CHE 5:10
BEQ 4:51
NYT 4:04
LAT 3:40
CS 10:34 (J—paper)
WSJ 8:34
Xan Vongsathorn's New York Times crossword
You don't see a lot of constructors whose names would look terrific in the grid, but newcomer Xan Vongsathorn has that unusual initial X. His debut features a mini-theme:
I believe puzzles with a mini-theme are still termed "themeless" but perhaps they should be called "mini-themed" instead. The rest of the puzzle takes the standard themeless form, with four corners and a middle with lots of white space, some interesting fill, and a smidgen of iffiness. Overall, it felt easier than the usual Friday puzzle—the clock was at 3:59 when I went to click the "Done" button, and I don't break 4:00 on Fridays too often. The highlights as I see 'em, mingled with the tough stuff and the iffies:
For more on the genesis of this puzzle, see Jim Horne's interview with Vongsathorn at the Wordplay blog.
Updated Friday morning:
Randolph Ross's CrosSynergy puzzle, "School Supplies"—Janie's review
Remember the board game "Go to the Head of the Class"? With my solving time today, clearly that's not where I'm headed, but as the school year winds down, this puzzle does leave me well-equipped for (remedial...) classwork. What's in my backpack? Randolph Ross has made sure I've got these five items:
And for the record, all but the last are making their first appearance in major puzzledom. The last is, though, making its CS debut. That's four out of five brand-newbies and that makes for some mighty fresh theme fill.
Why was I so draggy in solving this? For starters, apparently I was over-thinking 1A's [Make up (for)] and didn't enter ATONE until very late in the game. I saw the -AGE of 1D and decided that with the clue [Soothe], the fill had to be MASSAGE... So the entire NW was pretty much bollixed up, TOPPLING last. (TOPPLING, btw, along with RENOVATE and SAME DAY in the NE corner, are all making their first CS appearances.) YIKES for YIPES didn't help much either... Had never heard of coach John Wooden (at 57D) and had to give the area around it some thought, but when I see a 4-letter [Sch.] ending in "A," dollars to donuts it's gonna be UCLA, and that was exactly the case today.
Neat grid-bits include the way the [Justice Dept.'s crack team?] DEA sits atop the PERP or [Cop's collar]. (Those are two terrific clues, too.) Then there's the crossing of LOCA with LOCAL; and the REDHEADS that grace the the grid at 66A and 67A. I especially like the three sixes that run down in the NE corner: IN DEEP, CHERIE and SLAP ON. That feels like an especially lively corner to me.
A few more standout clues: [Splash and dash] for ECLAT, [Ripple tippler] for WINO, [Babe from Hollywood, e.g.] for PIG, [Symbolic kisses] for XES, and [Words set in stones] for EPITAPHS.
I was a bit let down by seeing both WASHER and AWASH in the same puzzle, since A-TEST or APISH could have replaced the latter without wildly skewing the level of the puzzle. I'm sure there's a reason why the duplication occurred (and I suspect it was a deliberate choice), but I'm not sure that it'll ever be shared. (RR: this is your cue to chime in! )
Hmmm. Any references to my hometown today? Well, whaddaya know: birthplace of Parker POSEY? Yup. The "Big 'B'" it is!
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, the themeless "Word Processing"
Brendan confuses some solvers by giving a variety of titles to his themeless puzzles. How about changing the subtitle to "a themeless crossword," Brendan? This particular puzzle's got 68 words, (1) some terrific fill, (2) some weird stuff (PEASECOD is a [Type of pod]? I have no idea what this means), (3) some traps, and (4) some fresh clues.
Example of category 4 ALGER strays from Alger Hiss and Horatio Alger and is instead clued as [Fanny ___ (purported first wife for Mormonism founder Joseph Smith, Jr.]. AWW can mean ["Is that you as a baby?"]. LEAR is clued as an [Aribert Reimann opera], which I've no familiarity with (not the opera, not the composer—but I can guess at the story line).
I fell into one category 3 trap: a 7-letter [Lager alternative] starting with P? Must be PILSNER. Nope, it's a PALE ALE. Which Brendan was just expressing his fondness for in a previous post, so I should have known. If you're just doing the BEQ puzzles but not reading his blog, you're missing some cues that can help you with his puzzles.
More oddball category 2 answers: Let's see...hmm, NOTER is mildly awkward. That's an [Observer]. That's about it other than that PEASECOD thing. There's also OTARU, the [Hokkaido port], but I've seen that one enough by now that it's become a gimme. SMALL AD is a little clunky, and the [Tiny plug] clue didn't make it go in any more easily. Wait, there's also the unusual [Philosopher Chu ___] HSI, which seldom appears in crosswords.
And saving the best for last, the goodies in category 1: the AIDS QUILT at the bottom was Brendan's seed entry, and who deliberately puts a Q and U in the bottom row? That's where words like SETTEES and REASSESSED normally live. SPINAL TAP and LISA LISA provide the musical vibe. Have some CHIANTI ([It comes in a straw basket]) with your PAD THAI. Peek out the FRENCH DOORS and get serenaded by a cheeseball whose best line begins, "ROSES ARE RED."
The [Ancient Italian city founded by Ascanius], ALBALONGA, makes me wonder if particularly nerdy fans of Jessica Alba say "Alba longa, vita brevis."
Doug Peterson's L.A. Times crossword
Doug's theme tacks on a COM at the beginning of familiar phrases:
The theme entries are bracketed together in pairs by the longer Down fill—ATOMIC AGE ([Era that began with a blast?]) and a COAL MINE ([Montana resource site] is a weird clue, as the coal mines I've heard of are everywhere but Montana) on one side, and COLERIDGE (["Kubla Khan" poet]) with MS. PACMAN on the other. There are 6's and 7's binding those theme entries together, too. [Either of two notable jumpers] is Evel KNIEVEL or his son, for example, and up top there's a HOT TUB rhyming (halfway) with THE HUB.
