NYS 5:00
NYT 4:23
LAT 4:15
CS 3:15
I am in a pet (in the "sulky and peevish" sense). It's that pesky sesamoiditis—"The pain usually begins as a mild ache and increases gradually as the aggravating activity is continued. It may build to an intense throbbing." Indeed. It was a mild ache a week ago, and has increased gradually each day. As far as health conditions go, it's not worrisome, I know, but it's still vexatious.
David Kahn's New York Times crossword summons up memories of his famous Al Hirschfeld tribute puzzle with hidden NINAs in the grid. This time, the theme is THE SECRET GARDEN, and A DOZEN ROSES are hidden, word-search style, throughout the grid. Man, it took me forever to find the twelfth ROSE! I even started looking for PETE Rose, to no avail, but finally found the last ROSE crossing some black squares and ending in square 63. (All 12 are circled in the grid here.)
Favorite and/or toughest clues: [Three short, three long, three short] for SOS in Morse code; [Spend the night] for ROOST ("Hey, cutie, wanna roost in my coop?"); [Everyday speech] for PROSE (I usually think of prose as written, not spoken); [Designer/architect Goldfinger] for ERNO (I know Erno Rubik of cube fame and Auric Goldfinger of James Bond fame, but not this guy—and I don't care for his buildings); [Capital of Valais] for SION; [Dumpling stuffed with cheese] for PIROGI (I am more familiar with the pierogi spelling, but I will gladly eat potato and cheese dumplings no matter how they're spelled); [Antenna holder, maybe] for INSECT; [What you might be doing this puzzle in] for PEN (or the loo, or the bus); ["The chief nurse of England's statesmen"] for ETON; [Hydrospace] for SEA; ["Too great a burden to bear": Martin Luther King Jr.] for HATE; and [Horse-training school] for MANEGE. I wasn't in the mood for all the cross-referenced clues (WEE and TINIER, SNO and CAT, SEINE and THE SORBONNE), and the constraints placed on the fill by the requirement for a dozen ROSEs to be hidden led to plenty of suboptimal fill. Were those offset by the joy of the word search that followed? I don't know.
My solving of Doug Peterson's "Themeless Thursday" in the New York Sun was interrupted by my son's hissy fit. (Grr.) Plenty of lively fill here—to wit, EMOTICON, THOUGHT POLICE, DEAD CAT BOUNCE, MEL BLANC beside Ozzy OSBOURNE, DJINNS, and a SKORT on the CISCO KID's midsection. Favorite clues: ["Finding Nemo" character Peach, e.g.] for SEA STAR; [Drawing cards] for LURES; [McGrath of "Sesame Street"] for BOB; [Rumspringa group] for AMISH; [Like Jason Kidd] for GOATEED (I think he's a basketball player, but I have no idea what he looks like—GOATEED was a lucky guess with a few crossings); [Was awful, in slang] for BIT; [Raid target] for BOOKIE (I first went with COOKIE, as in a raid on the cookie jar, but there is no Cob McGrath); and [Rose's home] for DAVID KAHN'S PUZZLE—no wait, it's PBS, home of Charlie Rose.
Updated:
My mom looked up sesamoiditis in a medical dictionary, and found only references to a foot ailment in horses. She said I should see a better veterinarian.
Randolph Ross's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Ster-linguistics," is really funny, and I swear I was not under the influence of narcotics when I solved it. Each theme entry tacks on a -STER to radically change the meaning. HAMSTER SANDWICH! A dictionary buff who's a WEBSTER BROWSER! SPINSTER DOCTORS! (This rad-fem blogger has reclaimed the term "spinster aunt," so the word amuses me.) And HIPSTER HUGGERS, because even the coolest hipster needs a little love. Every theme entry made me smile, and that doesn't happen so often. Much appreciated!
The LA Times crossword by Gary Steinmehl contains a "SKY ___" theme, with five phrases (including BLUE FLU in the middle) that begin with words that could fill in that blank. The answer seems nonstandard as crossword fill goes, but I'm fond of ZSA clued as [Eva's half sister?]. The dik-dik is also nonstandardly split in half, with DIK in the grid. Somehow I find the two work together better than they would separately.
April 09, 2008
Thursday, 4/10
April 08, 2008
Wednesday, 4/9
NYS 4:59
NYT 3:42
LAT 3:16
CS 3:09
It's Tuesday, and it's trivia night. A friend of mine will be joining the group tonight for the second time—she felt like she didn't contribute that other time, but having another person way on this side of age 25 has got to help, right? I don't know how much help I'll be, though—I'm all yawny and felt very sleepy while solving the following crossword just now.
Tony Orbach's New York Sun crossword, "Done to a T," felt hard to me, but either it's a bit harder than usual for a Wednesday Sun (for which my average solving time is 4:46) or tiredness is knocking me down a peg. I'm not sure this is the best description of the theme: Phrases starting with __ND words become phrases starting with __NT words, and the clues reflect the new word's meaning. A trendsetter is one thing, but a TRENT SETTER would be an [Engliish water dog?],, and the phrase "...and counting" turns into entomological ANT COUNTING. Who knew that [Lucia's brother in "Lucia di Lammermoor"] was named ENRICO? Or that ALEX HALEY wrote a book called A Different Kind of Christmas? I hadn't made sense out of [Bedroom closet community?], and ended up filling in NARNIA strictly through the crossings—didn't even see the answer until just now. Favorite clue: [Notable two-dimensional performer?] for TV STAR.
Updated Tuesday night:
Huzzah! We won trivia! I'm not quite sure how we won with so few points, but apparently the other teams recalled fewer answers. My key contributions were knowing the name of Perot's '92 running mate (and I swear he also had a '96 running mate who was included in a themeless crossword recently, and I'd never heard of him and have again forgotten his name) and the country where Mother Teresa was born.
The New York Times crossword is a joint production from Daniel Kantor and Jay Kaskel. The very last letter I typed in was supposed to be a D (in DRUM), but I typed an adjacent S instead (and just now, I typed "asjacent" at first). In searching for the typo after getting the "incorrect" message, of course I started scanning the grid at 1-Across. Nothing like a 20-second typo search to enhance one's solving time. But the crossword's theme was kinda funny—WHINE AND DINE describes the kvetchy complaints a dissatisfied restaurant patron might have. For 20- and 47-Across, the snarkiest remarks are in the clues, with the straightforward equivalents in the grid (e.g., MY SOUP IS COLD is direct, where ["I asked for tomato bisque, not gazpacho!"] is the bitchy snipe. 28-Across takes the opposite tack, with ARE WE INVISIBLE being more oblique than ["Has our waiter even made eye contact?"]. Favorite clues and answers: [Language of the Hindustan Express] for URDU; ATM FEE, or [Money for money]; DADDY-O ([Pops]); and [Pal] for both BUB and BRO (MAC must have been busy).
