NYS 5:00
NYT 4:55
LAT 3:41
CS 2:51
(post updated at 10:30 a.m. Thursday)
Wow, February already? Yeesh. Time flies when arctic weather is on the march.
The Sun puzzle, Max Rosmarin's "Triple Doubles," has plenty of juicy clues. The theme has nothing to do with basketball stats. Rather, the theme entries have pairs of triple letters (as in HAWAII INN NAMING). My favorite clues included [Take a shine to?] for GLOSS, [Lose, as a tail] for SHAKE (I was thinking of those lizards that can regrow tails), [Have a date?] for EAT, and [OR setting] for PST.
In Michael Maurer's NYT crossword, I got off on the wrong foot with 1-Across, plugging in the more familiar AIR ACE instead of WAR ACE. The theme sent me all over the grid, as each theme entry was two cross-referenced entries forming OXYMORONS of a type. The word pairs seem to appear in random spots, but taken together, they occupy symmetrical pieces of real estate and account for a veritable boatload of theme squares (75 by my count). Having that many theme squares, of course, tends to force compromises in the fill, so we end up with ERNES singing MIS and flying across the ORNE River, for example. Favorite clues here: the simple [In] for ENTREE, [Choice after a football coin toss] for RECEIVE (Go, Bears!), and the doubling up of [Start to fall], SAG and the month SEP. For my money, Michael COLE has got to be one of the least well-known of famous COLEs: Natalie, Nat King, Gary, Old King, slaw, Porter, the USS, Haan shoes. The TV version of The Mod Squad was largely before my time. I looked up the [Lebanese port] TRIPOLI (being more familiar with the Libyan city), and found this nice tidbit at the end of the Wikipedia article: "Today, Tripoli is also known as Al-Fayha'a, derived from the Arabic verb Faha which is used to indicate the spread of a certain smell. Tripoli was best known with its vast orange orchards. During the season of blooming, the pollen of orange flowers gets carried by the air spreading a splendid odour that can be felt anywhere in the city and its suburbs, hence the name al-Fayha'a."
Updated:
Sheldon Benardo’s LA Times puzzle has a fun theme that toys with people whose first names are also cities and whose last names are also nouns. I especially liked [Oregon newcomers?], EUGENE DEBS. Fictionally, Austin Powers could have been included. Any other famous names come to mind? I can’t think of any suitable Pierres. (Moving away from the theme, I thought [Five-sided home?] was a great clue for PLATE.)
Bit of an oddball theme in Randall Hartman’s CrosSynergy puzzle—phrases that contain the letter string NZO—but it makes for a lively trio of 15-letter entries.
Will and Merl's appearance on Oprah's show (which airs in the morning in Oprah's home market) was entertaining. They didn't have the same "wow!" factor as the two brothers doing the Cirque du Soleil act—could you lie on your stomach and lift your feet off the floor if there were a man doing a handstand on your heels?—but Oprah seemed delighted by the personal bits Merl worked into the Oprah-themed puzzle. While the acrobats wore a lot of makeup, even in HD, I didn't see makeup on the crossword guys. But they looked more polished than they did in Wordplay, so maybe the hair and makeup department did do something after all.
January 31, 2007
Thursday, 2/1
January 30, 2007
Wednesday, 1/31
NYS 3:59
NYT 3:53
LAT 3:35
CS 3:21
Co Crocker passed along word from Will Johnston that the Wednesday NYT crossword is a different creature in the applet than in Across Lite or the newspaper proper. If you're wedded to using the applet, I'll tell you what's in the Across Lite notepad below the cut.
This puzzle is by Brendan Emmett Quigley, and I've already stashed a copy in my "great puzzles" folder. Why? Because of the overall quality of the clues and fill and because of the gimmick. One could say that the puzzle exceeds the usual word-count limits, since there are 81 entries, and one could carp that there are only 31 theme squares—but the three theme entries run on the diagonal, and I hear it's mighty hard to build a puzzle within the constraints of three-way cross-checking of the theme squares. Despite the high word count, many of the entries are long words and phrases, so it sort of has an easy-themeless vibe to it, particularly for those solving on the NYT's applet (where the three diagonal clues were not provided). Those clues are:
1. Face imaginary enemies
7. 1972 Bill Withers #1 hit
37. Bettor's buy
Going back to the straight across and down stuff, my favorite clues and entries were: LA BOHEME, I'M LATE, SMOLDER, [One who may bug you] for SPY, [It's basic] for ALKALI, [Time and time again?] for TWICE, TITIAN RED ([Brownish orange]), MOS DEF, "THEM'S the breaks," and [Two-dimensional world?] for ATLAS. The entries that are borderline iffy (I don't question their legitimacy—just don't care for them) in my book—Roman numeral DII, LSTS, WAAH, POOLE, ENNIS—all intersect with the diagonals, so I can look past them.