For more on this puzzle, see Rex's post at L.A. Crossword Confidential. The blog's especially useful for newer solvers, as we strive to be educational. For example, here's an informative tidbit from Rex: 50D: "Thin Ice" star, 1937 (Henie) - the "ice" part was the giveaway. HENIE is 60% vowels and thus crossword gold. He started doing crosswords much more recently than I did, so he's more attuned to such crosswordese. I've been seeing the HENIE/ice skating combo for 30 years, so sometimes I forget that such things aren't necessarily familiar to people who haven't been doing crosswords long and aren't old enough to have seen Sonja Henie movies. (She had three Olympic gold medals, too.)
Todd McClary's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "I After E Except After C"
Todd upends the spelling mnemonic "I before E except after C" by gathering together four two-word phrases in which both words run contrary to the rule:
I'm guessing the constructor and editor Patrick Berry noodled around with a lot of possibilities for this theme. Who knew you could find a foursome of phrases that fit this theme and were of proper lengths for a symmetrical crossword? I haven't got all that much to say about the puzzle other than that I love this theme. It combines trivia ("Name an '80s teen comedy that violates the 'I before E except after C' rule twice") with enjoying the craziness of the English language. You'll note that the two vowel digrams can be pronounced in a multitude of ways. EI is a schwa, a long A, sort of an E sound before an R (sorry, I don't know the linguist lingo), and a long I. IE is a long E, schwa, long I, and long E/short E combo. It's a wonder anyone's a good speller, I tell you.
Peter Gordon's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Who Let the Dog Out?"
Wow, I haven't seen a 21x21 puzzle by Peter Gordon since I did his book of the NYT puzzles he constructed from 1993 to 2003. (NYT crossword subscribers can get all those puzzles for free via the NYT but it's nice to have them in book form, especially when the book's from Sterling.)
It felt like it took forever to grasp the theme, but the light dawned when I reached my fourth theme entry—the OBAMA (118A) family's pet dog BO has been "let out" from each theme answer. Here's where the BO's were extracted: 25A boDICE RIPPER; 43A PRO boWLERS' TOUR; 67A boUGHS OF HOLLY; 87A BoXER REBELLION; 109A MADAME BoVARY; 5D PICAbo STREET; 50D BABY boOM; 60D CROSSboW; 74D COLORING boOK. I found there were plenty of "aha" moments to be had among these nine theme entries. Smooth, lively fill—you've got your BRONX ZOO and your arts-and-craftsy GLUE GUNS, SET A DATE, and so on. Rock-solid clues to boot.
May 14, 2009
Friday, 5/15
May 13, 2009
Thursday, 5/14
NYT 4:30
LAT 3:09
Tausig (untimed)
CS 6:40 (J—paper)
David Kahn's New York Times crossword
What an odd puzzle. What can one make of it? The theme is an interesting one—all around the PERIMETER are 7-letter answers that are anagrams, or SCRAMBLES, of one another. Those anagrams are as follows, clockwise from the upper left:
Given the constraints of perimeter theme entry placement and the limited letter choices for the squares around the perimeter—plus the crossing entries in the middle—the rest of the was going to have some compromises, but I'm not sure the theme provides quite enough payoff for the fill. UNNERVE ([Upset]) is good but its crosser UNBRAVE ([Cowardly]), not so much. INSANER ([More cracked]), an awkward comparative word. SEROW, the [Asian goatlike animal]? Wow. One prior in the Cruciverb database, from a 1999 Washington Post puzzle. I missed that puzzle, so I more or less had to guess at the O, which is shared by DROP SET, or [Weight training unit]—a term I've never seen. ALAE, or [Wings, zoologically], is old-school crosswordese—rarely seen now, but at least I knew that one.
The rest of the fill is fine, now that I take a look at it, but I have a SEROW stuck in my craw and it's giving me a little indigestion. You know how that goes. Assorted clues and answers, coming right up:
It's storming like crazy outside, so I'd best post this before my electricity gets zapped. Good night!
Updated Thursday morning:
Patrick Jordan's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Beer Bearers"—Janie's review
"Oh, it's beer, beer, beer that makes you want to cheer"—and it's Patrick's "Beer Bearers" that celebrates four of the ways this most popular alcoholic beverage may be delivered—namely, by:
Other OASES in this puzzle are the excellent seven-, nine- and ten-letter fill: STRUDEL and LARCENY; ARMYWORMS and TUNESMITH; UNDERWATER and PRESS AGENT. Gotta re-visit that middle pair, each of which is making its major-puzzle debut. Now I'm not so keen on what I learned about the wildly destructive behavior of ARMYWORMS, but TUNESMITH (and its [Melody master] clue) is about as lovely as they come (saith the lyricist...).
Then there's the family gathering to be enjoyed: MAMA, PATER and BABY. And the foreign destinations of ULAN Bator and IRAN to be contemplated. Has anyone else read The Complete Persepolis? This is one powerful graphic-format autobiography about author Marjane Satrapi's coming of age in post-revolutionary IRAN. Will view the award-winning DVD this weekend.
Once again, there are loads of alliterative clues to keep things lively, and there are others that are just plain lively: [Command in a levitation act] for RISE, [Take a spouse] for WED, ["Everybody lift together!"] for HEAVE, [Passing notes?] for OBITS.
And I nearly forgot to mention another fave combo: [Spotlight hoggers] for HAMS. Get it? HOGgerS and HAMS..... (I know—you got it!)
Finally, let me also mention that before [Former Dolphins coach Don] SHULA was a "former Dolphins coach" he was "former Baltimore Colts coach (and player) Don." I mean, ya never know when yer gonna need that piece of information!
