Puzzle #4 — 3:06
If you're planning to do this year's American Crossword Puzzle Tournament puzzles at home, either by mail or online, don't read on! There will be ACPT SPOILERS in this post. (I highly recommend doing either at-home option. Only $20! And fun! These terrific crosswords won't be showing up in the New York Times, and you can get an idea of how you'd stack up at the ACPT.)
They say Puzzle #1 is the easiest puzzle of each year's tournament, but this year many people felt #4 was a notch easier. Andrea Carla Michaels and Myles Callum teamed up to make "Twice as Nice: You'll have to spell it out for us, please." The theme entries represent the word double by doubling a word that follows double in a familiar phrase:
You know what my favorite bits were? In the fill, the phrase GO AWRY. (Anyone else think the U.S. Army's recruiting website's URL looks poorly chosen? goarmy.com looks for all the world like a mysterious old adjective. "Oh, don't pay him any mind. He's a goarmy old coot." Plus, if you turn the m upside down and have it switch places with the r, goarmy turns into go awry.) The [Err] clue isn't as fun as its answer.
Barry, Maurice, and Robin are the GIBBS who are [The Gees of the Bee Gees]. Boring ol' EDDY gets dressed up a tad with the clue, [It tends to go counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere]. [Adam and Eve's tree?] is a FIG tree, the better to harvest leaves to cover one's nakedness.
One thing that makes this puzzle easy is the inclusion of a bunch of "repeaters," the short words that are the glue that holds crossword grids together. There's a RUER, the EE's (EEN and EELED), the EL's (ELIA and ELBA), and the AL's (ALAI and ALOE). Zip, zip, zip through the puzzle, hopscotching across these familiar companions.
Up next: Patrick Merrell's #5. {Insert movie soundtrack signaling doom.} And to think that we all thought Pat was a super-nice guy who made fun puzzles. Little did we know that he had the heart of a cruciverbal killer...
March 25, 2009
2009 ACPT Puzzle #4
March 24, 2009
Wednesday, 3/25
BEQ 4:58
CS 3:38
NYT 3:29
LAT 3:21
Tausig — wait for Thursday post
The theme entries in Jerry Rosman's New York Times crossword almost demand not to be read aloud in series:
See what I mean? By the third or fourth one, it sounds like you're lost in a sea of tongue twisters. Don't do it! Just read them silently. Don't challenge your tongue that way.
Let's put the spotlight on some of the fill in this puzzle:
Cool entries/clues: U CONN is the basketball powerhouse that's a [Nutmeg State sch.]. I have U CONN going to the Final Four in my bracket. [Return to one's seat?] clues REELECT. If one is a politician, one is reelected by one's constituents. WHARTON is a [Prestigious business school] and not a name we often see in the grid. Literature fans are sad that Edith Wharton didn't get the nod this time.
When I see a clue like [Umiak passenger], 5 letters, you know what I do? I fill in a T at the end and wait for the crossings to reveal whether it's INUIT (as it is here) or ALEUT. Just another one of those "hang on, you can't be sure which one it is" pairs of answer words.
I think we can all agree that ALB isn't something we love to see parked in a crossword grid. Can we also agree that it's poor form to make up abbreviations? The [Neighbor of B.C.] in Canada is Alberta, which is abbreviated Alta. ALB. can stand for Albania, but it's not Alberta's abbreviation. Sheesh, I blogged about this three years ago and three Canadian commenters backed me up.
Updated:
Dang, I still have this many puzzles to blog this morning? I stayed up way too late working on my L.A. Crossword Confidential post, and now I see that I still need to blog the LAT puzzle over here.
Up first: Brendan Quigley's puzzle. It took me a while to tune into Brendan's frequency this morning (one [Unit of frequency] is a MEGAHERTZ) and see what the "National League" theme was all about. I figured 'tis the spring training season so it must be baseball, but no. National is a car rental agency, and so are parts of these theme entries:
Brendan's packed the grid with a lot of groovy fill. UGG BOOTS and UTZ CHIPS, two horrible-sounding brand names that haven't gotten in the way of success in the marketplace. IN A JAM and ON A JAG aren't so great by themselves, but the two together in one corner, both with J's? I like that. E-TAIL is horrible, but it's salvaged somewhat by being linked to STORE, a [Blog section emphasizing 38-Down]. I don't have a blog store, but Brendan sells t-shirts at his. The Hawaiian goose NENE doubles as the [Single name that Denver Nuggets player Maybyner Hilario goes by]. Now, why would a guy named Maybyner want a nickname? "Maybyner" is awesome!
