CS 3:48
NYS 3:35
LAT 3:18
NYT 2:59
Onion, Tausig—see 9/24 post
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Great Tuesday theme in Richard Chisholm's New York Times puzzle. 61-Across is IN HOT WATER, or [Where 17-, 29-, 36- and 44-Across often end up]. A LAWBREAKER, or [One risking arrest], ends up only in the idiomatic, metaphorical hot water. The other three things need actual hot water: SPAGHETTI, a [Trattoria offering], TEA LEAVES, clued with [Some seers read them], and those pesky [Sink items], DIRTY DISHES. My favorite answer in the fill is DIAL TONE, the [Sound after a hang-up]. Answers that might throw a newer solver who hasn't seen them time and time again already:
It took me a while to identify the theme in Mark Feldman's New York Sun crossword. It's the kind of puzzle where the theme entries are all clued straightforwardly and aren't so obviously related, so you can finish the thing without grasping the theme. The title, "Ultimate Band of Fiction," had me looking for hidden musicians, but it's actually a theme of hidden musical instruments at the end (hence "Ultimate") of each theme entry. All five theme entries are fictional characters from literature, TV, and movies: DAMIEN THORN, JOHN KLUTE, BECKY SHARP, DAISY DUKE, and ELLEN MORGAN. What further tightens the theme is that each character's last name contains one letter before the instrument name. The fill contains 16 7- and 8-letter entries, which is impressive.
Updated:
Lynn Lempel's CrosSynergy puzzle reinterprets "On the Home Front" as "phrases whose front words can appear in front of the word home." This is another theme I didn't piece together until after I finished solving it.
Anyone else get confused by the deer of crosswordland and enter ROE DEER instead of RED DEER for the [Antlered grazer of Eurasia]? Anyone else feel sad for the OTTER, clued as a [Playful swimmer hunted for its fur]? I, for one, find evocations of skinned animal fur rather offputting at the breakfast table. (Can you imagine if PETA launched a crossword boycott?) SEAN Penn is in the puzzle as ["I Am Sam" star Penn]. The last time this was referenced in a crossword, just a few days ago, I entered SAM I AM straightaway. Whoops, different Sam!
Now, the theme in Stella Daily and Bruce Venzke's LA Times crossword hid from me because musical lingo is not my thing. A [Fossil fuel, e.g.] is a NATURAL RESOURCE. A [High-tech sports bar purchase] is a FLAT-SCREEN TV (though plenty of households have flat-screen TVs too—sports bars have those giant projection TVs more than homes do, I think). The average sports bar will have TVs in the plural—way in the plural. SHARP CHEDDAR is a mildly [Pungent cheese]. I might've clued it as flavorful, as I reserve pungent to describe the stinky cheeses I cannot abide. NATURAL, FLAT, and SHARP all describe...what, notes? Keys? Jim's music theory post doesn't explain NATURAL but reviews various flats and sharps found in crosswords. The three theme entries are tied together by a fourth: MUSIC TO ONE'S EARS, or [Delightful, and a hint to this puzzle's theme].
September 22, 2008
Tuesday, 9/23
September 21, 2008
Monday, 9/22
Jonesin' 3:29
NYS 3:18
CS 3:16
LAT 2:53
NYT 2:44
(updated ta 4 p.m. Monday)
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The Monday New York Times crossword by Peter Collins cages some beasties in the circled squares within the theme entries:
These animals can also be found in THE / ZOO, 11- and 66-Across. The Collins crossword includes some energetic fill, too—SNOW DAYS and a CATCH-ALL were particularly nice.
Some of the non-thematic fill struck me as a bit of a reach for a beginning Monday solver. A [Sacred song] is a MOTET, and ORA [___ pro nobis (pray for us: Lat.)] also has a sacred bent. The last name of [Michael ___, Cochise player in 1950s TV] is ANSARA, and I learned that from crosswords. Crosswords contain many four-letter river names; the AMUR, a [Russia/China border river], feels a little less common than the Oder, Ebro, and Arno. [Political cartoonist Thomas] NAST pops up pretty often in crosswords; he was big in the 19th century. The [Old Olds] is the Oldsmobile ALERO, among the more common car names in crosswords even though it's been discontinued. RONA [Jaffe who wrote "Five Women"] also wrote Class Reunion, which I read back in the '80s. I don't know that she has any literary or popular importance these days.
Updated:
The Sun crosswords for the week haven't been posted yet—but the New York Sun website is up and reporting moral support from various parties, so I think the puzzles will be along later today.
Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy crossword, "Stewardship," has a quote theme. Ordinarily I don't much care for quote/quip themes, but I appreciated this W.C. Fields quote: I ALWAYS COOK / WITH WINE. / SOMETIMES / I EVEN ADD / IT TO THE FOOD. With 18 7-letter entries in the fill, this puzzle's got a fairly low word count (74) for a themed puzzle. I had no idea why [Netherlands province] is HOLLAND. According to Wikipedia, North and South Holland are provinces in the Netherlands, and the English-speaking habit of calling the country "Holland" is just plain wrong. I have a Dutch uncle (born over there in the '40s), and I never knew this. Learn something new every day! Overall, this seemed like one of the easiest Klahn crosswords in recent memory, didn't it?