Gary Steinmehl's L.A. Times crossword
We used to see Steinmehl's byline more often when the New York Sun was still publishing. Here, he interprets LINCOLN CENTER as an ABE Lincoln in the exact center of four starred theme entries:
A few things jumped out at me. We have the proofreading one-two of STETS, or [Leaves in], and DELE, or [Editing mark]. PATEN, or [Communion bread holder], is the sort of answer that used to appear much more often in crosswords. Two consonant-heavy celeb names are MR. T, a ["Rocky III" actor], and ["The Brady Bunch" actress Davis], ANN B. The most interesting long answer in the fill is BLIND SPOT—[The right side-view mirror compensates for it] in your car.
Why do this theme now? Because today is the 50th anniversary of when they broke ground to build LINCOLN CENTER. Usually a tribute puzzle assembles a batch of trivia for the theme, but this is a cool twist on the norm.
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "Double Switch"
The "Double Switch" here involves phrases that contain 3-letter words with double letters. The letter that's doubled is switched, thereby altering the phrases' meanings:
Tricky spots, good stuff, etc.:
May 12, 2009
Wednesday, 5/13
Onion 4:51
BEQ 3:56
NYT 3:15
LAT 2:57
CS 6:43 (J—paper)
Nancy Kavanaugh's New York Times crossword
Nancy Kavanaugh presents an instant puzzle: JUST ADD WATER (58A) and the theme will appear.
The Middle East accounts for three answers. An IRANI is a [Certain Oriental rug maker]. An OMANI is a [Muscat native]. And YEMEN is a [Red Sea land]. Europe rings in with NEIN (German for "no"), or [Frau's "forget it"]; NAE, a Scottish [Kiltie's turndown]; the French phrase Les ETATS-Unis; EUR., [Where It.'s at]; [Zuider ___] ZEE; and DADA, [Jean Arp's movement] in the European art tradition. Hawaii is on the board with two: UKES are [Luau strings] and a LEI [may have plumerias or orchids].
Most likely trouble spot: Where TRURO, the [Cape Cod town], meets several intersecting answers. DR. LAO was a [1964 Tony Randall title role]. [Having a rough knotted surface] clues NUBBY, as in a nubby, bumpy knit. An ARIL is a crosswordese word meaning [Seed covering]. And then there's the two-word answer ONE CUBIT—[18 inches, give or take].
Byron Walden's Onion A.V. Club puzzle
By the way, I hear this Saturday's NYT puzzle will be a collaboration between Tyler Hinman and Byron. Should be a fun one—with a touch of evil.
The Onion theme is TEABAGGING, the [Actual protest activity for tax-and-spend opponents that sets the tone for this puzzle's theme]. Teabagging is not just a tax protest, it's also a sex term relating to the balls. So the rest of the theme entries also have sexual connotations (don't ask me what they all are), but are clued as non-lewd protests with embarrassing double-entendre names:
There are two full names from the music business appearing opposite each other in the grid. CLEO LAINE and Motley Crue's VINCE NEIL. Nice contrast. [Today's 20-somethings, as a group] are GEN Y; my husband has an Aunt Geny, but she's 70-something. Never heard of METALLO, the [Kryptonite-powered cyborg supervillain]—I mean, I probably saw a movie with this villain but sure don't recognize the name. I never knew ZONIAN was the word for a [U.S. citizen living near the Panama Canal, once]. An unusual partial, ALAS I, completes ["___ Cannot Swim" (2008 Laura Marling album]. Laura Marling is 19 and thus part of GEN Y. Did you need all the crossings to get LEHUA, the [Hawaiian hardwood tree]? I did.
Updated Wednesday morning:
Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy puzzle, "If the Shoe Fits"—Janie's review
The theme of this enjoyable puzzle—shoe styles—is spelled out in the second half of each of the two-word theme fill. You won't find the Sirius Stiletto among the options, but you will find:
So that's it for the theme. But that's not it for fill that's making its first appearance. BELLMAN, a variation of "bellhop" is taking a bow, as are TIP JAR and LIE AWAKE (well, for these two, a CS bow anyway). All of these feel very fresh to me and not merely because they're first-timers. They have a real specificity to them in the kinds of images they conjure up. This is a good thing.
I seemed to like this puzzle from the get-go. While its connotation is not that of a happy place, TORA Bora is still a place that grabs our attention; CALEB Carr's The Alienist was one of the grizzliest books I've ever read. I was glad to be reminded, too, of author ALISON Lurie, whose literate The War Between the Tates I read years ago. And it was refreshing to see Arthur ASHE clued not as a world-class tennis player, but in conjunction with his three-volume series [A] Hard Road to Glory: A History of the African-American Athlete. "Arthur! Arthur!"
Back to the map of the world, we get good ol' domestic TERRE Haute, IN, but we also get the more exotic KASBAH [Old section of Algiers]. This one led me to investigate the differences between KASBAH and Casbah. (Haloscan can be a bit frustrating, sending you back to the home page as it does after visiting a link, but sometimes it's worth the trip. Give it a go.) And then, from this site of "greatest film misquotes", there's this on the subject:"Come with me to the Casbah," followed by "we'll make beautiful music together" - was not said by Charles Boyer to co-star Hedy Lamarr in Algiers (1938); it was said by cartoon characters Yosemite Sam and Pepe LePew in subsequent Looney Tunes cartoons, among others; in fact, animator Chuck Jones based the Warner Brothers cartoon character Pepe LePew on Charles Boyer's Pepe Le Moko.
While we're in movie-land, there's not only producer Marcus LOEW, but also SOME Like It Hot, Citizen KANE (and not Citizen Ruth...), Keystone KOP, HAN Solo, ILSA Lund.
