NYS 4:55
NYT 3:11
CS 2:51
LAT tba
Wow, trick-or-treating is hard work. Bundling up (temps in the low 40s), walking two miles, reminding the Green Power Ranger to say "Trick or treat!" and "Thank you," and schlepping sacks o' candy home. I was walking like a zombie on the way back home. Then came the ceremonial Discarding of the Crap (the stick-to-the-molars stuff like Starburst, Laffy Taffy—whoever came up with that name should be drawn and quartered—and Tootsie Rolls), per the dentist's advice. And now the Power Ranger has retired for the evening, so I can sneak some of the better stuff for myself. Kit Kat and Reese's, here I come!
Check out the intricacy of Paula Gamache's theme in the NYT: nine entries that each contain the tenth, TSE (the initials of T.S. Eliot, which anagrams to "Toilets"—which is the title of Francis Heaney's parody of an Eliot poem, which you can read by clicking here and scrolling down to the first poem). Eight of those first nine theme entries appear in four crossing pairs, the longest of which cross the ninth entry in the middle. Thus, relatively few fill entries don't cross one of these. Plenty of good clues, too.
In the Sun, Gary Steinmehl goes OUT the in door in "Revolving Door"—IN in a base phrase is changed to OUT. My favorite clue here: [Pilgrim's progress?] for HAJJ. It's rather JAUNTY to have GUZZLE in a crossword, no?
October 31, 2006
Wednesday, 11/1
October 30, 2006
Tuesday, 10/31
CS 5:15
Onion 4:53
NYS 4:31
Tausig 4:29
LAT 2:54
NYT 2:52
(post updated 9:15 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Tuesday)
Happy Halloween! For about the eighth year in a row, I don't have a costume. Last time I dressed up for the holiday, I was a cloud. Do you know how hard it is to make pillow stuffing stay attached to a sweatshirt? And sewing the lightning bolts on my pants was a hassle, too. But my son's all set with a store-bought costume.
Patrick Blindauer's racking up the credits with two puzzles for the day: a solo outing in the NYT and a joint production with Tony Orbach in the Sun (if you haven't been able to download the Sun puzzle, try using the .zip file for 10/31 here). In the NYT puzzle, the black squares in the middle look like a jack-o'-lantern. In particular, a pumpkin carved to look vampirical—in the hard-copy newspaper, the black squares bracketing 52-Across are rendered as triangular fangs. The theme entries (three 15's) are all clued as [Dracula's least favorite (something)?]. Good fill to boot—TEE TIME, EVIL-EYED, EUREKA, ESCARGOT.
The Blindauer/Orbach Sun puzzle, "Catching Some Z's," doesn't have a Halloween theme. It converts an S sound into a Z sound, as in BRUISE WILLIS. Speaking of catching some Z's, this ending of daylight saving time means it feels like it's way past my bedtime, and I'm falling asleep mid-sentence. Good puzzle...and good night.
Updated:
Either I'm off my stride, or Bob Klahn's Halloween-themed CrosSynergy puzzle has an awful lot of tricky clues. Given the byline, I'd say there's a 75% chance it's the clues. If you like to work harder than usual on a Tuesday puzzle, check this one out.
Ben Tausig, who edits the Onion A.V. Club crosswords, is also in the stable of Onion constructors. Judging from the theme, Ben may be feeling creatively tapped out (do the puzzle and you'll see what I'm getting at—it's not a slam on Ben!).
Meanwhile, Ben's Ink Well/Chicago Reader puzzle, "Cultural Learnings for Make Benefit American Crossword Solver," pays tribute to the Sacha Baron Cohen movie, Borat, which is being released this Friday. But the theme requires knowledge of geography more than the entertainment business, so it's educational (I pieced two of theme entries together with the help of crossings and learned a bit) as well as fun. And the clues! They're great. [Late August?] might put you in mind of the dog days, but the answer's playwright AUGUST Wilson. That's just one example of the goodies in this most enjoyable puzzle.
