LAT 11:11
WaPo 9:05
PI 8:37
NYT 8:22
BG 7:05
CS 4:35
All righty, the husband and kid are off at the park playing ball, so I had some quiet time to do crosswords. Wow, my Sunday morning just opened up beautifully! I should do all the Sunday puzzles that are available early on Saturdays.
Mike Nothnagel's New York Times crossword, "Lingo," is a beaut. Mike found seven phrases that could tack LING onto the end of one word to make a new word and a phrase that could be plausibly clued and also evoke some amusing images. The [Local cutiepie?] is the TOWN DUMPLING, and I picture her holding court at the local landfill. [Fraternization on an army base?] is MILITARY COUPLING, and I'm picturing the generals in the junta getting cozy with one another. SQUID INKLING? SpongeBob's neighbor Squidward has plenty of ideas, many involving getting rid of SpongeBob so he and his clarinet can live in grumpy peace. I wonder how many unused theme candidate Mike had—can you think of any other good ones?
To this puzzle and its constructor, I say 14-Down: I LIKE YOU. I got a kick out of the cluing, and I liked that a bunch of answers contained Scrabbly letters. JEREMIADS (great word meaning [Prolonged complaints]) and JABBER, KANJI crossing K.D. LANG (or k.d. lang, as she prefers—her All You Can Eat album is among my favorites, and if you like warm, yearning, torchy songs, check it out), TALL SIZES crossing DEEP-SIXED, and more.
The clues I enjoyed most: [Chant at a basketball game] for DEFENSE ("Dee-fense! Dee-fense!"); [Load bearer?] for clothes DRYER; [Least populous U.N. member] for TUVALU (love that geography!); [1992 Oscar-nominated title role for Robert Downey Jr] for CHAPLIN (which I've never seen, but I want to because Downey is talented and he has lovely eyes—and why isn't it available on DVD so I can get it from Netflix?); [With geniality] for AMIABLY (I love the word amiable because it's such a favorable word to sound like the adjectival form of my name—can anyone top that? I mean, Elizabethan isn't cute at all.); [Particular purpose] for NONCE (derivation: from Middle English "then anes," mangled by misdivision—just like "a norange" and "an ekename" somehow became "an orange" and "a nickname"); [Saturn, for one] for GOD (not car, not SUV, not the planet); [Calf feature] for SILENT L and [Start of an itinerary] for POINT A; [It should have a head and a good body] for BEER; [Injured, in baseball lingo] for ON THE DL, as in "on the disabled list" ("on the DL" can also mean on the down-low," describing men who purport to be straight but also have sex with men on the sly); [Sound's partner] for SAFE up above [One trying to find the right combination?] for YEGG, slang for safecracker; [Anatomical part whose name comes from the Latin for "grape"] for UVEA (I just read this and totally blanked on it); and [What a train goes down] for AISLE (as in the train of a wedding gown). I either forgot or never knew [1980 N.F.L. M.V.P. Brian] SIPE.
Other Puzzles:
Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon's online Boston Globe puzzle, "Quartets," has 10 theme entries that contain four of a kind—if Alabama weren't in a clue, it would qualify as an answer here because the letter A appears in it four times. The last of the 10 contains two different letter quartets, and I think no theme entry features the same foursome. Fairly easy puzzle, as these things go, with one word I didn't quite realize was a word (DUPERY, the noun form of dupe) and another unfamiliar word, RATLINE (ratlines are the ropes one can climb to ascend the riggings on a sailing ship, apparently). Hey, if you like these Sunday puzzles (with bylines alternating between Cox and Rathvon, a.k.a. Hex, and Henry Hook) and you feel a tad guilty getting the puzzles for free in Across Lite, consider buying one of the many book collections of Globe puzzles. I've got a volume somewhere around here.
Alex Boisvert's Washington Post puzzle, "Do Be Do Be Do," made me smile when I figured out the funniest of the 10 theme answers. Each one's a phrase in which the letters BE have been changed to DO (as in "beg pardon" into DOG PARDON) or vice versa ("China doll" into Asian/Mexican fusion fast-food eatery CHINA BELL). The DO -> BE entries are on the left side of the grid, and the BE -> DOs on the right. Anyway, it took me a while to figure out what to do with [Disparaging psychiatrist?]: DR. BELITTLE!
You'll need to don your Hat of Pun Sensibility to tackle Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle, "Pun Party." There's a short fill-in-the-blank clue here, [Shih ___]. I can spell TZU. Some months back, though, a purebred (one of Merl's trickiest clues this weekend: [A pure and thorough conclusion] for BRED) owner in my neighborhood lost his dog and posted this sign: 
Updated:
Rich Norris's themeless puzzle for the CrosSynergy syndicate has some high notes and low notes. The highs: [Question after a trip] for ARE YOU OK; [Follow a boat, in a way] for WATERSKI; [High] for EUPHORIA; [Change one's mind about, as a computer option] for DESELECT (which is a terrible word in regular English but a perfectly descriptive one in computerese); the sarcastic ["Oh, joy"] for I CAN'T WAIT; [Got ready to go up] for TAXIED, as in a plane heading to the runway]. Lows: [Bourg's department] for AIN (that's a new one on me, I think) and [Eared seal] for OTARY (it's been a good long while since I've seen that one).
