Your Crossword Fiend is taking a day off, leaving you in the capable and wry hands of Puzzle Girl. She'll be blogging the Friday puzzles from the splendor of her new home office. Please behave for her (or get your misbehavior out of the way before I return to blog the Saturday puzzles). Enjoy the rest of your Thursday and your Friday!
August 07, 2008
August 06, 2008
Thursday, 8/7
LAT 5:57
NYS 5:48
NYT 5:17
CS 3:11
(post updated at 8 a.m. Thursday)
Man, am I beat. I was up for a few of the wee hours last night after the smoke from an Uptown fire (in the Vietnamese district, not the entertainment district) wafted a mile and a half and into my window. Then my son and I spent the day at my sister's and got home at 9:30, and I never did have a nap. So please pardon the abbreviated blogging.
Peter Collins and Joe Krozel joined forces again for the New York Times crossword. Let's get right to the theme: Vivien LEIGH (hat tip to Donald for the correction) and Clark GABLE were in Gone With the Wind, and those words are hidden within the four longest entries:
The fill's got a quartet of non-thematic 10-letter entries spicing things up. Yesterday's TAEL falls in my "old-school crosswordese" category; so does AINU, or [Japanese aborigine], a word I used to see much more often in crosswords. That A crosses [Quatrain form], ABAA; I wonder how many solvers across the country opted for the incorrect ABBA/BINU or left that square frustratingly blank.
Regular constructing partners Patrick Blindauer and Tony Orbach teamed up once more for the New York Sun puzzle, "Gevalt!" They insert an OY into four phrases to radically alter their meanings:
I hadn't seen the ATELIER/[Painting place] combo when I used the word atelier in the previous post about Patrick's special puzzle. (It's possible I'm clairvoyant. Or clairvOYant.) Tough spots: [Apple variety] ending in I is FUJI (crunchy, juicy), not the Mini computer from a couple years back. [Men's fragrance brand] is IZOD. KIX isn't just a cereal (who knew?)—it's also [Band with the 1988 album "Blow My Fuse"]. Good gravy, why are RAISINS an [Ice cream mix-in]? Chocolate chips, sure. Berries, cake, candy bars, sure. Raisins in ice cream? Bleh. [It's used in the months of Kislev and Tevet] takes my crosswordy knowledge of Hebrew months (Elul and Adar) two months further—the answer's MENORAH.
Over and out for tonight.
Updated:
The LA Times crossword by "Lila Cherry" (really Rich Norris) took me longer than today's other puzzles, partly because it's got a 16x15 grid and partly because of a key misstep. The theme marks the return of the Summer Olympics this week with five events:
I might've liked this theme more if all the theme entries had been clued as sporting endeavors—that Christopher Cross song takes me away to a bad place. I mucked things up in the middle of the puzzle by thinking MODERN DECATHLONS before I made it down to 61-Across. Outside of the thematic stuff, this puzzle seemed rather tough to me. Cases in point: The Spanish word CAPA, [Matador's cloak]. GMS clued as [Trading execs], presumably in baseball (?). LINO, or [Kent kitchen floor]. [More likely to bend] sounding like an -ER comparative, but it's LENIENT. IMMESH, or [Entangle]. The [Spanish sherry city] JEREZ, which can be spelled other ways too. TENT clued trickily as a [Clearing house?], or small house in a forest clearing. [Mountain, in Quechua] for PICCHU, as in Machu Picchu. [Kid of jazz] ORY. [Since] for IN THAT. [Java site] for an URN of coffee.
Randolph Ross's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Post Exchanges," takes four phrases that end with post and anagrams that word to change the meaning of the phrase:
PLATYPI is a tricky non-S plural, [Swimmers with flat feet]. The lunch meat called BOLOGNA [may be coming through the rye] bread. NAPHTHA is a [Highly volatile hydrocarbon], as in fels naphtha soap. I like this one: [Diamonds on the soles of one's feet?] clues ARGYLES, or Argyle socks. I don't know that the argyle pattern is knit into the sole of the sock, but I like the evocation of Paul Simon's song, "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes."
