Diary of a Crossword Fiend : Daily Commentary on Crossword Puzzles

May 07, 2009

That ACPT cooking show

If you missed last night's Food Network show co-starring constructor Andrea Carla Michaels in the kitchen and a bunch of edible food-phrase puzzles, behold the video:

Part 1

Part 2

May 06, 2009

NYT 6:42
LAT 3:06
CS 8:02 (J, paper)/2:51 (A, Across Lite)
Tausig (untimed)

Elizabeth Gorski's New York Times crossword

Gah. Don't you love it when it takes a minute to a minute and a half to figure out how the applet wants you to hand some special squares? I started with beautiful round O's, which looked good in the grid but didn't take. Hmm, maybe 0? No. C for circle? No. Finally I went with H for HOOP in the upper left and lower right, and R for RING in the other two corners—that worked. Yeah, should've tried the first letters first—but each rebus square stood for one thing Across and another thing Down. In the upper left and lower right corners, we have the following:

1A: [HOOP]STER is a [B-ball player]. The HOOP crosses a CIRCLE in 1D: The [CIRCLE] LINE, a [New York City tour provider]. I got slowed down by having Gray Line in mind, not being a New Yorker.
68A: [1950s fad item] is HULA [HOOP]. 55D: CROP [CIRCLE] is clued as [Mysterious art visible from the sky].

In the upper right and lower left, here's how it plays out:

6A: [Like the Grand Canyon or Fourth of July fireworks] clues AWE-INSPI[RING], crossing 14D: [ZERO] HOUR, or [Showtime, at NASA].
67A: [Welcome January 1, say] is [RING] IN THE NEW, and 47D: SIZE [ZERO] is a [Teeny dress measurement].

And why are all these zeroes, circles, rings, and hoops lurking in the corners? To illustrate the phrase ROUNDS THE CORNERS, or 40A: [Gets past a last difficulty...or a hint to this puzzle's theme]. Hey! That's how I finished the puzzle in the applet. Had to properly round the corners.

Miscellaneous other clues and answers—many of 'em tough:

16A: [Phobic sort] is a NEUROPATH. That's a bit of a Saturdayish word for the crossword.
22A: ["Burma Looks Ahead" author] is U NU. Makes perfect sense to pair him with ["American Pie" actress Tara] REID, no?
26A: [Picasso's muse Dora ___] MAAR has a name I learned from crosswords.
31A: PROUD PAPA! He's a [Cigar distributor, perhaps], after the baby's born.
43A: HIS OR HERS is clued as [Unisex]. Great entry.
47A: A ["Notch" on Orion's belt] is a STAR. Lovely clue.
61A: ZEPPELINS were the [Means of some W.W. I raids].
64A: [Complete, quickly] clues THORO, short for "thorough." Aptly, this crosses THRU, clued as [Dolly Parton's "Travelin' ___"].
66A: CRUMP is a [Crunching sound].
2D: SOMAS are [Bodies of organisms].
26D: MYRRHS are clued as [Some aromatic resins].
38D: DER is [Part of many Dutch surnames]. Paging James Van Der Beek...

Updated Thursday morning:

Ray Hamel's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Captain's Courageous"—Janie's review

Nupe. This was not a shout-out to Rudyard Kipling's 1897 novel or to the 1937 Spencer Tracy movie of the same name. Instead Ray gives us a fine assortment of three two-word titles/names and one two-word object, the second half of which is the name of a fictitious captain. A fierce foursome. Who are they?

17A: making its CS debut, [Movie about a lost clownfish] FINDING NEMO
28A: in its major-puzzle debut, [Needlecraft tool] CROCHET HOOK
45A: [Competition originating in Atlantic City in 1921], "there she is," MISS AMERICA
62A: also making its CS debut, [Perry White's workplace] DAILY PLANET

Captain Nemo is a character I've encountered only in the movie of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (and man, did those giant squid freak me out!). I can't think of Captain Hook without also thinking of Comden and Green's "Hook's Waltz" from the popular musical Peter Pan: "Who's the slimiest slime of them all? Captain Hook! Captain Hook!" And while I'd heard of Marvel Comics' Captain America, TBS's Captain Planet was brand new to me. Did you know these guys?

Am also imagining the "also ran" list that Ray must've had: 'Round Midnight, audio-video, short-order cook (oops, he's a real guy...). Any others come to mind?

The non-theme fill does a grand job of unifying the puzzle as well. There's a bit of a journey 'round the ...PLANET in here. Taking off from O'HARE (or possibly JFK...), we go to INDONESIA, ASSAM, HANOI and KENYA, and perhaps study at an ÉCOLE, where our DIGS are DORMS. On a student budget? Well then, we can feast on CHILI, JELL-O, a WEDGE of pie and OREOs. [Which reminds me: did you see Dinner: Impossible?! Fabulous. And Andrea? A star is born!]

Music weaves though this one, too: barbershop SONGS, the OZARK Mountain Daredevils, SKA; Kiki DEE; STRAD.

An air of mystery pervades the cluing, where we encounter ["Monk" and "Mannix"] and Ellery Queen. It was in trying to solve the former where I ran into problems. SHOWS did come to mind, but somehow felt so generic, given the specificity of the clue. Was not helped by its cross with SONGS either, clued as [Barbershop quartet numbers], which I also overthought. Ditto [Can opener?] for HARD "C." When will I ever learn?!

STOW IT was new to me—but I'm so glad to learn there's yet another way to say "Put a sock in it!!" ;-)

And finally, [One way to Staten Island] gave us FERRY. Here is Millay's "Recuerdo" (cited in the article) in its entirety. Enjoy!

Orange here again. Morning, folks!

Occasional commenter KarmaSartre noodled around with churchsigngenerator.com and came up with this:

Jack McInturff's L.A. Times crossword

The theme is sort of pulled together by 57A: HERD MENTALITY, or [Pressure to conform, and a hint to the hidden word] in the other theme entries:

20A: [Ralph McInerny's priest/detective] is FATHER DOWLING. I like to call him Mr. C.
27A: The KOSHER DELI is a [Place to order gefilte fish].
51A: In Gone With the Wind, ANOTHER DAY is clued as [Scarlett's last words]. No! Her last words were the line "After all, tomorrow is another day." You can't just yoink the last two words out of their context and call them "her last words."

The theme's not working for me because there's no reason for HERD MENTALITY to be there instead of just an explanatory HERD at the bottom of the grid. There's no "mentality" of any sort that ties the theme phrases together.

Favorite clue: ESSAY is ["A literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything": Huxley]. And did you know ORAL-B was the [First toothbrush to go to the moon]? [Winner over Alexander in 1804] is AARON—Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, I presume, usually referred to by last names and not first. We've been seeing ERIEPA (...the Environmental Protection Agency for old crosswordese silkworms?) a lot lately—here it's clued as a [Port ENE or Cleveland, O.]. We also had NONHERO in another recent puzzle; it's an [Unlikely protagonist]. BOB FOSSE, the [Choreographer with nine Tonys], gets the full-name treatment. There's a fictional character pile-up in the upper middle—ULEE the [Peter Fonda role] abuts YGOR the [Lab assistant in a 1939 film], and the OLGA who's [One of Chekhov's "Three Sisters"] crosses them. I don't recall ever seeing ACTE clued as [___ de vente: bill of sale]; that's odd.

Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "International Fare Mixup"

The mixup in international fare has nothing to do with AIR TRAVEL (19A). Rather, the nationalities in various foodstuffs are mixed up by anagramming:

16A: SHINGLE MUFFINS, or [Rainproof one's pastries?], scrambles the word ENGLISH.
24A: [Prepare uneaten kalamatas for the next frat party?] clues REKEG OLIVES, with an anagrammed GREEK. Bonus points for the echoes between Greek olives and fraternity "Greek life" and the associated keg parties; one point off for the "rekegging" of olives. It's beer that's in a keg, not olives.
47A: SWISHED FISH anagrams SWEDISH FISH, that abysmal candy. The clue is [Halibut prepared by being shot through a net?]. I like the mislead here with fishing vs. basketball nets.
60A: AMERICAN CHEESE turns into IN-CAMERA CHEESE, or [Gruyere, framed]?].

My very favorite clue in this puzzle is [I.M. with family members in China?] for architect I.M. PEI. Brilliant! I also like TACKY's clue, [Like pretty much everything in Graceland]. Today is Tom Bosley Day, apparently: His Father Dowling made it into the L.A. Times puzzle, and his Happy Days character MR. C is here ([Howard Cunningham, to Fonzie]).

May 05, 2009

Wednesday, 5/6

BEQ 4:36
NYT 3:03
LAT 2:58
CS 6:57 (J—paper), 3:05 (A—Across Lite)

Michael Callaway Barnhart's New York Times crossword

This debut puzzle is an easy one, one I'd have finished in a decidedly Tuesdayish time if not for that typo. I paid no mind to the theme while doing the crossword, as the theme entries were all clued straightforwardly, but now I see that the KEY WORD ([Google search need...or a hint to the ends of 20- and 49-Across and 11- and 28-Down]) answers end with keyboard keys:

20A: RUNNING A TAB means [Not paying immediately at the bar]. Remember when the tab was mainly for indenting? Now it's for jumping to the next field in online forms.
49A: To LOSE CONTROL is to [Go ballistic]. I rarely use the control key.
11D: [Apartment building feature] is FIRE ESCAPE. The escape key is handy in Across Lite when it comes time to enter multiple letters in a square.
28D: DO NOT ENTER can be a [Road sign warning]. It says "return" on the enter key on my Apple keyboard.

Among the impressive fill and clues in this puzzle were these:

[307 for Wyoming and 907 for Alaska] are AREA CODES.
MR. DEEDS was a [2002 Adam Sandler title role].
[Through the uprights] clues GOOD, as in "The field goal was good" because it went between the goalpost's uprights.
TROPICAL is clued with [Like drinks with umbrellas].
The classic [1978 Cheech & Chong movie] is UP IN SMOKE. DOPES (see below) and HEMP, or [Rope material], are clued as if they have no connection whatsoever to what Cheech and Chong were smoking—but STONED is clued with [Like Cheech & Chong, typically].
[China's place] is in the CUPBOARD. I went with MAINLAND first because I had the D in place and knew it couldn't be EAST ASIA.
KING LEAR was [Cordelia's father].
A wedding [Reception toast giver] is typically the BEST MAN.
Wiliam [Penn, to Pennsylvania] is an EPONYM.
[Bottom lines] aren't just HEMS, they're also SUMS.

Out-there stuff:

[El Lider of Argentina] is PERON. El Líder? I've never seen that term inside or outside of crosswords.
[100 or so, e.g.: Abbr.] is an EST., or estimate. "How old is your grandma now?" "Oh, 100 or so."
The answer to [Deduces, with "out"] is DOPES. Say what? Who says that? My husband and I have never heard DOPES used this way.
"I'll take Three-Letter Literary Words for $1,000, please": [1961 Literature Nobelist Andric]'s first name is IVO. [Yevtushenko's "Babi ___"] is YAR.

Updated Wednesday morning:

Patrick Blindauer's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Seven C's"—Janie's review

Can you name them? One of the interesting things about them is that there are some seven variations on the traditional Medieval septet. Oh, wait—Patrick's theme is seven Cs. I was thinking... Never mind.

So—in the three long theme answers we get lively, alliterative phrases in which each word starts with—you know:

17A: COLLISION COURSE [Path of peril]
29A: CHILI CON CARNE [Spicy stew from Mexico] (And happy day-after Cinco de Mayo!)
58A: CLOSED CAPTIONED [Like some broadcasts] -- even those on NBC, that [Network with a three-note theme]. Those chimed notes, btw, go back to the network's radio days.

Somehow I imagine that restricting oneself to seven Cs only—no more, no less—was a genuine construction challenge. Patrick makes it look and feel like a breeze. The peppy cluing and fill add to this puzzle's charms.

Taking a page from the Klahn playbook, we get such entries as [Lofty lair] for AERIE, [Fish features] for FINS, [Piece of Pollock (not this guy] for ART, [Candle composition] for BEESWAX, [Mammal of Madagascar] for LEMUR, and [Petrol provider] for ESSO.

I especially like the way ART sits atop MIRO. "The Tilled Field" lives in the Guggenheim. C'mon down!

Love those two vertical 11s: HELPING HAND and FLINTSTONES; and also the two vertical 8s: PASTRAMI and CILANTRO -- though that's a culinary combo I think I'd like to avoid! For more palatable culinary creativity, be sure to tune into the Food Network tonight (10 p.m. Eastern) for Dinner: Impossible which will revisit this year's ACPT luncheon.

Mike Peluso's L.A. Times crossword

I already wrote up this puzzle for L.A. Crossword Confidential. The theme takes an unusual twist, combining the "words that can precede X" trope with an anagram. 54A: [Food reaction shared by about 3 million Americans] is PEANUT ALLERGY. Did you ever notice that "peanut GALLERY" ([43D: Anagram of 54-Across's ending that can follow the first word of 20-, 33-, 40- and 54-Across]) is an anagram of PEANUT ALLERGY? Apparently Mike Peluso did. The other three theme entries—

20A: ["Kids Say The Darndest Things!" author] is ART LINKLETTER.
33A: [Congressional bone of contention] is the NATIONAL DEBT. Rent I.O.U.S.A. from Netflix for more on that topic.
40A: To [Decide to prosecute] is to PRESS CHARGES.

—operate as standard answers, evoking ART GALLERY, the NATIONAL GALLERY, and PRESS GALLERY.

Updated Wednesday afternoon:

Brendan Quigley's blog puzzle, "Support Group"

Just a quick overview today—The theme there is inserting PRO into a phrase, changing the spelling of the word that turns PRO, and cluing the resulting phrase. "Diesel motor" becomes DIESEL PROMOTER, or [Shaq's agent?]. [Legal action for a rain dance?] clues CLOUD PROCEEDING, playing on "cloud seeding." And a singular "growing pain" (aren't there usually multiple growing pains?) turns into GROWING PROPANE, or [Slowly accumulating barbecue fuel?]. That one doesn't quite work for me, because you'd never say that you're growing the amount of propane you have.

In the fill, BRA is clued as a [Cup holder?]. This one clangs—the bra is made of cups and straps, it doesn't hold cups. What it holds are...not called cups.

