergordonism is [Taiping Rebellion general] for TSO—why the chicken dish bears the general's name is apparently unclear.
Updated:
Both Raymond Hamel's CrosSynergy crossword and Jesse Goldberg's LA Times puzzle include JIMI Hendrix, on the heels of last week's Themeless Thursday in the Sun, where Seth Abel included his full name. Are you experienced?
December 04, 2006
Tuesday, 12/5
Onion 4:37
NYS 4:32
Tausig 4:32
NYT 3:14
CS 3:07
LAT 2:59
(post updated at 8:30 a.m. and 1:10 p.m. Tuesday)
Aww. I made a mistake and did Patrick Blindauer's Sun puzzle for Wednesday, which I oughtn't blog about until tomorrow, but I liked it. It was actually a little easier than the Tuesday Sun, I thought.
The NYT puzzle by Kenneth Berniker included a smattering of proper names, but right there at 1-Across, I was stumped by [Soprano Lehmann], who turned out to be LILLI. In the Cruciverb database, this 19th-century opera singer appears just once, in a 1999 Boston Globe puzzle. Aha! No wonder I didn't know the name. She isn't pop culture, and she ain't even crosswordese these days. That corner of the puzzle seemed more Wednesday than Tuesday to me. Ambitious theme, with a 15-letter vertical entry down the middle of the grid plus four phrases that start with 3-letter initialisms. This crossword also happens to pair RADII and ULNAS, INCA and AZTEC, and the confession I AM BI ([What gay men wish Brad Pitt would say?]). Oh, wait...that's IAMBI, plural of iambus.
The Tuesday Sun puzzle by Alan Arbesfeld culls phrases that contain a homophone of a musical instrument and swaps in the instrument. My favorite theme entry was [Noisy lovemaking props?]/SEX CYMBALS, which paints a vivid scene. Also an ambitiously sized theme, with five long entries, enhanced by some Scrabblicious fill.
Updated:
Two months ago, Harvey Estes included AUTUMN IN NEW YORK, the Richard Gere/Winona Ryder movie, in an NYT theme. Patrick Jordan plays with it in his CrosSynergy puzzle, turning it into a "Late Show" as WINTER IN NEW YORK. What I'm wondering: Did anyone you know actually see that movie?
Alex Boisvert, who has today's LA Times crossword, left a blog comment yesterday about a crossword editor's pseudonym. Several newspapers' puzzle editors often use pseudonyms in the byline when they publish their own handiwork. Barry Haldiman's list of these aliases is here. Alex's theme is great—two 15's and two 14's following the form of THE ___ IS/ARE ___, in which the two blanks are opposites (as in THE ODDS ARE EVEN). I love old words like RAKEHELL, which has a decent Wikipedia write-up.
Brendan Emmett Quigley's Onion A.V. Club puzzle is "What? Me Worry?" It pays homage to paranoid conspiracy theorists and the things they fret about. Major props for including FLUMMOX in the fill—a word I ought to use more often. (How do you flummox a lummox?) Never heard of ["Chunklet" or "Skyscraper"], which crossed a basketball player (is the repeating MVP Steve NASH or a different NASH?) and [Invader ___ (former Nickelodeon alien)]. I guessed at ZINE and Invader ZIM, and they panned out. In the opposite corner, I was temporarily flummoxed by a couple other crossings, having first opted to spell it PUH-LEEZE rather than PUH-LEASE. All right, how many people know Bob Marley's wife's name off the top of their head? At least I was semi-familiar with the STAX record label, so that corner came together, too. (Is this what it's like to not own a TV and try to solve the NYT crossword every day?)
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "Think'ing' Differently," transforms phrases starting with -ING words by using those words as verbs instead of...whatever the term is for an adjective made out of an -ing noun. [The "V" in V-Day], it should be noted, does not pertain to victory as in VE-Day and VJ-Day. [Dizzee Rascal's genre] is GRIME; I'm gonna guess that's something hip-hoppy, but I don't have time to look it up now. And industrial musician Scott KLAY—never heard of him. But years ago, I ran into a former high-school classmate, who said she was doing "industrial dance." Is that more like "industrial films" or "industrial music"? I dunno. Great fill, with THE STRIP, VIS A VIS, DIAL-UP, and GO PRO.