ALEC Baldwin is clued wonderfully: [A Baldwin, but not a piano]. Sweet! And there are lots of other lively clues: [Grace period?] for AMEN; [Ducktail applications for GELS; and loads of alliteration with [Seaside souvenir], [Genesis gent], [Stable sound], [Black, to Blake],[High-spirited horse], [Valley of the Vineyards]. (Nice, too, how NEIGH, that [Stable sound] is in grid-proximity to STEED, the [High-spirited horse].)
Does this puzzle have perhaps too many names and pop culture references? Perhaps. I haven't even mentioned all of them. But each name seemed to trigger some other connected thought. That kept things interesting for me. Oh—and I almost forgot—the crossword-friendly ORIOLE [Baltimore player] found its way here, too. So, really, what's not to like (said the girl from Baw'mer...)?!
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "P.B.R. Me A.S.A.P."
Between IHOP and the Jewel, I'm out of free time this morning. Medical editing! Puzzle editing! Work awaits. So, quickly:
The theme is phrases that, like Brendan's beloved Pabst Blue Ribbon, have P.B.R. initials. POINT BLANK RANGE, a PUSH BUTTON RADIO, and Colin Powell's famous POTTERY BARN RULE, the ["You break it, you buy it" foreign policy]. It's not the timeliest appearance of that phrase, but is it not still a fantastic 15? Highlights in the fill: BREAK A SWEAT, YO LA TENGO, FIRST DIBS. Trouble spot for me: The crossing of [Dwight Howard's team, on scoreboards] and [Naughty by Nature hit of 1991]. ORL, or Orlando, and OPP? SESTETS and TSETSES populate the bottom row in the constructor's fallback copout fill, but at least they're clued as anagrams of one another. The ERNE clue is very inside-baseball: [Bird indigenous to crosswords]. So those answers are excused, but we still have ENOTE, APIA, and SOLING reminding us that the puzzle can't all be SASHAYS and SKI PLANES.
Laura Sternberg's L.A. Times crossword
In my L.A. Crossword Confidential post, I already lauded this theme. Five colorful phrases that begin with words that can precede PEPPER (69A), in turn creating other colorful phrases? Win-win. Here are the theme answers:
Throw in a LAMAZE class for a ZOMBIE mom, the twin [Rogue]s KNAVE and SCAMP, DEEP-DISH pizza, and the handful of blah bits (ICC, AEC, OAS, RESODS) can be forgiven. Plus: 69 squares of particularly rich and flavorful theme content buys a lot of good will.
MGWCC #49
crossword 5:40
puzzle 4:16
good evening, friends. the 49th episode of matt gaffney's weekly crossword contest. this week's puzzle, like puzzle #21, asks us to find the title hidden in the grid. what are the theme answers?
what do these answers have in common? the first thing to check in cases like this is hidden thematic material across the word breaks, and that's what we've got here. a RIB, ULNA, ANVIL, and STERNUM are hiding out in HENRI BECQUEREL, BEAUTIFUL NAME, GERMAN VILLAGE, and REGISTER NUMBER. those are all bones. the ANVIL is also called the incus, and it's in your ear. the STERNUM (you guys know this, right?) is the breastbone.
so what's the metapuzzle answer? well, the instructions tell us that This week's contest answer consists of two entries in the puzzle grid which total eleven letters. Together, they form a phrase which is a perfect title for this week's puzzle. looking around, we have BONES at 9a, clued as [Dice, in slang]. what 6-letter entry goes with it? ah, here it is at 41a: [Kaput], or BROKEN. BROKEN BONES is the answer to the contest and the title of this week's puzzle. it was also the title of ben tausig's puzzle from a couple of weeks ago, with a similar-but-not-quite-the-same theme: bones that were hidden sequentially but non-consecutively in long theme answers. ben's ULNA, for instance, was in the chekhov play UNCLE VANYA.
i found this puzzle surprisingly difficult for the second week of the month. (i shudder to think what it's going to be like the fourth, or even fifth, week of may!) despite knowing HENRI BECQUEREL, the upper left corner stymied me for quite some time:
and why did the metapuzzle take me so long? literally the first thing i noticed when trying to work out the theme was the RIB in HENRI BECQUEREL, but then for some reason when i looked at the other word breaks i didn't see ULNA... or ANVIL... or STERNUM! 1 for 4, ouch. so i dismissed the idea and started looking for other things. it took me a while to come back to it.
let's see, what else was in the grid?
that's all for me this week. see you next time.
May 11, 2009
Tuesday, 5/12
Jonesin' 3:18
NYT 2:45
LAT 2:36
CS 6:38 (J—paper)
Ooh, sorry I'm a little late tonight. I got distracted by the Blackhawks game, which is so unlike me. Hockey? It moves too fast. (Baseball? It moves too slow. Call me Goldilocks the reluctant sports fan.)
Wayne and P.K. King's New York Times crossword
I figured a theme like this had surely been done before, and it has, back in '99 and also in 2006, but with entirely different sets of DISsed theme entries. The Kings' fresh foursome follows:
A few other clues:
Updated Tuesday morning:
Stella Daily & Bruce Venzke's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Back Biters"—Janie's review
Looking for a little flash in your Tuesday puzzle? Look no further. The dynamic duo of Daily & Venske provide it in the very first themed entry:
17A: [Electricity in the sky] BOLT OF LIGHTNING
The gimmick, however, is not about brilliant displays of light, but what's [...found at the end of this puzzle's longest answers]. At the back of these four answers are biters of sorts: BUGS!! Two of them are of the insect variety; two—and these are the far more insidious sort—are of the human variety.
The companion to our friend the ...LIGHTNING bug, emerges here at 27A [Cousin of the Etch A Sketch] MAGNA DOODLE. And behold, we now have the DOODLE bug.