Rich Norris, in drag with the "Lila Cherry" pseudonym (anagram of "really Rich"), made the syndicated LA Times puzzle: nine two-word phrases that have an LP split between the end of the first word and start of the second. Hence, COCKTAIL PARTY, and the title "Broken Records." The puzzle wasn't as hard as my comparative times would suggest—I was off the clues' wavelength and did half the puzzle while talking on the phone.
September 15, 2007
Sunday, 9/16
September 14, 2007
Saturday, 9/15
NYT 11:18
Newsday 5:48
LAT 4:19
CS 3:38
Brad Wilber's New York Times puzzle is an old-school toughie with very few gimmes. For me, the only real gimmes were GEENA [Davis of "Cutthroat Island"] (the pirate movie that nearly killed her career), [Documentarian Morris] for ERROL (love him! Rent The Fog of War if you missed it), [Chick playing a piano] for jazz musician Chick COREA, ARON for [Elvis follower], [Novelist Potok] for CHAIM Potok, and DR T ([Richard Gere title role of 2000]). Huh, what do you know? All names! Mainly from pop culture! That really is a good crossword category for me.
My worst categories? A lot of the stuff in this puzzle. The obscurish words were particularly vexing today: NOSEBANDS are [Bridle parts], a BAILEE is a [Temporary property holder], a TOLL BAR goes with [It's raised after a payment is collected, and [Slipping frequencies] are ERROR RATES? These simultaneously stumped and underwhelmed me. What I liked better: a word I didn't know but am glad to have learned, RECLAME, which comes from the French and means [Notoriety]; and the colorful phrase GIMLET EYE ([Piercing glance]), which I'd forgotten (gimlet is both a cocktail and a corkscrew-like boring tool).
Favorite parts: [Interest for Miss Marple] for CLEW (British spelling of "clue"; raise your hand if you wrote CASE); [Contortionist's inspiration?] for PRETZEL; [Aquavit flavorer] for CARAWAY (remind me never to drink this stuff); [Seed's exterior] for TESTA (old crosswordese I remembered!); DEAD WRONG; [Where some addresses come from] for PODIA; [One yawning] for CHASM; [Do groundbreaking work?] for the verb MINE; [Shakespearean character who introduced the phrase "salad days"] for CLEOPATRA (did not know this!); and [Symbol of industry] for ANT.
Took far too long to figure out: [Paris fashion house since 1956- for CHLOE; [Setting of Camus's "The Fall"] for AMSTERDAM (Really? Did not know that. The Plague takes place in Oran, of course.);[Marina accommodations] for our old friend, the BOATEL; [Hansom cab accessory] for LAP ROBE (my mind breaks LAPROBE into LA PROBE and wonders if that beer from Latrobe is involved somehow); [Factor in a home's market value] for CURB APPEAL; [Carried by currents, in a way] for OCEANBORNE (couldn't get electrical current out of my head); [Serenity] for HEART'S EASE; ["Pink Shoe Laces" singer Stevens] for DODIE; ["Be more..." sloganeer] for PBS; and [Honourary title: Abbr.] for MBE. Speaking of MBE, I just looked up those Order of the British Empire honours: MBE = Member (the lowest-ranking), OBE = Officer (the abbreviation most often seen in American crosswords), CBE = Commander, and those named to the two highest ranks, Knight or Dame Commander (KBE, DBE) and Knight or Dame Grand Cross (GBE), are entitled to use Sir or Dame before their names (e.g., Dame Judi Dench, Sir Paul McCartney).
One quasi-nit to pick: LASH is clued as [Liner's locale]. Have you ever tried applying eyeliner to eyelashes? I'm thinking it wouldn't work. The lash line, a.k.a. the edge of the eyelid, sure, but the LASH itself? I say not. Opinions?
Updated:
I'm short on time this morning, so I'll be brief. (Honest!)
Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy puzzle has a short quote by SAMUEL GOLDWYN: COFFEE ISN'T / MY CUP OF TEA. Agreed!
James Sajdak's LA Times puzzle has some terrific words in it. They're not laden with uncommon letters, but I'm fond of the quaint-sounding ALMONERS ([Charity distributors]) and FLACON ([Perfume bottle]); WALLEYE ([Minnesota's state fish]); the play and poem A RAISIN IN THE SUN; the [Mythical monthly predator], a WOLFMAN; PLASMA TV; "STEP ON IT!" ([Fare order]); the colloquial AS LONG AS ([Seeing that]); John CLEESE; the [Swamp gas] MIASMA (love this word! it's much better than smegma); and a RECLINER chair (clued well: [Super Bowl seat for many]). Other clues of note: [Game invented by Native North Americans] for LACROSSE (a gimme); [Battle of Britain locale] for MIDAIR; [Kitchen drawers?] for AROMAS; [Artemis's companions] for OREADS (don't know the mythology behind this, but I'm always pleased to see oreads, naiads, and maenads in the crossword); [Musical nonsense syllable] for DOO (well...that's one way to clue that!); and [Goody-two shoes' feature?] for HALO.