Kurt Mengel and Jan-Michele Gianette have teamed up again for an LA Times crossword with sort of a bi theme—each theme entry is the title of a work of art that begins with a synonymous word.
Bonus points for including BEFUDDLE, or [Confuse], in the fill. Great word!
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "On an Axis," takes each theme entry from the X axis to the Y axis, in a sense. Five words or phrases that begin with X and end with Y give the puzzle a Scrabbly vibe: XAVIER UNIVERSITY is the [Cincinnati home of the Musketeers]. XEROGRAPHY is the [Technique used by photocopiers]. [Actor who played George Mason on "24"] is ZANDER BERKELEY (don't know him). [Marvel Comics series, as of February 2008], is X-MEN LEGACY. And the XINHUA NEWS AGENCY is the [Official press group of the Chinese government]; this one aptly intersects with DENG Xiaoping. Lots of X action!
Updated again:
This week's Sun crosswords are up now. Just in case the newspaper closes up shop before October 3, you might want to do what I did—go to Will Johnston's Puzzle Pointers page and download this week and next week's Suns.
Justin Smith's New York Sun puzzle, "How Does It Feel?", is not about Bob Dylan, thankfully. (I don't like Bob Dylan's sound. So sue me.) Rather, the theme entries are all phrases that begin with distinctly tactile adjectives. FUZZY LOGIC, a SOFT SHOULDER of the road, a metaphorical STICKY WICKET, and SMOOTH JAZZ. Three of these things you can't really touch, and the one you can touch isn't actually soft. I'm not that fond of MR. GOODBAR, the Hershey bar with waxy milk chocolate and peanuts, but it makes for a wunderbar crossword answer. Favorite clue: [TV character who got notes signed "Epstein's Mother"] for Mr. KOTTER of '70s TV. I'm also a fan of the letter Z (Trip Payne can have his Q), and here there are six of 'em, garnished with a Q and an X.
September 20, 2008
Sunday, 9/21
NYT — {insert your own time here}
PI 11:05
LAT 8:30
BG 8:18
CS 3:38
NYT diagramless — untimed
(updated at 4:45 Sunday afternoon)
Hello, friends and fans of the Fiend -- Janie here, sharing the honors with Her Orangeness, who -- as befits her vaunted position -- will undertake the lion's share of the Sunday puzzles. Which is to say, everything else. Let the games begin with the Sunday New York Times!
When I accepted the offer to guest blog, little did it occur to me to think that my first time out would be in the service of a B.E.Q. Holy moly. BUT – after a first pass through with almost nothing to show for my efforts, I began adding more and more letters and about 40 minutes later: a completed puzzle – that got filled in mostly from the bottom up – and sorta SE to SW, then NE to NW.
There is a lot of theme fill in "It's a Mystery" -- where the last names of LEADDETECTIVES are paired to give us (mostly) quite familiar phrases. To wit:
Soooo many great lead detectives that didn't make the cut this time -- Jane Tennison, Endeavour Morse, Hercule Poirot, Kurt Wallander. Well actually, of those, only Morse would qualify (MORSECODE). But you can see what a great theme this is – and the range of characters it summons up!
But this is Brendan Emmett Quigley – so you know there’s more than a great theme to make this puzzle so rich.
Some clue/fill combos that made me sit up and take notice:
Thank goodness for AGNEW, SAFIRE and JOADS. They let me get a toe-hold in the SE and created the base on which I was able to build up.
Did I neglect your faves? The floor is now open!
;-)
Janie – who managed to use the “shift” key for the entire post!!
Updated:
Orange here, reporting for duty. Merci beaucoup and vielen Dank to Janie for giving me Saturday night off! You know, I was just talking about Janie last night via e-mail with a crossword friend, who said (and I quote) "I adore Janie. She is vibrant, warm, genuine, and kind." I agree, and wanted to class up the joint with Janie's presence. Thanks for your post, Janie! (I didn't want to step on Janie's write-up by saying much about Brendan's puzzle here, but I gave a little feedback over at the new Today's Puzzles forum.)
Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer crossword, "A Pronounced Difference," has a whopping 17 theme entries, eight of them found in stacked pairs and three more staggered in a stack across the center of the grid. That's some high-end constructin' there! I figured out the theme when I decoded [Run away from an attorney?], or FLEE BAILEY. This, like the other theme entries, takes a phrase in which one to four letters are pronounced individually (e.g., "F. Lee Bailey" has a stand-alone F) as separate words and changes the pronunciation to make them into words. Four of the theme entries parse two-letter postal abbreviations of state names as short words (for example, [Aloha?] is a HONOLULU HI, and ["O won a trip to where? You're kidding!"] clues both "COLUMBUS? OH!" and "PORTLAND? ME?"). There are too many theme entries to list them all, so I'll share my favorites:
I had one iffy square—I wanted [Wilted] to be SOGGY rather than SAGGY (the correct answer), but ABADAN looked a little more plausible than ABODAN for the [Iranian refinery city]. I do enjoy Merl's wordplay game–within–a–crossword themes, and this one was especially enjoyable.
Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon take the "Oxymoronic" approach in their Boston Globe puzzle in Across Lite. There are 12 theme answers (six Across and six Down, so plenty of intersecting theme entries here), mostly clued straightforwardly. They include RANDOM ORDER, the BIGGER HALF, and an OPEN SECRET. WHOLE PIECE didn't sound "in the language" to me, so I Googled it and found a lot of hits that didn't include that phrase in the excerpt in the Google results page. Googling "I ate the whole piece" turned up some relevant uses, though. PEACE FORCE sounded, well, forced—but Googling it shows plenty of "peace force" entities. I hear more about "peace-keeping forces." I must fervently object to FIEND being clued as [Satanic sort]. Crossword Fiends are very nice people. Honest.
Jack McInturff's syndicated Los Angeles Times crossword is called "That Is Extra" because "that is" in Latin is i.e., short for id est, and each theme entry has an IE inserted into a familiar phrase. I had a heckuva time figuring out that [Odd way to do a gangster movie?] was WITHOUT MEANIES, and the [National Soccer Hall of Fame city] perched above it didn't help. I tried Orlando and Atlanta before I finally worked it out that it was ONEONTA. 1-Across, [Hit], could be a verb or a noun with assorted meanings, so SUCCESS didn't come right to mind. And 3-Down, [Dolphins' group]—I wanted something like NFC EAST (I have no idea what division Miami's football team is in), but it's not that kind of dolphins, it's those in the order CETACEA. The other sections of the puzzle were more pliable, with [Al Capone's gang?], the CHICAGO BULLIES, and the [Mound covered with freshman headgear?], or HILL OF BEANIES. I like the play on "many moons": MANY MOONIES are a [Unification Church throng?].
Martin Ashwood-Smith's themeless CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge" is among the easier themeless puzzles of late. It's got two triple-stacks of 15-letter answers and another solo 15 in the middle. This puzzle marks the return of "I GO!" as an answer, clued as ["My turn!"]. I never used to say that, but ever since it appeared in a previous crossword, I like to say "I go!" when playing board games with my kid. It just might catch on among the younger generation...though it hasn't yet. Favorite clues and answers:
I had to rely on the crossings for the [Edmond O'Brien comedy of 1950, with "The"], or ADMIRAL WAS A LADY. I'm not KEEN ON ([Liking a lot]) that instance of lopping off "The." The title seems woefully incomplete without its "The." Another theme entry, ORIGIN OF SPECIES, loses its "The" too—this [Classic of 1859, with "The"] somehow flows better than the other The-less title, doesn't it? I think it's that in the first one, the article is part of a sentence you might say aloud, whereas it's just an article before a noun phrase in the other instance.
Updated again late Sunday afternoon:
The non-theme clues also had that Byron touch. [Certain Gulf Stater] sent my mind to the Persian Gulf, but it's an ALABAMAN at issue here. [Time for a shower] is the month of APRIL. [Stick stuff that sticks stuff] refers to GLUE, as in a glue stick. (I have about 10 glue sticks in the house. Am ready for Ben's first third-grade poster project!) Some of the non-theme fill was unusual. There's a DATE TREE, the verb phrase HOLD OPEN, and the fun-to-say NUGATORY, to name a few.
I like it when a diagramless puzzle uses the pattern to draw a picture. In this one, the black squares in the middle form a big Y-SHAPED structure.
Introducing a new haunt for the crossword community
Thanks to a lot of hard work on the part of the talented and charming Dave Sullivan (a.k.a. Evad), I am now the proud mama of a new crossword discussion site: The Crossword Fiend Forum.
There's a "Today's Puzzles" category for free-ranging discussion of crosswords, along the lines of the New York Times "Today's Puzzle" crossword forum. (That forum will be discontinued soon, replaced by a new blog by Jim Horne at the NYT site.)
"Cryptic Crosswords" is the home for talk about all sorts of cryptics. The occasional one in the NYT? Sure. The variety cryptics in Harper's (by Richard Maltby) and the Atlantic (by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon)? Yep. Your own? Why not? The ones in Games magazine? Sure.
"Help Zone for Crossword Newbies" is a place where beginners can ask questions about specific clues and answers, or seek more general advice about how to tackle crosswords.
"Language, Etymology, Grammar" is where you can share your thoughts, ramblings, questions, gripes, and fun links on those topics.
In "Crossword Books," I'd love it if you'd offer brief (or long!) reviews of puzzle books. If you need a recommendation for a book, for yourself or someone else, feel free to ask there.
There's also a "Constructors' Corner," the purpose of which is undefined. If you have ideas or requests, please share them (even if your idea is "drop it, we don't need it").
This blog isn't going anywhere, and I love the sort of discussion we have in the comments here. So stick around—but stop by the Crossword Fiend forum when you're bursting to say something on the topics covered over there.