But beware the LITTER bug and the FIRE bug!!
The former comes to us via 49A: [Cat owner's purchase] KITTY LITTER; the latter from 63A [Oscar-nominated Clint Eastwood thriller] IN THE LINE OF FIRE.
("FIRE bugs" also puts me in mind of Swiss playwright Max Frisch's play Biedermann and the Fire Bugs. Though, all things bein' equal, I think I'd be happier recalling Johnny Mercer's tribute to LIGHTNING bug larvae, "Glow Worm".)
What's so good about this theme-fill is that, once again, it's very fresh. BOLT OF LIGHTNING is making its first appearance in a CS puzzle (and has appeared in only one other major puzzle—nearly ten years ago); MAGNA DOODLE and KITTY LITTER are complete newcomers. I like that!
What else do I like? Well, there are some charming crosses within the grid: RENT and DENT; LIMIT and EMIT; SKEE and KNEE. While not clued as such, we also get a theme-related bonus in PEST. We get a pair of past-tense complaints, too: MOANED and NAGGED.
SNAFU showed up four days ago in Randall Hartman's "Cheese Heads," but then it was clued as [Major miscue]; today it's a slangy [Hot mess]. And yesterday, Doug Peterson gave us COMP for [Freebie]; today we have ANNIE for [Oakley of the range]. Whaddaya call a comp ticket? An ANNIE Oakley. Scroll to the end to find out why!
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Pig Out"
Yes, "pig out" is a familiar phrase, but I can't get too excited by this sort of theme—long phrases that begin with PI and end with G or begin with P and end with IG. Matt adds another title-related element to the theme—the first four theme answers center on eating and the fifth is the results of "pigging out." Three of the five theme answers are rock solid, and some seem to be pig-related in a way:
[Gwyneth Paltrow's website] is GOOP.com. I haven't explored the site—just read things where people make fun of it. Favorite answers: UFF-DA is ["Oh no!" in Norwegian areas of the Midwest]. At Carleton, we made fun of St. Olaf with "Uff-da!" chants at football games. GIFTED KIDS is a great entry' [They may be placed in a higher class]. DANGER ZONE is, apparently, a [Song that elicits images of "Top Gun"]; don't know the song, am glad to have never seen the movie (also missed Cocktail). The BUZZER is a [Game show device]; Jeopardy! likes to call it a "signaling device," perhaps because it doesn't buzz, but come on, we all know it's a BUZZER. I liked the [Brothers with a 2009 movie] clue; it had me thinking of the Hughes, Coen, and Farrelly brothers, all directing teams, but no—it's the teen-idol JONAS Brothers.
Don Gagliardo's L.A. Times crossword
Gagliardo's theme is occupationally oriented ways to say "shut up":
Lots of good long answers in the fill—the HEAT INDEX is [Wind chill factor's opposite]. Winnie the Pooh's beloved HONEY POT should really be spelled HUNNY to capture Pooh's vibe. ZOOM LENS is a camera [Attachment for closeups]. SET UP SHOP means to [Go into business]. And old Mother Hubbard's [Bare fixture of rhyme] is her CUPBOARD.
Extra crosswords!
It's Monday. The crosswords are easy. You find yourself hankering for more. You're in luck! Here are two more puzzles:
Trip Payne's made a Longoesque vowelless crossword of his own. At Trip's website Triple Play Puzzles, scroll down to Vowelless Crossword #1 in the list of variety puzzles. This one seemed a little easier than Frank Longo's vowelless Sun crosswords were, with a finishing time of 10:04. (I haven't seen Frank's upcoming all-vowelless puzzle book yet, so I don't know how those compare.) As soon as I finished, I Googled Mainz to see what the vowelless version of the [German state whose capital is Mainz] expanded to, but aside from that, I was able to figure out what all the answers would be with vowels. Trip is a kind soul, so he's posted two versions of the puzzle—the hard one provides no enumerations, while the easier one tells you how the letter and word counts break down in the expanded answers.
Did you read Brendan Quigley's discourse on "Ten Bullshit Themes"? Patrick Blindauer did, and he saw that one of his not-yet-submitted puzzles was already being mocked without anyone having seen it. So he sent it my way for online publication. Head over to the Crossword Fiend forum to download Patrick's crossword.
Enjoy!
May 10, 2009
Monday, 5/11
BEQ 4:35
LAT 2:35
NYT 2:19
CS 5:53 (J—paper)
Fred Piscop's New York Times crossword
Whoa. Is this pretty much the easiest NYT crossword you've ever seen? I'll bet a lot of people are enjoying setting a new personal land-speed record.
The theme is simple but lively: "somebody's something" songs covering a number of "somebody" pronouns. SHE'S A LADY is a [1971 Tom Jones hit]. The [1972 Carly Simon hit] is YOU'RE SO VAIN. I'M A BELIEVER is the [1966 Monkees hit]. And HE'S A REBEL is a [1962 Crystals hit]. All are familiar song titles—and the two I haven't necessarily ever heard are familiar from crosswords (SHESA and HESA clues).
Not every word in this puzzle is a straight-up gimme, but the ones that are less well-known have manageable Monday-grade crossings. Here are the closest things to difficult clues:
Updated Monday morning:
Doug Peterson's CrosSynergy puzzle, "It's Not Unusual"—Janie's review
This reasonably straightforward theme gives us three phrases whose final word is synonymous with "not unusual." And the beauty part? Two of the three phrases are making their puzzle debuts. So we're in "fresh fill" territory and that's a very nice place to be! This non-shout out to Tom Jones gives us:
I think one of my least favorite words (and one I don't especially love meeting in crosswords) is CRUD, but there it was at 1A. Happily, it was all up from there. Though it's clued here as a [Volley of gunfire], a SALVO is also a burst of cheers or applause. A LILT is a [Jaunty rhythm]; an ADAGIO passage is one that's played [Slowly, in music]. When something [Runs smoothly], it PURRS. I always love seeing ENIAC and am amazed by how smoothly it ran. Hadn't realized that while it was initially developed in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania, it was then moved to the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland (my home state), where it was in residence (and use) between 1947 and 1955.