Updated:
Donna Levin's LA Times crossword features four two-word phrases that rhyme with Alice, with four different ways of spelling that cluster of sounds. George Halas, a phallus, and callous are feeling a bit put out that the grid was not able to accommodate more than the other four. The [Renata Tebaldi rival] is MARIA CALLAS, the [Jazz at Lincoln Center director] is WYNTON MARSALIS, [Winston Churchill's ancestral home] was BLENHEIM PALACE, and the [Last Supper wine vessel] was a HOLY CHALICE.
Mel Rosen's CrosSynergy puzzle is called "How Do You Stand?" and "positions" are the theme. Each theme entry is both a word made of a prefix + position and a short word followed by the word position. For example, a [Dining room chair] is a SUP POSITION, and supposition is a word (not alluded to in the clue).
April 07, 2008
Tuesday, 4/8
Onion 4:52
NYS 3:52
Tausig 3:36
CS 3:12
LAT 2:46
NYT 2:45
Hah! There's another sleepy-time theme in the New York Times crossword, just one day after one ran in the New York Sun. So often when two versions of a theme appear in close proximity, one of the two suffers by comparison. I don't think that's the case this time—Dave Mackey's NYT puzzle was a delight (and the Sun was cool, too). Now, if you don't share my fondness for pop culture, maybe you didn't enjoy this puzzle, but I sure did. The theme entries in this one follow a progression—first it's BEDTIME (FOR BONZO), then you get into your PAJAMA (GAME) (and yes, the singular is kosher), put your head on your PILLOW (TALK), and next thing you know, it's (I) DREAM (OF JEANNIE) time. Three of the four theme entries are movie titles and the last was a TV series. Yesterday's 1-Across in the NYT asked for dictator AMIN; today's 1-Across asks for Mr. Kotter himself, GABE Kaplan. Other pop-culture answers from the worlds of TV, film, and pop music are JABBA the Hutt; actors Greg EVIGAN, Annabella SCIORRA, and LIZA Minnelli; director Sam RAIMI; the French film AMELIE ([2001 title role for Audrey Tautou]); old film studio RKO; the song "Ode to BILLY JOE" and the lyric "TIE A yellow ribbon..."; and EWE clued as [Stand-in for "you" in "Concentration"], the old rebus game show. Of course, pop-culture haters get the more highbrow ZOLA ([Emile who wrote "Truth is on the march"]); ["Rule, Britannia" composer] Thomas ARNE; a SAGA and a NOVEL; New Yorker cartoonist REA Irvin (he did a ton of New Yorker covers, including the iconic Eustace Tilley cover, and designed the classic New Yorker typeface); the ["Venerable" monk] Adam BEDE; and MME. Bovary.
Other favorite clues and fill: [Bonkers] for both DAFT and LOCO; UTOPIA clued as [A world without 71-Across], have-NOTS; ZOOLOGIC; ["It's on me!"] for "I'LL TREAT" (a happier option that cluing it as ill-treat); [Informal greeting at a breakfast shop] for MORNIN (what exactly is a "breakfast shop"? does IHOP qualify?); and even [Coastal raptors] for ERNS, because Emily Cureton draws a mean ERN. (I see that Dave solved his puzzle in the NYT applet—behind several other fast solvers. Hee! It gives me the giggles when I can beat a constructor on his or her own puzzle.
Peter Collins' New York Sun puzzle, "Split Seconds," takes five phrases that follow the "second ___" format, puts the second word into the midst of a theme entry, and has each theme phrase split the second ___ word across word breaks. For example, the bolded letters in GEORGE A. ROMERO and HIPPOCRATIC OATH can follow "second" in common phrases. Another theme entry is TUBE STEAK, which I just saw earlier in the day while consulting an online list of slang terms for "penis" (a Crasswords puzzle had a slang term I'd never seen before). Here, it's clued as [Frank]. I...had no idea anyone called hot dogs that. The fill juxtaposes USAGE and (a few inches away) PEDANTRY; who doesn't appreciate that connection? (My mom caught Hillary Rodham Clinton with an errant "Bill and I" that should have been "Bill and me." *sigh*) How is it that I've never seen ARBORETA as the plural of arboretum?
Updated:
The LA Times crossword might mark a debut—I don't recall seeing the name Thomas Takaro before. There are six theme entries (filling rows 3, 6, 10, and 13) in which the two parts of each answer are identical save for an I-to-A switch. FIDDLE-FADDLE, KIT-KAT, FLIM-FLAM—these and the others are all lively-sounding terms with mostly happy connotations. PELL-MELL almost joins the party, but with a consonant change instead (and no thematic partner across the grid). There are 17 longish (6 to 8 letters) answers in the fill, too, with PELL-MELL sandwiched between Dr. FAUSTUS and AFFABLE. I like the juxtaposition for whatever reason.
Nancy Salomon's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Inner Tube," places an IV (as in "IV tube") in each theme entry's base phrase. Pry open yields a "PRIVY OPEN" sign, dingbat hides a DIVING BAT swooping out of the dark (eek!), a trial date (when the trial is scheduled) turns into a TRIVIAL DATE (clued as [Unremarkable get-together?] rather than [Good social option for nerds]), and led the way goes actively Zen with LIVED THE WAY. Nice fill, though it's been a while since TOTIE Fields showed up in the crossword—she's one of those people I learned about strictly from crosswords, like Toots Shor.
Updated Tuesday evening:
Well, I've had dinner and am only now getting around to the puzzles e-mailed out earlier today by Ben Tausig. Tyler Hinman's Onion A.V. Club crossword has a "Confucius say" theme. For example, [Confucius say "Man who fart in church ___"] is completed by the double-meaning SIT IN OWN PEW. [Confucius say "Passionate kiss like spider's web; leads to ___"] UNDOING OF FLY (the entomological fly and the trouser fly can both be "undone" in different ways). I'm not wild about the inherent cartoony stereotyping vibe of the theme, and two of the five theme answers don't have the same stilted-English vibe that the other three share (though the clues are stilted in that way). Good fill—where else could you combine a MARMOSET and ABS OF STEEL?