September 19, 2008
Saturday, 9/20
Newsday 5:48
NYT 5:42
LAT 4:38
CS 4:00
(updated at 2 p.m. Saturday)
My, oh my, what a glorious day today. I spent seven hours outside enjoying the warm September sun and the cool lake breezes. I hope it's equally lovely where you are this weekend. Speaking of this weekend, it's next weekend I'll be out of town, not this one—so guest bloggers will be in charge next weekend. Janie will be out of town next weekend too, so she'll give us her perspective on this Sunday's NYT and I will sit on my duff instead.
The Saturday New York Times crossword by Joe Krozel dishes up just 58 words, not a one of 'em only 3 letters long. The breakdown is four 4's, six 5's, 24 6's, six 7's, and 18 8's. Given the low word count, you expect to see a few roll-your-own words, here represented mostly by some "odd jobs." (That was Rex Parker's label for those -ER entries you may find in a grid like this—identical to this puzzle from a couple years ago that also had odd-jobbers in the fill.) Krozel's puzzle uses those odd-job entries as the grout between some really shiny tiles in this crossword. The shiniest entries are ones you might not expect to find in a 58-worder:
The odd-job entries include a [Drama queen] who's an EMOTER; SPEEDERS who [might be weaving]; a [Ballerina, often], or LEAPER; an APPROVER, or [One signing off]; and SEEKERS, [Participants in a kids' game]. The latter word could have been clued with reference to Harry Potter's position in the game of quidditch. Akin to the odd jobs are some slightly unnatural-sounding phrases: NEAR TO is [By]; SHIP IN is [Send from abroad]; and CART IN is [Deliver by truck]. A third "in" phrase, BASH IN, or [Break by hitting], feels smoother to me.
Other clues:
I tend to dislike a lot of the low-word-count crosswords, but this one had enough zippy fill to keep me content—plus, it lacked any crappy or obscure entries that might've irked me while solving. Well done, Joe.
Updated:
And well done, Doug, too—Doug Peterson's 72-word Newsday "Saturday Stumper" is loaded with wonderful clues and answers. Some of the clues flouted my expectations—for example, [Pound pieces] must refer to Ezra Pound's POEMS, right? Haven't we seen that clue before? But no, it's monetary PENCE. [Triple Crown winner of '67], yuck, some horse-racing reference and a horse I don't care about, right? No, it's baseball's CARL YASTRZEMSKI and his Polish STRZ string in the middle of his name. More favorite clues:
The other answers I liked best included PLOTZ, or [Faint]; CRIES WOLF, or [Is overly alarming]; and OKEY DOKEY, or ["I'm game"]. This wasn't as hard as many Stumpers, but it's not as if it was packed with instant gimmes either. It struck a perfect balance of lightness and rigor, and I loved the overall cluing.
Doug Peterson also constructed the 70-word LA Times crossword. The grid features four 15-letter entries in stacked pairs. Up top, SWIMMING LESSONS are [Occasions to see butterflies] of a sort, and [Mahouts drive them] refers to INDIAN ELEPHANTS. Down below, MARIE ANTOINETTE ([Reign of Terror victim]) clashes beautifully with THE THREE STOOGES (["A Plumbing We Will Go" team]). I like that dissonance between French history and slapstick comedy. Did the Stooges ever use the guillotine?
Favorite clues:
Thomas Schier's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Taking Sides," is another with the "three words that fit a clue mashed together in a 15-letter space" theme:
AGONISTS is clued as [Persons torn by inner conflicts]. I think that meaning is less prevalent than the medical/physiological one, the opposite of antagonists. The asthma drugs that are bronchodilators are typically beta2-adrenergic agonists. TAT has been clued as a tattoo lately, but this puzzle returns to the old-school crossword clue, [Work at lacemaking]. The only thing I know about lacemaking is that tatting is part of it (strictly crossword-based knowledge).
September 18, 2008
Friday, 9/19
NYS 5:57
LAT 4:09
CHE 4:09
NYT 3:57
CS 3:34
WSJ 7:03
(updated at 9:30 Friday morning)
Hooray! The Cubs beat Milwaukee this afternoon in a dramatic 12 innings. There were some pessimists who gave up and went home when the Cubbies were down 6-2 in the ninth, and they missed a good time.
Alex Boisvert's New York Times crossword includes a timely mini-theme, and how often is a Friday NYT puzzle specifically timely? Hardly ever. The two 15's that cross in the center are TALK LIKE A PIRATE Day (September 19) and SHIVER ME TIMBERS, or ["Well, I'll be!," as it might be said on September 19]. I do not understand the appeal of Talk Like a Pirate Day, but I know certain people work themselves into a lather over it each year. Aargh? Whatever.
This puzzle is easy-peasy, as far as themelesses go, but still loaded with great fill. For example:
The crossings gave me what I needed for [Meyerbeer output], which is good because OPERAS was far from the tip of my tongue. And the [Hindu drink of the gods], AMRITA—that one also came from the crossings.
Tom Heilman's New York Sun "Weekend Warrior" is not too fearsome as WW crosswords go, but a good bit harder than the NYT...especially with entries like COTOPAXI, the [Volcano of Ecuador]. And FONTAL clued question-markedly with [Springy?], as in springs of water being fonts. Favorite entries:
In a freaky coincidence, both the Sun and NYT crosswords contain LATE PASS as an answer—the Sun clue is [Gym entrance requirement, sometimes] while the Times has [Student excuser].