I also admired Alan Arbesfeld's Sun puzzle, "H2O," in which the theme entries turn an H into an O. My favorite of the theme entries was COIN A (China) SYNDROME. Juicy clues and entries included [One who makes many sound investments?] for AUDIOPHILE, [Piñata feature] for TILDE, [French toast] for SALUT, [Wild West?] for MAE, [First offer?] for CAIN, INAMORATAS, [Server's offering] for SUBPOENA, and [It's sometimes right on the nose] for ZIT.
January 29, 2007
Tuesday, 1/30
NYS 4:59
Tausig 4:33
Onion 3:34
NYT 3:33
CS 3:04
LAT 2:56
(post updated at 3 p.m. Tuesday)
First up, Oprah alert! This Thursday, February 1, Will Shortz and Merl Reagle will appear on The Oprah Winfrey Show. The episode features assorted "how'd they do that?" segments, including one on crosswords with Will and Merl. So set your TiVo, off-brand DVR, VCR, or viewing schedule (and keep an eye out for Tyler Hinman in the audience).
The main thing I want to say about Nancy Salomon's Tuesday NYT is that I have been lobbying for years for wider use of the word HUZZAH—and here Nancy includes HUZZAH, HUZZAH in a large-circulation newspaper crossword. Huzzah! I'm also fond of the letter Z, having grown up with it as one of my initials, and this puzzzzzzle has 18 of 'em. All those zeds make for spicy fill, including ABOVE ZERO (dammit, I want it to be ABOVE FREEZING—ABOVE ZERO is still too cold), KIBITZ, GRIZZLIES (are there any sports teams that are specific kinds of bears? We have the Chicago Bears and Cubs, but are there some Grizzlies in the NBA? Where are the Kodiaks? And how come there are teams called Colts and Broncos and Mustangs, but I can't think of any Horses or Ponies?). MUDVILLE is great non-Z fill, too. Anyone else lose a little time by filling in PTUI instead of PFUI?
Jeffrey Harris constructed the Sun puzzle, "Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes," which does not, alas, have a David Bowie theme. (Speaking of music popular in the '80s, among other decades, I heard the Wang Chung song "Dance Hall Days" on the radio today. Omigod, is that song awful. It pained me. Especially because I didn't hate it in the '80s.) So. The crossword. The theme entries change a word with a final K sound that's not spelled with a -CH into a homophone that is spelled with a -CH—"cross-check" becomes CROSS-CZECH; "mock turtle" is MACH TURTLE (clued as [Animal that's unusually fast for its species?]); "conks" is repurposed as [Shellfish repurposed as hats?], or the vivid image of CONCHS ON THE HEAD (which causes one to wonder if molluscoid slime would make a good hair pomade).
Updated:
Donna Levin's LA Times puzzle "shapes up" pretty nicely.
Matt Jones' Onion A.V. Club crossword, "Rap Sheet," echoes today's NYT puzzle in its Scrabbliness—the JAY-Z theme spotlights other names or phrases that contain both a J and a Z, with 15 J's and Z's in the grid. I love entries like JEEZ LOUISE, CAJOLE, and SAVEUR magazine, plus the other J-Z names. Where else but an alt-weekly would the answer to [Safe choice?] be TROJANS?
Highlights of Ben Tausig's Chicago Reader/Ink Well puzzle, "Painless Solutions," in which the OW is removed from the theme entries: [Publish or perish, e.g.] for VERB, ["Much ___ About Nothing" ("Simpsons" episode)] for APU, [Keep one's pants on?] for ABSTAIN, [Seinfeldian shorthand for control in a relationship] for HAND, [Song, once] for AIRLINE, and [Good thing to hit] for G-SPOT.