Looking for an enchanted getaway? How about a visit to DELPHI [Greek oracle site]? Prefer something a little more local? Get thee to a DAY SPA—with an emphasis on the "aaah."
The rangy cultural references in Doug's opus cover the way above-AVERAGE to the COMMON to the decidedly sub-STANDARD. I leave it to you to decide where on your personal scale you'd place: MOBY DICK, BELA Bartok, Marlene DIETRICH, ENID Bagnold, TONI Tennille or Braxton, YOKO Ono, ISHTAR...
Fave cross: SQUID/SQUASH. "SQUID SQUASH I was takin' a wash/Long about a Saturday night..." ;-)
Fave clues: 33D [Propel a gondola] for POLE; the segue of 28A into 32 A, [1987 Warren Beatty flop] [Of monumental proportions], and the connection of the last word of 44A [Page with columns] to 45A [Greek oracle site].
All of these examples and more work to vitalize and UNITE this smoothly solved puzzle.
Lila Cherry's L.A. Times crossword
Hey, Rich Norris picked the wrong pen name for today's puzzle—that Cherry in the byline is practically a spoiler for 51A: CHERRY GARCIA in the grid. That's theme entry #3, the [Ice cream flavor honoring a Grateful Dead icon]. (Two of my friends just saw the Dead in concert last week. Yes, they're still touring.) 59D: RED ties the theme together: [The starts of this puzzle's three longest answers are shades of it]. The first RED is 20A: CARDINAL SINS, or [Lust, gluttony, greed, etc.]. Now, this is the second puzzle in about a week in which "cardinal" is used to mean the color red. Isn't that weird? It's in the dictionary definition, sure, but I don't know the last time I've heard anyone using "cardinal" (or "cardinal red") to describe a color. Maybe in terms of sports fans, but "Cubbie blue" isn't a broader color name. Our final red is 34A: CRIMSON TIDE, or [Alabama team nickname]. That C is also the last letter in WISC., and the University of Wisconsin's color is red too.
I liked the shoulder-to-shoulder appearance of the [Trident-shaped Greek letter] PSI and a PITCHFORK, or [Tool in a haystack]. We get two full names in the grid. E.B. WHITE is the ["Charlotte's Web" author] and ED MCMAHON used to be [Johnny Carson's sidekick]. With 20 non-theme answers in the 6- to 8-letter range, this puzzle has standard Rich Norris freshosity and smoothitude.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "David Bowie Playlist"
Brendan's a huge Bowie fan, so he made a 15x16 puzzle with eight David Bowie songs combined into four phrases. From left to right, they are:
I can't tell you how pleased I am to have 27A, [Actor David of "Rhoda"]. David GROH! He played Rhoda's man Joe, who went from boyfriend to roommate to husband to ex within five seasons. I have a particular fondness for pop culture from my salad days (if age 8 to 12 can be considered one's salad days). So that one was a gimme for me, but may be obscure to many others. Least familiar to me: CANEA, the [Port of Crete that was once its capital]. [Folk singer Phil] clues OCHS; in the online version of yesterday's L.A. Times Calendar crossword (if not the print version), [Folk singer Ochs] clued OCHS. O(u)chs.
I have been campaigning tirelessly against HEHE as a [Sardonic laugh]. That's one of my leading online-writing pet peeves. Are people hearing this in their heads as "hee hee" (which, duh, should be spelled "hee hee") or as "heh, heh"? Mind you, printed dictionaries haven't bothered to document any of this, but to me "he he" is akin to "you you."
Sunday, 5/10
NYT (27:32)
PI (18:24)
LAT (untimed, I mean really, it's PuzzleGirl — who cares?)
BG (untimed)
CS tba
Hey, everyone. PuzzleGirl here, filling in for Orange who's off doing ... um ... come to think of it, she didn't tell me what she was doing. No wait. Traveling. Traveling somewhere with spotty Internet? Yes, I'm sure that's it. Well, whatever it is she's doing, we're here gabbing about the puzzles — yay!
Patrick Berry's New York Times puzzle, "Golfing Around," is full of golf puns. If you don't like puns, you probably won't be thrilled with this one. Me? I was just happy to know enough about golf to understand the theme answers. Well, most of them anyway.
Theme answers:
I made two mistakes in this puzzle. The first one was just a bonehead error on my part. I had "No holes parred" at first and couldn't figure out how that fit with the clue. I even Googled pucko to see if that was something. (Well, it's something, but not anything that works in this puzzle.) So I'm sitting here, late at night, knowing I have a mistake in my puzzle, pretty much knowing it has to be at one of the pucko crossings, but I can't figure it out. So I send out a may-day email to a bunch of PuzzleFriends, hoping they're still up after having no doubt completed the puzzle correctly. Crosscan got back to me pretty much right away and set me straight on BUCKO. D'oh! Thanks Crosscan! Then he sent me another email telling me I should talk about the MAYLE/BARIC crossing. I'm all "Huh? MAYLE/BARIC?" Yeah, I had that wrong too. I'm dying to know how many of you got tripped up there. Let me know in the comments!