The theme in Jack McInturff's L.A. Times crossword is RULEs: What the four theme entries have in common is that their first word can precede the word RULE, which appears at 62D. Here are your theme answers:
Government regulations may be a gag rule. Home rule is a system of local government. The ground rules are the basic principles at play. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is the Golden Rule. Cute how the Golden Delicious apple and Golden Rule both have a capital G, while the other theme answers and their associated "rules" are lowercase.
One of the clues that snagged me was right there at 1A, Blue or brown follower. It took having most of the crossing answers in place to see EYED. Biblical clues are one of my weak spots, so 31D: Land where Moses died was tantamount to Random four-letter place name in the Bible. MOAB is also a place in Utah. And HATLO! My goodness. 27D: "They'll Do It Every Time" cartoonist Jimmy clues HATLO, which is not a name I recognize from anywhere. Oh, here's why: He drew that cartoon from 1929 to 1963, before I was born. The A in HATLO has a tough crossing, too—33A: Finance major's deg. is BBA, or bachelor's of business administration (the baby sister of an MBA). 10D: School play prop is a PAPER HAT, and that just wasn't coming to mind. I think my kid's school shows have involved real hats, not paper facsimiles. I hadn't seen 23A: Donizetti aria "Regnava __ silenzio" (NEL) while I was working this puzzle, and it's just as well. More commonly, NEL's clue evokes the "Volare" lyrics "____ Blu, Dipinto Di Blu." (Yes, I know the text styling is different in this paragraph than the rest of the post. I'm baldly plagiarizing myself and not covering my tracks by reformatting everything.
Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy crossword, "Beer Blast," has a theme I didn't think about at all while solving. The theme entries were clued straightforwardly, so figuring those out didn't require thematic thoughts.
The Three Favorite Cluing Habits of Successful Klahns:
MGWCC #42
crossword 5:55
puzzle 49 hours
anyunghashimnika, and welcome to the 42nd episode of matt gaffney's weekly crossword contest, "this town has changed." it took me damn near forever to figure out this week's metapuzzle; hopefully it won't take quite as long to explain it. what are the theme answers?
what's going on with the theme? my first thought was that NOISE LOVER was a play on NOISE LEVEL. and ... maybe BACON BITES, and ... OLDEN TIMES? i had no ideas for the first one, though. let's see, do the instructions help? they tell us that This week's contest answer word is an American city with eight letters in its name. hmm. because there are four theme answers, we might guess that we are getting two letters from each one, somehow.
let's have another look. each theme answer consists of two five-letter words. what if they're not puns on some base phrase? TEMPI is one letter off from TEMPE, which is a U.S. city, and i know the theme involves cities somehow. in fact, another look at the title, "this town has changed," suggests that the names of cities are being played on. okay, what else is there? BITTE is one letter off from BUTTE (hat tip to my wife for noticing this). GLINT could be FLINT, and LOVER from DOVER... we're getting somewhere. what have we got so far?
those eight letters don't seem to suggest much. but wait! there are four more five-letter words in these theme answers, each one also concealing a city:
what can we do with these sixteen bold letters? it turns out that the original 8 (FDEUMBGM) don't really do much. but the 8 new letters (GLIISNLB) anagram to form BILLINGS, montana--which is this week's answer word. whew.
it wouldn't be an MGWCC without some fun clues and fill, so let's take a look:
that's all for now. tune in next week for the killer puzzle of the month (maybe).
March 23, 2009
Tuesday, 3/24
Onion 4:35
Jonesin' 4:33
LAT 2:58
NYT 2:55
CS 2:35
Pancho! Pancho Harrison popped up with the LAT byline yesterday, and here he is again with the New York Times crossword. The theme is slang terms for the POLICE (62D)—and no, there are no pigs in the theme. Too derogatory. The theme entries are as follows:
My personal favorite term for the POLICE is po-po, which is documented in Grant Barrett's Double-Tongued Dictionary. There's no POPO in this grid, alas, but we do get PUPAE ([Cocoon occupants]), which is close enough.