October 29, 2006
Monday, 10/30
NYS 3:07
CS 2:55
NYT 2:37
LAT tba
(post updated 8:20 a.m. Monday)
The Monday Times and Sun crosswords both had quintessential Monday themes—the sort where after you've solved a couple theme entries, you can hazard a guess at the other two without having many crossing letters at all. In Raymond Hamel's Sun puzzle, I would have figured out the theme within the first theme entry if I'd actually taken a second to read the title: "On Your Feet!" Great fill in this puzzle—Mike TEEVEE from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (and the movie with Willy Wonka in the title); SANCTUM, SATYRS, and SARONG; SCHNOOK and BRAVADO. One clue is rather horrifying, though: [Slaughterhouse sounds] for OINKS. Does anyone really wish to contemplate animal slaughter while solving a crossword? I'm thinking a vegetarian and someone snacking on a BLT would be equally unsettled by this one. Mention of slaughterhouses puts me in mind of the WPA mural at my local post office; here's a detail of it showing a burly man, incongruously wearing a Jughead hat, ready to whack a steer over the head.
The NYT crossword by Nancy Salomon bundles together four things you might say if you bumped into an old friend. I like the combo of the 9-letter entries at 10- and 33-Down; after NEAR BEERS, don't you want to make SNOW PLOWS rhyme, too?
I have no idea what befell the NYT's entire "Readers' Opinions" area. I'm sure plenty of people have been jonesing hard for their crossword raillery, their wine-soaked chatting, their baseball talk...wait, there can't be much left to say about baseball. I don't recall the forums being plunged into darkness for the entire weekend without warning, at least not in the past three years. (I swear I had nothing to do with it.)
There was a ton of traffic to this blog over the weekend, but it had little to do with this weekend's new crosswords or the NYT forum being down. Remember Michael Shteyman's last puzzle? The Saturday puzzle with the [MATCH] rebus? More than 1,500 solvers of the syndicated version of the puzzle Googled the clue for ODIN, [Mythical dweller across the Rainbow Bridge] (and I wonder if it was Michael's clue or Will's). I love an insanely hard clue that is fairly Google-resistant...at least before I mention it here on the interwebs.
Updated
The theme in Mel Rosen's CrosSynergy puzzle, "I've Got a Secret," has an unusual layout: two 15's in standard places, plus a 12-letter entry across the middle, split into two 6's (HIDDEN and AGENDA) separated by three black squares. It's apt because throwing those black squares in the middle sort of conceals the phrase.
Sunday, 10/29
NYT 9:58
WaPo 9:55
LAT 9:12
BG 7:24
CS 4:07
(post updated at 3:00 p.m. Sunday)
Elizabeth Gorski's "Sandwich Man" puzzle in the NYT uses MR IN-BETWEEN as the spur to insert a MR in between two components of a phrase to change the meaning. Thus, [Putting up a guy in the bath?] is HOUSING MR BUBBLE. Truthfully, I didn't love this theme. It grated a bit that JOLLY MR ROGERS relies on a plural of Jolly Roger, whereas ROASTED MR PEANUT has one measly roasted peanut. And hinging the MR IN-BETWEEN theme itself and one theme entry (MY BOY MR BILL) on song lyrics rather than titles was also irksome. But maybe I'm just cranky because I'm tired and because I'm not so familiar with those lyrics. I did like how Gorski sandwiched the vertical theme entries between staggered 9- and 10-letter entries. The trickiest thing for me was EUGENIA, clued as [Saint whose feast day is December 25]; the musical notes EGBDF, clued as [Lines on a staff], also threw me. A few old-school crossword entries made an appearance; the other day we saw the fiber ISTLE, and this Sunday puzzle has INGLE for [Fireplace]. Am I the only one who isn't always sure which is which? (Similarly, distinguishing the ORIEL window from the OSIER basket-weaving material has thrown me in the past.)
Updated:
Whoo, how 'bout those Bears? I've never seen a coach of a pro team smile so much during a game. Too bad my late dad isn't here to enjoy the Bears' return to dominance.
In Patrick Blindauer's Washington Post crossword, "Yours, Truly," has an often-funny theme (SAVIOR RECEIPT! HOOSIER DADDY!) and good set of clues. The last square I filled in was the crossing of [London Philharmonic founder] Thomas BEECHAM and 19th-century composer CESAR Franck.
Manny Nosowsky follows up his Friday Wall Street Journal puzzle with a second Halloween-themed puzzle in the LA Times.
Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon's Boston Globe puzzle, "Kerr-Flooey," was available in the actual newspaper three weeks ago. (Thanks for the research, Dave!) It's got a quote from Jean Kerr.