Lots of cool fill—a DIME NOVEL, DEL MONTE canned fruit, the au courant SWINE FLU, a LIGHT TOUCH, the PASO DOBLE, and the BAD COP from the "good cop, bad cop" routine ([Interrogation figure]). Bonus nostalgia points for the partial A BILL, clued as ["I'm Just ___" (Schoolhouse Rock classic)].

MGWCC #48

crossword 3:20
puzzle 2:40

hi, everybody! welcome to the 48th week of matt gaffney's weekly crossword contest, titled "Quite Quaint Quintet." this easy puzzle featured five alliterative/assonant theme answers:

the [Sleepy fictitious Scotsman] is WEE WILLIE WINKIE. i believe he also featured in byron walden's "double hung" onion puzzle of 2007. i don't think i actually know who this is, but i know that there is a character in salman rushdie's midnight's children named wee willie winkie. i just picked it up again after leaving it untouched for about six months, and i'm only about 30 pages from finishing. it's a really good book.
[Endlessly] clues AGAIN AND AGAIN.
[Altered a situation's power dynamics] means TURNED THE TABLES. that's a good figurative expression, although the literal meaning kind of eludes me. i mean, even if it's a square table rather than a round one, it's probably not going to be very different if you turn it.
[Cook-off food] is CHILI CON CARNE. yum...
the (only?) [Vice President from Minnesota] is HUBERT H. HUMPHREY, namesake of the hubert h. humphrey metrodome.

what do these theme answers have in common? well, obviously, they're all three-word phrases in which each word begins with the same letter. the instructions are: This week's contest answer is a common five-letter word that ties this puzzle's theme entries together -- and appears somewhere in today's blog post. (no, not this blog post, this blog post.) i struggled with this one for a little bit, searching for a word that suggested "repetition" or "alliteration." nope, nothing. then i took another look at the theme answers: what letter gets repeated? W, A, T, C, and then H. oh, that's a word! is that word in the blog post? yes, yes it is, and watch is the answer.

even though it was quite a straightforward crossword overall, there were still a bunch of names i didn't know:

[Noted Irish band, with "The"] is the CORRS. never heard of them.
[Gadfly journalist Mark ___] is STEYN. never heard of him.
[Astronaut and former Senator Jake] is GARN. never heard of him. by the way, does that mean he's still an astronaut? "senator and former astronaut" seems more plausible somehow.
[Ben & Jerry's co-founder Ben] is COHEN. did not know that, although i've heard of ben & jerry's, of course.

May 04, 2009

Tuesday, 5/5

Onion 3:55
NYT 3:42
LAT 2:30
CS 7:45 (J — Paper)

Trip Payne's New York Times crossword

Trip's puzzle has the same theme layout as the Monday NYT—two 15's in rows 3 and 13, and a 13-letter answer across the middle. This time the theme takes phrases with S sounds in them and transforms those into Z sounds:

17A: [Decide against reorganizing the pet store?] clues DON'T MOVE A MUZZLE (don't move a muscle). Is it just me, or is Muscle Milk a particularly gross-sounding gym-rat beverage? The new phrase in the theme entry reads a little flat.
38A: [Conversation-filled places in a restaurant?] are BUZZING TABLES (bussing tables, as in what a busboy does).
61A: FUZZ AND FEATHERS is [What chicks have?]. The phrase fuss and feathers means "unnecessary bother and excitement." I'd rather be full of piss and vinegar than fuss and feathers.

Because an anniversary dinner is putting me to sleep, let's run through some fill:

[Mismatch] clues BAD FIT. Is that a stand-alone "in the language" phrase? I'm not so sure.
[Expensive eggs] are CAVIAR. I was envisioning larger eggs.
The BASS TUBA apparently is a [Low-pitched instrument]. Discerning music fans insist on the soprano tuba, no substitutes.
BIT-O-HONEY is a [Nestle candy]. Great entry, icky candy.
The NEZ PERCE are a [Pacific Northwest tribe]. So are the Salish, who were in another puzzle a couple weeks back.
[Sudan/Saudi Arabia separator] is the RED SEA.

Updated Tuesday morning:

Tony Orbach's CrosSynergy puzzle, "I'm In!" — Janie's review

Tony's puzzle beautifully capitalizes on one of my favorite kinds of wordplay. Take a familiar phrase or name, and change it to another by adding some more letters. And here the title tells us exactly what to do: put the letters "I" and "M" in the answer. In this manner we get:

STONE [IM]AGE at 17A [Likeness of actress Sharon?] This works very well; we get two credible phrases just by adding [IM] to STONE AGE.
L[IM]P RECORDS at 24A [Flood-damaged files?] This one is my fave. I know it's meant to conjure up water-logged papers and manila folders, but I keep envisioning Dali-esque, heat-damaged 33s. Either way, the strong visual—with the natural sound of the altered phrase—makes this work really well.
T[IM]ED TURNER at 52A [Precisely-cooked rotisserie chicken?] Here I cry (um) "fowl." I had to think about this one a lot. While the chicken is being turned, it's not a "turner," is it? Perhaps if this had been clued as something like [High-end (or "precision") rotisserie] it wouldn't have raised a flag for me.
GET THE [IM]AX at 64A[Multiplex owner's note to self?] Another winner that conjures up a whole scenario. Nice.

With the exception of one area, this was a very smooth kind of solve -- with colorful fill and lotso scrabbly letters. Hungry? How about some CREOLE cookin' and maybe an ESKIMO PIE or a SMORE for dessert? Hungry for more than food? Put on some soft MUSIC (perhaps some ARTUR Rubinstein), whisper "Je t'AIME" and then say, "KISS ME." (Oh—that'S 'MORE!) Note, too, the five Xs—two of which occur in the spiffy LUXURY BOX (making its first appearance in a CrosSynergy puzzle); the three Ks; and the Z in DOOZY.

Broadway gets a little shout out with [The Sharks and the Jets, e.g.]—the GANGS of West Side Story; and with ROXY, clued here as [Classic theatre name] and referenced memorably in the verse to the Broadway classic "Guys and Dolls":

What's playin' at the Roxy? I'll tell ya what's playin' at the Roxy.
A picture about a Minnesota man, so in love with a Mississippi girl
That he sacrifices everything and moves all the way to Biloxi—
That's what's playin' at the Roxy.......

The appearance of OPIE made me smile because I'd just seen a recent picture of Ron Howard. Time flies when yer havin' fun, no? Here he is again, as Ronny Howard in about 1960 and a [Freckle-faced Mayberry denizen].

The one area of the puzzle that I tripped over was the crossing of SPAWN with WEAK and our pal TIMED TURNER. Because I'd entered SPARK for the first one, I (carelessly) entered TURKEY for TURNER. OOPS. Not very SMART. Lost 30 seconds straightening that out...

Still 'n' all, this was one mighty pleasing puzzle and I HOPE for many more from Mr. Orbach!

David Cromer's L.A. Times crossword

Cromer tees off with four theme entries that begin with golf words. The phrases have a non-golf meaning, but they're clued here as if they do pertain to the sport:
17A: [Golfer's java-dispensing target?] is a CUP OF COFFEE. The cup is what a golfer's trying to get her ball into.
62A: [Drawing of the area next to the fairway?] is a ROUGH SKETCH. The rough is the deeper grass surrounding the flatter fairway.
11D: [Mound near a sand trap?] is a BUNKER HILL. Bunkers are those sand-filled hollows it's hard to hit a golf ball out of.
29D: [Really large putting surface?] is GREEN ACRES. The green is where you'll find the cup.