Merle Baker's Newsday Saturday Stumper has a glorious grid—every answer is between 5 and 9 letters in length (no 3- or 4-letter answers!) and the total word count is quite low: just 58 answers. My favorite entry is a word I couldn't readily define: DESCANT. Clued as [Comment at length], this could be a a very good word for me to know! (Here's the American Heritage definition.) There are perhaps a few more prefixed and suffixed words than in most themeless puzzles, owing to the difficulty in filling a 58-word grid, but it didn't strike me as off-putting in the slightest. No jokey clues here—it's all straight-up "just the facts, ma'am" puzzling with eminently fair clues. I've only given away one answer, so if you usually skip the Stumper, try this one. Though there are no short words like ARIA or ERA to help you along, it's quite doable—especially compared to today's tough NYT puzzle.
September 13, 2007
Friday, 9/14
NYS 6:40—The Sun is a brilliant must-do! Solve it before reading the blog.
NYT 5:13
Jonesin' 4:03
LAT 3:59
CS 3:21
WSJ 7:58
John Samson, who edits the Simon & Schuster crossword book series, sent me a copy of the latest volume, #257. I'll be digging into that book and a couple other recent S&S volumes this winter for American Crossword Puzzle Tournament training. (If you've done ACPT puzzles, you've noticed that there are 17x17 and 19x19 grids—which are hard to come by outside of the S&S books and the occasional Games puzzle.) John let it slip that a book due out in January 2008, the hefty Simon & Schuster Mega Crossword Puzzle Book #1, will include my name in one puzzle (!). The theme is "Premier Puzzlers," and I'm clued as [2005 ACPT champion (Div. B)]. Looks like there are seven ACPT overall champions in the puzzle too (1978, 1987, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, and 2007), along with another B champion (2007). I'm not going to look them up—it'll be more fun to guess the names based on letter counts and the odd crossing letter. If you're in the puzzle, I think it is incumbent upon you to give your folks a copy of the book so they can brag about your fame.
Now, on with the day's crosswords.
Patrick Berry has crafted a tour de force for the New York Sun: The middle five columns (with circled letters in Across Lite) are unclued, and you have to rely on the Across answers, the title "Color Change," and the clues for 4- and 57-Across ([Beginning of a transformation] and [End of the transformation]) to figure out what's what. (The Across Lite Notepad merely informs the solver that the print edition includes no clues for the five columns in the center.) So what's what? There's a word ladder, that's what. And not merely a word ladder with 4-letter words, either—this one's got 5-letter words. And all but three of them are also part of a longer Across answer. In a sense, the Across answers that aren't checked by Down answers still do have checking, as 4 of the 5 letters will be the same above and below. At the end, you're left with 4- and 67-Across and have to change a letter from the adjacent row to get an apt pair for the "Color Change" title: BLACK and WHITE.
If that's not enough (and really, it was!), there's more: The fill is lusciously Scrabbly, with a single Z, Q, and X along with two Js and quartets of Ks and Vs. You might think the answers that include the word ladder pieces would be iffy, but we have Milton's BLANK VERSE of Paradise Lost; a little GOSLING with the misleading* clue, [It gets further down with time], down being goosedown; SWINE FEVER; and GHOST-WRITE ([Take cash but not credit] is also a smart misdirect). Stepping off the ladder, we have STYX crossing QUERY, RAZE crossing RAJIV Gandhi.
Other clues that caught my eye: the vague verb [Compact] for TAMP; [Turn about] doubling up for SLUE and SWING, one after the other; [A little way in?] for PORE (wait, what goes into a pore rather than out?); baseball commissioner [Bud Selig's real first name] for ALLAN (pointless trivia, but look! A new clue for ALLAN. I'll take it!); and [Red Bull New York soccer coach Bruce] for ARENA (all I could remember of his surname was that it began and ended with A). I never heard of [Buddy of the Songwriters Hall of Fame], but Buddy DESYLVA was a Tin Pan Alley songwriter, a stage and film producer, and a cofounder of Capital Records.
Executive summary: Kerplunk! Overall excellence slathered like buttercream frosting on top of a sweet and unbelievably rich gimmick = this cruciverbal torte is going in the Great Puzzles folder as one of the year's best.
*Misleading = wonderful.
Moving to the New York Times crossword, John Farmer brings us a beautiful themeless 70-word puzzle. Each quadrant has a show-stopper or two: VERKLEMPT ([Choked up]) in the upper left, a PASTRAMI sandwich in the upper right (who can forget Seinfeld's George successfully wooing a woman by saying that he always felt pastrami was the most sensual of all the cured meats?), a SOUL PATCH down below (the teeny-weeny beard sported by Frank Zappa and Dizzy Gillespie, and QUIXOTIC ([Starry-eyed]) in the remaining corner.
Favorite answers: SOPOR ([Lethargy] and the root of soporific—I also like torpor); ABORIGINE (which means [Early inhabitant] anywhere, not just in Australia); QEII (Queen Elizabeth II, the [Modern-day monarch, for short]; the cross-referenced combo of Brian ENO and his AMBIENT music; the LAO people of Thailand and Laos crossing the Chinese LAO TZU (who can also be spelled Laozi, Lao Tse, Laotze, or Lao Zi); the MUSSED UP and NEAT combo; the GAZA STRIP; and QUANTA (plural of quantum, [Fundamental energy units]).