Harvey Estes' themeless CrosSynergy crossword is laden with two 15's (crossing in the middle at a Q) and a dozen 10-letter entries.
October 27, 2006
Saturday, 10/28
NYT 6:06
Newsday 5:27
LAT 5:02
CS 3:22
(post updated 9:15 a.m. Saturday)
What, what? (Read with Nigel Hawthorne's intonation from The Madness of King George.) Another David Quarfoot puzzle? We just had one last Saturday, and here's his byline again. Which is louder, the rejoicing throughout the land or the wailing and gnashing of teeth? On my end, it's the rejoicing, since I'm done with the crossword. I am a firm believer in the idea of doing a crapload of crosswords to tone your cruciverbal muscles, and this week I've done a bunch of Rich Norris themelesses. Coincidentally, this Saturday's 14-Across appeared in one of the Norrises, so that tricky letter sequence—EXHIBIT A ending with an A—popped into my head quickly. And another Norris puzzle had a word related to UXORIAL in it (clued there in relation to a husband, here as [Wifely]), so that helped, too. DQ always finds a way to sandwich in plenty of zippy entries, like YOU DA MAN (["Way to go, bro!"], SO HAVE I, the (TV) movie OMEN IV: The Awakening, and the liqueur TIA MARIA. There's the mini-theme in the center, two professional wrestlers pinning one another. Then there's the category of obscurities, fair game for a Saturday puzzle—the [Russian fermented drink] KVASS, the standby basket-weaving material OSIER (willow branches, really), the NEOGENE period (starting 23 million years ago), an [Anatomical term that's Latin for "hollow"] that makes perfect sense (CAVA, the root for the word cave), and the finch SERIN. My favorite type of clue—in full blossom here—is wickedly deceptive or otherwise tough. [Followers of ducks, sheep or pigs] is EIEIO, [Heady?] is CRANIAL, [Warren resident] is OHIOAN (not rabbit), [River tower] is TUG, and [Cursed] for DOGGONE. Not to mention [Lake in Mist County, Minn.], which seems to require knowledge of geography but doesn't (Lake WOBEGON is fictional). All in all, another great offering from David Quarfoot and Will Shortz.
Updated:
The Newsday Saturday Stumper this week is by Doug Peterson. A sprinkling of Z's, X's, and K's enlivens the grid. My favorite clue here was [Sort of blue] for CERULEAN—are you feeling a little cerulean today? Or maybe more cobalt?
Bruce Venzke and Stella Daily's LA Times themeless crossword beefs up two triple stacks of 15-letter entries by topping (or bottoming) them with a pair of 7-letter words (including tasty, tasty CHEETOS)—that means eight rows of the puzzle contain a total of just two black squares.
October 26, 2006
Friday, 10/27
NYS 6:51
NYT 5:31
10/13 CHE 5:20
LAT 4:18
CS 2:53
Reagle 10:17
WSJ 9:44
(post updated 7:20 a.m. Friday)
It's mighty hard to concentrate on crossword blogging when one's houseguest is attempting to get one suckered into Grey's Anatomy. It's getting later, I'm getting tireder, and the show's still on, so I'll be briefer than usual.
The NYT crossword's by David Bunker, who's had a few early-week puzzles in the NYT before. This themeless has a number of interesting combinations—JIGGLES next to ANATOMY, UPPED across from the neighboring UPGRADE and UPRIVER, GARGANTUA balanced by PORTLIEST.
Francis Heaney demonstrates broad musical knowledge in his Sun Weekend Warrior, which gathers WHO'S NEXT, a Depeche Mode song (LILIAN—never heard of it), the Beatles' MICHELLE and LENNON. Some excellent clues here, including [Between-flight stops?] for ROOSTS (I was thinking of landings between flights of stairs), [One hoping to be shelved?] for WRITER, and [Agoraphobe's anathema] for OPEN AREA. Plenty of Scrabbly goodness with QUIZ SHOW and XEROXES. Lotsa drugs, too—HEROIN, LSD, and UNPOT. What's that? The latter's a verb? No matter. (The NYT puzzle includes the CHRONIC next to a KEG.) Good batch of phrasal entries in this puzzle, too.
Updated:
Joy Andrews' Chronicle of Higher Education puzzle from October 13 is entitled, "English Imports." The seven theme entries are all loanwords from other languages. O etymologies! How I love thee. Despite the strictures posed by seven theme entries containing several Scrabbly letters, the fill is great overall. Excellent crossword!