We don't get nearly as many golf themes as baseball crosswords, so I appreciated this one. Plus, as I noticed yesterday for the first time this spring, if I go down to the corner and look across Lake Shore Drive, I see folks golfing at the lakefront 9-hole. Too bad I don't golf, because that course sure is conveniently located.

Did you read the April 20 New Yorker article about the restoration of the Askernish golf course on a Scottish island? I had no idea that the term links had nothing to do with the chaining together of 18 holes and everything to do with the Scottish term for the type of terrain that has sand bunkers and whatnot.

Back to the crossword! Scattered throughout the grid are other golf tidbits. The ball's LIE is a [Golfer's position]. An IRON is a [Golfer's choice] of club. [Golf legend Walter] HAGEN] is here. And there's a slight golf evocation with [Hollywood do-overs], or RETAKES—golf's retakes are called mulligans.

See also PuzzleGirl's L.A. Crossword Confidential post on this puzzle.

Matt Gaffney's Onion A.V. Club crossword

What's great about watching TV shows on DVD? NO ADS. The [Nice thing about the TV shows in this puzzle] is that the ADs have been removed:

17A: [Show about Burt Reynolds' after-hours lover?] is EVENING SHE. (Evening Shade.)
23/49A: [Show about Julia Louis-Dreyfus's entrepreneurial activities?] is THE NEW VENTURES / OF OLD CHRISTINE. (The New Adventures....)
36A: [Show about Paul Reiser's lousy report card?] is MY TWO D'S. (My Two Dads.) The only Paul Reiser show I could think of was Mad About You, and M ABOUT YOU would neither fit here nor make a lick of sense.
39A: [Show with Phil Hartman reporting from Brazil?] is NEWS RIO. (NewsRadio.) I loved NewsRadio—terrific ensemble cast given a jolt by the lunacy of Phil Hartman.
56A: [With "The," show about John Astin's river-blocking kids?] is DAMS FAMILY. This one doesn't read as well, with both the answer and the clue seeming stilted. DAMS plural? "River-blocking"? Meh.

That's 62 squares of thematic material, which is on the high side, so props to Matt. Lots of pop culture goodies in the puzzle, too. BABU was the [Deported Pakistani in a "Seinfeld" episode] ("Where is Babu? Show me Babu!"). The Simpsons ponies up [Cletus th Slack-Jawed ___] YOKEL. ANSON [Williams of "Happy Days"] played the inimitable Potsie. MEN is [Part of MIB], MIB being Men in Black. Country singer TANYA Tucker is here. DIANE [Sawyer or Keaton] refers to TV news and movies. ["Star Wars" villains] are the SITH. We have singers SUZI Quatro (Late '70s! "Stumblin' In" was a hit in '78, around the time she played Leather Tuscadero on Happy Days) and DAR Williams. And SLIMES is clued as [Makes messy, on "You Can't Do That on Television"].

Matt looks a little fixated in the fill, doesn't he? There's ENEMA, clued with [It clears the rear], and ANAL, clued as [Annoyingly rigid].

My mystery words today: TICA is clued as a [Costa Rican woman, casually]. One of my cousins married a Costa Rican guy and another is dating a Costa Rican, but I haven't picked up this term. EBOW is a [Guitar accessory]. Say what? The EBow is for electric guitars.

May 03, 2009

Monday, 5/4

BEQ 4:19
Jonesin' 3:08
LAT 2:59
NYT 2:28
CS 6:31 (J -- paper)

Happy 18th anniversary to my husband, who is remarkably tolerant of my crossword avocation. Thanks, hon!

Mark Milhet's New York Times crossword

Today's theme is hesitant trepidation: All three theme entries are clued with [Succumbing to second thoughts]. The answers are GETTING COLD FEET, CHICKENING OUT, and LOSING ONE'S NERVE. Some of the fill in this puppy might give a crossword newbie second thoughts, although the puzzle's an easy one for the seasoned solver. Here are some words that flirt with the "crosswordese" category:

46A: EMI is a [U.K. record label]. Yes, it's still a major player in the recording industry, but I suspect it gets nearly as much attention in crosswords as in the music press, and is considerably more prominent in crosswords than in everything else I read.
58A: ITERS are [Anatomical passages]. I encounter this far more in crosswords than in medical editing.
6D: ERGS are [Energy units] or units of work. Outside of physics and crosswords, I can't say this word gets much play.
38D: NIBS are [Writing points], as in the points for a fountain pen. Nibs are also those terrible cherry licorice bits that I can't get enough of. Twizzlers, you are no Nibs.
40D: FERULES are [Old schoolmasters' sticks], handy for thwacking recalcitrant pupils. This isn't common crossword, no, but neither is it usual Monday fare.
56D: ENOL is a [Certain alkene]. Not your usual [Organic compound], [Carbon compound], or [Hydroxyl compound] clue. The dictionary on my Mac doesn't include this word, so it's got no business being in a Monday crossword—except for the LEGION ([Veterans' group, informally]) of regular solvers who reflexively fill in ENOL for any 4-letter chemical-sounding clue. If you didn't know this answer, jot it down in your brain—it'll be coming back to a puzzle near you quite soon.

There are three Bible answers today, but luckily they're not the more arcane ones like SELAH or NEH. or TAMAR. EDEN is the [Genesis garden]. SINAI is the [Mount ___, where the Commandments were given to Moses]. And NOAH was a [Biblical captain for 40 days and 40 nights].

Milhet's three-part theme leaves plenty of room for more interesting fill in the corners. There's ["Gesundheit!"], or "BLESS YOU"; CORNPONE, or [Dixie bread]; MARVEL [___ Comics, home of Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four]; plus ICE SHEET, HARASSED, and TOTTERS.

Updated Monday morning:

Will Johnston's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Measuring Up" -- Janie's review

Nice to start the week with this puzzle by esteemed moderator of the erstwhile New York Times Puzzle Forum -- and creator of the invaluable page of Puzzle Pointers. (There's also a link in Orange's column of "Crossword Links" at right.)

And it's also nice to see the ways this puzzle lives up to its title. Will gives us three grid-spanning phrases, each of which starts with a type of "measure":

17A: LENGTH OF SERVICE [Factor in employee recognition awards] -- LENGTH being a unit of distance -- or, as in this case, time.
37A: AREA OF EXPERTISE [Professional's specialty] -- AREA, as we learned in geometry, refers to a plane's size and is determined by multiplying (class?): "length by width." Unlike the previous example (or the next...), this fill does not describe a literal measurement but gives us a strong "in the language" phrase, where "area" means "field." As the exception, it is perfectly placed at the puzzle's center.
59A: VOLUME OF TRAFFIC [Commuter's concern] -- VOLUME being a measure of capacity (or sound amplitude). Again -- we're talking about the amount of traffic here -- or possibly the noise generated by it. This commuter is assaulted less by the sound of above-ground traffic than by the decibel level of the subways (and confesses she carries earplugs.....).

SPEED and NANO also come from the "measure" vocabulary pool -- so Will gives us a double bonus.