Favorite clues: [Muscleman with a 1980s cartoon series] for MR T; [Subject of interest in the question, "Who are you wearing?] for a GOWN worn on the red carpet; [Movie villain voiced by Douglas Rain] for evil 2001 computer HAL; [Spell checker?] for a magical AMULET; ["Take ___ the River" (Talking Heads hit)] for ME TO (enjoy a video of a live performance, big suit and all); the surprisingly straightforward [Spanish kitties] for GATOS; [Doesn't support a conspiracy theory?] for ACTS ALONE; [Moon of Uranus named for a Shakespearean character] for OBERON (heh, heh, he said "moon" and "Uranus"); [Available] for IN PRINT, like books; and [Largest of the ABC islands] for CURACAO (A and B are Aruba and Bonaire).
Crazy intersection: [Actress Nancy of "Sunset Boulevard"] crossing [Old-time actress Crabtree]—is it OLSEN and LETTA or OLSON and LOTTA? Turns out it's OLSON and LOTTA. Medical terminology for the day: GAVAGE, or [Forced feeding, as with a tube].
Updated:
The theme in Kurt Mengel and Jan-Michele Gianette's LA Times puzzle is straightforward, but I had to fill in an awful lot of the grid in order to see what it was. Each theme entry squeezes in a DIS- before the final word, transforming phrases into TAKE-OUT DISORDER ([Problematic deli syndrome?]), HEAVEN DISSENT, GOLF DISCOURSE, and CABBAGE DISPATCH ([Wired money?]). There's some dreadful Latin from a state motto, but fortunately it's in the IDAHO clue, [Its motto is "Esto perpetua"], rather than ESTO being clued as [Idaho motto word]. (Here's my refresher course on state mottoes that get play in crosswords.) Lots of deft clues here: [Star with potential] for NOVA and [Star witnesses?] for MAGI; [Additional ones not itemized] for REST and [And addtl. ones not itemized] for ET AL; ["___ put hair on your chest"] for IT'LL (my son likes to think that onions will put hair in his armpits); [One of the British?] for ISLE; ["___-12": '60s-'70s police drama] for ADAM (ah, childhood nostalgia); [Beijing-born violinist Frank] for HUANG (that's a new name for me. Note to self: remember name.); [They may be screened] for DOORS; the looks-like-a-verb [Trusted] for RELIABLE; and [Place enjoyed by Sundance] for ETTA (Etta Place from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, not Utah, home of the Sundance Film Festival).
Matt Jones's Jonesin' puzzle asks the solver to distinguish between Bill Nye and Bill Nighy, Mark Wahlberg and Mark L. Walberg, Michael Haydn and Gen. Michael Hayden, and Henrik Ibsen and Henry Gibson. It's easier than it sounds, because you get most of the info in the clues—for example, you only need one word to finish [...while Mark L. Walberg currently hosts PBS's "___ Roadshow"], and you can probably do that without knowing this guy. CLAQUE is a [Group hired to applaud a performance]; I recently learned the word from Patrick Blindauer and like it (it dates back to early-1800s France and is the forebear of today's canned laughter. Favorite clues: the completely grammatical [You was once this] for THEE; [Anatomical in-between area] for TAINT; and [Discovery Channel game show with a host/driver] for CASH CAB (that link's a clip of constructor Tony Orbach's appearance on the show).
Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Blast Off!", plays the prefix countdown with TRI-, BI-, and UNI- words followed by "THREE...TWO...ONE," blast off. [Pawning place] clues HOCK SHOP; in my town, it seems that a hocking place is a pawn shop rather than the other way around. Perhaps "hock shop" skews toward being a Canadian usage?
In the larger format, we've got today's Wall Street Journal crossword, Elizabeth Gorski's "Crunch Time." Each theme entry has an OREO tucked inside, and BLACK AND WHITE SANDWICH and OREOS also show up to make the theme crystal-clear. The name Catherine AIRD was new to me—she writes crime novels, mainly, which I don't read. A lot of art and artists in this puzzle: MAGRITTE, DALI, the SISTINE Chapel ceiling for visual arts; a VIOL and the LEONORE OVERTURE for the music arena; MERCEDES for automotive beauty.
September 12, 2007
Thursday, 9/13
NYS 5:24
LAT 5:12
NYT 4:48
CS 2:59
Holy schnike! A whopping 105 theme squares? (Anyone know if that's a new record?) Contained in one triple-stack and two double-stacks of 15-letter entries? That's what Joe Krozel and Vic Fleming came up with for their New York Times puzzle. Unlike most puzzles with a bunch of 15-letter answers spanning the grid, these ones are all related to the judicial system. The tradeoff in such a puzzle is constraints in generating the crossing fill, which accounts for a few partial entries (e.g., OR TEA, A JET), more than the usual foreign-language content (ERES, ESSE, TIOS, NER, TASSE, ESSA, PASTO—hey, if that means [Meal, in Milan], then antipasto served before dinner suddenly makes a lot more sense), and ample abbreviations (e.g., ASSYR, GRPS). Good fill includes SWAMI, BOOZE, EAST LA, ESQUE (which has a touch of Wordplay chic since The ZOLAESQUE Affair), and SUSAN (Vic! Don't clue your wife's name with [Lazy ___]!). So help me (your honor), I even like the "roll your own" word RELAPS, because the IDEA (clued here as [Bean sprout?]) of lapping someone on a racetrack and then whipping around the track again and passing them again is funny. Nice bit of trivia with [First multiracial coeducational college in the South] for Kentucky's BEREA College, which charges no tuition. ELSA Alert! A new ELSA clue: [Dr. ___ Schneider, historian who was a love interest of Indiana Jones].