Bonus puzzle by Patrick Blindauer
Head over to the Crossword Fiend Google Groups page to download a timely word baby from the atelier of Patrick Blindauer. It's in PDF form, not Across Lite, because of a couple unusual features.
Click the "Read more" link for my write-up after you've tackled the crossword. Spoilers follow.
Patrick Blindauer's "Pop Quiz" is a tribute to an artist who would be turning 80 today if he were still alive. There's a lot to the theme, which involves a good deal of cross-referencing. VALERIE / SOLANAS (1- and 8-Across) is the subject of the film at 35-Across, I SHOT ANDY WARHOL. ANDY WARHOL himself is split out from that entry with a 37-Across clue (this is one of the nonstandard things that mandated the PDF format). YOKO ONO and MARILYN balance out 1- and 8-Across. Two asymmetrically placed Down answers are also thematic: PRESLEY at 22-Down and MAO at 34-Down. The shaded squares in the middle represent a classic Andy Warhol pop-art painting of a soup can, with CAMPBELL'S and VEGETABLE appearing on that can in roughly the same spots as in this Warhol print.
There's one obscure word connecting two theme entries—BEMA is a [Raised part of an Eastern church]. In the same corner of the grid, SHERRI [Steinhauer of the L.P.G.A.] was unfamiliar to me. My favorite clue is [They monkey around] for SIMIANS.
August 05, 2008
Wednesday, 8/6
NYS 3:46
NYT 3:13
CS 3:10
LAT 3:04
(post updated at 3:30 a.m. Wednesday)
This is the second New York Times crossword by a teenaged constructor this week—Caleb Madison, who made his debut in May, is 15. (Monday's Oliver Hill is 18 now.) That may be 15 going on 75—at least where 70-Across is concerned. That ol' [Chinese weight], the TAEL, was a routine crossword answer back in the day, but it's been used only five other times in the last decade in Cruciverb.com-indexed crosswords. Anyway...the theme is movies and movie characters and a sports nickname that end with KID (46-Across). There are six theme entries from which the KID has been lopped off, and the missing KID isn't alluded to in those clues:
In the non-theme fill, I had one gotta-have-every-crossing answer: ASO, [Japan's largest active volcano]. The 1-Across corner of the grid has AMTRAK ([Train company with a portmanteau name]), sure, but it's also mighty international. [Many a Punjabi] is a SIKH. [French girlfriends] are AMIES. That [Capital on the Arabian peninsula] is SANA, Yemen. And one [Religious leader in a turban] is a Muslim IMAM. Sikh men wear turbans too, but are not Muslim. Just below this corner, there's the LENA, a [River of Irkutsk]; ETES, or [Dijon seasons]; and Pablo NERUDA, ["Il Postino" poet]. In the lower left corner, a French PARC is there, clued as [Setting of many a Monet painting]. The middle of the grid's got TSO, the Chinese [General whose name is associated with chicken]. The upper right goes foreign with a dead language, the Latin QUOD. Under that is the Spanish OCHO, or [Dos cubed]. The worldwide tour winds up in the bottom right, back home with a YANKEE ([Munson, Maris or Mantle]).
My favorite collision of answers is where BIG BERTHA, the [Long-range German gun of W.W. I], meets the fresh phrase GO PRO, or [Lose one's amateur standing].
In the New York Sun, Mark Feldman says "They're in the Money." Who? Why, the people with units of currency for last names. I had heard of GEORGE GROSZ thanks to a 2006 Saturday NYT crossword that included him with a horrible crossing (soap opera creator IRNA Phillips, meet painter George GROSZ). A grosz is a Polish unit of currency. South Africa's money is included in dancer SALLY RAND's name. Baseball player CURT SCHILLING spent Austrian money (pre-euro). Poet EZRA POUND covers Britain, and the fictional ROCKY BALBOA found his wealth in Panama. (Here's Van Halen's "Panama" video.) Fill I enjoyed: Larry HAGMAN and Susan LUCCI from TV; REIKI, RAISA, and RAISIN echoing one another; SUEDES and unrelated SKINS; Greek action with STOICS, RHO, and PHI; and a political vibe to CITIZENS, FEDERAL, SWEARS IN, and PARDONS.