The two words in the "least likely to appear in a Tuesday NYT puzzle" category are NARD and ALGID. Wouldn't they make a great superhero duo? Nard Woman and Algid Boy, to the rescue! NARD is an aromatic ointment from antiquity and also a plant that's a [Source of a fragrant oil]. ALGID means [Chilly] or cold, and it's from the Latin. I say we all start using "algid" to mean "cool"—who's with me?
Among the more algid answers are these: EL NINO is a [Cause of weird weather]. [Dukakis in 1988 and Dole in 1996] were ALSO-RANS. It's not Tuesday-easy to parse the answer to [It's observed on Oct. 24], as UNDAY looks meaningless but U.N. DAY makes sense. U.S. STEEL takes a similar form; it's a [J.P. Morgan co.]. A [Wink in tiddlywinks, e.g.] is a plastic DISC. A [Goofball] is a DOOFUS; that OOF part makes the words work, doesn't it? I like crossword answers from German 101; GUTE ["___ Nacht" (German words of parting)] qualifies, as "good night" is the sort of phrase you pick up in the first month. The KANGAROO is [Emblem on the Australian coat of arms].
Updated:
Randall Hartman's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Green Space," uses the term TRAILER PARKS to describe the other three theme answers, each of which has a park name as its "trailer," or last word:
I like the theme in Matt Jones's Jonesin' puzzle, but oy! That fill. The coolness of GEDDY LEE ([Rush's lead singer]), JORDACHE jeans ([Label on many asses in 1980s fashion]), and ICE CREAM ([It can give some people a headache]) is offset by the spelling variations and 3-letter trivia tests. One theme answer, [Pets that are low to the ground], has a variant spelling: WEINER DOG. (I prefer "wiener dog," paying tribute to the word's Germanic roots.) ["The Prophet" author Gibran: var.] clues KHALIL—Gibran became famous with a "Kahlil" spelling but apparently he had changed it from the original KHALIL. The mystery 3's included these:
The latter two cross MEKONS, which is clued as [Early punk rock band with the song "Never Been in a Riot," with "the"]. If you didn't know the MEKONS, guessing that E could be tough.
The theme's solid (WEINER aside), though. It's "Revenge!" of the NERDs, with 67A's NERD clued as a [Square hidden in each of the five long across answers]. "Hidden square" evokes something other than "hidden word," doesn't it? Delicious mislead. The hidden NERDs are in a DINNER DATE, the irritating-to-watch-unless-you-like-the-sort-of-animation-in-Schwab-ads A SCANNER DARKLY, DESIGNER DRUGS, ABNER DOUBLEDAY, and the aforementioned WEINER DOGS. It's a great assortment of answers (WEINER spelling aside), and I give Matt bonus points for splitting all the NERDs across two words (no BraiNERD, Minn. here).
I had to save Dan Naddor's LA Times puzzle until later because I kept wanting to check in on PuzzleGirl's post at L.A. Crossword Confidential—so twice I clicked over and saw the byline and the word "state" in her write-up before averting my eyes. Maybe I finished a few seconds faster than I would if I didn't have a vague "state" sense percolating up to the surface. Anyway, the theme: Geography! Four city/state combos are flip-flopped so that the state is the location of the noun that the city's name doubles as. Here's the quintet:
The NEBRASKA LINCOLN seems a little bit off, as nobody would describe a car by the state it was in. But the other theme answers could plausibly be state rocks (Michigan prefers the Petoskey stone), places on the map, scenic attractions. The grid has a definite ugliness to it, with those big chunks of black squares setting off the middle theme entries, but once you get started you stop noticing the black squares and zoom in on the white squares. The toughest clue is the verb phrase [Copy cats?], cluing MEWS. Favorite fill:
This week's Onion A.V. Club crossword is from Byron Walden. The theme in this 15x16 puzzle is given in 22D: BROS BEFORE HOS. Each of the other theme entries has a BRO__ word before a HO__ word. That's fine and dandy, but I am so over the "bros before hos" phrase. Yay, men banding together and demeaning women in the process. Deplorable! The phrases that start with those fragments are these:
Tough stuff: STEARNES, or [Negro League great Turkey ___, 2000 Baseball Hall of Fame inductee], was new to me. I haven't seen the movie, so I didn't know COORS was the [Product boycotted in "Milk"]. ([Detroit beer baron Bernhard] STROH's beer was not boycotted, apparently.) An [Ankaran of color] might be an AFRO-TURK. Cool word, but not one I'd ever encountered. [Some college lecturers] clues NON-PH.D.'S, which I needed nearly all the crossings to see. [Identify, as a botanical sample] is KEY OUT—not a phrase I knew. 58D, the ['80s band named for a Star Trek character] is cross-referenced with an answer that crosses it, ["Heart and ___" (1987 hit for 58-Down)]. It is not TPAI who recorded "Heart and SOIL," no—it's T'PAU and SOUL.