Updated:
Dan Naddor's LA Times crossword forced me to bide my time and wait for the light to go on. I thought I had 1- through 4-Down right, but that made the beginning of the first theme entry start with SDDO. Say what? Turns out four of the theme entries went AGAINST THE GRAIN—[Rebelliously, perhaps (and a hint to this puzzle's four theme answers)]. Backwards!
All four theme entries mean "against the grain," and they all travel against the grain too. I like the backwards crossword action a lot. Now, some of the crossings for these backwards answers might not be totally obvious to a solver who hasn't sussed out the backwards aspect, which could make it tough to finish. MACAU, or [Former Portuguese colony in China, to the Portuguese], crosses two theme entries. So does AUDRA [McDonald of "Private Practice"]. [Truth or consequences] clues the word NOUN. [Lucy's "Ally McBeal" role] is LING. [1964 Civil Rights Act creation] is the EEOC. A [Slip cover?] is a DRESS, although hardly any younger women wear slips these days.
Rich Norris's CrosSynergy crossword is called "Lint Trap" because each theme entry contains the word LINT split across two or more words. [Solve a crossword, e.g.] is FILL IN THE BLANKS. CRIMINAL INTENT is the [Subtitle of the second "Law & Order" spin-off]. [Ironically, it's the larger of the two] refers to the SMALL INTESTINE, which is skinnier but much longer than the large. Something that has [Broad appeal] is of GENERAL INTEREST. The fill includes a METEORIC rise beside ESCHEWS; the Italian "thank you," or GRAZIE; and the [Archie Bunker expletive] "AW, GEEZ."
John Lampkin's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Writers' Courses," plays with writers' names and food and drink. [What the writer of "Charlotte's Web" chose for an aperitif?] is WHITE WINE (E.B. White). Francis Bacon joins the game with [What the writer of "The New Atlantis" chose for an entree?]—a BACON BURGER. LAMB CHOPS are [What the writer of "Essays of Elia" chose for the main course?]; Charles Lamb wrote under the name Elia (common crossword fill). Jack LONDON BROIL is [What the writer of "White Fang" chose for a meat course?]. And for dessert, [What the writer of "Cantos" chose for dessert?] is Ezra POUND CAKE. My goodness, that meal is a heart attack in the making. No veggies, no salad, no sides? Just three kinds of meat, wine, and cake? Ambitious fill, with more than 20 6- and 7-letter answers, including my favorite, HANGDOG ([Shamefaced]). There are plenty of high-end answers, such as ESDRAS, [Name shared by two Apocrypha books].
Yet another Wall Street Journal crossword that's easier than they used to be—Mike Shenk, if you're reading, can you let us know if it's merely chance that the last few WSJ puzzles have been fairly easy, or if it's a purposeful easing up? Dan Fisher's "Front-Runners" theme places a POL at the front of seven phrases to change their meaning completely. My favorite was POLYESTER YEAR, clued as [1976, when leisure suits were most popular?]. The other theme entries are:
September 17, 2008
Thursday, 9/18
NYS 4:30
NYT 4:24
LAT 3:47
CS 3:21
(Updated at 10:15 Thursday morning)
Darn those Cubs. They were supposed to win tonight's game so that when I go tomorrow, that'd be the game when they clinch the NL Central. Is this it? Is this the beginning of the end of a good run? Is this when the Cubs slide into heartbreak again?
The Thursday New York Times crossword is by Mike Nothnagel, and it's got a zigzag path of circled squares across the middle. The letters in those squares spell out the clue for the four theme entries: IT GOES UP AND DOWN. The four [See circles] answers are a WINDOW SHADE, ELEVATOR, SINE WAVE (which is very roughly what the circled squares look like), and, uh, the STOCK MARKET. Yes, the stock market will go up again. Although the midsection of the puzzle basically adds a third direction of checking (across, down, and zigzagging), Nothnagel managed to include an X and Q in the mix. Assorted clues and answers of note:
Alex Boisvert's New York Sun crossword, "Those Were the Days," features a [quip by comedian Demetri Martin]: I REMEMBER WHEN / I USED TO BE REALLY / INTO NOSTALGIA. A younger friend of mine has seen this guy perform, I think, but I'd never seen Martin until watching this video (18 minutes of standup from Comedy Central) just now. Funny guy. Alas, I spent so long watching the video that I'm too sleepy to single out other answers and clues from this puzzle. Feel free to call out what you liked—such as the YUMMIEST / EUNUCH.
Updated:
It took some staring to tease out the theme in Will Nediger's LA Times crossword. Three unrelated stars of film and TV...what connects them? The Greek alphabet:
Tons of Scrabbly and lively fill in this puzzle (with more than the usual amount of 7-letter or longer answers), mingled with some less interesting stuff (FDIC, OJO, BED OF, IRES, e.g.). There are a dozen instances of the letters Z, Q, X, J, and K, in answers like OLD JOKE ([Groan elicitor]), the RAZZIE award for a BAD ACTOR, and QUIZ. Other entries I liked: a SCHLOSS is a [German castle] with just one vowel (like SCHWAS); OJ's lawyer Robert SHAPIRO sits beside ACCUSES; and a TRAPEZE is a [Flying act?]. My son just started an acrobatic and aerial dance class on Monday that combines tumbling with trapeze action.