Updated:
Patrick Blindauer's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Graphic Novel," finds something novel in each theme entry—the word NEW (67-Down) spanning the words in a phrase.
[Turned out badly] is GONE WRONG.
An [Independent sort] is a LONE WOLF.
CHEYENNE, WYOMING is, Patrick tells us, ["Magic City of the Plains"].
[Finished] means DONE WITH.
A [Dusseldorf drink, maybe] is RHINE WINE. Not to be confused with Rhine whine, which would be ach.
My favorite clues: A [Backyard pendulum] is a TIRE SWING. [Not so hot?] can mean just WARM. I had a ZITHER when I was a kid (neither my sister nor I could actually play it at all skillfully), but did not know it was a [Stringed instrument heard in "The Third Man"]. I'm not sure how I feel about the crossword readiness of the phrase WAS ON, clued here as [Performed really well, informally]. On does have a dictionary definition (adjective #3) reflecting exactly that sense, but if WAS ON is kosher, then what'll bar the door against entries like IS BAD, IS ILL, or IS MAD clued as stand-alone phrases?
Jack McInturff's LA Times crossword puzzle clues CIVIL WARS with [Internal conflicts, and a hint to the ends of 17-, 23-, 36- and 51-Across]. The other four theme entries end with a word that can precede war, but I'm not sure why the unifying entry is CIVIL WARS and not simply WARS. The theme entries are:
Clues in review:
August 04, 2008
Tuesday, 8/5
Tausig 4:46
Onion 4:38
NYS 3:38
CS 3:06
LAT 3:05
NYT 3:00
(post updated at 3 p.m. Tuesday)
The New York Times crossword is Joon and Caroline Pahk's professional constructing debut. I love the theme of ANAGRAMMED NAMES. The other three theme entries are the real names of famous people, and the clues include anagrams of their names that they used in some fashion:
The constructors' names anagram to OKRA IN CHAPEL and JAN P. HOOK, in case you wondered. They've squeezed plenty of Scrabbly fill into their puzzle. There's ZEAL, or [Fervor]; MISTER X, or [Unidentified man]; and QATAR, or [Doha's land], to name a few. Most interesting clues (including a good bit of literary stuff):
Journalists are well represented here, too—TIM Russert, Tom BROKAW, and [Newspaperman Harold] EVANS.
The New York Sun puzzle by Randall Hartman is called "Horse Around" because the six theme entries have a horse word around some other letters, as you can see in the grid.
In the fill, we have a not-so-common word that's also in the Tuesday NYT: TIKI. Over yonder, it's got a ["Kon-___"] clue, while the Sun has [Former Giants running back Barber]. Favorite entries include TAIWAN, DOLLOP, and UNESCO. Aaand...I'll leave off there, since we're in the midst of the evening's second ridiculously dramatic thunderstorm.
Updated:
Randall Hartman's name is also atop today's CrosSynergy puzzle, "I'm Starting Off." Each of three theme entries (all 15 letters long) receives IM at the beginning, hence the "I'm" is "starting off." [Like the Cotton State after a natural disaster?] is IMMOBILE ALABAMA. To [Bring in the National Guard?] is to IMPORT AUTHORITY. And [Water carrier's snapshot?] is IMAGE OF AQUARIUS. Lots of names in the fill—I counted 15 (real) people's names, plus a handful of fictional characters. For me, a puzzle jampacked with names flows smoothly and feels easy. Hey, is it wrong that when I had the B** in place for [Hulk Hogan accessory], I first thought of BRA? (It's a BOA.)