Paula Gamache's LA Times puzzle contains some lively fill as well. Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy crossword provides a Mondayish amount of challenge.
Halloween puzzling kicks off with today's Wall Street Journal crossword by Manny Nosowsky and Merl Reagle's oddball Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle. In Merl's puzzle, a creepy quote (from "Rime of the Ancient Mariner") wends its way through an asymmetrical grid in an unbroken path, turning when it hits a black square. It's harder than the usual quote puzzle in that portions of the quote travel upwards or from right to left.
October 25, 2006
Thursday, 10/26
NYT 5:46
NYS 4:45
LAT 4:26
CS 3:05
Todd McClary and Dave Tuller's NYT theme didn't fully dawn on me until a few minutes after I finished the puzzle, at which point I said, "Oh! Now I get it." (Full disclosure: I didn't really say anything out loud.) You see here, the four cross-reference clues aren't just cross-reference clues; where it says [See 43-Down], it doesn't mean merely to read 43-Down—instead, the clue is [See ___] where the blank is filled by the answer to 43-Down. 43-Down is THINGS, so 11-Down's clue is really [See things], ergo HALLUCINATE. It was the "see" thing I failed to notice while I was solving the puzzle. You know what else? It feels like there have been more of those "huh—I never heard of that" entries in the crosswords lately. In this puzzle, that honor belongs to HUASTEC; the Huastecs apparently split off from the Mayans about 4,000 years ago (the INCAS appear above them here). Nice combo of pop culture (OTTO, OPRAH, STYX, MILLI Vanilli, THE D.A., and XENA with TV and rock/pop clues), geography (BAKU, THEBES, PISA), plus BEANO. Zippy cluing, too—[Touch and go?] for TAG and [20 places?] for ATMS.
The Sun puzzle by Kelsey Blakley, "Name the Vowels," features (sort of) famous people whose first names end with the letter that starts their last names. Never heard of IRA ALLEN—Ethan Allen's non-furniture-vending brother, apparently—and the poker player ($*#% poker!) STU UNGAR was just vaguely familiar. Plenty of interesting fill, like HOOLIGAN, THERAFLU, LAMAZE, and the poisonous pufferfish FUGU.
It's late and I'm falling asleep at the keyboard, so I'll sign off for now.
Updated:
In the LA Times puzzle by Dan Naddor (new constructor? I don't recognize the name), there are six theme entries tied together by a seventh, OUT OF. The fill includes both CASTRO and FRANCO, though the latter was clued as football great Franco Harris rather than the dictator. Seeing ELDON, clued as [___ Industries, one-time maker of slot cars], I asked myself if that was the name of Murphy Brown's painter on the TV show. My Googling turned up a term paper ($104, cheap!) comparing Murphy Brown and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. I seldom had $104 in my checking account when I was in college—who are these kids who can afford to pay that much to cheat?
Patrick Jordan's CrosSynergy puzzle is a tribute to the late Steve Irwin. It was mildly disconcerting to see OFFSHORE in the fill, given where Irwin died...and then to see it connected to SNAFU, which abutted END.
October 24, 2006
Wednesday, 10/25
NYS 4:36
LAT 4:14
NYT 3:58
CS 2:49
Don't miss Jeffrey Harris's Sun crossword, "Celebrity Swifties." It's all too seldom that theme entries actually make me laugh aloud (albeit quietly), and three of the five here amused me.
The NYT by Adam Perl is a quip puzzle. Maybe I should start a glossary with made-up terms, like DQP for "dreaded quip puzzle." I know quips have many partisans, but in this climate of bipartisan divisiveness, I come down squarely on the side of wishing quip puzzles appeared much less often. Obligatory anti-DQP grumble out of the way, let's talk turkey: There's some good fill here, like MOSH and SNIVELS, and the theme occupies four 15-letter entries. In the upper center section, there may be a secret moral lesson posed by JAILS crossing LUST, IDLE, and SPITES—how many of those are among the seven deadly sins? I fell into the HOTCAKE trap for [Brisk seller] before switching to HOT ITEM, which crosses
TAPIR, and seeing that word never fails to remind me of the time my husband and I saw a tapir with an erection at the zoo (that is one fearsome phallus, let me assure you). We've got a new-wave HARD C—[Croc's head or tail?]—balancing out the old-school entries like ELBA and ISTLE. I'm curious to know what aspects of this crossword gave trouble to some of the seasoned solvers whose applet times weren't at their usual stellar level tonight.