Three favorite clues: [High wind?] for FIFE, [Pen name] for CROSS and [Worldly wisdom? (abbr.)] for GEOG.

And speaking of GEOG, between the fill and the clues, we get a bit of a world tour here with: SARI [Delhi wrap], NILE [Luxor's river], IRAQI [Baghdad native], USSR [Cold War inits], AMIN [Former Ugandan tyrant]; and foreign phrases [Cul-de] SAC and [Pâté de] FOIE [gras].

It's probably serendipity, but where the demise of Cleopatra is concerned, invert the clue numbers and notice that 36A [Venomous viper] ASP has a complement in 63A's [Luxor's river] NILE.

Never heard of GINO Vanelli, but the crosses allowed me to find the correct fill. Will's a Boston guy -- and it seems there's a special Celts-Gino connection! Also tripped myself up some, trying to make MINI work for NANO; then NEWBIE for NOVICE.

Has anyone ever seen TRON? Ah, well -- perhaps it'll show up on AMC. ;-)

OVER.

Los Angeles Times crossword by Rich Norris's alter ego, Gia Christian

I can't help thinking of the power ballad "Sister Christian" when I see this one of Rich's pen names. (Skip to about 4:05 in the video to see how dramatically the vocalist belts out "You're motorin'.")

Let's call this theme KABOB (41A: [Skewered meal])—each theme entry is a B-to-B kabob:

17A: [Excellent performance] is a BANG-UP JOB.
29A: [Sci. class where many an "Eeuw!" is heard] is BIO LAB.
46A: [Bill for what you drank] is BIXBY. No, not really. BAR TAB.
62A: A catchier name for [Satan] is BEELZEBUB.
11D: To [Betray by bad-mouthing] is to BACKSTAB.
39D: The [Angels or Dodgers] are a BALL CLUB in the L.A. area.

Smooth fill, as we expect from Rich, with 14 6- to 8- letter non-theme answers classing up the joint. And six theme entries! Favorite answer: KIBITZ, or [Be a nuisance at the card game], connecting two theme entries. Favorite clue: [Host who expects you to question his answer?] is Alex TREBEK. Just a few more weeks 'til my Jeopardy! audition in Chicago...

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Inside Jobs"

The theme is "Inside Jobs" and one job is hidden inside each theme vertical entry in this 15x16 grid:

3D: ["Pan's Labyrinth" director] is GUILLERMO DEL TORO.
18D: [Plants with purple flowers] are the unknown-to-me FOXTAIL ORCHIDS. Slightly better known to me: the [South African iris cousin] called the IXIA, which I saw recently in another crossword. It's on the crosswordesey side.
8D: [SUV that was a prize during "Survivor 2005"] is the PONTIAC TORRENT.
10D: [Acts of desperation] are LAST-DITCH EFFORTS.

Those 11-letter answers at 17A and 62A? Not part of the theme. They're just there to interlock nicely with three theme entries apiece. Favorite fill: Where ASHKENAZ, or [Group of European Jews], meets MATZOH, or [Seder staple]. I bought that record my senior year of high school—the [1983 Huey Lewis and the News album]—and yet I blanked on the title. SPORTS!

Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Pardon My French"

Matt's theme this week is couleurs—color phrases with the colors translated into French. Like so:

17A: [Bugs Bunny, most notably?] clues BLANC RABBIT. He's a gray rabbit, not a white one, but (a) "White Rabbit" is a familiar phrase and (b) Mel BLANC did the voice for Bugs.
32A: [Fear that you'll smear your makeup?] is ROUGE SCARE. Brendan's puzzle has the original RED SCARE in it today.
41A: [The woman that seduces hard-boiled film detectives?] turns the equine Black Beauty into a film NOIR BEAUTY. This puts me in mind of Kim Basinger's character in L.A. Confidential and nudges me to link to L.A. Crossword Confidential (Rex covers today's puzzle).
57A: [Extreme skateboarder who shreds on the halfpipe?] clues VERT MONSTER. The Green Monster is that wall at Fenway Park in Boston. I'm guessing VERT = short for "vertical" in skateboarding argot.

Notable stuff in the fill: A marijuana [Joint] is a DOOBIE, but one [In need of joint relief] is ARTHRITIC. Trade names abound—we see CESSNA jets, GUMMI Worms, Mr. PIBB, KOOL-AID (a [Drink that's stirred, but not shaken]), BUGATTI (the [Sports car manufacturer now owned by Volkswagen], maker of the super-fast Bugatti Veyron), and TOFUTTI. Plus the SEATTLE P.I., or Post-Intelligencer, the [Washington newspaper that ended its printed version in March 2009, for short]. For a foreign vibe, we get FUGUS, the Japanese [Poisonous blowfishes], and PRAHA, [Czech Republic capital, to locals]—one of my dearest friends lived in Prague for a decade, so that was a gimme for me.

May 02, 2009

Sunday, 5/3

NYT 8:12
PI 7:53
LAT 7:30
BG 7:09
CS 3:55

Head over to Roy Leban's Puzzazz.com for this month's crossword, "High-Tech Mergers." (You can solve online, in Across Lite, or on a PDF printout.) As the title suggests, it's got a tech theme, but you need not be an IT professional to crack this puzzle. Roy calls it Monday-Tuesday difficulty, but it took me 4:52 to finish and that's beyond Tuesday level for me. Could just be that it was late and I was tired when I tackled it...

Caleb Madison's New York Times crossword, "A Stately Garden"

A few weeks back, I killed some time at the illustrated Wikipedia article depicting the various state flowers. So that helped me as I ventured through the theme entries in Caleb's puzzle, and I entered some of the flowers in the circled squares before I had the complete answer.

23A: [Five works of Mozart (Rhode Island)] are VIOLIN CONCERTOS, enclosing a VIOLET. The violet is also the state flower of Illinois (represent!) and New Jersey.
29A: The ROSE is in AGREE TO DISAGREE, or [Not completely settle an argument (New York)].
48A: ALVIN AILEY is the ["Revelations" choreographer (Utah)]. His name contains a LILY, but technically, it's the sego lily in particular. SEGO is a bit of crosswordese in its own right.
58A: The PEONY is Indiana's flower. [Trial hearing? (Indiana)] clues EXPERT TESTIMONY.
68A: [It's never made with plastic (Ohio)] clues a CASH TRANSACTION. The CARNATION hides here.
82A: [Country singer with the #1 album and single "Killin' Time" (New Hampshire)] is CLINT BLACK, enclosing a LILAC. The lilac bush in my back yard has begun to bud, so in a couple weeks I'll be swooning over lilac fragrance. (My heart belongs to the crabapple blossom, however.)
95A: LAURENCE OLIVIER contains LAUREL. [He played a Nazi in "Marathon Man" and a Nazi hunter in "The Boys From Brazil" (Connecticut)].
108A: ["Bye Bye Birdie" tune (California)] clues PUT ON A HAPPY FACE. California's flower is the POPPY—specifically the California poppy.

I love the state flowers aspect of the theme, but I'm mildly put out that two of the flowers' names are incomplete and that the violet clue omits two states that honor that flower.

All right, what else is in this puzzle that I want to talk about?