Stella Daily and Bruce Venzke constructed the LA Times crossword. The theme entries all begin with words that pertain to NO WAY OUT, [1987 Costner film, and a hint to this puzzle's theme]. The other three theme entries begin with words that are also synonymous verbs:
There was one answer I had to completely rely on the crossings for, [Donna Reed costar Carl] BETZ. Answers that were easier to get because I've seen them in numerous crosswords before:
Updated again:
I think I might be missing something in Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "A Broad Take." As 17- and 23-Across explain, the first word of each of four theme entries are A LETTER FROM / A FOREIGN COUNTRY. LAS VEGAS WEDDING begins with LAS, which is Laos without the O, hence the "(+o)" notation in that clue. SPIN DOCTORS start with an A-less Spain. CUB SCOUT +a gives us Cuba, and MANSTAND ([The act of waiting for a partner to finish shopping, per the Urban Dictionary]) has Oman without the O. Is there a reason it's those "letters from a foreign country," or those letters in particular? Or is Ben just playing on the double meaning of a character from the name of a country vs. a letter mailed by a person in a foreign country? Favorite clues:
Matt Gaffney's Onion A.V. Club crossword has fun with people whose last names double as past-tense verbs. The fictional detective Nancy Drew is commanded, ["Sketch us a picture, super-sleuth!"]—or NANCY, DRAW! Enron's Kenneth Lay is transformed to KENNETH, LIE! That clue's particularly apt—["Cook your books, Enron man!"]. William Hung and Charlie Rose yield WILLIAM, HANG and CHARLIE, RISE. These four are thematically tied together by the advice, STOP LIVING / IN THE PAST. Excellent theme, isn't it? In the fill, MOM is a particularly apt answer for the clue [Kid's shout]. I had to pause the Across Lite timer while solving this puzzle to help my kid, in fact, right after I'd filled in 6-Across. [Feel unloved, perhaps] is the clue for NEED A HUG; if you're in the market for toddler-friendly board books, you can't go wrong with Jez Alborough's Hug. I remember the Arthur TREACHER's Fish and Chips chain, but didn't know Treacher was a [British actor for whom a fast-food fish chain is named]. Maternal duty calls again—I'm out.
August 03, 2008
Monday, 8/4
Jonesin' 4:26
NYT 3:34
CS 3:18
NYS 3:11
LAT 2:52
(post updated at 10:40 Monday morning)
All right, let's get this out of the way right up front. 6-Down in Oliver Hill's New York Times crossword is BARYON, the [Subatomic particle made of three quarks] that I've never heard of and am much surprised to see parked in a Monday puzzle. The theme? It's phrases that end with -anners:
WEEKLY PLANNERS are [Books for jotting down appointments].
CAT SCANNERS are [Hospital imaging devices].
POOR MANNERS include [Burping and slurping in public]. In private? Totally fine. Have at it.
PROTEST BANNERS are [Places for antiwar slogans], among other things. A syndication-delay solver e-mailed me today and mentioned a Bay Area friend had chopped up a fallen tree and put up a sign in the front yard reading FREE FIREWOOD. A neighbor asked who Firewood was and why he'd been imprisoned. *rim shot*
This crossword had some lovely entries, including IWO JIMA ([1945 battle site with a flag-raising]); the CY YOUNG [Award won by Roger Clemens seven times]; and Ralph ELLISON, who wrote "Invisible Man." ONER is a boring only-in-crosswords word, sure, but I like the clue, [Lollapalooza]. The music festival of the same name took place in Chicago this weekend, and I heard about 90 seconds of Kanye West's show while driving by on Lake Shore Drive tonight. That Lollapalooza ties in with the general rock vibe, in FOO Fighters, the Sex Pistols' PUNK, and NEIL Young. DIRK clued as a [Dagger] seems like a bit of a stretch for Monday solvers, but the sooner they learn to associate those two words, the better they'll be at future crosswords. I wasn't crazy about NETSURF, clued as [Cruise around the Web]—not sure who uses that term—or OW OW. At least ["Man, that hurts!"] meshes with OW OW, which at first I thought was going to be yet another NYT usage of OWIE as an interjection rather than a noun meaning "boo-boo."
The New York Sun puzzle by Bill Weber (Debut? If so, good going!) is A-OK. The "Doubly Approved" theme includes three phrases that contain OK twice. BY HOOK OR BY CROOK means [In any way possible]. COOKING THE BOOKS is [Falsifying financial records]. And my personal favorite, the OKEFENOKEE SWAMP, is a [Southeastern wetland]. The non-themed fill is superb. TCHOTCHKE! A spelling test, a fun word to say aloud, and a [Cheap trinket] all rolled up into one. I didn't know what SCOTCH EGGS ([British breakfast foods]) were until I looked it up—a shelled hard-boiled egg enrobed in sausage and bread crumbs and then deep-fried. Cholesterol, yum. MUMBAI is what we call the city of Bombay now. BIOPIC advances from its supporting role in crossword clues to a lead role as an answer. And there's a MOTORDROME, or [Track for a car race].