Randall Hartman's CrosSynergy crossword, "Cheers," uses its title to evoke bars, as in the TV bar called Cheers. 55-Across, [In jail (and a hint to 17-, 25-, and 41-Across)], is BEHIND BARS, and the behind of each theme entry is another word for "bar":
Good fill, with relatively little of the stale stuff that fills in the cracks in a great many crosswords. The fill includes two 10-letter answers. SIMMER DOWN is clued with the exhortation ["Take a chill pill!"], and IN A PIG'S EYE is a skeptical ["Yeah...right!"].
September 16, 2008
Wednesday, 9/17
Onion 6:38
Tausig 6:10
LAT 3:56
NYS 3:55
NYT 3:44
CS 3:31
(updated at 9:45 a.m. Wednesday)
Man, oh, man. I am beat. There's nothing like having your car towed after remedying the reason you got a parking ticket. Should they have towed it? Certainly not. Does the city need the revenue? Apparently. It's the least I can do to help out. But your kid's bedtime is hardly the optimal time to load up the family in a borrowed car to visit the auto pound.
Yeah, so I didn't enjoy Edward Safran's New York Times crossword one bit, but I believe it's my overwrought state of mind and not the puzzle that's at fault. Is this Mr. Safran's constructing debut? I do not recognize the name. The theme is cinematic men who ___, clued by actor and year:
Answers that didn't come so quickly to mind:
In the New York Sun, Jeremy Horwitz provides a trivia theme in his crossword, "Reading for a Bit Part"—there are three semi-recent movie adaptations of novels in which the novel's author had a bit part. The [1989 film in which author Stephen King plays a minister] is PET SEMATARY. I never read the book or saw the movie, so I don't know why it's Sematary and not Cemetery—but how fun to have a crazy misspelling featured in a crossword. The [1999 film in which John Irving plays a stationmaster, with "The"] is CIDER HOUSE RULES. I read that, and found off-putting the fact that a character's name was spelled "Melony." The [1996 film in which author Kurt Vonnegut Jr. plays a sad man on the street] is MOTHER NIGHT. I probably read this in high school, and I have no spelling-related comments on it. The corners of Jeremy's puzzle contain triple-stacks of 8-letter answers and quadruple-stacked 6's. Included in those bricks of white space are many lively entries, such as a LAVA LAMP, CALAMARI, TRINIDAD, and ZEALOT.
Updated:
I had no idea what Robert Doll's LA Times crossword theme was when I had GARLIC PRESS ([Implement used on cloves]) and SETTING SUN ([Much-photographed phenomenon]) in the grid. I may have also had EARLY TIMES, [Maker of the Official Mint Julep of the Kentucky Derby], without noticing it was also a theme entry. Then I reached 63-Down, [What you might get from the ends of this puzzle's six longest answers], with N*** in place. The Sun! A beloved source of a crossword puzzle! Newspapers! Aha! The other three phrases hiding newspaper names are the [Marlene Dietrich trademark], a HUSKY VOICE; [Oscar's cousin], the GOLDEN GLOBE award; and the [Fort Knox entrance, for one], a SENTRY POST. Not only are there six theme entries here, but some of them manage to intersect. Hey, a question for you constructor types: Do the four squares that form ell shapes (after 1-Across, above 38-Down, and those squares' opposites) all count as "cheater squares"? And why exactly are cheater squares frowned upon?
Patrick Jordan's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Yo-Ho-Ho!", serves up four kinds of [Mixed drink with rum], the old-time sailor or pirate's liquor of choice (hence the crossword's title). The drinks are the PINA COLADA, BEACHCOMBER, BAHAMA MAMA, and TOM AND JERRY. I've never had any of them, but daiquiri is too short to fit into this theme. Favorite clues: [Pained expression?] for OUCH and [Fault line?] for OOPS. There's some Scrabbly fill, such as QUENCHED and ZONKS. My favorite fill's not the Scrabbly stuff, though. DUST-UPS are [Quarrels], and a delicious CANDY BAR is a [Vending machine buy, perhaps]. I did take a wrong turn with that last one—I followed the CAN part with OF POP, which I also would have liked to see in the grid.
Ben Tausig was on the schedule for this week's Onion A.V. Club crossword, which took me quite a bit longer than the day's other puzzles. Is it really that hard, or did I fall off Ben's wavelength this morning? Each of the five theme entries has a short word in which the first two letters have been transposed, altering a phrase's meaning:
Favorite fill: UPCHUCK, or [Hurl]; YES'M; CROSS-DRESS, or [Reverse one's gear?]; and ANARCHY, or [Political state whose symbol often appears in Wite-Out]. Favorite clues: [Private addressee] is your DIARY, and not someone in the military addressed by a private. [Note below an F?] looks like a music class, but it's the teacher's notation, "SEE ME." There were plenty of clues that forced me to use the crossings because I had no idea what they were. [Bret and Jemaine of "Flight of the Conchords," e.g.] are a DUO. [___ de Beber (Antonio Carlos Jobim classic)] is AGUA. (Does that mean "water to drink"?) ELO is a [Chess rating system named for its creator]? I haven't heard of it, but the Electric Light Orchestra? Oh, yes. [Bassist Palladino] is named PINO.