Karen Tracey's New York Sun Themeless Thursday puzzle is jazzy with Scrabbly answers, like the central anchor, JASCHA HEIFETZ (now him, I've heard of—Jacqueline Du Pre, less so), and the teeny middle right section packed with two Zs, and X, and a K. Loveliest entries: JOAN MIRO (lucky guess with three of the letters—didn't know what [Grattage pioneer] meant); the [Do-it-all device] we know and love, the UNIVERSAL REMOTE; ON THE AGENDA; SAKS FIFTH AVENUE with a Shopgirl movie clue (in that movie, the lead characters go to a Reynaldo Gallery); the colorful SOUSE (a [Lush]); SLIPPAGE; K'NEX building toys (check out this guy's seven-page gallery of K'Nex creations); and CHAINSAW (a [Powerful feller], indeed). Clues not already mentioned that I enjoyed: [March alternative] for SIT-IN; the verb [Plots] for GRAPHS; [Pelican, to Pedro] for the Spanish word ALCATRAZ; [Submit] for HAND IN; [Third of eight] for planet EARTH; [Arboreal African snake] for MAMBA (using "arboreal" instead of the more directly horrifying "tree snake" a plus); [Asian tie] for OBI; [___ Battle (video game)] for OGRE, a refreshing change from the Shrek and fairy tale clues; and ["I'm a great lover, I'll bet] comedian Philips] for EMO (cluing him as a plain fill-in-the-blank is dull, but using one of his skewed lines? Always a good bet!). I had never heard of the [1968 hit by the Turtles], ELENORE, and I do not understand two clues at all: [Keynote, in music] = TONIC and [Primo begetters] = TIOS.
Updated:
"Grand Openings" by Mel Rosen, the CrosSynergy crossword, begins each theme entry with a "g(G)rand ____." For MASTER BEDROOM, I prefer to think of hip=hop pioneer Grandmaster Flash rather than chess grandmasters. [Cupcake-shaped side item with chili]? Mmmm, CORN MUFFIN! With butter, please.
Dan Naddor's LA Times puzzle duped me with [One who ran a Mickey Mouse operation?]—I opted for DISNEY instead of the correct EISNER. Look at that! The two names share the inside four letters. The theme entries are five phrases that mean [Hang tough], and they make an excellent group of idiomatic phrases. For the fill, far too many clues were on a wavelength far from the one I was on—is it just me, or was this a challenging set of clues?
Dept. of Shameless Self-Promotion
I forgot to link to this a few weeks ago: Meleah Maynard's profile of me in the summer issue of the Carleton College alumni magazine, the Voice.
In the print magazine, the article and full-page photo appeared on facing pages. Wow, does anyone like their nose in a picture that size?
September 11, 2007
Wednesday, 9/12
NYS 4:59
LAT 3:47
CS 3:22
NYT 3:14
The New York Times puzzle for the day comes from Alan Arbesfeld's mind. It's got four theme entries explained by a fifth long entry, FINISH STRONG: the other four start with "strong___" words. The vague "is it a verb or a noun or an adjective?" [Smash] clues BOX OFFICE HIT (strongbox). [Athlete seated at a table] amuses me, because does anyone really classify an ARM-WRESTLER as a jock? [Advice to a Harley passenger] is HOLD ON TIGHT (vs. the 38 Special song, "Hold On Loosely")—did I mention the motorcycle passenger we saw in Florida who was reading a book rather than holding on tight? Kee-razy. Speaking of kee-razy in all its Scrabbly glory, this puzzle has plenty of XZJK action. That even tricked me into moving KERRY into Northern Ireland, when the [County near Tyrone] is DERRY (or Londonderry, if you're U.K.-allied), home of the famous Walls of Derry, but fortunately, A Fish Called WANDA rescued me (a fish called WANKA? er, no).
Gary Steinmehl's New York Sun puzzle is called "Twist Endings" because the five theme entries running vertically in this 15x16 grid all have their final word "twisted," or reversed. Paint pots get flipped to be PAINT STOP, which'd be equivalent to the verb phrase, [Work on an octagonal sign?]. The best of the theme entries is the long one in the middle: GREASY SNOOPS. Nobody likes a greasy snoop! Speaking of greasy, the fill includes a CHILI DOG, along with other goodies like PUP TENT, BAND-AID (clued as [Temporary solution], which I like but which the corporate trademark defenders would bristle at), SELA WARD getting the first/last name treatment, CARTOONY, and D-CUP ([Big supporter], ha!). I hit a deadly crossing where the [Flash memory forerunner] met the [Alternative name for hopscotch] (it's EP-ROM and POTSY). Other favorite clues: [Foreign tender?] for an AU PAIR tending children; [Clink preceder] for TOAST; the so-old-fashioned-I've-never-heard-of-it [Accroaches] for USURPS; [Street walker, briefly] for PED; [Color similar to cranberry] for GARNET (at last! A Peter Gordon color clue that didn't mess me up!); and [Short and not sweet] for CURT. Anyone know why [E&M unit] is AMP? And can we quit cluing ECRU as [Hosiery hue]? The closest match I could find was sock liners. Ecru is still a fashion color, but not so much in the pantyhose arena.