"L.A. Crossword Confidential" is live!
I am delighted to introduce the shiny new blog L.A. Crossword Confidential. Rex Parker has the inaugural post and will be on duty Mondays, every other Wednesday, and Friday. PuzzleGirl will take Tuesdays, Thursdays, and the Sunday Calendar puzzle by Sylvia Bursztyn. You know me—I called dibs on Saturdays. I'll also do alternate Wednesdays and the syndicated Sunday puzzle edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis.
I'll continue covering the L.A. Times crossword here, too, for those of you who like to have the day's assorted puzzles discussed in a single place.
March 22, 2009
Monday, 3/23
BEQ 3:55
CS 2:35
NYT 2:27
LAT 2:22
Hey, Angelenos and other denizens of southern California! There's an upcoming crossword tournament in your area on April 25. For details about the Crosswords LA Tournament, visit crosswordswest.com. Registration is cheap and the proceeds go to a good cause. If you've never been to a crossword tournament, small local events are a great way to find out how much fun tournaments are.
The Monday New York Times crossword is by Randy Sowell, and the theme is all about hurling. (No, not that kind.) The four theme answers all begin with synonymous words:
You know what word I rarely use? PICAYUNE. It's a terrific alternative to [Petty]. Joining PICAYUNE on the list of answers I liked are these:
Updated:
Isn't it great when a third-grader's homework helps his mom remember a phrase that shows up in a crossword puzzle? Pancho Harrison's LA Times crossword features three phrases that begin with a 1, 2, 3 set of prefixes:
The theme is mirrored in this clue and answer pair: [Uno plus dos] equals TRES. My favorite parts of this puzzle:
Cute, fresh theme in Stella Daily and Bruce Venzke's CrosSynergy puzzle—the title, "Which Doctors?", plays on "witch doctors" and alludes to the unifying theme. Each of the four longest answers begins with a fictional doctor's name:
Today's themeless Brendan Quigley crossword is Brendan's attempt to mimic David Levinson Wilk's gorgeous NYT grid from this past Friday. Brendan managed the intersecting tripled-stacked 15's, but not the extra four 15's framing the puzzle. He explains his construction process in the accompanying blog spiel. I don't know about you, but I always like a VH1 Behind the Music story about the making of a crossword.
So, what's in the puzzle? Lots of 3-letter answers to coax the solver along if the 15's aren't readily apparent. If you don't know that a 3-letter [Siouan of Nebraska] is an OTO or that [Hawaii's Mauna ___] is either LOA (as it is here) or KEA, then maybe those common 3's weren't going to be much help—but they do show up in a zillion crosswords. Now, ENEMA hardly ever appears in a crossword, but Brendan has it in his puzzle, clued with [It will help you go]. BEURRE BLANC is a [Nice sauce for fish?], Nice being a city in France. Mmm, butter. I know Ziggy Stardust but not ALADDIN SANE, a [Mid-'70s David Bowie alter ego]. ["M*A*S*H" actress Jo Ann] PFLUG, ["Under Two Flags" novelist] OUIDA, and ARLEEN, [Former TV host Sorkin], were other names I didn't know. [Barbie fan?] is a great clue for AUSSIE—you know how those folks love to throw shrimp on the barbie. But don't the Aussies call shrimp "prawn"? Mystery verb of the day: [Put in a cistern] clues VATTED. Who knew "vat" was also a verb? It is. [Petraeus, e.g.: Abbr.] sort of looks like a clue for a Roman emperor, but it's GEN. David Petraeus.