Ben Tausig's other puzzle, the Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword called "Number Two," posits some punny tag lines that could've been used in commercials about vice presidential candidates in 2004 and 2008. Four years ago, it was Bush/Cheney vs. Kerry/Edwards, so ["Dick Doesn't Just Lobby for the Tobacco Companies--He's a Client" (rejected campaign ad, 2004)] is CHENEY: SMOKER (playing on "chain smoker"), and ["John: Model Citizen" (rejected campaign ad, 2004)] EDWARDS TO LIVE BY (words to live by). The current campaign pits Obama/Biden against McCain/Palin, so ["Now More Than Ever: Joe" (rejected campaign ad, 2008)] is BIDEN: HIS TIME (biding his time), and ["How Does Sarah Stack Up?" (rejected campaign ad, 2008)] is PALIN COMPARISON (pale in comparison). Say what you will about the ugliness of modern American electoral politics—at least they spare us terrible puns. Surrounding the theme entries are a bunch of lively answers with fun clues. There's PIPE DOWN, the N.Y. JETS, WASABI, and KNOWNS (I had GIVENS). DIEBOLD fills in the blank in ["___ Accidentally Leaks Results of 2008 Election Early" (Onion headline)]. BRYANT gets away from college football, with [Plus-size retailer Lane ___]. I am confused about one thing, though—why is AGA clued [Indian tourist destination]? That clue seems better suited to AGRA than AGA.
September 15, 2008
Tuesday, 9/16
NYS 4:12
NYT 2:59
Jonesin' 3:27
LAT 3:27
CS 3:22
Onion, Tausig— see 9/17 post
Michael Langwald's New York Times crossword serves up four dishes consisting of a cooking word that doubles as an adjective or verb and a food/organism that doubles as a descriptive term for a person:
I'm not wild about the theme, but I do like the fill overall. Sometimes a 1-Across is really dull, or too hard for an easy puzzle. Here, the first two entries are VALET and DROOL, which both are fresh. Yesterday's first two entries were ASAP and A TAD, which are fine but the VALET/DROOL combo has much more zip. Toss in EVITA PERON, "clear AS MUD" (which is not to say that partial-phrase entries are great, but when the full phrase is colorful I mind much less) a SAD SACK, and an ICEBREAKER at the party, and the solving experience perks up a bit.
I decided to plow through the whole week's Sun puzzles yesterday, so I'll be blogging about them one to four days post-solving. Let's refresh my memory... Lee Glickstein's Tuesday New York Sun crossword, "There Goes the Picnic," ruins the picnic by adding ANTs or RAIN to four phrases. The base phrases and the post-RAIN, post-ANT results are entertaining:
Fill highlights include CRABGRASS, a SKOSH, Erma Bombeck's column title (AT WIT'S END), and ARBY's.
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The title of Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Shrinkage," evokes the Seinfeld episode in which cold water shrinks George's equipment to be "like a frightened turtle." Here, FOOTLOOSE ties the theme entries together at 59-Across. Good gravy, we're losing 12 inches here? Really, it's nothing more than the word FOOT being excised from five phrases:
Fill I liked: SPAZ, GROUPIE, FAT CAMP, EPONYM, VIS-A-VIS, and CROATIA. Fill I didn't: OPEN IN clued as [Golf's Sony ___ Hawaii]. That answer crosses three separate theme entries and the word GROUPIE, though, so I can forgive it. IGG, the [Co. behind Myth War Online and GodsWar Online], was a mystery to me. I could also do without the word WHORE, even with an Othello quote as its source.
Donna Levin's LA Times crossword includes six restaurants or bars where various sitcoms' characters hung out. Now, when I was watching All in the Family as a kid, I paid no mind to the name of the bar Archie liked, as Archie was mostly seen in his living room. The bar is KELCY'S BAR, and Kelcy just looks wrong, wrong, wrong. Like a misspelling of "Kelsey." It's not a common name, so if you didn't know the name and spelling up front, you were reliant on the crossings for this answer. The theme entries are:
The fill's pretty good here, too—FLAB and BLAH, intersecting URKEL and PUNKY from bad family TV, CHEEKY and CRONY, SAYS "I DO" and SCENARIO.
Randolph Ross's CrosSynergy puzzle's called "Fowl Play" because the theme entries all include types of fowl.