1A: The SCALP is the [Source of some bangs], as in hair. This clue is just weird. Doesn't quite do it for me. Not a good way to kick off the puzzle.
19A/34A: [Onetime Robert De Niro role] clues both AL CAPONE and a DON. Speaking of fictional mobsters, there's that [Mario Puzo sequel] OMERTA in the same general area of the puzzle.
BRNO is a [Chief city of Moravia], in the Czech Republic. Prague is in Bohemia, if I recall correctly.
HSIA is the [Chinese dynasty before the Shang].
To BOX in the boxing ring is to [Produce some combinations, say]—as in a one-two punch combo.
[Duodecim] is Latin for twelve, and the Roman numeral 12 is XII.
GRAEME [___ Park, colonial Pennsylvania site near Philadelphia], is not a place I've heard of.
Belgian artist James ENSOR is the ["Carnaval sur la plage" artist]. There's also a David ENSOR in TV news.
The OCARINA is a [Harmonica-like instrument]. That Zelda video game, about the Ocarina of Time—does that have anything to do with the musical instrument?
The British spelling of plow is PLOUGH—[Accompanier of a harrow, in Harrow].
[Lineman?] clues ACTOR, as in a performer with lines. Eh.
[Prefix with noir] is NEO. Can't say I've encountered any references to neo-noir before.
The song AMERICAN PIE is a great entry. It's the [1972 #3 hit that starts "A long, long time ago"]. Hey! Now you've got one answer in this Sporcle.com quiz about opening lyrics.
ARTES [may be patronized by senors and senoras]. As in "patron of the arts," but in Spanish.
STOLA is a [Classical wrap. Don't worry—you won't be seeing this answer too often.
[Italian sculptor Nicola or Giovanni] is PISANO. I don't know about you, but throwing in the extra guy didn't make this clue any easier for me.
[It's read from right to left] means the TORAH. Hebrew is read from right to left.
Cars! SAAB and VOLVO are the [9-3 and 9-5 car manufacturer] and [Car with a name that's Latin for "I roll"], respectively. Hey, I didn't know that about Volvo.
[Bar since 1879] is IVORY SOAP. They make a mean Old Fashioned there.
SAMI is a [Northern Scandinavian]. I think the Sami used to be called Lapps.
[Their, in Munich] is the German word IHRE. You'd think this would be crosswordese by now with those letters, but no.
The PACA is a [Cousin of a guinea pig].
GATOR is the [Nickname for Ron Guidry] of baseball.

Updated Sunday morning:

Gail Grabowski's syndicated Los Angeles Times crossword, "Torn Fabric"

My full write-up is at L.A. Crossword Confidential. The theme is hidden fabrics "torn" across two words in assorted phrases:

23A: As it was formerly known, channel with the slogan "play every day" (GAME SHOW NETWORK). I feel as though different fabrics can be made into MESH, but that mesh per se is not a fabric. Can any textile-savvy folks confirm or deny?
32A: "Enough!" (THAT WILL DO). Hidden TWILL. I want to elide the phrase into Farmer Hoggett's "That'll do, pig" from Babe.
43A: Waldo of kids' books, e.g. (HIDDEN IMAGE). Hidden DENIM, wily hidden Waldo. If he were stepping out on Mrs. Waldo, it would take an eagle-eyed P.I. to track his movements. Here's a cartoon envisioning the birth of Waldo's baby.
60A: Couldn't rush at rush hour (SAT IN TRAFFIC). Smooth SATIN.
82A: "That used to be the case" (NOT ANY LONGER). Hidden NYLON. Phrase feels mildly iffy as crossword fill goes.
96A: It can be seen from the Seine (EIFFEL TOWER). FELT is used pretty much just for hats and kids' crafts projects, isn't it?
103A: Safe bronzing product (SPRAY-ON TAN). Hidden RAYON.
123A: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, e.g. (ONLINE NEWSPAPER). Hidden LINEN. Ooh! An au courant clue, as the Post-Intelligencer ceased its dead-tree version and went online-only just a few weeks ago. This isn't an answer that could have existed a few years ago.

Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer crossword, "Testing Your Forty-tude"

This "do the math" theme is a lot of fun: Take two familiar numbers and perform an arithmetic operation to end up with 40. Like so:

19A: [___ + ___ = 40] clues FLAVORS PLUS CAT LIVES. 31 flavors at Baskin Robbins ice cream + 9 lives for a cat. "CAT'S LIVES" would read a little smoother.
27A: [___ – ___ = 40] is CARDS MINUS THE ZODIAC. 52 playing cards, 12 signs of the zodiac. Technically, zodiac ≠ 12 but the signs thereof are 12 in number.
48A: [___ x ___ = 40] is SENSES TIMES AN OCTOPUS. That's 5 senses, 8 arms on an octopus. An octopus ≠ 8, but we get the idea. It's more a game of the number suggested by a word or phrase rather than an actual count.
68A: [___ – ___ = 40] clues ROUTE MINUS THE ALPHABET. Route 66 minus 26 letters in the alphabet.
84A: [___ + ___ = 40] is CATCH PLUS A GOLF COURSE. Catch 22, 18 holes.
106A: [___ x ___ = 40] is SEASONS TIMES BO DEREK. Bo Derek starred as the "10" in 10, and there are 4 seasons.
116A: [___ + ___ = 40] clues JACK BENNY PLUS A PENNY. Jack Benny was famously 39 years old, year after year, and a penny = 1¢.

Overall, the fill was quite smooth—no trouble spots to sandbag the solver.

Henry Hook's 6(ish)-week-old Boston Globe crossword, "Triple Sixes"

The theme entries are six three-word phrases in which all the words are 6 letters long. PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND was a [1534 Cartier discovery]. HELENA BONHAM CARTER was a ["Howards End" cast member]. [The Simpsons' dog] is named SANTA'S LITTLE HELPER. [1993 movie sequel] is ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES. "LIGHTS! CAMERA! ACTION!" is the [Director's call]. JACKIE JOYNER KERSEE is an Olympic [Heptathlon great]. Another famous 666er, Ronald Wilson Reagan, sat this one out.

Favorite clue: [Stocking-up device?] is a GARTER.

Least favorite: [Physics Nobelist Emilio] SEGRE is unfamiliar to me. In Merl's puzzle, SERGE appears in almost the exact same place in the grid, and is much more solver-friendly. There's also [Old Roman coins], or DENARII. I've seen this one a couple times and have not been wild about it.

Martin Ashwood-Smith's themeless CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge"

The master of the triple-stack provides top and bottom triple-stacked 15's:

1A: STATE DEPARTMENT is clued with [It's headquartered in the Harry S Truman Building]. I did not know that.
16A: ["The Ron Reagan Show" network] is not on TV. It's AIR AMERICA RADIO.
17A: PRINT JOURNALISM is [Part of the press].
58A: [An angry speaker might make it] clues an ANIMATED GESTURE.
62A: [It's not a total knockout] refers to LOCAL ANESTHESIA. I had a brief foray into wrongness with ANESTHETIC instead of ANESTHESIA.
63A: [People mover] is TRANSPORT SYSTEM. "Transportation system" feels more natural to me.