March 21, 2009
Sunday, 3/22
PI 8:25
NYT 8:05
LAT 6:12
BG 6:01
CS 3:10
The New York Times crossword puzzle brings newish constructor Joon Pahk to the ranks of Sunday puzzledom, accompanied by his friend Matt Matera. If you're interested in knowing how the puzzle came about, check out the interview at Jim Horne's Wordplay blog. If you just want the nitty-gritty about the puzzle, hey, stick around here, kiddo. The title of the crossword is "Closing the Deal," and card games typically involve cards being dealt out in some fashion. The end of each theme entry is a word that's also the name of a card game (and not just games using a standard deck of 52). I think there are nine theme entries, but if there are more I've missed, I know someone will point it out. Here are the ennead:
There are lots of cool answers and clues in this crossword, but right now I'm short on time. So let me start out by presenting the 10 Answers Most Likely to Stymie People:
My five favorite answers in this puzzle are these ones:
Wait, hang on a second. I just spotted a few more tricky spots I'd wanted to mention. I never remember if 69D [Pianist Jose] is ITURBI or ITURBO; it's ITURBI. His U crosses not-quite-a-real-word KUDO, or [Singular praise?] (81A). That's a mostly jocular back-formation treating kudos as a plural, which it is not. (It's from the Greek for "glory.") And then there are the two airport abbreviations clued with reference to one another. In 47A, the little cul-de-sac opposite PYE, JFK is clued as [Traveler's alternative to 90-Down]. 90D is clued as [Traveler's alternative to 47-Across], and it's LGA, the abbreviation for LaGuardia Airport.
Updated:
Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer crossword, "On the Road Again," adds a new CAR to each theme entry:
Toughest clues:
Mike Peluso's syndicated Sunday Los Angeles Times crossword, "Separate States," finds an embedded SSR—110-Down, [Former state "separated" in seven puzzle answers: Abbr.]—in each theme answer. I learned two things from this puzzle: First, that noun phrases in which a word ending in -SS is followed by a word starting with R- tend to be dull. Second, that "separate states" isn't a phrase that has any sort of stand-alone meaning that my husband and I are aware of. I wonder if the title had been something like "Breakup of the USSR," which would be cute but violate a crossword rule because SSR is in the grid. I'd have liked to see that title and no SSR in the grid. Granted, each SSR is broken up in the theme phrases and not the USSR, but "Separate States" does nothing for me.
Overall, this crossword was quite easy. I had one of my fastest-ever times for a Sunday LAT on this one, and there was a little conversation with my family during the course of doing the puzzle. There was one word in the fill that stumped me: [Stuff, as with food] clues STODGE. My dictionary says it's a chiefly British noun and not a verb, but either way, I know "stodgy" by its American non-food meanings but haven't encountered "stodge." [Good to go] confused me briefly too—the answer is A-OKAY, and I'm not sure I've ever seen it spelled out thus.
The theme entries are as follows:
Henry Hook's 6-week-old Boston Globe puzzle in Across Lite, "Hot Stuff," breaks down like this:
I wonder how many of us are doing these puzzles now. I'm sure there are many thousands who do the puzzles when they appear in the Globe, but 6 weeks later via Puzzle Pointers and Cruciverb...are there even 100 of us? I'm not sure who the blog audience is for the Globe crossword, frankly. (Big thanks to Nancy Shack, who posts the puzzles in Across Lite, and to Emily and the Henrys who permit her to. Frowny face on behalf of all those Bostonians who might like to have a blog at which they could chat about the puzzle when they're doing it and not 6 weeks later.)
Paula Gamache's themeless CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge" didn't present so much of a challenge today. Here are my favorite clues and answers:
Good news for L.A. Times constructors
In about a month (starting May 1), the rate paid for a daily L.A. Times crossword will increase from $60 to $85. Granted, the payment isn't competitive with the New York Times' $200, but (1) bear in mind the money is coming from Tribune Media Services, and the Trib is in dire financial straits, and (2) it's more generous than what USA Today, Games, and Universal pay.
The T.M.S. Daily Crossword (Monday through Saturday) is being discontinued, and the papers that ran the syndicated T.M.S. puzzle will now air the L.A. Times crossword edited by Rich Norris. So L.A. Times constructors will have a larger national audience for their work.
The L.A. Times crossword will also receive more focused attention in the blogosphere, as Rex Parker, PuzzleGirl, and I are launching a Rex-type (multimedia!) team blog dedicated to it. We plan to cover the 15x15 puzzles published Monday through Saturday, the syndicated Sunday puzzle edited by Rich Norris (syndicated nationwide but not printed in the L.A. Times newspaper), and Sylvia Bursztyn's Sunday Calendar puzzle (printed in the L.A. Times). URL to come when we start up, which may be as soon as Monday, March 23.