I checked the Cruciverb.com database to see if this theme's been done before, because it felt a little familiar—or at least, it seemed like it wasn't so "out there" that someone else wouldn't have thought of it too. (That's no knock on a theme. Great minds think alike, etc.) SITTING DUCK has been in six other puzzles. A 2000 Newsday was similar, but with four shorter theme entries rather than five including three 15's. The two most recent ones in the database focused on the verb part of the phrase SITTING DUCK. Another included a variety of animal types. One used DUCK as a fabric. And another include two DUCK phrases (!) and one with another bird. So I vote this one's a winner. It's also got some good fill, like T-MOBILE, WAIT UP, ZANTAC, and COWER.
September 14, 2008
Monday, 9/15
NYS 3:18
CS 2:48
NYT 2:43 (...would have been faster but for a typo)
LAT 2:23
Jonesin' tba
Sharon Petersen's New York Times crossword was constructed by a woman, but the theme's packed with animal machismo. BUCK-NAKED means [Completely nude] and begins with a word for a male deer (or rabbit, ferret, kangaroo, or rat). We should have more BUCK-NAKED in the crossword—it's a colorful phrase. STAG PARTY is an [All-male gathering], like this theme. A stag is a male deer (but not those other animals). Is there an implication here of a buck-naked stag party? No? A [Bygone Dodge S.U.V.] is the RAM CHARGER. No, wait, Ramcharger is one word. Anyway, a ram is defined as an "uncastrated male sheep." (This site tells you a castrated one is a wether or a hogget.) BULL MARKET is ["Buy buy buy" time on Wall Street]. My, this is a virile theme, as bulls are also uncastrated (it's the steer who has gotten a bum steer).
My favorite fill: VALJEAN, the ["Les Miserables" fugitive]; SACHET clued with [It makes good scents] (make mine lavender, please); slangy ALL WET, or [Completely wrong]; and POP STAR, clued with the clashing [Elton John or Britney Spears]. There are plenty of common crossword answers here that beginning solvers would do well to remember:
Are these Monday write-ups with the lowdown for new solvers useful for anyone? I hope so.
Peter Gordon, a.k.a. Ogden Porter, crafted a New York Sun crossword with a simple theme. In "Totally Slick, It," there are just three theme entries, each with a three-syllable word ending with an E sound, only the first syllable stressed, followed by a word that rhymes with "picket." A foggy description, but here are the answers, which sound good together:
The size of the theme leaves plenty of space for sparkling fill. We get the Bee Gees' "JIVE TALKIN'," "The Pirates of PENZANCE," BACARDI rum, and an ACT OF MERCY. This is the second puzzle in recent days in which a musical key was clued, so I filled in *MINOR because what are the odds there'll be a J there? Yeah, both times it was *MAJOR, E MAJOR here. The O part was easy, as were "Thelma & LOUISE" and KERMIT the Frog—so I never saw OSI or its clue, [Giants defensive end Umenyiora]. As usual, the Monday Sun crossword hits at a Tuesday or Wednesday NYT difficulty level.
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The Jonesin' puzzle won't be sent out until late today, so I might end up blogging about that one Tuesday instead.
Mike Peluso's LA Times puzzle was nearly Monday-Newsday easy. (The Monday Newsday crossword is the exemplar of an easy puzzle—that's the one Al Sanders almost broke two minutes on in Wordplay, and subsequently has solved in less than two minutes. And Tyler Hinman has done a Monday Newsday online in 70 seconds, I believe.) I liked the anagram theme—65-Across, CARES, is anagrammed into four other words that appear in assorted phrases. GREEN ACRES was the [Park Avenue-to-Hooterville sitcom]. SACRE BLEU is clued as [Poirot's epithet], although an epithet is a name you call someone, either disdainful or merely descriptive, and not just any swear word. A [Cornfield "guard"] is a SCARECROW. And HORSE RACES are what make up the [Triple Crown trio]. Highlights in the fill: RUN D.M.C., the ["Walk This Way" rap trio], crossing RODNEY Dangerfield and RICE CHEX cereal.
Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy puzzle takes a thematic approach I'd like to discuss. Some themes are "tighter"—more specific and more complete—than others. The LA Times theme omitted the anagram SERAC, which is (a) fairly obscure and (b) not found in any common phrases. So it's fairly complete, but it's not super-tight because phrases like SACK RACES and and SCARE TACTIC are out there. Martin's "Definite Maybe" theme groups three oxymorons, all noun phrases, together. They're not related by subject area, and it's nowhere near an exhaustive list of oxymorons. By not squeezing in more oxymorons and by having the latitude to swap out one phrase for an alternate if the fill wasn't working out, there's room in the grid for some interesting longer fill. For example, the upper right and lower left corners have pairs of 9-letter entries stacked atop or below theme entries, and each pair of 9's is crossed by a vertical 9 that binds the middle theme entry to the top and bottom ones. There's a CROCODILE, a LILAC TREE (I never knew lilacs also had a tree form), PRAGMATIC, and "WHERE AM I?" (I'm not wild about ALL HANDS, which feels to me like strictly an 8-letter partial entry missing its "on deck.")
The three theme entries in the CrosSynergy crossword are LIVE RECORDING, or [Concert taping, e.g.]; WORKING VACATION, or [Busman's holiday]; and RESIDENT ALIEN, or [Landed immigrant, e.g.].