Updated:
Clocking in at roughly a Thursday level in a sea of Mondays is Matt Jones's Jonesin' puzzle for this week. The answers in the "Size Matters" theme are oversized things that rely on their size for their effect: a NOVELTY CHECK along the lines of the Ed McMahon/Publishers Clearinghouse checks, CLOWN SHOES (which puts me in mind of this Rolling Stone article about speaking in tongues and fictional alcoholic clown fathers), a giant FOAM FINGER as seen at sports stadiums, and a MONSTER TRUCK ("Truckasaurus!"). One thing I like about the Jonesin' puzzles is their openness to language as spoken informally. Here we have POOF UP, clued as [Fluff out, like hair or a sleeve], and YUCKY, or [Full of bad taste?]. There's also pop culture—Michael URIE of Ugly Betty, MONGO from Blazing Saddles. And current events—Nancy PELOSI. And a little bit of naughtiness—MOONED is clued [Made an ass of oneself?].
Doug Peterson's LA Times crossword has an exemplary theme—that is, a theme in which three phrases begin with synonyms for exemplary. PERFECT BINDING is the [Technique used to make paperbacks] and magazines like Vanity Fair; the New Yorker's an example of saddle-stitched binding. IDEAL BODY WEIGHT is a [Goal for many dieters]. And MODEL AIRPLANES [may be flown by hobbyists]. In the fill, ESPRESSO ([Trattoria beverage]) delivers a jolt of caffeine. Also lending pep are the words with letters like X, K, and J—MEXICALI, the [Capital of Baja California]; XENA, [TV heroine with a sidekick named Gabrielle]; more coffee, [Joe in a cup] for JAVA; KAREEM Abdul Jabbar, [Laker teammate of Magic]; and JAWS, [Shark flick]. [Very good grade] is A MINUS, which looks like the mystifying AMINUS in the grid.
The quip in Mel Rosen's CrosSynergy crossword, "And Tomorrow...?", occupies four full rows of the grid (with a single black square in each of those rows). FOREVER IS / A VERY/ LONG TIME INDEED / BUT SHORTER THAN / IT WAS / YESTERDAY. I don't care for the 5-letter chunks split off, because I forgot they existed and read it as "Forever is a very long time indeed but shorter than yesterday," and that made no sense at all. If there are GONNA ([Sondheim song "We're ___ Be All Right"]) be short theme entries, I want more payoff than a quip. Clues that may vex crossword newbies:
August 02, 2008
Sunday, 8/3
BG 9:37
NYT 8:39
LAT 8:16
PI 8:04
CS 4:14
second Sunday acrostic: untimed but average difficulty
(post updated at 1:45 Sunday afternoon)
The NYT's second Sunday puzzle is an acrostic by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon. I won't get into the quote, just one of the clues—[Chicago entertainment district] feels decades out of date to me as an UPTOWN resident. The section of the Uptown Wikipedia article about the "Uptown Entertainment District" smacks of boosterism more than realism. The Green Mill is still a jazz club, and the Aragon Ballroom and Riviera Theatre host concerts, but the other places are mostly vacant or torn down and I wouldn't call it an "entertainment district." It's rather blighted, actually, where those venues are. Googling Uptown entertainment district scared up a blog post entitled "Uptown Entertainment District?" about a folk singer who lives in an SRO hotel and sings outside the Wilson El stop. To make sure I wasn't off base about this clue, I asked my mom and husband to name a 6-letter Chicago entertainment district, and they were both stumped and then laughed when I gave the answer.
The Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle by Peter Collins and Joe Krozel is called "Off With Their Heads!" The theme entries are easy to fill in once you've got half of an answer, as the 13- and 15-letter answers contain duplicated swaths of letters:
Fun little word game, isn't it? And now, quickly because I've got to go out for dinner, clues of note:
Updated:
Mike Peluso's syndicated Los Angeles Times crossword, "KP Duty," groups together eight two-word phrases in which the first word ends with K and the second starts with P. A [Diver's choice], for example, is TUCK POSITION. [Lowest enlisted rank] is BUCK PRIVATE. [66-Down cause, maybe] is BLACK PEPPER. Before I saw that 66-Down was ACHOO, I had BLACKP***** and wondered how 66-Down would tie in with the BLACK PLAGUE. This type of theme tends to be on the easy side, because once you've figured out how the theme works, you know each theme answer contains a KP spanning two words. I do prefer themes with some sort of wordplay rather than a commonality like this.
Merl Reagle tells an agricultural story in "Farming It Out," his Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle for this weekend. The dozen theme entries (plus EIEIO as a bonus) relate parts of a business tale using quasi-farm-related idioms such as SEED MONEY, CHICKEN FEED, and "THAT AIN'T HAY." Not only is this a lot of theme entries (granted, some are on the short side), but at the top and bottom of the grid, there's some theme-answer stacking, as is Merl's wont. The grid's a little ugly with those black squares in all four corners, but Merl is his own editor and Merl doesn't turn down Merl's puzzles for structural reasons like that. If the point of a crossword is to entertain, Merl is one of the best at doing that, week in and week out.
Henry Hook's syndicated Boston Globe crossword, "Over and Under," plunders the thesaurus for various words, phrases, and statements that can mean [Over] or [Under]. There are five of each, and they all run in the Down direction—with the [Over]s directly above the [Under]s. Challenging theme to fill out, I thought, but not particularly fun. The overs are IN EXCESS OF, CONCLUDED, REPEATEDLY, "I AWAIT REPLY," and THROUGHOUT. The unders are DOWNSTAIRS, NOT AS MUCH AS, BURDENED BY, LOWER THAN, and HYPNOTIZED. The clue [N.Y.C.-vs.-Chi. argument cause] seemed to signal an abbreviation in the answer, but no: it's PIZZA, of course. That was my favorite clue, along with [Changing time?] for PUBERTY. Plenty of tough-as-nails answers here: [Old name in Turkish taffy] is BONOMO, crossing IVANOVO, a [Russian textile city]. The latter touches AMBERY, or [Dark orange-yellow]. Below that is RHETOR, a [Skilled speaker] sharing its last three letters with ORATOR. TIROS are [Novices (var.)], and they cross RODRIGO, [Baritone in Verdi's "Don Carlos"]. And DAGMAR the ["Dumb blond" of 1950s TV]? I've seen her in a couple crosswords over the years.
I'll get to the CrosSynergy themeless in a couple hours. Saving the best (i.e., the kind of puzzle I enjoy the most) for last!
Updated:
Will Johnston's themeless CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge" was indeed fun for me. HIs 68-word grid has corners of 7's with a spiraling net of 11's joining them together. I had a lot of favorite answers in this one:
Favorite clues:
August 01, 2008
Saturday, 8/2
Newsday 9:06
NYT 4:42
LAT 4:34
CS 4:28
(post finally updated at 5:00 Saturday afternoon)
Karen Tracey's New York Times Saturday crossword took me only a little longer than the Friday puzzle, but it did feel harder and I felt luckier. I wouldn't have been surprised if the applet had snarled at me that my solution was wrong, because the top middle and bottom middle both stymied me to a degree. The roughest spot was at the bottom, where the [Perennial herb with florets sometimes called "ham and eggs"] ran alongside [Dan ___, 1948 Best Actor nominee for "When My Baby Smiles at Me"] and crossed [___ Robbins, co-lyricist of the #1 "Rocky" theme song "Gonna Fly Now"]. Yow! What, who, and who? I was just buying some herbs at the garden center last weekend, and LANTANA was not in the herb section. It was in the flower section, and its multicolored florets are stunning. Indeed, the Wikipedia article I linked to doesn't call Lantana an herb. The actor is Dan DAILEY, and the co-lyricist is AYN Robbins. A non-Rand AYN? My goodness! Up at the top, I wanted SCHNOZZ or SCHNOZZOLA to fit for [Beak], but the less-familiar-to-me SCHNOZZLE turned out to be the answer. Crossing that were SLOANE, [Title role in a Joe Orton play], and AZIMUTH, clued as [Reading from a surveyor's compass]. Is that what those surveyors are doing? Next time I see one, I'll ask what the azimuth is.