Politics and the media take center stage in this puzzle. In addition to the top triple-stack, there are these related answers:

18A: [Politician's goal] is a SEAT.
33A: Abe BEAME was a [1970s Big Apple mayor].
35A: Chairman MAO is a [Former Red head].
37A: One sort of [Early anti-Communist] was a TSARIST.
34D: JANET RENO was [Clinton's Attorney General]. Good first/last name entry.

Assorted other clues: NISI is [Decree ___ (non-absolute court ruling)]. [Range topper] is a STETSON hat worn out on the range. SAXES are [Instruments for Clarence Clemons] (the clue misspells it as "Instruments for Clarence Clemens"). Saxes are not involved in a Marilyn [Horne solo], or ARIA.

Sunday, 5/3 NYT second Sunday: Cryptic crossword

NYT cryptic by Cox & Rathvon 11:29

My answer grid after the cut, along with explanations of answers. Don't peek too soon! Keep working at it and don't give up.

Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon's cryptic crossword had a few clues that stymied me for a while, and then there was that one typo of mine that kept another answer from emerging. D'oh! The advantage of the locked Across Lite file is that you can't cheat by asking it to reveal just a square or two for you.

1A. From stem to stern, tossed in the Sound (10)—THROUGHOUT. Sounds like "threw out."
6A. Exchange hands, from right to left (4)—SWAP. It's PAWS backwards.
10A. Dirt from two states in Dixie? (7)—SCANDAL. SC (South Carolina) AND AL (Alabama). This one kept me guessing. I tried putting SLANDER in there, but it didn't work with the Dixie aspect and doesn't quite match up with "dirt" either.
11A. I guess I showed you this other envelope's contents! (2,5)—SO THERE. Contents of "thiS OTHER Envelope."
12A. Brother cooking chicken as we speak (5)—FRIAR. Sounds like "fryer."
13A. In audition, ape irregular soldier (9)—GUERRILLA. Sounds like "gorilla." Don't be misled by the large number of letters shared by irregular and guerrilla.
14A. Correcting and composing essays for The Voice (8)—RIGHTING. Sounds like "writing." Is it just me, or are there a lot of "sounds like" clues today?
16A. "Iceman" playing in picture palace (6)—CINEMA. Anagram of "Iceman."
19A. Sadly, Big Ben is on the decline (6)—EBBING. Anagram of "Big Ben." Not used to seeing "sadly" used as an anagram signal.
21A. Heard on a regular basis, as Galahad (8)—KNIGHTLY. Sounds like "nightly."
24A. Rule the head of the school declared (9)—PRINCIPLE. Sounds like "principal."
25A. Listened to ghastly old tale-teller (5)—GRIMM. Sounds like "grim." I had griot, which means storyteller, in mind here, and that was a compelling wrong answer. Eventually, with **I*M in place, I played the alphabet game for the fourth letter and realized the answer when I made it to M.
26A. Ancient Greek's expertise in bridge (7)—SPARTAN. ART inside SPAN—the only word-inside-another-word answer in the Acrosses.
27A. Narrative article in need of editing (7)—RECITAL. Anagram of "article."
28A. Ransom Eli's car sold off (4)—OLDS. Anagram of "sold."
29A. Paper fixed, according to reporters (10)—STATIONERY. Sounds like "stationary."
1D. People working together in concert ask for Celine (4,5)—TASK FORCE. Letters in "concerT ASK FOR CEline."
2D. Oscar Wilde's gaol interpretation (7)—READING. Double definition: He was in Reading Gaol, interpretation = reading.
3D. One of the French the German hypnotized (5)—UNDER. UN = French "the," DER = German "the."
4D. Elements of light around the head generals (8)—HALOGENS. HALO of light + GENS, short for generals.
5D. Coat with fake luster (6)—ULSTER. Anagram of "luster." An ulster is a kind of overcoat.
7D. What fun to be horizontal in a bike stunt (7)—WHEELIE. "WHEE!" + LIE horizontally.
8D. Holy statue made of pastry, thanks to the British (5)—PIETA. Pastry PIE + TA, an informal British exclamation meaning "thanks," according to my dictionary. Wow, I didn't know about "ta."
9D. Bird's pitch caught by Chuck (8)—STARLING. Pitch = TAR inside SLING = the verb "chuck."
15D. A big town, after decade, shows endurance (8)—TENACITY. TEN + A CITY.
17D. One next to a little gym club is in a bad way (9)—ABYSMALLY. I mistyped CINEMA as CINEME, making the first letter here an E, which kinda got in the way of seeing the answer. "One" = A. "Next to" = BY. "Little" = SMALL. "Gym club" = the Y.
18D. Bug holds musical note without being obvious about it (2,6)—IN SECRET. Note RE inside INSECT.
20D. Robber gang acquires rig (7)—BRIGAND. RIG inside BAND, another word for "gang." Brigand is an old word for a robber who ambushes people in the mountains or forest.
22D. Prickly flower is off the list (7)—THISTLE. Anagram of "the list."
23D. Insert peg into fixed keyboard (6)—SPINET. Peg = PIN inside fixed = SET.
24D. Bother with orange and green sauce (5)—PESTO. PEST + O for orange.
25D. Good new Coke mascot in TV ads (5)—GECKO. This one also took me a while to parse correctly. G = good + ECKO, anagram of "Coke." The Geico gecko is a mascot in TV commercials.

May 01, 2009

Saturday, 5/2

Newsday 12:19
LAT 4:36
NYT 4:10
CS 10:14 (J -- paper)

Peter Collins' New York Times crossword

Aw, man! What a rip-off. I count on my two themeless NYT crosswords on Friday and Saturday. This weekend, the Saturday puzzle got bumped up to Friday, and what's on tap for calendrical Saturday is...a Thursday puzzle? Just a themed puzzle, appearing now because it's Kentucky Derby day. And you know how I know it's a Thursday puzzle running on Saturday? Because the solving time is right on target for Thursday, and because there's a little extra oomph to it—you see the KENTUCKY DERBY running diagonally between those corner black squares? There's your Thursday gimmick.

Now, on the plus side, I liked the "aha" moment after I finished the puzzle and said "hey, wait a minute, where's the Kentucky Derby?" and reread the TRIPLE CROWN clue: [It comprises the 10-Down, 34-Across, and a third part found elsewhere in the grid]. The BELMONT Stakes and PREAKNESS are the other two legs (prongs?) of the Triple Crown. [One that bets are on] is 48A: THE FAVORITE. And [One with a stake in 48-Across, say] is a horse BREEDER.

On the other hand, horseracing themes never delight me. Horseracing is of no interest to me.

So what else is in this puzzle?