March 20, 2009
Saturday, 3/21
NYT 6:18
Newsday (not timed, but on the easy side)
LAT 3:29
CS 3:24
I'm getting to the New York Times crossword late because I was at one of those indoor family amusement park/arcade joints. Frankly, I'm astonished my brain still worked at all after five hours of unceasing kid noise. The Saturday puzzle is by Robert Wolfe. It mostly didn't grab me, but then, I'm tired. The things I liked most were these:
Among the least familiar answers and clues were these ones:
Updated:
Doug Peterson's themeless L.A. Times crossword has an abundance of interesting answers and clues, and yet the whole shebang tumbled like a house of cards. It's a fun puzzle, but I wish it had made me work harder for the payoff of finishing it. Highlights in the fill:
My favorite clues:
Other bits:
I didn't time myself on Raymond Hamel's Newsday "Saturday Stumper", but it felt almost as easy as Doug's L.A. Times puzzle. (PDF solution here.) Here are some of the clues in the realm of pop culture (more than the usual Newsday Saturday allotment of it):
There's a two-clue evocation of pop culture here, too. Corey Haim was in Lost Boys—the vampire movie, not J.M. Barrie's Lost Boys. HAIM is a [Hebrew name that means "life"], and STARE is clued as [Emulate vampires].
This puzzle has a little geography:
Tougher clues:
Today's themed crossword is Patrick Blindauer's CrosSynergy puzzle, "RE-Verse." In each theme answer, a word that starts with RE- sees those letters reversed in order and location such that the word instead ends with -ER:
I'm not crazy about the theme entries themselves—they're not goofy or outrageous or zany—but I love the concept of flipping the RE in two ways. Patrick, have you tried doing this theme in the opposite way, changing an -ER ending into a RE- start? I wonder if that would amp up the crazy; I'm having a hard time thinking of -ER words that would lend themselves to such a theme without creating a bunch of dreadful RE- verbs that nobody wants to see in a crossword.
2009 ACPT Puzzle #3
Puzzle #3 6:30
If you're planning to do this year's American Crossword Puzzle Tournament puzzles at home, either by mail or online, don't read on! There will be ACPT SPOILERS in this post. (I highly recommend doing either at-home option. Only $20! And fun! These terrific crosswords won't be showing up in the New York Times, and you can get an idea of how you'd stack up at the ACPT.)
Merl Reagle's puzzle #3 is a 19x19 called "Lipstick on a Pig." Before telling the tournament competitors to begin this puzzle, Will Shortz said that Merl had asked him to instructed us to read the title. So when we flipped it over, we read the title and laughed. Merl's intent was that we should read the title and the blurb that follows it: "Seven puns that will make you snort." Why? Because there are six theme entries—and the last one contained two pig-related puns while the first five each had a single pun. —No, wait. There are seven theme answers with eight puns, so the blurb isn't remotely helpful about the two-pun answer. Anyway, plenty of folks missed the second pun in 75-Across and lost big points on an otherwise easy puzzle.
Here are the theme entries, all of them centered on cosmetic enhancements ("lipstick") on a pig:
4D also snared a lot of solvers. [Constance of Norma of the silents] is TALMADGE. I'm not sure which crossings people had trouble with. 24A is ELEM., abbreviation for element, clued as [Au, Cu or PB]. The first two theme entries also intersected TALMADGE. 31A is DIEN [___ Bien Phu, Vietnam], and 35A is the TROGGS, ["Wild Thing" group], 1966.
The other problem square I heard a lot of people mention was the U in FRAGRUNT OINKMENTS. The crossing, OPULENT, is clued as [Sumptuous], and it's an ordinary enough word. But I think a lot of folks had the OINKMENTS part and put in the plausible FRAGRANT with the help of all but one of the crossings. With the clock ticking, it's easy to accede to time pressure and skip checking every crossing along the way. Believe me, I know this first-hand—I've had mistakes in three of my five ACPT appearances, and the only one I can remember well was the first one, a clearcut case of failing to check that a letter worked for both the Across and Down answers.
Up next: the easiest puzzle of the 2009 tournament, Andrea Carla Michaels and Myles Callum's #4.