Ben Tausig's Chicago Reader/Ink Well puzzle, "Missing the Signs," has five signs that are missing one letter and thus convey a different message. A tow-away zone sign gets hospital use without its T: OW-AWAY ZONE. A loose gravel sign goes morbid with LOOSE GRAVE. Nice pop-culture combo with the long vertical fill: Altman's GOSFORD PARK (which I haven't seen) and Carly Simon's classic, "YOU'RE SO VAIN" (who was that song about, anyway?).
April 06, 2008
Monday, 4/7
CS 3:18
NYS 3:06
NYT 2:51
LAT 2:32
Have you ever been alluded to in a webcomic? Huh? Have you? Because I have. Sort of. Faintly veiled as "Lemon." It's Patrick Merrell's latest Squares comic strip. (If you haven't been reading this weekly comic, start at the end of this page and work your way up, then click "next entries" at the bottom for the next page(s) of comics. It's packed with insidery humor aimed at crossword fans.)
The New York Times crossword's by Randall Hartman. Another baseball theme—baseball themes are especially popular in April. Why? Because baseball teams are glistening with potential and have not yet disappointed their fans. Run a baseball theme in August, and half the fans are going to feel pretty disgusted with the sport by then. That's one theory, anyway. This crossword's got five theme entries, four of which begin with FIRST, SECOND, THIRD, and HOME—the bases in baseball. The middle entry is COVERS EVERY BASE. Now, I feel like "covers all the bases" is much more "in the language" than COVERS EVERY BASE, but 17 letters won't fit into a 15x15 crossword, will it? I was mildly disgruntled when the cross-referenced clue at 1-Across wasn't fun at all—AMIN tied to IDI? That's something that will stick in one's CRAW (5-Across). Fortunately, Frank ZAPPA rides to the rescue in the upper right, and I have no unpleasant feelings about him (aside from not being crazy about his hair). His Z crosses ZANE GREY, which is opposite a RED DWARF star, which is to the left of Shaw's SAINT JOAN—nice long fill answers there. [Foolish person, slangily] is a GOONY—I had to look this one up. One dictionary defines it as a black-footed albatross, with a name derived from English dialect gooney, meaning "simpleton." Fair enough. Does the movie The Goonies pertain to foolish people or albatrosses?
In the New York Sun, Mark Feldman's "Bedroom Sounds" is upsized to a 15x16 grid, and yet it still was quick to solve for a Sun crossword. The three theme entries—PILLOW TALK, BLANKET STATEMENT, and SHEET MUSIC—don't merely begin with items found on a bed (as I first thought, wondering why Peter Gordon allowed PILLOW TALK, in which pillow = just a pillow, literally). No, the theme goes further—the second word in each theme entry fits the "Sounds" category promised by the puzzle's title. So it's an elegant and very specific theme. If only there were such a thing as a COMFORTER ORATION or FEATHERBED SPEECH to extend the theme to four entries, eh? The grid was packed with peppery fill—KEMOSABE and Tony DANZA, CBS TV and THE HAJ, OLD MONEY and SUMATRA, SCHNAPPS and SANTA FE.
Updated:
Thomas Schier's CrosSynergy crossword, "Double Plays," groups together four workable phrases in which the second word doubles as the last five letters of the first word. DISCARDS CARDS spurred me to check my unabridged dictionary for the etymology of the first word. Did you know it comes from dis- plus card, based on carte? Why the word has meanings outside of card games, I don't know. The first word in DESIGNS SIGNS has a Latin etymology that traces right back to signum, "sign." YEOMEN'S OMENS (my favorite theme entry) and PRIMATES' MATES contain unrelated words. In the fill, LOU is clued as [Money guru Dobbs]. Does he ever give financial advice any more? Is he still with Money magazine? Or is full-time blowharding what he's doing these days?
David Cromer's LA Times puzzle was a breeze. The theme entries start with synonyms: ROD (SERLING), POLE (POSITION), STAFF (MEETING), and BAR (MITZVAH). I'm particularly fond of the lively non-rod, non-bar contexts of the first and last theme entries. Excellent fill for a Monday puzzle, with little of the arid filler we so often see.
April 05, 2008
Sunday, 4/6
Second Sunday diagramless 20:45
NYT 10:16
PI 7:49
BG 7:35
LAT 7:28
CS 3:18
...And then there were five. No more Sunday Washington Post puzzle to enjoy—Washingtonians will now be getting Merl Reagle's crossword, which I (and you, if you like fun crosswords) already solve in its Philadelphia Inquirer incarnation.
Apparently not understanding a crossword's theme for too long can really interfere with speedy solving—even after I'd filled in MAY DOUBT A WILL in Daniel Bryant's New York Times puzzle, even after seeing the "Sound Moves," title, I couldn't parse the phrase that answer was based on. (Edited to add: Ashish reports that the title in the printed newspaper is "Could You Reword That, Please?") Much later, I figured out it was made out a will, which would seem out of place as a crossword entry in its unaltered form. So, each theme entry moves a sound from the end of the first word to the beginning of the second, which necessitates changing the spelling of those words. My favorite was the [Drab Oriental fabric?], GRAY TOILE OF CHINA (Great Wall). I hit another speedbump thanks to Chicago pronunciation, as KEY PAWN (MOVING) and keep on don't have the same vowel sound, and neither to DRAW PIN (CENTERS) and drop-in (I hear the vowels in paw vs. pot).
Moving along to the clues, did anyone else find themselves at 113-Across, [Word before or after "on"], with H**D filled in, and wonder what "on hard" meant? And then "on head"? (It's HOLD.) Favorite clues: [Greek discord goddess] for ERIS (my role model!); [Motor levers] for TAPPETS (I saw this word a few weeks ago in another puzzle, and considered it solely because of Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers); [Architect whose epitaph says "Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you"] for Christopher WREN (here's a picture—the epitaph's in Latin, in London's St. Paul's Cathedral, which was closed when I tried to visit); [Tribe originally from the Deep South] for CHOCTAW (because the tribe name sounds like it just might be chocolate plus TAWS, which are clued as [Choice marbles]); [1910s='20s Dutch art movement] for DE STIJL (Mondrian exemplifies the movement's style); [What people are saying, briefly] for VOX POP; [Prime minister raised in Milwaukee] for Golda MEIR; [Twaddle] for BOSH, both Brit-inflected; [Friday, for one] for COP (trapped between the Sgt. in my head and th CO* space, I wanted to move Joe into the military and make him Col. Friday); and [Steakhouse shunner] for VEGAN (hey, steakhouses are no fun even you eat dairy, eggs, poultry, and fish, lemme tell you). Most obscure answer, for me: SIMNEL, a [British fruitcake]. That, and ILLEGIT, clued as [Crooked]; is this a real word? It seemed like the puzzle had a lot of short answers that lacked flavor, such as APOS and OAST, ESTS and ETDS.