Updated:
The first two theme entries in Nancy Kavanaugh's LA Times crossword began with BEAN and FLEA, so I surmised that the theme was "jumping ___." There's no jumping air or jumping sand that I'm aware of, though, and the helper entry in smack-dab in the center of the grid is BAG (bean bag, etc.). A-ha! I enjoyed many of the clues. [Reasons for madness, in a now-cult 1936 film] is REEFERS...which could also be the answer to [College bud] (ROOMIE), now that I think about it. GONDOLAS are [Ski slope sights] and the clue's not particularly remarkable, but three years ago, our summer vacation involved plenty of gondola rides up the mountain at Vail (I'm not a skier, so I thought August was the perfect time to visit my sister-in-law in Vail—and then there were wild strawberries in a field of wildflowers atop the mountain). Other clues I liked: [It may be hard to swallow] for TALE (I had _ALE for the longest time); [Sci-fi craft] for UFOS (the other day, a couple commenters at Rex's blog questioned the plural answer for a "craft" clue—of course, disguised plurals are one of the tricks constructors like to pull); [Coming-out places?] for CLOSETS; and [Vault cracker] for YEGG (I like this word for safecracker—its etymology isn't clear, but it appears to be about 100 years old); yegg sounds like an old word to me, but then, safes aren't even 200 years old). Some of the Scrabbly fill I appreciated: IBIZA, CINQ, KWAI, EX-WIFE. Is HERALDRY a [Coat-of-arms science]? I wouldn't use "science" to describe a nonscientific area of study like this, but I believe the dictionary supports the usage.
Ray Hamel's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Go On at Lengths," tips off the theme in the title: the theme entries end with plurals of units of length. I like TWO LEFT FEET and CAMDEN YARDS—more zing than SYLVIA MILES (somewhat before my time) and a LIGHT METER. Anyone who has enjoyed SpongeBob SquarePants has a fondness for the BARNACLE, particularly in the plural expletive form, "Barnacles!" If you're trying to quit cursing, see if "Barnacles!" makes a suitable substitute.
Looking back to Sunday
Patrick Merrell has posted Patrick Berry's explanation of how on earth he managed to generate the theme entries in his incredibly elegant Sunday NYT puzzle from two days ago.
I finally did the diagramless puzzle by Janet Bender that was published beneath the Berry crossword. (More below.)
When completed, Bender's puzzle looked like a big letter S, with the black squares carving out an S of words. Nine theme entries ranging from 7 letters (SEA SALT) to 15 (STEVEN SPIELBERG) had S.S. initials. "That's pretty impressive," you say. "I like it when a diagramless yields a picture rather than just an ugly answer grid." But wait! There's more! Every single clue also starts with an S. I think the puzzle would not have suffered at all to skip the S-only cluing, which surely involved a tremendous amount of labor on the part of the constructor and editor. But people are drawn to the showier accomplishments of crossword construction (when they notice them), so there it is.
By the way: I almost never solve a diagramless without taking advantage of the hint that tells me where the first white square goes. So sue me.
September 10, 2007
Tuesday, 9/11
Tausig 4:09
NYS 3:59
Onion 3:44
LAT 2:53
NYT 2:52
CS 2:43
The Tuesday New York Times puzzle by Christina Houlihan Kelly had one of those elusive themes that entirely escaped my detection during the solve. And then there were six Across answers of 9 or more letters, so at first I thought all six were theme answers. It's just the outermost four: SAND WEDGE golf club, the butcher's MEAT GRINDER (anyone else think of the "butcher's ass" line from Tommy Boy whenever they hear the word butcher?), an AMERICAN SUB from the Navy, and a SUPERHERO like Spider-Man—and these four end with words that mean "submarine sandwich." Wikipedia clarifies that wedge is a regional term used in Yonkers and environs, which explains why I've never heard of that one. They're mostly subs in Chicagoland, but I know they're grinders and heroes elsewhere, along with hoagies and po'boys, but there aren't any crossword-friendly phrases that end with HOAGIE or POBOY. The fill includes a couple Xs and Zs and a smattering of Ks occupying words like TUXEDO, SHIRK, and DEBUNK. YADDA is here with my preferred two-D spelling. MAVEN is a lovely word (maybe someday it'll be clued [Dab hand]). I also like GLOMS on to and EMINEM clued with his full name, Marshall Mathers. Favorite clues: [Union member] for STATE; [Name after Dan or San] for MARINO; and [Swedish version of Lawrence] for LARS (I always think of Phyllis's little- or never-seen husband Lars on the Mary Tyler Moore Show spinoff, Phyllis). I don't think I've heard of [Big Band saxophonist Al] COHN; me, I'd have gone with Roy Cohn or Mindy Cohn of The Facts of Life. With the wealth of clues possible for WOMAN, it's a little disappointing to have a fill-in-the-blank evoking prostitution. Have any of you ever been to a séance? Crosswords have been insisting for years that one hears raps there (...maybe at a seance aimed at contacting Tupac), and this one offers up a KNOCK and a MOAN. Am I missing out on all the séance action out there?