January 28, 2007
Monday, 1/29
NYS 3:20
LAT 2:37
NYT 2:36
CS 2:33
(post updated at 8:40 a.m. Monday)
Remember the famous/infamous Puzzle #5 (constructed by Byron Walden) from last year's American Crossword Puzzle Tournament? The puzzle that only a few dozen(ish) people finished correctly within the time limit? The one with the wicked clues and a frightfully obscure cheese? Well, there I was, reading John Updike's New Yorker review of Jane Smiley's new book, Ten Days in the Hills. The core characters met "in the cheese section at Gelson's last Easter, when Max was buying a Piave and Elena was buying a Gruyère de Comté and their hands touched as they both reached for the Époisses." Their first meeting over Piave out of the way, of course, the characters move on to explicit sex throughout the resst of the book. But: Piave in literature and magazines! Did you think it would ever happen?
The Monday NYT comes from Fred Piscop, with a theme of vowel movement—five lively phrases ending with -APPER, -EPPER, -IPPER, -OPPER, and -UPPER. There are plenty of 7-letter entries (including UNITERS and DEVISER, but no "decider") in the fill—nothing too fancy, but perhaps a more "open" grid than is normally seen in a Monday puzzle.
Updated:
Harvey Estes does a nice job with tribute puzzles after assorted actors die. Today's CrosSynergy puzzle is called "Everybody Loves Raymond's Father," and it pays homage to four characters (two 6-letter ones, a 15, and a 10) played by the late PETER BOYLE. It's a perfect combo because, if you ask me, there's a striking resemblance between the two. Behold: a photo of Harvey and a one of Boyle.
A clue in Jared Banta's Sun puzzle (aside: See, that's how Jared should be spelled. It always bugged me that the title character in The Pretender was spelled Jarod. And since it bugged me, it stuck in my brain until, at long last, that bit of knowledge had a practical use in the Saturday NYT crossword.). Where was I? Yes, a clue in the Sun puzzle included the word boustredephonic, which was new to me. Boustredephonic writing travels back and forth across the page like OXEN in a field, rather than jumping back to the starting end so all the lines travel in just one direction. The theme is chicken parts (culinarily speaking, not biologically). But where are the neck and feet??
January 27, 2007
Sunday, 1/28
LAT 10:19
NYT 8:55
BG 7:33
WaPo 7:23
CS 4:24
Vic Fleming and Bruce Venzke's Sunday NYT crossword, "Having Pull," has a smattering of pop culture clues, but less than yesterday's puzzle. These were mostly gimmes for me: STARSKY of …and Hutch fame and ALLIE of Kate and… fame, daytime TV's Linda DANO, and the discotastic GIBB. There was nowhere in this grid for A FAST ONE, YOUR LEG, or STRAIGHT A'S, but there were 10 other "things that can be pulled" (including the pair of 7's crossing in the center of the grid—and one of those, MUSCLES, is crossed, aptly enough, by TONED UP). [Appeared] was a rather bland clue for CAME OUT, given what "coming out" means in the vernacular. Seeing [Lincoln, maybe] (as a clue for TOWNCAR) reminds me of something my son said at Chuck E. Cheese today—there was a Mount Rushmore mural on the wall, with five faces (four presidents plus the titular rodent). "Chuck E. is not the president!" he said, aghast. Speaking of presidents, I loved the clue for VIRGO: [Lyndon Johnson, by birth]. Favorite theme entries included ALL-NIGHTERS, WISDOM TEETH, and the OLD SWITCHEROO. Anyone familiar with the usage that teams [Kick] with BEEF?
Dat ol' forum
Looks like the NYT "Today's Puzzle" forum is on the fritz again—the last four days' worth of posts appear to have vanished, which is a new thing.
I'll bet the NYT's many new blogs have much more robust software and servers than the creaky forums. You think eventually all the forums will migrate to the blog format?
January 26, 2007
Saturday, 1/27
NYT 7:49
LAT 6:22
Newsday 4:21
CS 3:15
(post updated at 8:30 a.m. Saturday)
Well, I still need to finish the Tournament Crosswords, Volume 2, book, and a Stan Newman–edited book (sort of a “best of Random House puzzle books” collection). But the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is eight weeks away, and I’ll need more books to accommodate the 10-to-20-puzzles-a-day training habit. So I ordered four more books today: the second volumes of Thursday and Friday Sun crosswords, the CrosSynergy Challenging 30-Minute Crosswords book (which I hope is mostly themeless "Sunday Challenge" puzzles), and Trip Payne's Pop Culture Crosswords (because Stella Daily said the Madonna puzzle was the gayest crossword ever, and who can resist that?). Mysteriously, Amazon knocked off the cost of one of the books and gave me another $5 "promotional discount." So I'm getting about $32 of books for under $19. Sweet!