December 03, 2006
Monday, 12/4
NYS 3:52
NYT 3:23 (or 2:38 if it hadn't been for that typo)
LAT 2:42
CS 2:25
(post updated at 5:30 p.m.. Monday)
Grr for typos! Why is it that when a typo parks itself in one corner of the grid, the solver invariably starts looking for the error on the opposite side? Must be Murphy's law of online crossword solving. One of the things I liked best about Richard Chisholm's NYT crossword was the preponderance of proper names—about 20 of them, in fact, not counting those in the theme entries. I'm fond of puzzles that include plenty of names of people and places. The theme is blissfully free of Tom Cruise, whom PENELOPE CRUZ dated for a couple years. It's nice to see Penelope keeping company here with entirely different homophones of her last name. Other highlights include GEEZER, "Been there, DONE THAT," and UNDERAGE.
Why, the theme in Gary Steinmehl's Sun puzzle positively fizzes, doesn't it? "Pop Quiz" is a 15x16 crossword with five one-word sodapop brands at the ends of the theme entries. Today, I noticed that my cellphone matches Diet Coke's silver-and-red color scheme, so it's been a carbonated day all around. Nicely Scrabbly, with three Z's, an X, a Q, and three K's. I like the non-Mondayish cluing of WATER SPRITE as [Undine], not to mention OLE MISS being [Oxford university, familiarly].
I just solved the Second Sunday NYT puzzle, a cryptic crossword by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon. Most of the Across clues contained the word "clue" or "hint," so there's a nice thematic bent to it.
Updated:
I was out all day for my grandmother's funeral. The sadness was lightened considerably by the array of old photos my sister had gathered together—I hadn't ever known that one of my cousins and her daughter bore such a strong resemblance to my grandma at age 10, having never seen these photos before. And my dad had been a skinny kid—who knew he was such a butterball as a baby? Too cute. The assorted family rifts even healed up a bit today, so all in all, not so sad.
Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Big Box Office," is that rarity: An easy Monday puzzle packed with terrific fill, much of it long.
"Lila Cherry" (really Rich Norris) assembled four words/phrases with double K's for the theme, and jacked up the Scrabble count with a total of 10 K's, two Z's, two J's, and a Q.
December 02, 2006
Sunday, 12/3
NYT 10:11
WaPo 8:07
LAT 7:41
BG 7:07
CS 4:25
(post updated at 10:55 a.m. Sunday)
That was weird. First I started out with the NYT applet set for a daily-size puzzle rather than a Sunday, and couldn't quite comprehend what was happening. Then I remembered to switch to the large grid, but was struck by déjà vu as I began reading the clues in Pat Merrell's "Prefix Remix," and pondered the wisdom of continuing to solve a puzzle that I'd done before instead of finding the correct puzzle—before snapping out of it and realizing it was the right puzzle. Then I started to have trouble typing properly. I remain in a bit of a fugue state and probably ought to go to bed early tonight. Oh, wait, it's kinda late to be getting to bed early.
So anyway, the puzzle. The theme splits out a word's prefix and clues it as a two-word phrase, so SUPERVISOR is parsed as the building SUPER's VISOR, clued [Headwear for a building chief?], and COUNTER BALANCES are [Amounts owed at a diner?]. I liked the theme, but the non-theme fill was even better—the blah A-TEST crosses ATOMIC, which spells out the A in A-TEST (so you know it's not N-TEST here). The VON TRAPP family, WISCONSIN, I MANAGE (clued ["Somehow everything gets done"]) and the contradictory HELP ME, PILSNER and GESTALT, and the out-of-left-field DECAGONAL. I hear they're working on a movie version of CHiPs, with the Erik ESTRADA part played by Wilmer Valderrama. So, what was your favorite part of this puzzle? And am I the only one who was hit with déjà vu?
Updated:
Seth Abel's name is showing up more often in bylines these days, isn't it? He's got today's Washington Post crossword, "Playing the Field," which reclues phrases that happen to include a word that's also a football position. Hence, [Gridder on a crowded bus] is a STANDING GUARD, and [Scornful gridder] is a BITTER END. SUDOKUS and KWANZA lent the fill some sparkle. And this time around, I knew [St. Philip ___] was NERI; a week or two ago, that one had stumped me in another puzzle.