Update #1:
The Across Lite Boston Globe puzzle by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon, "Mother's Helpers," runs AU PAIRS down the middle as [This puzzle's theme]; the seven theme entries are words, names, or phrases that contain a pair of AUs. The AU PAIRS tie-in lets this make sense to me, whereas that recent Merl Reagle puzzle in which each theme entry had a pair of OUs left me cool. I like the multilingual vibe espoused by the theme entries—CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS has a French first name and half-Teutonic last name, which echoes the two German answers (SAUERKRAUT and HAUSFRAUEN) and two French-inflected answers (BEAUJOLAIS NOUVEAU and the LAURENTIAN PLATEAU. Then throw in PAUL AUSTER from Brooklyn and CHAUTAUQUA, a New York town with a Seneca name, to round things out (or raund them aut, maybe). Good fill—LOVE GAME, ON PURPOSE, SANGRIA, TOGGLE, an ART FAIR, and John HERSEY (hooray for Hersey graduating from only being in clues for ADANO!). There's also a double-hit of oval geometry—an ELLIPSE is an [Elongated O], while [Like a flattened O] is OBLATE.
Update #2:
Paula Gamache's Second Sunday puzzle, a diagramless crossword, had me erasing a ton in the top third of the grid. The good news is that I figured it all out, and I didn't even use the starting-square hint. The first big misstep was filling in THE CHOSEN PEOPLE, who picked fights with the nearby Down entries because they needed to narrow themselves down to THE CHOSEN FEW. It wasn't until I filled in the first three long answers that I gleaned any commonality—the letters ECHO. The final long answer explains the theme "in a way"—the phrases containing that letter string are ECHO CHAMBERS. (Interestingly, ECHOLOCATION could have served the same purpose with a minor clue edit.)
Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle, "Greeks and Romans I'd Like to Meet," reminds me a bit of History of the World, Part I—here, the theme entries are English words that sound as if they could be the names of ancient Greek or Roman figures. Do you know there are 15 theme answers? Yeah. That's quite a lot. My favorites were ["You're getting warmer"], HUMIDITIES; ["You don't look so good"], NAUSEA; and ["Interesting flavor...what's your secret"], CORIANDER. Outside of the theme, there's a brilliant clue: [Remove from power?] for UNPLUG.
Update #3:
The CrosSynergy themeless "Sunday Challenge" this week is by Raymond Hamel. Now, I hadn't noticed the YDS/YARDSTICK duplication in yesterday's NYT, but I did notice the UNI- prefix across from UNILATERAL here. Usually I don't notice such dupes, and when I do, it doesn't make me erase one of the answers because it's got to be against the rules. (Fight the power!) Lots of favorite entries in this puzzle—I just wish the clues had been harder so I'd have to work for all these great answers. The ACTION HERO is resting beneath the FASHION MAG, and in the opposite corner, the fill evokes a PREHOMINID crossword AFICIONADO. The Nielsen families in SIOUX FALLS may be WATCHING TV. The [Moonshine mug] is a MASON JAR. Retro childhood fun and games come out with a POTATO RACE and X-RAY VISION promised by a comic book ad. Favorite clues: [It may follow Kuwait or Quebec] for CITY; [Dr. Kimble's pursuer] for GERARD (from The Fugitive); and [Ruff stuff] for the LACE in an Elizabethan ruff collar. The most obscure clue was [Braided grass] for SENNIT; fortunately, the crossings were all pretty gettable.
Gail Grabowski's syndicated LA Times crossword, "It's On Order," has nine theme entries that begin with words that can precede order—for example, BACK FORTY and NEW POTATOES give us back order and New Order. I feel that COURT FAVOR is a little iffy—is it a blending of "curry favor" and "pay court to"?
April 04, 2008
Saturday, 4/5
Newsday 9:05 (in the Newsday applet)
NYT 5:35
LAT tba
CS tba
I liked Rich Norris's Saturday New York Times crossword. The three 10-letter answers stacked across the upper left corner start all with adjectives—SHORT STRAW, MEDIUM RARE, and TALL...no, wait...IRON MAIDEN. I couldn't believe that last one—an early '80s music clue ([Band with the 1982 platinum album "The Number of the Beast"]) I needed a bunch of crossings to get. Metal is not my genre. All righty, let's get straight to the business of the trickiest clues:
- [Not a very good drawing] is a SHORT STRAW.
- [A little red] means MEDIUM RARE (hmm, maybe OIL PAINT shouldn't be clued as [Medium in a tube], even though they're different senses of the word?).
- The [View from the back seat?] is the NAPE of the neck of someone sitting in the front seat.
- The vague [Certain code] is TAX LAW; April 15 is 10 days off—if you haven't filed your tax return yet, get a move on!).
- [Get ready to take off] means STRAP IN, as a pilot or airline passenger might do, while [Connecting flight] involves STAIRS rather than air travel.
- [When Arbor Day is observed: Abbr.] is SPR, short for spring, rather than APR, short for April.
- The seemingly plural [Recent developments] is the LATEST.
- [The other shoe, e.g.] is a MATE, not just something that's expected to drop.
- [Bean product?] is a BRAINCHILD.
- [Upsetting types] are DARK HORSES in the race.
- [Twist things] is the plural noun, RINDS (as in "a twist of lemon") and not a verb, while [Saves, e.g.] is a baseball STAT and not a verb ending in S.
- The vague [Test] is a TRIAL RUN.
- [It's hard to do this barefoot] is WATERSKI, but my first thought was TAPDANCE.
- [Fountain requests] are WISHES when you throw a coin in, and not soda fountain orders.
- A [Standard] is a YARDSTICK you measure something against.
These ones are "just the facts, ma'am" clues—straightforward factual clues you may or may not know the answers to, many of 'em interesting:
- [Da capo ___ (Baroque piece)] is filled in by ARIA (solo singer plus instruments).