Patrick Blindauer's New York Sun crossword, "TV Audio Problems," reconfigures six TV show titles with sound-alike words. The best of these is SOLE TRAIN, with a [Conga line of flatfish?]. (Perhaps Don Codnelius hosts.) The best or most entertaining clues: [1980 #1 hit for Kenny Rogers] for LADY (because it made me laugh to be reminded of that song); [Possible reply to "Would you like more haggis?] for NAE (what on earth was I thinking, opting first for AYE?); and [Mark Twain, e.g.] for PEN NAME (I'm related to Twain via my Clements ancestors). Nice to see IXNAY in the grid as well.
And now, a little tutorial on hair removal products. NAIR is clued in this Sun puzzle as [Bikini waxer's purchase], and that seems a little off base to me. Yes, Nair sells bikini waxing strips, but I think the company is fairly new to waxing products. They're primarily known for their hair-removal lotions that chemically dissolve the hair, but can't penetrate all the way into the follicle. (Waxing yoinks the hairs all the way out.) Neet used to be about as well known as Nair, but I haven't seen it on store shelves in years. Apparently a French company owns Neet and still has Neet products on the market, but they're certainly not distributed as widely as Nair. (Director Mira Nair is also on tap for NAIR cluing needs.)
Updated:
Randall Hartman's CrosSynergy puzzle has an anagram theme: each theme entry ends with an anagram of TARPS (which is not in the puzzle, because it's awfully flat.) One of the theme entries is CHIN STRAP, [Part of a football helmet]; I feel better after the Sunday NYT expected me to think of EAR HOLES instead. Favorite clues/entries: [It may get rattled] for CAGE; SOCK HOP; [Where zippers can get caught?] for SPEED TRAPS (as in those who are zipping down the highway); [President who fathered 15 children] for John TYLER (his first wife was disabled by a stroke at 39 and died at 51 during his presidency; he remarried during that same term, to a woman five years younger than his oldest daughter—it's so Jerry Springer!); and [Statement from a ticked-off person] for both I'M SO MAD and THAT'S IT.
Doug Peterson's LA Times crossword jeers through the theme, with cartoon blackbirds HECKLE AND JECKLE heckling, ALGER HISS hissing, BOO RADLEY booing (I have a nephew named Atticus, and I like to ride his parents for not naming him Boo), and ALONG FOR THE RIDE including "ride" but not being a person or character (Sally Ride's name is too short to balance the terrific Heckle and Jeckle inclusion). No clues jumped out at me, but the fill had tons of gleam: ZEALOT, XENA the Warrior Princess, PICKS AT food, MOJO crossing the quaint BIJOU, GEOMETRY, and a PIANO above its KEYS.
Brendan Emmett Quigley's Onion A.V. Club puzzle has a theme that starts out, "Speed Dating went really well last night, but I can't make up my mind," and continues with seven adjectives and two nouns that might be used to jokingly describe people in certain occupations. Fun puzzle! Each of the nine theme entries has its own "aha" moment. The dog catcher was FETCHING and the firefighter was a HOTTIE, but wait, the siren was TEMPTING? Sirens are tempting, but how many sirens are going to Speed Dating? [Potato chips, to Brits] are CRISPS, yes, but there are brands sold as potato chips there. (The best damn salt-free potato chip I ever had was from a chip-maker in England who hand-stirred kettle chips and used "potato chips" on the label, and it's a small company that isn't exporting its chips to the U.S., alas.) Great grid, with those corners of 6x6 words and the stacked 8-letter entries. Favorite clues: [Some generalists, initially] for PCPS (primary care practictioners); ["We've already gone over this"] for YES YES; and [Belt holder] for CHAMP. There's no reason to use "comedienne" rather than "comedian" in [Comedienne Margaret] CHO, though; it's not as if there's another comedian who's a man named Margaret and the puzzle needs to keep the clues easier. I've never heard of CLERC watches; these people must not advertise in Esquire. [Depilatory brand] is NEET; see above. Near-fatal crossing: [Sebadoh's Barlow], _OU, and [___ Soundsystem], _CD. Figured it had to be LOU, and it is. I don't like CITEE, but I like all the entries it crosses.
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader puzzle ("Where Are They Now?") makes sport of college team names that appear at the end of established phrases. My favorites: [Syracuse graduate in phlebotomy] for BLOOD ORANGE; [Brown graduate in downsizing?] for BAD NEWS BEAR (despite the non-plural answer); and [Oregon graduates in vulcanization] for RUBBER DUCKS. One question: What makes a SHARK a [Spineless predator]? I think it does have a spine, one made of cartilage rather than bone but a spine nonetheless. VAX is clued with reference to some vacuum cleaner brand; anyone else remember using the Vax system to send primitive e-mail in the mid-'80s? Favorite clues: [Hamburger's home?] for HAUS; [NECCO wafer relative] for SMARTIE (I love Smarties—the American version—and demand to know why they're not sold in 3 oz. boxes for movie snacking); [Subject of a sleep study, perhaps] for APNEA (as a sleep medicine editor, I find this clue works beautifully—normally clues for APNEA sound woefully tinny to me); and [Garden of literature] for EDEN (yes!). Out-of-left-field answers: [Dutch astrologer Eisinga] for EISE and [Soap opera veteran Laurence] LAU. Except I just Googled the latter, and wait, I remember him. He was an '80s heartthrob on All My Children and then he took over the Sam part on One Life to Live in the present decade and was so much more handsome than his predecessor.