No shortage of excellent entries in Karen's 68-worder:
Favorite clues:
Other clues of note:
Updated:
Today's themed CrosSynergy crossword is by Bob Klahn, so it's tougher than usual. "Ay, There's the Rub" has a quip theme: IT'S EASIER TO / START FROM / SCRATCH IF / YOU HAVE SOME. (Scratch is also slang for money.) My favorite clues:
My favorite answer in Robert Wolfe's 70-word LA Times crossword is DOG EAT DOG, or [Ruthless]. Props to Mr. Wolfe and editor Rich Norris for cluing EMOTES with [Works in plays]; yes, not overacting, just acting and conveying emotion to the audience. PAISANOS, or [Pals], is nice too. I'm less pleased by OPEN A SHOP, or [Get started in business]; that seems more like ordinary language and less like the kind of idiomatic phrase that stands alone (compare "open up shop"). THE WAY serves more or less as a 6-letter partial here, clued as [Something to show or lead?]. THE WAY as a standalone phrase has plenty of other cluing options. Clues that may be apt to stymie solvers:
Stan Newman, writing as "Sally R. Stein," constructed this week's Newsday Saturday Stumper, a 72-worder. It wasn't such a hard puzzle, really, but my brain was set on lackadaisical mode when I solved it. My favorite part was the stack at the bottom with NYPD BLUE ([Three-time Emmy winner of '99]) atop AU GRATIN ([Literally, "with the scraping"]) atop SPAMBOTS ([Automated address collectors]). [Lou Grant's paper], obviously, was the TRIBUNE. Except that didn't work—it turned out to be THE TRIB. Other nice entries and clues include:
Weird entry: ECOLABEL, clued as ["Dolphin-safe," for one]. Not familiar with the term ECOLABEL.
Crosswords for BlackBerry
CrosSynergy crosswords are already available via cellphone (click on the ad atop this page for details). Now Magmic Games (...which is hard to pronounce) has a mobile New York Times Crosswords app in development. If you've got a BlackBerry and would like to be a beta tester, read on for Magmic's request:
Are you a crossword puzzle addict who owns a Blackberry?
Magmic Games, under license from The New York Times, is now looking for enthusiastic participants to help shape the soon-to-be-released mobile version of The New York Times Crosswords. Your commitment would involve: downloading a pre-release version of The New York Times Crosswords onto your Blackberry; spending some time playing the game; and then answering a questionnaire giving your feedback and suggestions.
If you are interested in applying to take part, please send an email to nytxbeta@magmic.com, with the subject line “Application.” The body of the email should include the following information:
1. Your name
2. Your email address
3. Your Blackberry model number, e.g., 8130
4. Your location: City/State or Province/Country
5. Your experience with crossword puzzles
Please note that your personal data will not be used for any other purpose, now or in the future.
ABOUT MAGMIC GAMES
Magmic Games is a world leading developer and publisher of mobile entertainment with over 80 titles in action, sports, casino, puzzle, retro and multiplayer genres across a variety of mobile platforms, and is the world’s leading provider of Blackberry games through its portal www.bPlay.com . Go to www.magmic.com for more on Magmic Games.
Doogie likes puzzles
I just caught a few minutes of Fresh Air with Terry Gross on Chicago Public Radio. She was interviewing Neil Patrick Harris, who's currently starring online in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, available via iTunes. (That's the latest Joss Whedon post-Buffy project.) He's done a lot of Stephen Sondheim musicals, and it turns out he befriended Sondheim before he started working with him. Why? A shared love of puzzles, games, crosswords, etc. (Sondheim has published and helped popularize cryptic crosswords in America, I think.) Harris has enjoyed taking part in puzzle treasure hunts at Sondheim's home. Lucky dog!
I don't know about you, but my esteem for people in the public eye always shoots right up when I find out they like crosswords.
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