- The [River past the ruins of Nineveh] is the TIGRIS; across the river from Nineveh is Mosul, Iraq.
- A [10th-century exile from Iceland] is ERIC THE RED.
- [Bygone New York daily, with "the"] is HERALD.
- From the land of math and science, we have RADIXES ([Base numbers, in math]) and TRIVALENT ([Like some chromium and arsenic]).
- DEPAUL University's team are [The Blue Demons of the N.C.A.A. Big East], and I can't believe I waited for crossings to reveal...my parents' alma mater.
- Lake TITICACA is the [Two-part lake connected by the Strait of Tiquina], and it's everybody's favorite body of water from Trivial Pursuit.
- [1996 Emmy-winning role for Alan Rickman] is RASPUTIN; totally forgot this, though I feel like I saw part of it on TV a couple years ago.
[Question answerer] is a POLLEE—I don't recall seeing the word before, but it is a valid noun derived from the verb poll. My eyeballs want this to transfigure itself into actress and director Sarah POLLEY or POLLEN, but then we'd lose the DARK HORSES.
The first name of [Choreographer Lubovitch] is LAR—this is the second time I've seen his name and I hadn't remembered him, so it was time to read up. He's a couple weeks younger than my mom (like her, born in Chicago), founded his own dance troupe in '68, and choreographs ballets, Broadway shows, and ice-dancing routines. Maybe I'll remember the name now.
I don't get why [Thai relative] is VIET. According to the Wikipedia articles on those languages, they're in different language groups, and the countries are separated by Laos and Cambodia. Is this clue akin to cluing ITALIAN as [German relative] because they're both European? I await enlightenment.
Updated:
Barry Silk's LA Times crossword has a lot of good stuff in it, but alas, I am running out of blogging time this morning (the subsequent paragraphs were written first). Favorite bits: [Dutch for "hidden river"] for SCHUYLKILL (crazy letter sequence + Dutch etymology = winner); IRAQ is followed by IRANIAN OIL ([Japan and China are its biggest importers]); [Mass transit unit] is both a TROLLEY CAR ("Clang, clang!" It's Mister Rogers' Neighborhood!) and a TRAM; [Settler, sometimes] is a CREDITOR; [Capital east of Bangor] is HALIFAX, Nova Scotia; [Where pa'anga are spent] is TONGA; and Christina AGUILERA ([2000 Best New Artist Grammy winner] crosses EGG SALAD ([Sandwich spread]), which amuses me for some reason.
Eww, I don't care for the Newsday crossword applet one bit. I did the "Saturday Stumper" by Stan Newman (writing as "Anna Stiga") on it, which I never do, and when you start in the middle of a word and reach the end...it just leaves you there. I like to be delivered promptly to the first blank square from the beginning of the word. And using the arrow key to change directions also moved me one square over in the new direction, which I'm not used to. Moreover, in my browser, not every clue was entirely visible, so the ROLEX clue was [BusinessWeek's #1 brand in ']. So! Next time, I will wait as long as it takes for the printer to function before I give up and use that applet. EASY RAWLINS looks terrific in the grid, but ["Cinnamon Kiss" hero] didn't tap anything I know. [Ilene and Rosanna, to Strait] are the EX'S in the George Strait song, "All My Ex's Live in Texas" (I know it only from crosswords). [Coke product] is TAR, from dirty industrial settings, and not TAB soda. The surprise [Romance language] is ARAGONESE...which I do not speak. [Fixin' to] means GONNA. I got DIVESTURE ([Shedding]), but prefer divestiture. As always in the themeless Newsdays, there are some vague short clues, such as [Flights] for AIR TRAVEL—not stairs, flights of fancy, lams, wine flights, or anything to do with birds, but any of those would be a plausible interpretation of the clue.
Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy crossword, "Set Piece," is Monday-easy. The three theme entries have the same clue, [SET]. Set is one of those words with a zillion dictionary definitions and multiple etymologies—two theme answers relate to verb definition 1 and noun definition 9 for set with an Old English derivation; a set of items or a musician's set come from the Latin secta instead. The third theme entry is Set, the EVIL EGYPTIAN GOD. According to this, it sounds like he wasn't so evil—just the victim of a smear campaign.
April 03, 2008
Friday, 4/4
NYS 8:26
NYT 6:57
LAT 5:05
CHE 4:32
Jonesin' 3:08
CS 2:59
WSJ 8:50
Will be limping to my kid's school to volunteer this morning, helping 180 or so second-graders work on their two-week integrated arts project about the Olympics. My son signed up for the dancing group, I think doing an opening ceremonies sort of routine. His guy friends all signed up for dance, too. How awesome is that?
So the many lovely Friday crosswords I wait all week for will have to wait 'til the afternoon.
I am fond of the letter Z, having grown up with that as my last initial. Do you think David Quarfoot might have a special liking for Q? Let's see if his New York Times crossword reveals anything. Well, there are those six Qs along the diagonal. (Two of the Q words also contain a Z and cross PIZAZZ, which makes my Z-centric self happy.) Please do marvel at this construction, but save some room in your marveling lobe for this 1996 Manny Nosowsky puzzle with an unearthly 12 Qs lined up diagonally. (Kee-rikey!) Even with "only" six Qs lined up here, Quarfoot's puzzle is stil mighty showy.
There are two music answers that Jim H's "Music theory for crossword lovers" didn't teach me about—D NATURAL ([Accidental in the key of B or E]) and F MAJOR ([Beethoven's "Pastoral" Symphony is in it]). Seth G. had reported that ADAR is the go-to Hebrew month in crosswords; here, it's clued as [When the Feast of Lots is observed]. (Feast of Lots is equivalent to Purim.)
Toughest clues: [Abstainer's order] for ADAM'S ALE (i.e., water); [Olympic event since 1988] for SUPER G skiing; [Producer/director ___ MacNaughton of Monty Python] for IAN (never heard of him); [Peck parts: Abbr.] for QTS (1 peck = 8 quarts); [Burger replacement] for Chief Justice REHNQUIST (love this clue!); [Stands in line at an airport?] for the stands known as KIOSKS; [Title woman of a film that won the 1985 Camera d'Or] for ORIANA; [Dodger's dread?] for IRS AUDIT (love this clue, too!); [Places to make tracks] for recording STUDIOS; [It often gets down] for a down-filled QUILT; [Réunion reunion attendee] for FRERE (French brother, family reunion); [Poetic conjunction] for ALTHO (that's poetic?); [Pair from a deck, maybe] for MASTS (boat deck, not card deck); [Literally, "women's boat] for the UMIAK; [Board] for MEALS, as in "room and board"; the verb [Silence] for QUELL, not QUIET; [Pecking order?] for "KISS ME"; and the sort of strained [Feeding tubes?] for ZITI pasta.