OKRA is a [Vegetable sometimes grown as a flower]. Who knew?
[Walrus-skin boats] are UMIAKS. A gimme! Yes, I have been doing crosswords too long.
[Spain's Victoria Eugenia, familiarly] clues ENA. Hey, is this the Spanish queen ENA of crosswordese fame? Did I finally learn her full name?
[Bad bill collector?] is a Treasury agent, or T-MAN, catching counterfeiters.
MOO SHU is not a [Kind of pork]. It's a dish that contains pork. Every now and then, I like to speak out on behalf of those who absolutely loathe the "kind of" clues that would more correctly be fill-in-the-blank clues.
[Best Actress winner for "The Great Ziegfeld," 1936] is Luise RAINER. I believe her first name shows up much more often in crosswords.
SKIMP ON is clued as [Not provide fully]. That K begins the diagonal answer.
SUBARU is [One of two cars besides a Cadillac named in Springsteen's "Pink Cadillac"].
[Ruling] is a noun and a gerund, and it can be used to describe the party that is IN POWER.
CANONRY is clued as a [Church office]. Don't recall seeing this word before. More religion: [The Little Flower of Jesus] is THERESA.
If it's CUT-RATE, the price is [Marked down].
OPHELIA's always welcome in the crossword. Her quote clue: ["O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!" speaker, in Shakespeare].
The [Nintendo product] called the GAMEBOY is a good crossword entry.
[Family in Upton Sinclair's "Oil!"] are the ROSSES. Didn't read it; didn't see No Blood for Oil. No, wait, that's not the movie title. Like Oil for Chocolate? No Country for Oilmen? Ah, There Will Be Blood, right?
I sure didn't know that the D TRAIN is [Public transportation to New York's Yankee Stadium], but luckily the D's crossing was solid.

Updated Saturday morning:

Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Bond Issues"—Janie's review

So yesterday, in "Up for Debate," Doug Peterson gave us STOCK ISSUE. And today, Bob Klahn gives us "Bond Issues." No -- I don't take this to be the start of Wall Street trend in CS puzzles, as the "Bond" at issue here is Ian Fleming's Bond. James Bond. Or in this case, the singers of five Bond-movie theme-songs. To wit:

17A: SHERYL CROW ["Tomorrow Never Dies" theme singer]
28A: SHEENA EASTON ["For Your Eyes Only" theme singer] -- I really like the way this one looks in the grid, especially the vowelly EENAEA part.
39A: MADONNA ["Die Another Day" theme singer]
47A: NANCY SINATRA ["You Only Live Twice" theme singer]
63A: CARLY SIMON ["The Spy Who Loved Me" theme singer] -- name that tune! (Spoiler below)

Now this is a pretty straightforward kind of theme with pretty straightforward cluing and fill. And one evocative jukebox. Click here for some terrific trivia about these and the other Bond-movie theme songs.

Is that all there is? Folks. We've got Klahn here. Bob Klahn. It's the tip o' the iceberg. There's more than the theme to unify this one. And it comes primarily from the finely wrought cluing.

There are the alliterative, repeating and/or rhyme-y clues: [Jolts with volts], [Pertaining to a pigmented peeper part], [Porter order], [Boozing or babbling binge], [Surname separator], [Steinbeck surname], [Pickings or Pickens], [Minute or mile], [Minute bit], [Ship slip], [Central point], [Central line], [Needing kneading?], [Dot-com datum], [Cornell founder Cornell], [Light, in a way], [Light yellow], [Roast rotator], [Intense suspense, e.g.], ["There is no try" Jedi], [Highland headland], [Globular goblet], [Pivotal point] -- holy moly!

There's a quadruple, too: [What a kid'll eat, in song], [Kanga's kid], [Kid], [Kidder]. Btw -- if you didn't understand the first of these, you may never have heard/heard of Mairzy Doats -- a novelty song from the '40s.

Animal clues? Gottem: [What a kid'll eat...], [Kanga's kid], [Bee flat?] (loved that!), [Fox or turkey chaser?], [Hog wild?].
And then, in the fill -- to complement all the KIDding in the clues -- he gives us: JOSH, TEASE and CARD.

Not to mention the slew of scrabbly letters: 4 Z's, 3 J's, 2 X's. And the elegant [Central point] crossing of NEXUS and CRUX.

The only crossing that gave me pause was BAIZE and ZORI. Just wasn't certain of that common Z. Kept thinking BAIZE was a color. But no -- it's a fabric. Was I maybe thinking of MAIZE?......

To wrap it all up, will only add that where this kind of solid cluing/puzzle-making is concerned, um, "Nobody does it better"!

Alan Olschwang's L.A. Times crossword

I'm looking forward to a return to Saturday toughness for the themeless L.A. Times puzzle. Not this week—maybe next week. I like themelesses that make me work for 6 to 7 minutes, as 4½ is just too short. I want it 50% more difficult.

Lots of good fill here—there are three widely spaced 15's going Across, held together by another vertical 15. An eight-pack of 9's provide the rest of the long fill, and my favorites among them are A LOT TO ASK, GONE TO POT, and the cool MAELSTROM. Today at Casa Fiend, there's a science fair project to oversee, so here I'll simply refer you to my L.A. Crossword Confidential postif you're looking for more detail.

Stan Newman's Newsday "Saturday Stumper"

(Solution here.)

I was thisclose to conceding a few squares in the southwest corner when I realized that 37D: [Seat] was INSTATE and not INSTALL. Once again, I find the "original meaning of a first name" clue to be an irritant. 56A: [Name meaning "old city"] is ELTON, presumably an elision of eld + town. I have never, ever heard of ITALO-disco, an '80s European music genre.

I fell into the OKRA trap for 38A: [Gumbo ingredient]. The answer is ROUX, and that crosses a few other toughies. 27D: [Square meal] is CHEX, but it's not the meal that's square, it's a cereal piece. 33D: [Type of rail] is a COOT; both are aquatic bird names. 38D: [Ball playing?] is Lucy RICARDO; since when is a role or character a "playing"?

The most misleading clue is 10D: [Film set in colonial New York]—ANTZ. I knew that took place in an animated ant colony, but who remembers that it was in New York? Second most misleading: 31A: [What element 108 was named for]. If you happen to know that element 108 is called hassium, it might not be obvious that it was named after the German state of HESSE, which is "hassia" in Latin.

I'm not sure why 12D: HOODIES is clued as ['90s fashion statements]—I see no shortage of hoodies in my 'hood in 2009.

I had a couple wrong turns in the grid. 2D: [Spa offerings], ending with UBS? Surely HOT TUBS, right? Nope—OIL RUBS. Do spas call that service an "oil rub"? Because that sounds more like something a mechanic does, not a relaxing spa offering. 45A: [Adidas alternative] is FILA, but I started with AVIA and also considered PUMA.

A couple spots had interesting letter collisions. 42A: [Save or Print] clues MENU OPTION, and that UO looked so impossibly wrong. In the southeast quadrant, the long Acrosses have consonant pile-ups. DR. DEMENTO is a [Comedy Music Hall of Fame charter member]. 57A: [Long-time telethon cohost] is ED MCMAHON. And 59A: [Teen idols] are ROCK STARS.

Random trivia: 30D: ["Rigoletto" inspiration] is Victor HUGO, and 52D: [About 8.8 liters] is a PECK, 8 quarts.

Dinner: Impossible—Wednesday, 5/6

Andrea Carla Michaels tells me that the episode of Dinner: Impossible taped at the ACPT will air on the Food Network this coming Wednesday at 10:00 p.m. (9:00 Central). Set your TiVo/DVR/VCR/viewing schedule now! (I'm looking forward to seeing Andrea in the kitchen, and perhaps other people I know commenting on the food later.)

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Diary of a Crossword Fiend

May 07, 2009

That ACPT cooking show

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Wednesday, 5/6

MGWCC #48

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Tuesday, 5/5

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Sunday, 5/3 NYT second Sunday: Cryptic crossword

May 01, 2009

Saturday, 5/2

Dinner: Impossible—Wednesday, 5/6

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