1-Down in Sean O.F. Smith's LA Times syndicated puzzle is [Early animal handler], NOAH, which reminds me that yesterday, I caught part of This American Life on Chicago Public Radio. Toward the end of the "Sink or Swim" episode, there was a darkly hilarious retelling of the Noah story, by a Simon somebody, in which Noah was portrayed as a jerk who always called his sons "big dummies" and who first thought the voice talking to him was a whistling in his nose. You can subscribe to the show's podcasts for free via iTunes; right now, last week's episode is the most recent one available for download. (And I liked the theme in this crossword, by the way.)
Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon's Boston Globe quote puzzle ("Not to Mention...") managed to be easy despite the quote within it. Is COFELON a word?
Harvey Estes' themeless CrosSynergy puzzle has two triple-stacks of 15-letter entries, spiced up by having 6- to 8-letter words or phrases for almost half of the stacks' crossings.
December 01, 2006
Saturday, 12/2
NYT 9:06
Newsday 7:44
LAT 4:49
CS 2:51
(post updated at 9:50 a.m. Saturday)
Okay, this is going to be a long post. The Saturday NYT is by Bob Klahn, who tends to be one of the toughest cluers out there. That means a zillion clues are worthy of mention, and it means nobody gets through this puzzle without working their mental butt off for it. First, I'll mention two gimmes that wouldn't have been gimmes for me just a few weeks ago: GUIDO and HIRT. The Cruciverb-L mailing list can be so helpful to solvers. A couple weeks ago, Vic Fleming initiated a discussion of GUIDO and old crosswordese combo "Guido's note"/ELA. It turns out E LA is two words, and Guido wasn't a singer, but some sort of [Musical notation pioneer]. Thanks, Vic! And more recently, regular commenter Barry Weprin singled out as a "Petergordonism" a clue for HIRT that was much like the Klahn/Shortz clue, ["The Green Hornet" trumpeter]—thanks for cementing that factoid in my mind, Barry!
I don't think my English-lit education taught me that Shakespeare's epithet was the Sweet SWAN of Avon. And what's this BASTA that's the [Third highest trump in card games] and that I've never heard of? Not crazy about STOP STREET—is that a regionalism? I haven't heard this term, either. But I loved DO I HAVE TO, A GOOD MANY, 'TRANE (short for Coltrane) ALIBI IKE with the double I. BRAD isn't just a [Thin fastener]. Roosevelt Island isn't just a part of Manhattan; there's also one in ANTARCTICA. EL ROPO can apparently mean a huge marijuana joint as well as a cigar.
Other clues I want to single out include [Leaves for dinner] for SWISS CHARD, [Brand of chips] for INTEL (salty! crunchy!), [Plain sight] for HERD, [Unlocked?] for BALD, [Park Avenue retailer?] for AUTO DEALER, [Washington posts] for INTERNS, the simple [In] for HOT, [Toaster setting?] for DAIS, and [Monopoly's railroads, e.g.] for TETRAD. Fabulous clues, every last one of 'em, and a vigorous crossword challenge. Kudos to Messrs. Klahn and Shortz!
Updated:
Thomas Schier's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Roman Movies," calls on the solver's knowledge of Roman numerals. Which reminds me—I watched one episode of that new game show, 1 vs. 100, and was surprised when the 1 and assorted members of the mob of 100 had no idea which letter was the Roman numeral for 100. People! Were you not paying attention in junior high? This puzzle also contains the word XEBEC; click the link if the word was similarly unfamiliar to you so you can read more.
The themeless LA Times crossword by Ernest Lampert bummed me out with one of the first entries I got—[Seeks change?] for BEGS. Being reminded of the unfortunate straits of the destitute did not pass my "Sunday morning breakfast test"—I'd sooner see Merl's ENEMA or URINE, actually. Maybe [Works like a dog?] instead for a day when [Pleads] or [Entreats] is too easy?
The Newsday Saturday Stumper by Stan Newman was the finals puzzle in one of the recent smaller crossword tournaments. I solved it within the past month or two, and still found it mighty hard the second time!
Everyone's doing it
Calling out the pesky pedants, that is. The pseudonymous Rex Parker railed against the strain of pedantry that involves harping on others' mistakes, as seen at the NYT Today's Puzzle forum a few days ago. And then today, Ken Jennings took trivia nit-pickers to task in his latest blog post.
Hey, I'm a reasonable person. A little pedantry is fine, as long as it's good-natured and not directed at an individual. But the nasty stuff, the one-upmanship, the personal carping—who needs it?