Jeffrey's Sun puzzle has some great fill—OXYMORON and (the unrelated) BUTTHEAD, XERXES I, KAPUT. There's a 7-letter entry I'd never heard of—EL GALLO demonstrates the gaping abysses in my knowledge of musical theater. Funny clue for BACON: [Strips in a club?]. And the theme! A fresh twist on Tom Swifties, using five famous people whose last names sound like adverbs. My favorite three were ["I think about quitting every time I can't stand the Heat," quipped ___] PAT RILEY (wryly), ["I'm not ashamed of my association with Gene Simmons," admitted ___] ACE FREHLEY (freely), and ["I have no doubt in my dancing ability," stated ___] MICHAEL FLATLEY (flatly).
Updated:
Len Elliott's LA Times puzzle features pairs of bran, ban, band, and Rand names. You might say, "Aha! No brand names!"—but actually, DRANO and VESPA are elsewhere in the fill. I wasn't familiar with one of the theme components, BURN ban. Google tells me governments mandate burn bans (fireplaces, outdoor fires) when there's a risk of fires or a pollution-trapping air inversion. The Chicago area doesn't use these—but parts of the collar counties do seem to permit outdoor burning of leaves and yard waste, which means some suburbs are stinky and make me grumble.
I knew all the famous names in the Sun puzzle, but Randall Hartman included an actress I didn't know in his CrosSynergy puzzle, "Hollywood Shorts." Ruth ROMAN got her start as TV's Jungle Queen, moved on to Hitchcock, and finished up with Murder, She Wrote.
First-grade homework
My son had to compose 15 sentences, one for each of the week's spelling words. The second word was pen, and the sentence he came up with—without prompting from me, I swear!—was:
My mom dus crosswords in pen.
He copied the word crosswords from a book but did the rest himself. I hope the teacher doesn't think he's writing fiction!
The "Today's Puzzle" forum
Okay, I tried posting these remarks at the NYT "Today's Puzzle" forum twice this morning, and the "Service Unavailable" message stopped me in my tracks. So, change of venue.
The preponderance of evidence suggests that the forum is intended to be a social community for crossword fans, and that this identity supersedes any pretense that it's devoted to discussion of that day's NYT crossword. The "spoiler rule" bars posters from getting specific about a crossword until noon on the day of publication. So everyone who avidly downloads the puzzle the night before (and pays a subscription fee for the privilege) is supposed to wait up to 14 hours before posting comments about the theme, specific answers, or really, anything that a hypersensitive individual might deem to be a spoiler. The first-thing-in-the-morning solvers also have to wait several hours before the spoiler deadline passes.
Imagine if you had plans that kept you out of the house when your favorite team had a critical game on TV. You'd tape or TiVo the game and look forward to watching it later. If you wanted to avoid hearing the final score, you'd skip the local news broadcast, you'd certainly shy away from watching ESPN, and you'd be careful about what websites you visited. What you wouldn't do is expect ESPN to scrupulously avoid giving away the score before you'd gotten around to watching the game yourself. And that's basically what's happening at the "Today's Puzzle" forum. Enough people have grown accustomed to hanging out there for chit-chat, and they'd prefer not to have to avoid the site until they've finished the puzzle themselves. The continued enforcement of the spoiler rule indicates that the preferences of that particular group of people supersede the dedication to talking about the day's crossword.
One of the key reasons I started this blog was to talk about the Times crossword when it was fresh in my mind, minutes after solving it online. (Would you believe someone once e-mailed me to ask me to abide by the forum's spoiler-rule schedule on my blog?!?) I know a number of you appreciate having a place to read or write about the puzzle when it's convenient for you, regardless of whether noon has arrived—and I certainly appreciate reading your comments and keeping a puzzle-centric conversation going.
So from my perspective, the main problem with the NYT forum is that it's misnamed. Call it the "Crossword Fans" forum and highlight the spoiler deadline. How does it enhance that community of solvers to chide any newbie who mistakenly visits the "Today's Puzzle" forum in the morning to ask a specific question? It doesn't. It's certainly reasonable for someone to assume that the "Today's Puzzle" header is an accurate description of the forum's scope—but really, it isn't, is it?