Okay, what else? I had a couple missteps with zero for JERK [59A: Ding-a-line], mull for MUSE [72A: Cogitate], eggs for HIES [82A: Spurs (on)], and stir up for RILE UP [90D: Agitate]. I also didn't know SLIDELL was a Louisiana city on Lake Pontchartrain, OTIS Smith used to play for the Magic, and LI PO was a Tang dynasty poet. Favorite word in the puzzle? BLAT. No contest.
John Lampkin's L.A. Times puzzle, "Mothers of Invention," has some fun fill, but I couldn't really get excited about the theme.
Theme answers:
For all the details on my indifference, and to learn more stuff I didn't know in the puzzles today, check out my post at our other blog: L.A. Crossword Confidential.
Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer crossword, is full of puns (surprise!) with the theme "Perfect Gifts for TV Moms."
Theme answers:
I didn't know the real names of either Elvis Costello (DECLAN McManus) or Roy Rogers (Leonard SLYE) until today. I kept reading the "Three Coins in the Fountain" clue as wanting the name of an artist or director or something, but it just wanted the name of the fountain (TREVI). I know that EBOLA and e. coli are two different things (e.g., EBOLA is a [Notorious virus]), but I can never remember which one is which. Raise your hand if you thought Walesa forming solidarity in Poland was close enough and that anyone who knew right off that the correct answer was GDANSK is obviously some kind of over-achiever. If you didn't understand the reference to George Hamilton's TAN, here's a visual aid. You know who else is unnaturally tan? John Boehner, Ryan Seacrest, and the entire Ohio State University wrestling team (e.g., J Jaggers).
Okay, I'm going to wrap this up, but I would be remiss if I didn't just say a little something about MRS. [30A: Mom's title]. Merl. You know I love you. And I get it that it's Mother's Day. But, really? Really?? Yes, there are moms who (a) are married and (b) prefer to be called "Mrs." But the percentage of moms who don't fall into one or both of those categories these days has got to be pretty high. Just sayin'.
Okay, it's late, I'm tired, and I have other stuff to do tomorrow, so I'm just going to give you a quick rundown of Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon's Boston Globe puzzle, "Overlappers."
Theme answers:
I like how we start out right at 1A with a golf reference. I'm not sure, however, that all golfers would consider PAR a "success." I like the inclusion of cad and popinjays in the clues and VARLET and FOPS in the answers. And I love the phrase "Room to swing A CAT." Not that I would ever do it! It just cracks me up to picture it. PROM [66A: School ball] made me think of the "Hannah Montana" episode I watched with PuzzleDaughter today. I've been avoiding that show like the plague. Never watched it until today. There were parts that were actually kind of amusing, but I was really surprised to learn that a primary focus of the show is that Miley Cyrus's character leads a double life. By day she's typical high school student Miley Stewart, but when she puts her wig on, she's magically transformed into rock star Hannah Montana. And nobody knows. That's the part that really struck me. I had to ask my daughter: "So, the kids that go to school with Miley Stewart on the show — they don't know that she's Hannah Montana? Even though they look exactly alike?" She was all, "Mom. She puts on a wig and wears different makeup." Well, that explains everything. Anyway. The episode we watched was about Miley's prom and I was going to tell you about it, but really. Who am I kidding? You're not really that interested and I'm exhausted, so I'm going to close for now. Thanks for letting me hang out with you again — it's always a blast! With any luck, Amy will be back tomorrow.
May 08, 2009
Saturday, 5/9
Newsday 13:27
NYT 8:37
CS 5:00
LAT 4:25
Brad Wilber's New York Times crossword
You know what's not a great combo? Doing a Saturday NYT puzzle an hour closer to bedtime and clues pertaining to Broadway shows and horse racing—and an Egyptian pharaoh for good measure. Or bad measure. Slow measure, anyway. Lots of cool stuff in this puzzle, plus a small smattering of the "bleh" type stuff. Here's what I liked the most in this challenging puzzle:
And then there's the more elusive stuff. Come Saturday, you have to expect a lot of this:
Bruce Venzke's L.A. Times crossword
See my L.A. Crossword Confidential post after the wee hours of Saturday morning. I'm trying to wrap up the Saturday blogging too late on Friday night, I'm sleepy, and I'm leaving for Mother's Day weekend in the morning.
Updated Saturday morning:
Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Sign Up!"
The theme here is phrases in which the word SIGN appears upwards. DOWN is [Not the way to look if you need help with this puzzle's theme], and these phrases split NG IS across two words:
A few cool clues or answers:
Four "Huh?" clues:
Doug Peterson's Newsday "Saturday Stumper"
(Solution here.)
Hey! Look at that. I finished without resorting to Google, with only about 10 flat-out wrong answers that I had to rework along the way. (There were many more answers that I couldn't come up with a single workable answer for, in addition to those wrong entries.) A handful of tough clues, extracted from the list of almost-all-tough clues:
There's a good chance that the Oryx recognition of this year's toughest crossword will have to go to the Saturday Stumpers as a group. They've had their easy and medium years, but now they're in a mad-tough year.
May 07, 2009
Friday, 5/8
BEQ 4:55
CHE 4:51
NYT 4:43
LAT 4:16
CS 6:18 (J—paper)
WSJ 8:54
John Farmer's New York Times crossword
Not many NYT crosswords begin with a blacked-out square in the upper left, much less with a chunk of six black squares there. John's puzzle has a cute grid with four black corners bracketing a ring of 9-, 11-, and 13-letter answers. Those long ones are as follows:
Overall, this lovely puzzle has mighty smooth fill, even with all those 3's and 4's that had the potential to feel like compromises. It's a pangram, so there's an interesting assortment of Scrabbly words. And none of the clues or answers jumped out at me as being iffy. Keep 'em coming, Farmer John! Put on your constructin' overalls, park the tractor, and get to work.