We've been graced with another Karen Tracey crossword, the Saturday NYT. How did I like it? Let me count the ways. (1) Great adjectives: TRICKSY ([Mischievous]) and DITHERY ([Highly agitated]). Words like these always please me in a crossword, in prose, in speech—anywhere. (2) Pop culture: ATOM ANT from the '60s, Eric BANA, JAROD (At last! I am rewarded for having watched The Pretender with my husband.), Star Trek: Voyager's JERI Ryan (who also costarred in the collapse of a senatorial race in Illinois, clearing Barack Obama's path to national prominence), comedian ELAYNE Boosler, past Tonight Show announcer EDD Hall, the short-lived sitcom ENOS, and three unfamiliar (to me) song things, Sinatra's OLD NEW YORK, "I GO for That," and ELENI Mandell. (Wow, that's a heckuva lot of pop culture. Love it! But it's probably angering high-culture snobs—though they get Tintoretto's ARTE, Warhol's MARILYN, and ERNST.) (3) Terrific words, some of 'em with a past-centuries vibe: the plant family SPURGE, the MUDHEN (also called the American coot), ALEGAR ([Sour, fermented liquid]), OMIGOSH, and NONSTARTER (clued straightforwardly as [Dud of an idea]). (4) Geography: one capital city, Fiji's SUVA, and a bit of the Bronx I'd never heard of, THROGS NECK. (5) Zippy clues: [Occasion to reserve a table for two?] for LATE LUNCH (ah, 2:00), [Bank donation?] for PLASMA, [Formal introduction] for DEAR SIR, [Flooring?] for AMAZEMENT, and [Like some connections for SIAMESE (a Siamese connection is that double fire-hose connector doohickey you see outside buildings: like this).
Updated:
No time for giving due consideration to the day's other crosswords—there's a party at Chuck E. Cheese at 10:00, and one wouldn't want to be late to that! But there's a booboo in the LA Times puzzle by Robert Wolfe. NAPA is clued as ["Sideways" setting], but the movie took place in California wine country further south. Even the Washington Post's movie critic got this wrong: the correction on that page says, "the setting of the film was incorrectly identified as the Napa Valley. The movie was set and filmed in the Santa Ynez Valley and other locations in Santa Barbara County."
January 25, 2007
Friday, 1/26
NYT 5:53
LAT 5:29
NYS 4:44
CS 3:45
12/12 CHE [whoops, forgot to note my time]
WSJ 9:53
Reagle 7:43
(post updated at 9:45 a.m. Friday)
Loved the theme in Alan Arbesfeld's Sun crossword, "Add a Line"! I'd enjoy another crossword with the same type of theme, and I'd enjoy assorted twists on this theme. How about you? And if you haven't done this one already but usually solve via keyboard, consider printing it out and solving on paper.
Back in unthemed land, Mike Nothnagel constructed the Friday NYT crossword with a rather sinuous grid pattern. Alas, I felt stymied on the wavelength front, as I kept having no idea what the clues were getting at. The slowest corner for me was the upper left, where I dabbled with NIXON instead of AGNEW, GROW for BREW, ASK AGAIN for ASK ABOUT, drew a blank on A, B, OR C for [Multiple-choice choices] and OAK for [Bourbon flavorer], and couldn't make any sense out of ONONO**** (which turned out to be ON ONE KNEE). I didn't finish that corner until after escaping to the rest of the puzzle, where THERE'S NO I IN TEAM sparkled with its triteness (what a shame it's so "in the language"!). As did the combo of MAYBE NOT and IT DEPENDS, the GINSU knife, and NONPAREIL (I do like Sno-Caps chocolate nonpareils). Clues that I liked and/or was stymied by: [Hardly windy] for CURT, [Trailer makeup] for SCENES, [Single or double, say] for BED (nope, not a baseball HIT), [It helps keep one's place] for RENT, and [Boxer's org.] for AKC (what was it, about a week ago that a similar clue was used for WBA? Shortz is messing with us!).