I had no idea that SAM SPADE was a [Sleuth who "looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan"], nor that there was ever a character called THE SIREN, a [Spellbinding "Batman" villainess played by Joan Collins]. Speaking of fictional characters, we also have the [2002 Denzel Washington drama] JOHN Q. Other Q highlights: QUETZAL, [Guatemala's national bird]; QUIZNOS, ["Mmmm...Toasty!" sloganeer]; QUEEN MUM, [Noted centenarian of 2000, familiarly]; and QUIET GAME, [Parent's ruse to hush noisy kids] ("Let's see which of us can be the quietest...I bet I can go the longest without talking!). The VIP PASS [might get you backstage].
Other entries and clues I admired: the LIME TREE, or [Linden] (gimme pop culture, geography, geology, and trees in my crossword!); [Like some cubs] for URSINE (lion cubs would be leonine or feline, not ursine); the hockey [Ranger rival] for a New Jersey DEVIL; and MOSEL, the [German wine region] (they make a lotta Riesling there).
Trip Payne's annual circa–April Fools' Day "Wacky Weekend Warrior" in the New York Sun was exactly as expected, meaning that only about 10 clues were at all what you expect in a crossword. The rest of the entries in this 52-word grid of expansive white space? Totally insane. A [Maseru-phobe's cry] is "OH, NO—LESOTHO!" I.M. Pei's followers are termed PEIITES. [Denial of draft-animal ownership] is IT ISN'T MY OX. [Strip, to a snake] is UNDRESSSS. And the [naive big-game hunter's cry] is, of course, "Here, HIPPO, HIPPO, HIPPO." I like the occasional derangement of crossword sanity, and this was a fun Wacky WW.
Updated with quick takes:
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "When in Rome," was easy once I saw the fun gimmick—words or abbreviations that contain only letters that are also Roman numerals are converted into spelled-out numbers. The [Roman martial arts star?] is Jet Li, or JET FIFTY-ONE. An IV drip becomes FOUR DRIP, V for Vendetta turns into FIVE FOR VENDETTA, and a mix tape is ONE THOUSAND / NINE TAPE. No room for a 10-letter theme entry, so no MALCOLM TEN here—which is good, because I've heard the "Malcolm the Tenth" joke a few too many times. Fun fill, too, to go with the fun theme—OMAROSA from The Apprentice and Heidi KLUM from Project Runway (reality TV, in the house!), a WHAMMY from the game show Press Your Luck, Maria's husband LUIS from Sesame Street, PEZ candy dispenser, and the ZAPF Dingbats pictogram font. I just Googled Zapf and you know what? It's a guy. Hermann Zapf, born in 1918, noted type designer, responsible for my go-to font (Palatino—and thanks to Mac genius Joe Cabrera for helping me reclaim Palatino when an OS upgrade ate it) as well as Dingbats (snowflakes! scissors!) and a zillion other typefaces.
Lynn Lempel's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Full Speed Ahead," includes four phrases that begin with words that are synonymous: QUICK(SILVER), FLEET (ADMIRAL), HASTY (PUDDING), and FAST (FRIENDS). It's too bad there wasn't room for ZIPPY THE PINHEAD, but good that there was room enough for the FLEET ADMIRAL so we were spared the Fleet enema.
Plenty of tough clues in Dan Naddor's LA Times crossword—or maybe I'm just not on the right wavelength for his puzzles. I think I had the same trouble with his last puzzle, unless I'm misremembering. The theme is AI words morphed into IA words. I'm always pleased when a morsel of crosswordese is put to better use than mere filler—and here, the Middle Eastern unit of currency known as the rial gets promoted (rail becomes rial in RIAL SPLITTERS. Mind you, in the upper corner, the ol' REATA perches atop the ol' ALTAI Mountains, so there's still some of that fill. Favorite theme entry: DIARY QUEEN ([Honored chronicler?] or, if you prefer, [Crossword blogger Orange]). The central theme entry, FIAT ACCOMPLI, is 12 letters long. Do you know what that means, kids? That means the grid has to be one row wider or narrower than the usual 15—in this case, it's a 15x16 grid wider than it is tall (the occasional 15x16 NY Sun crossword is taller).
The Chronicle of Higher Education puzzle, "Myth-a-morphosis," was constructed by Annemarie Brethauer. The theme entries are (and correct me if I'm wrong, please) characters from Greek mythology who were transformed from a person or nymph of some sort into other entities—a flower, tree, stone, monster, spider, stag, and panpipe. (I'd say SYRINX, who became a panpipe, got the worst of it.) Tough fill if you don't know all the mythical names—the flower GLOXINIA, a SPANDREL ([Wall spce between adjacent arches]), KINO from Steinbeck's The Pearl.
I began to nod off before finishing Randolph Ross's Wall Street Journal crossword, "The Start of Something Big." It's not the puzzle—it's me. Four hours wielding scissors and double-stick tape (plus some crayons)? I'm rusty. Tackling a Sunday-sized puzzle immediately after doing four other crosswords, during the late-afternoon Doldrums of Sleepiness? A recipe for a mid-solve catnap if I ever saw one. The theme entries are sort of like Jeopardy! "Before and After" clues, though in this case the beginning is always a word that's synonymous with big. [Big word] + X and X + Y are both establishes phrases, but [big word] + X + Y is something nutty. For example, a [Big security device?] is a MAXI PADLOCK, and a maxipad is a "feminine hygiene product." (Welcome to crosswords, MAXIPAD!) I Googled maxipad and found this funny video, "The Secret Life of the Maxi Pad." (Guy dressed as pad—with wings!—goes about his day. Grocery shopping—for cherries, hot sauce, tomatoes, strawberries, etc. Yoga class.)
April 02, 2008
Thursday, 4/3
NYT 6:16
NYS 5:29
Onion 4:14
LAT 3:51
CS 3:50
Ahh, it's nice to get a little rebusoid butt-kicking from a Thursday New York Times puzzle, isn't it? Kevin Der built his crossword around the [1980s catchphrase] from the Wendy's commercial, "WHERE'S THE BEEF?" (Greatly overrated commercial via YouTube in that link.) The beef is on the hoof, as it turns out, in the form of eight [cow] rebus squares that graze throughout the grid in random locations. One [COW] per long Across answer, one [COW] apiece in symmetrical squares 9 and 68, and four other [COW]s meandering elsewhere. Now, if the rebus squares held the word [OUT] or something, it would make no organic sense that they were strewn about at random, but cows? How're you gonna get the cows to mind you when you're a crossword solver and not a cattle farmer?