Selected clues from the rest of the puzzle:
John Lampkin's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Work, Work, Work"
The title relates to the six trilogies in the theme. There's Tolkien's LORD OF / THE RINGS and Dos Passos's USA trilogy—the only two of the trilogies here that I could name straight off. Willa Cather's trilogy, 7 letters starting with a P? Hmm, PRAIRIE? Yes. Paul Auster has his NEW YORK trilogy, which sounds faintly familiar to me. I didn't know that Robertson Davies had a DEPTFORD trilogy, nor that Cormac McCarthy's books make up the BORDER trilogy.
There is a plethora of out-there tough clues and answers. To wit:
Updated Friday morning:
Randall J. Hartman's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Cheese Heads"—Janie's review
This Friday puzzle can be described with three words: easy, breezy and cheesy. And when I say "cheesy," I'm speaking literally here. The first word in each of the four two-word theme phrases (the "head" of the phrase) names a type of cheese. Actually that's not entirely accurate, but I'll get to that a little later.
One of the reasons many of us solve puzzles is for the entertainment value, and this one is loaded with references (directly or in-) to the entertainment we enjoy on stage and screen. There's AGNES Moorehead of Citizen Kane fame (perhaps best known to boomers and Nick at Niters as Endora in Bewitched); ELSA Lanchester (whose name nicely crosses ELSE); LIZA Minnelli (whose name nicely crosses ZIMA at the "I"); Klinger portrayer Jamie FARR; the movie ORCA (which does appear to be a "must miss"); De Niro film A BRONX TALE (written by and now being performed as a one-man play by Chazz Palminteri); Broadway musical MAN OF La Mancha (also a [not-very-good] movie); the thematic AMERICAN BUFFALO (which put expletive-loving playwright David Mamet on the map); and finally, Joe Green's AIDA (I know, I know: Giuseppe Verdi!).
Fill I love: COOT for [Geezer], QUACK for [Snake oil salesman], SNAFU for [Major miscue]. (Where that last one is concerned, am also fond of its corollary, FUBAR...) Nice to see the two Xs, two Zs and that Q, too.
What I learned: the COBRA is an [Army helicopter].
While I'm usually delighted by repeated clues, something doesn't sit quite right with the twin [Pigs] at 26D and 28D surrounding 27D's [Koran religion]. And in the grid, ISLAM and SWINE run side by side. Perhaps I'm being overly PC/humorless, but given Islam's dietary laws, this pairing doesn't feel, well, particularly "kosher." So to speak. I guess I'm wondering if this was something that went under the radar of the CS team or whether it was included to test the waters. Puzzle construction being the complex task that it is I suspect there's no easy answer.
That said, I had a fine time solving this, and was happier still (once I'd read the title and fully appreciated the theme) that this celebrated "cheese heads" and not "head cheese"!!
Dan Naddor's L.A. Times crossword
Now Dan's just showing off. A 70-worder that somehow found room for five theme entries? Impressive. He takes five phrases that end with -KEY and lops off the EY:
The grid looks like a themeless one, with those four open corners and the parade of 7's (and a 9) stairstepping through the middle. A lot of these answers would score low in Scrabble (well, unless the player managed to lay down all 7 letters in one play). Consider EERIEST, IRON ORES, TRUSTEE, USELESS, E STREET, ARLENES, EELER, and ASIANS. SEXINESS, or [Allure], gets a boost from its X but is otherwise exactly the sort of answer you're likely to see holding up the bottom of the grid. Mind you, even if these answers mostly lack crazy letters, they still make for fresher fill than a slew of 3- to 5-letter repeaters would. Even the dullest 7 is going to be less stale than a puzzle filled with ERIEs and UTAs.
Least familiar clue: It's a two-way tie! [Glazunov wrote a 1934 concerto for one] refers to the ALTO SAX. [Pou ___: vantage point] clues STO. I have never heard of Glazunov—music is not my bag—but at least ALTO SAX was gettable as a musical instrument. Pou sto is a Greek phrase I've never encountered before. I do know that STO means one hundred in many Slavic languages.
Clue with the strongest parade associations: [Red fez wearer] is a SHRINER. Weirdest-looking answer: ALE KEG, or [Pub container].
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Think Thick"
Can you imagine how awesome this grid would be without those single black squares to the left of 26A and 43A? I wonder if Frank Longo, Patrick Berry, or anyone else could fill that grid.
Like some of Brendan's test solvers, I had an error where 3D meets 28A. The [Small toucan with a yellow breast] is the ARACARI, not the ARACARA. And [You usually find them up against the wall] clues light SWITCHES, not paint SWATCHES. I wonder if people who don't know Brendan just bought a condo made the same mistake—the bird is not a well-known one, but is it natural to jump to SWATCHES in the absence of suspecting autobiographical content?
[Interruption of thought indicator] is the EM DASH. I love me a good em dash (see the preceding paragraph).
I have inexplicably and quite suddenly fallen out of the mood to write about crosswords, so I'll just say that if Brendan were to decide to make three themelesses a week, that would be fine by me. They're always enjoyable.
Liz Gorski's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Life Is a Merry-Go-Round"
Sometimes folks grumble when a chunk of letters in a rebus square are used to mean the literal word that comprises those letters. In this case, all six HORSE rebus squares use the HORSE as a horse, of course, as the HORSEs are arrayed in a CAROUSEL-style circle. The merry-go-round rebus (which, by the way, is perfectly symmetrical—when has Liz ever made a visual puzzle that doesn't layer on still more symmetry?) is a tribute to RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN, who partnered up on many MUSICALS including CAROUSEL.
Favorite clues/answers: [Boxer, for one] for SENATOR Barbara Boxer, and the [Elizabethan pronoun?] ROYAL WE. I hereby bestow the title of Queen Elizabeth on Liz Gorski and encourage her to begin using the royal "we" at every opportunity.