OBOLS?
I caught the last 15 minutes of today's hour of Merv Griffin's Crosswords. The gist of it is two contestants and three spoilers rotating through two podia, trying to answer each crossword clue that's presented to them. Incorrect answers lose money, correct answers win money. The money leader at the end is the winner, and he or she continues to the grand prize round in which the the goal is to fill in the remainder of the crossword, spelling the answers aloud.
Tyler Hinman watched the full hour and has some remarks about clues he deems iffy.
One caught my eye: [Six of these make a drachma] (or something along those lines). OBOLS is old-school crosswordese, so I knew it. I've been doing crosswords fairly regularly since about 1980, so many of those words we don't see much any more are still wedged inside my mind. But the word, in singular or plural, has a mere three appearances in the puzzles indexed in the Cruciverb database, two in 2000 and one in 2004. Why has the word largely disappeared from high-quality crosswords? (1) It's stale old crosswordese. (2) Greece switched to the euro back in 2002, so nobody's using drachmas or fractions thereof any more. What do you know? None of the contestants got this one. One guessed RUBLE.
My favorite thing about this game show: Spelling counts. The majority of Jeopardy! responses don't require spelling, and I can spell pretty well, so I'm partial to anything that plays to my strengths. Now, if we could only get the Merv Griffin's Crosswords people to hold auditions somewhere other than Hollywood...
Updated:
Trip Payne also reviews the show.
And Tyler reviews day 2, shows 3 and 4.
September 09, 2007
Monday, 9/10
NYS 3:23
NYT 2:53
CS 3:08
LAT 2:49
The Monday New York Times crossword by Edward Sessa includes circled letters to spotlight the theme: The NOTES OF THE SCALE appear, in pairs, in the four theme entries. DOG BREEDER contains DO and RE, MI and FA appear in the next Across theme entry, SOFT PALATE contains SO and LA in the Down entry that's higher up in the grid, and TI and DO appear in the other Down theme entry. (If you're about to interject that SO should be SOL, save your breath. SO has dictionary support as a variant and it's more widely used in American English. Plus, The Sound of Music didn't teach us "Sol/soul, offshoot of R and B," it was "So/sew, a needle pulling thread.") An affable theme, especially with [G.I. Joe, for one] being an ACTION DOLL. Yes, that's right—a doll. "Action figure" is merely a euphemism for man doll. Highlights in the fill: CHEESY (clued as [Shabby], which isn't exactly the sense I pick up from "cheesy") next to STEAMY, SARI crossing INDIA, and the prospect that one day, rapper EMINEM will be described as having DODDERED. "What's the etymology of dodder?" you ask. American Heritage defines it as "To shake or tremble, as from old age; totter.
To progress in a feeble, unsteady manner."—the root is [Alteration of Middle English daderen.] I'm so fond of words that have been in the English language for 500+ years.
The New York Sun puzzle is called "It's Your Move," and James Sajdak is the constructor. The theme...what is the theme? I finished without noticing any theme. Ah, games in which it's somebody's move: CHESS, CHECKERS, GO, and REVERSI, the latter serving as the beginning of REVERSIONIST and the other three doubling as the first word in a phrase. Delightfully Scrabbly fill, with XBOX and TAXIS and EXES and ESSEX (none of them intersecting at those Xs!) and QI GONG and KING-SIZE and WHEEZE (also standing apart). Not to mention longer fill like DASHIKIS and AS USUAL—overall, the fill is simply excellent.
Updated:
You'll need some Tums after devouring the LA Times puzzle. Constructor Bill Ballard dishes out THREE BEAN SALAD, FOUR CHEESE PIZZA, and FIVE-ALARM CHILI with some nonthematic sides of SLAW and RIGATONI. My favorite crossword-bound title appears here, the [Turkish title] PASHA. Don't we all aspire to be a pasha at times? I picture more of an old-time sultan or emperor, which may be factually incorrect, but that's how we use "pasha" around this house.
Harvey Estes' CrosSynergy puzzle, "Contemplate Your Naval Battle," has a few layers. The theme is a quote with two alternate endings, and the anatomy conjured by the title also pops up in the fill. The start and middle of the two quotes is WE HAVE MET / THE ENEMY. The first ending was uttered by Commander Perry at LAKE ERIE during the War of 1812: AND THEY ARE OURS. The alternate ending comes from Walt Kelly, creator of the "Pogo" comic strip: AND HE IS US. Kelly used the phrase on a poster for Earth Day in 1970. So that's a naval battle, a fillip of environmentalism, and then, for good measure, an INNIE to contemplate in the fill.