Going back to the Sun puzzle, in the theme entries, there's an extra stroke added to one letter (which means solving by keyboard gives a slightly less elegant version of the "aha" moment). Those people who use lowercase letters to fill a grid? Hey, this puzzle is proof that they're wrong and should stick to capitals like the rest of us. GO OUT OF STYLE gets another line tacked onto the first O, transforming it into an Q in GQ OUT OF STYLE. In the other theme entries, an F becomes an E; a P, an R; and an I, a T. Very few crosswords play with the way we physically write letters, but I find it an entertaining slant. (Aside: On the windowsill behind my friend's kitchen sink last weekend, I marveled at her wee aquarium of BRINE shrimp, lovingly known as Sea-Monkeys. Astonishingly, she said her kids have no interest in the Sea-Monkeys. But they're awesome!)
Updated:
Randolph Ross's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Education Reform," has a theme that's solid but perhaps not so exciting. But I truly enjoyed it—great clues, great fill, overall a great puzzle. I amused myself by being terribly confused by **GNUMP*, [Show whose title character wore a Tigers cap]. My brain simply refused to parse it as MAGNUM P.I.
Joy Andrews' January 12 Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "A Bone-ified Puzzle," uses bony puns in the four 15-letter theme entries. My favorite was [Garbo's request to have her fibula removed?], I WANT TIBIA ALONE. There were a couple new-to-me words in this puzzle—ISHI, a California Native American who survived a massacre that eradicated most of his tribe, and the card game PIQUET.
In Merl Reagle's Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle, "Oh, It's You," O becomes U. Cutest theme entry: [Overdid it at a love-in?] for WENT HUG-WILD.
January 24, 2007
Thursday, 1/25
NYS 5:45
NYT 5:10
LAT 3:48
CS 2:51
(post updated at 9:15 a.m. Thursday)
If my upcoming book is currently listed on Amazon with Will Shortz's byline instead of mine, is it too soon to post the link?
Sheesh, I really lose steam when I do crosswords on the New York schedule (at 10 p.m.) rather than with the Central Time advantage (promptly at 9 p.m.). That extra hour is when my neurons start to cuddle up together and rest their eyes. So it is that I will give short shrift to two good puzzles.
The Thursday NYT is by Manny Nosowsky, and it gave me trouble. First off, EARTH REENTRY, when enclosed in quotes and Googlified, garners only about 1,000 hits, which explains why that answer was slow to emerge from the grid. If the space shuttle were reentering earth like a sperm enters an ovum, that'd be one thing, but I think of it as reentering the earth's atmosphere. EVEN-MONEY CHANCE also battled its way out, letter by letter; "even money," I'm familiar with, but the phrase "even-money chance" gets less (special word for Howard and Michael) than 700 Google hits. I'd never heard of the Moyers speech, "The FIGHT OF OUR LIVES," either. The easiest of the theme entries, for me, was NOT WORTH A SOU, thanks to old crossword regular SOU (and its cousin, ECU). I do find it amusing that "not worth a sou" gets a mere 140 or so Google hits! The dime, nickel, cent, and buck all outpoll the sou, but I like the sou. Anyway, these theme entries contain ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR embeds, and that string of numbers occupies a vertical 15-letter entry crossing the other four theme entries. So that's neat, even if the specific phrases containing the hidden numbers vexed me. Plenty of vague clues for shortish answers: [Head] for JOHN, [Go against] for BUCK, [Chinese thought] for MAOISM (which shares 5 letters with TAOISM), and the ONLY/DULY pair clued with [As recently as]/[As required]. Favorite clue: [Wet bar?] for SOAP.
Doug Peterson packed a slew of great stuff into his Themeless Thursday crossword in the Sun. DWARF PLANET has shown up in a lot of clues in recent months, but here it stars at 1-Across. Doug doubles up on Italian with LUIGI PIRANDELLO and CHIAROSCURO, throws in a Traceyesque capital (DAR ES SALAAM, which was named by the Sultan of Zanzibar and where you can find Zanzibari restaurants), and includes the first name for an artist with a quasi-crosswordese last name (MAX ERNST). Best-loved clues: [Teens, for example] for CARDINAL NUMBERS, [See stars?] for PONTIFFS, [Eldritch] as an old, old word for EERIE, [Part of WWJD] for WHAT (right after a Roman numeral clue asking for a fraction of MMMDV...My Mother's Maid Doesn't Vacuum?), [Has kittens, so to speak] for ERUPTS, [Some toy inserts] for C BATTERIES, and [Vexillology subject] for FLAG (say "yo" if you studied the "flags of the world" article in the encyclopedia when you were a kid).