The toughest hidden [COW]s were in [COW]PEA, clued as [Soup or salad ingredient]; LO[COW]EED, about which we learn [It makes livestock go crazy]; and [Its coat of arms features a horseman spearing a dragon], specifically a basilisk, for MOS[COW]. A few of the rebus squares actually stood in for the word COW: HAD A [COW], [COW]HIDE, DAIRY [COW] crossing [COW]SHED, [COW] PASTURE, and my personal favorite, "RIDE 'EM, [COW]BOY" (clued as [Cry just before someone gets big bucks?], as in the tossing of a bucking bronco).
Notable non-bovine clues: [Benjamin Harrison's vice president, ___ P. Morton] for LEVI (wow, look at that facial hair); the vague [Out] for an ALIBI; [Car with an acronymic name] for SAAB (short for Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget, which I never knew); [Victor Nunez title hero] for ULEE (trickier to clue with the director's name rather than star Peter Fonda or bees); the noun [Drinks with a spoon, maybe] for COCOAS; [Mexican silver dollars] for DUROS (huh??) crossing another Spanish word, CUESTA or [Hill, in Spain]; ["Die Meistersinger" soprano] for EVA (much harder than going with the multitude of Evas in today's pop culture); [Spring break?] for THAW; the cross-referenced [With 52-Down, hangs out] for AIR and DRIES; [Knife, slangily] for SHIV (ah, Law & Order lingo—somebody was always getting shanked with a shiv in the showers at Rikers); [Eye in the heavens] for the HUBBLE telescope; ["As a matter of fact, I do"] for "WHY, YES"; and [Pond, in Liverpool] for MERE (I dig the geographically inclined Wikipedia article about meres).
Here is a description of the ALLA prima painting technique. In short, the artist lays down brush strokes of paint and goes with it, rather than reworking the painting over time. Say what you will about the madness of Peter Gordon's penchant for Roman numeral math—those clues are more gettable than something like [Midmillennium year], which is DII (502) here. Which millennium? The 500s or the 1500s? Grr.
Alex Boisvert's New York Sun puzzle is a 14x16 one. "Raise Your MLB IQ" explains what the INFIELD FLY RULE is, with key phrases included as six 14-letter Across entries, with the top and bottom pairs of entries stacked (!). To accommodate these 84 theme squares, the grid's sort of split into cantilevered extensions (like the section of the Guthrie Theater that juts out vertiginously over open air, and helped architect Jean Nouvel win this year's Pritzker Prize). That cantilevering means you really need to figure out the theme entries to break into the eight side sections of the puzzle. Excellent longer fill running alongside the theme entries—if you haven't seen AKEELAH and the Bee, make a point of renting it. (Spelling-bee drama!) There's also the musical SARAFINA, the song remake "LEAN ON ME," and HOTTIES crossing TATTOOS.
Updated:
I'm volunteering at my son's school this morning, so time is short and I won't get to Francis Heaney's Onion puzzle 'til later.
Stella Daily and Bruce Venzke put their earrings on the LA Times crossword's lobes. The theme entries end with STUD, DROP, HOOP, and CLIP—all styles of earring, as hinted by the last Down entry, EAR, clued as [Where you might see the last word of ...] the theme entries. (Drop earrings are dangly ones, and clip earrings are for non-pierced ears.) Lots of Zs and longish answers in the fill, which are good to see, but also what felt like more than the usual ration of OGEES, ESTER, ESTEE, Will GEER, and ENID, Oklahoma.
Patrick Jordan's CrosSynergy crossword, "Changes in the Weather," scrambles up RAIN, SNOW, and HEAT at the beginning of each theme entry, thereby altering familiar phrases. [Pets in modern-day Persia?], for example, are IRAN (rain) CATS AND DOGS. I'm not crazy about HATE (heat) OF THE MOMENT's built-in negativity, though. Plenty of longish answers in the fill today.
Updated again:
Okay, I'm going to school tomorrow instead. My sesamoiditis is acting up today. Must be the onset of the new baseball season that's responsible. And no, this doesn't make me old. It makes me athletic.
The Onion A.V. Club crossword by Francis Heaney has a cute theme—a public marriage proposal. Two straightforward clues have "(or the sender of the message)" and "(or the intended recipient of the message)" appended to them—those answers are GLENN and HELLENE. GLENN is proposing marriage to his beloved. The long theme spells out a quip that's funnier than most proposals—I'M SORRY, BUT THE / N.Y. TIMES / WAS TOO EXPENSIVE. / WILL YOU / MARRY ME ANYWAY? I don't know that the rare proposal that runs in a newspaper crossword actually costs the proposer any money, but we'll go with it. The lower right corner of the grid contains SAY YES, [Advice to 25-Across]/HELLENE. Right next to that answer is ENAMOR, which is so much better than, say, something like ABASED would be. Moving beyond the proposal, have you heard of VERNA, ["The Last Temptation of Christ" actress Bloom]? Oh! She played Marion Wormer in Animal House. (She had the classic No, vegetables are sensual. People are sensuous" line.) Dean Wormer's wife and Jesus's mother—now, that's range. Favorite clue/answer: ["You don't have to keep explaining"] for "I GET IT." If I were single, I'd want my proposal crossword to be like a Friday Sun puzzle or an ACPT puzzle #5, something you really have to work to solve.
April 01, 2008
Wednesday, 4/2
NYT 4:42
CS 4:28
NYS 3:54
LAT 3:40
Pub quiz is tonight, so NYT crossword blogging will wait until midnight or Wednesday morning.
Do you have any speed-solving tips? Which is to say, meticulous bits of technique that you swear by for finishing a crossword as fast as you can—which clues do you tackle first? Where do you move from there? Do you follow a certain path through the grid? Do you write your letters a certain way? What advice have you gotten from faster solvers? When solving online, do you mostly leave the mouse alone (as I do), navigating with tab/return/arrow keys? Don't tell me your tips here—take them over to Jerry's blog, where he's compiling a set of communal speed-solving tips.