Huh. I guess I didn't exactly skimp on the posting after all.
Updated:
In Dan Naddor's LA Times crossword, the theme entries are all the words running around the perimeter of the grid, tied together with a central BORDER / GUARDS (the words around the puzzle's border can all be followed by guard; e.g., SPLASH [GUARD], BODY[GUARD], and RED [GUARD]). The fill is surprisingly smooth for a puzzle with 58 theme squares blocking off the edges and middle of the grid.
Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy puzzle features a WOODY / ALLEN quip. If you overlook symmetry and read the line immediately below Part 3 as if it were Part 4, you'd get this: MY ONLY REGRET IN / LIFE IS / THAT I'M / AN ASS.
January 23, 2007
Wednesday, 1/24
Onion 4:58
Tausig 4:54
NYS 4:25
NYT 4:19
LAT 3:29
CS 2:34
(post updated a tad at 8:40 a.m. Wednesday)
I didn’t get a chance to do the indie crosswords Tuesday afternoon, so I’m plumb tuckered out from doing four crosswords (Wednesday’s NYT and Sun, plus the Onion A.V. Club and Tausig/Ink Well puzzles) and blogging about them this evening. It’s not so much that I’m a morning person—just that I’m not much of a night owl.
When I finished Gary Steinmehl’s NYT crossword, the burning question on my mind was, "Who the hell is PIE TRAYNOR?" Turns out he was a swell baseball player from 1920 to 1937 and “received his nickname for a fondness for eating pie.” The theme entries all start with words that are also desserts in other contexts; my cousin can TRIFLE WITH a trifle made of chocolate cake, chocolate pudding, fresh raspberries, and whipped cream. (Yum.) NAPOLEON SOLO is a name I know only from crosswords, and now Pie Traynor joins him.
Byron Walden’s Onion A.V. Club crossword flipflops five names from the arenas of politics and blowharding in a lively theme that somehow eluded me even after I had several of the last-names-first filled in. (It was Rush Limbaugh’s pharmaceutical misadventures that finally tipped me off.) Hey, raise your hand if you’d heard of PAPAYAS’ contraceptive properties before (and look, OVUM and UTERO appear in the same puzzle). I would’ve mentioned root beer in a clue for BURPY; that word reminds me of this juvenile little video of flatulent dinosaurs (don’t have the speakers turned up loud if you’re at work). [Former Swank playmate] sounds like porn, but it’s just poor Chad LOWE. There’s also a YUTZ, which is YIDDISH; this informal reference about Yiddish is a fun diversion.
Roger DePont (a.k.a. Peter Gordon) has another of his annual OSCARS puzzles featuring the five films nominated for Best Picture (and don’t forget: the nominations were announced Tuesday morning and the puzzle was posted by Tuesday evening. Speedy delivery!) Given their disparate letter counts, the titles are split up into 3- to 8-letter pieces, all plunked into a symmetrical set of squares in the grid. (So maybe it’s for the best that Dreamgirls was snubbed?) Aside from the movies, I liked seeing PASHMINA in the fill, and [Boot’s opposite end] as a clue for BONNET. (When my VW’s trunk is open, the dashboard tells me “bootlid is open,” and I can’t tell you how charming I find that. Sometimes the car also advises me to “top up wash fluid.”)
Ben Tausig’s Ink Well/Chicago Reader puzzle for this week is the tattoo-themed “Needle Work.” Plenty of entertaining clues here: [Someone with free junk?] is a NUDIST; [Adults score them for HS students] means SATS, not beers; and [Parliament style] is P-FUNK (I was thinking of plain ol’ FUNK, one letter shy). I learned a new 3-letter abbreviation—[Google Earth mapping syst.] is GIS, which means geographic information system. The [Insect with pincers] made me cringe. Know what’s worse than an EARWIG? A centipede. Or a scorpion. I had to check on the genus and species names for a couple scorpion varieties for a paper I was editing last week, and just reading about them gave me the willies.
Updated:
Randall Hartman's CrosSynergy puzzle echoes Ben Tausig's puzzle with one great clue: [Run out of clothes?] is STREAK.