After taking an April Fool's Day break, baseball week continues in the New York Sun crossword. Mark Feldman's 15x16 "Baseball in Vegas" assembles four phrases that pertain to gambling but begin with words that are key to baseball: CATCH, HIT, THROW, and RUN. Hooray! A baseball puzzle in which only minimal knowledge of baseball is required to grasp the theme! One completely unfamiliar bit of fill: TIK-TOK, the [Mechanical man from Oz]. If you're from Oz but you weren't in the movie, The Wizard of Oz, then I don't know you.
Updated:
Well, I had to go download the Across Lite version of the New York Times crossword to discover who the constructor was—the applet showed only "Patrick." Turns out it's Patrick Merrell whose puzzle's title field reads, "Turn the completed puzzle into a greeting card!" The theme entries (four 15s) read HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO—plus the instructions to CIRCLE LETTERS TO / SPELL OUT THE NAME / OF YOUR RECIPIENT. I believe every letter appears in the grid at least twice to facilitate your finding nearly any first name in the grid. But with only one Q and X, it's not quite universal. For example, poor Xixa Basha's first name cannot be circled in the grid. Is that the point of the theme, that you could assemble practically any first name from the letters included in the grid? If that's the deal, then I'm not so excited by that. But then, it is quite late, and I am barely sentient right now. I like that Pat (...or Will) has GAP clued as [Feature of Alfred E. Neuman's smile]; Pat has some involvement with Mad magazine. The [1977 James Brolin thriller with the tagline "What evil DRIVES..."] is called THE CAR (the car is possessed).
Updated:
Sean Smith's LA Times crossword tries a little ANGER MANAGEMENT, with theme entries that begin with synonyms for "angry." CROSS THE RUBICON uses the verb, but CROSS also means "angry." TICKED OFF POINTS has a verb phrase means "checked off," but can also fit the theme with another meaning. STEAMED DUMPLINGS also use a non-anger sense. Somehow I really like it that one of the theme entries includes a two-word phrase rather than limiting the theme action to the first word of each theme entry. Johnny DEPP is here, clued as ["Pirates of the Caribbean" star]. Johnny Depp is also here, meaning in Chicago, filming the John Dillinger biopic, Public Enemies. I passed a corner where they were shooting the movie on my way to trivia last night. So add another violent movie filmed in the neighborhood that I'll probably take my kid to, just because the neighborhood's going to be in the movie. (Dark Knight, this July's Batman sequel, is the other.)
Will write about Klahn's CrosSynergy puzzle when I get back from the gym—
And now I'm back, and boy, do I love Trader Joe's:
While I was out, Joon left a comment saying "This is the first time i can remember saying this, but am i the only one who thought the CrosSynergy puzzle was the best one of the day? Cute theme, excellent cluing, solid fill." Precisely! Gotta love Bob Klahn's style. "Bag Ladies and Gentlemen" are those four people in the grid (one fictional) whose surnames pull double duty as "___ bags." EDDIE MONEY is a moneybags (maybe there's a singular, but I like the nickname Moneybags), LEARNED HAND carries a handbag, MURPHY BROWN has to brown-bag it, and GEORGE SAND is toting a sandbag. With 22 6- to 9-letter entries in the fill, we get treated to a ton that's not the same ol' same ol'. Favorite clues: [Hardly a striking individual?] for a SCAB crossing the picket line; [Receive willingly?] for INHERIT; [Band or musical follower] for SAW (a musical saw is a handsaw used as a musical instrument); [One of three who walk into many bars?] for RABBI ("A priest, a rabbi, and a leprechaun walk into a bar"); and [Where "We have met the enemy..."] for ERIE. Yes! Really! Not Pogo. Oliver Hazard Perry said it during a battle at/in/near Lake Erie. And did you know that the [Group that evolved from Johnny & the Moondogs] was the BEATLES?
A new direction for the Fiend
Mon. Jumble Classic 00:23
Mon. Jumble Crossword 00:29
The arena of crossword blogging is getting increasingly crowded, so I'm launching myself in a new direction: Jumble blogging. It's only a matter of time before other people decide to join the Jumble blogosphere, but for now, I feel I can really make strides.
In solving Monday's Jumble Classic at the Chicago Tribune website, I didn't hit any speedbumps until I reached the final punchline solution. VALIT was VITAL, obviously, and YOVIR was IVORY (interesting Wikipedia article about ivory here—did you know decorative ivory carvings date back to the paleolithic era and mammoth tusks?). BINLEB's two B's pointed me right to NIBBLE. And ANGOLS, deceptively hinting at ANGOLA, was SLOGAN, which I had a tougher time with in another recent Jumble. "Watching an ironworker high on a skyscraper can be--" what? VTIRIEGN contains an ING, but mentally culling those letters still didn't reveal the answer to me. It was only when I typed in the ING and saw the remaining letters in isolation that I figured it out: RIVETING. Since I finished the puzzle in less than 00:30, I scored the maximum of 1,500 points. My fastest Jumble time to date is 00:13 (once), and I've made it in 00:15 a number of times. So I'm a little disappointed with a 00:23 showing, but at least I didn't lose time points.
Monday's Jumble Crossword marks the first time I cracked the 00:30 threshold. W00t! 00:29! This one would have been tricky for anyone skipping the clues, because there were multiple options for some of the anagrams. I was about to enter PLATE for one, but the [Fold] clue called for PLEAT. And FINGER looked obvious, but the [Edge] clue dictated FRINGE. The other six words were more straightforward. The final clue below the grid was [The Roman god of agriculture], and the given letters were SNUTAR. That could only be SATURN, but since when is he the god of agriculture? I never knew that. Apparently the Latin satus means "sowing." I knew the Romans had a goddess of agriculture—Ceres, who adorns the foot of LaSalle Street in Chicago. Saturn was Ceres' dad. Anyway...I think my previous best time on the Jumble Crossword was 00:38, so this is a nice jump up. Here's hoping I don't backslide too much tomorrow.
Tyler Hinman, as you might expect, is a speed demon when it comes to the Jumble puzzles. I forget the exact numbers he told me for his personal bests, but I think it was 00:08 for the Jumble Classic and maybe 00:15 or so for the Jumble Crossword. When the first Jumble tournament takes place, it'll be tough for anyone to unseat Tyler. (How about a YouTube video of your phenomenal Jumble speed, Tyler? The 511,000 people who've viewed your crossword record clip are hungry for another demonstration of your prodigious talents.)
