A Pangram and An Idea

Duly noted: Randy Sowell's NYT Monday pangram, nothing ... ummm ... picayune ... about it. And that was the entry (picayune) I puzzled over the most ... what on earth could "pica_ _ _ _" possibly be? Must have made a mistake in the crossings. Nope, no mistake. But, dang it, then what could that be? "Picay_ _ _" didn't solve the mystery, though you would lthink it would. Only when I filled in the U of "erupt" did the light dawn.

Spotted several fellow solvers -- not all working away at the Times puzzle -- throughout the day yesterday which gave rise to an idea for a contest I could do with this blog. This would involve choosing winning words, getting appropriate inexpensive yet fun prizes, handing out bookmarks, and hoping I don't attract spam.

I am notoriously shy . . . yet those puzzle-working strangers I've spoken to -- breaking their puzzle concentration -- have been invariably pleasant and friendly.

So I shall give it some more thought. I have the bookmark all designed, though!

Sunday's Specialty

It's a Split Decision by George Bredehorn, wherein there are no clues other than pairs of letters which words *don't* share: PRison and UNison, for instance.

I didn't quite finish this ... I'm stuck on the pair __ __ A __ RY and __ __ A __ TZ. The only word I can think of that ends in "tz" is ritz but, of course, that's not it. I want the first of the pair to be starRY, but that doesn't morph into starTZ.

That one and two others kept me from finishing the puzzle, but the rest of it went down fairly quickly. I was glad I had my pencil handy for it, though. It was a nice warm-up for the main event at the head of the page, "Closing the Deal" by Joon Pahk and Matt Mater. I started at the bottom and worked my way up in the puzzle as on the page ... have yet to finish it, however, as other weekend pursuits called. But I do have all week to return to it.

Friday's Whine

So all right, okay, I should have known the Princess of Alderaan; Jabba the Hutt must have frozen my brain for the day.

However ... someone please explain me how amaretto and sloe gin are "Alabama Slammers." Or, rather, why specifically Alabama?

I suppose I should google it ...

No-Google Friday

So, after the excitement of the ACPT, after re-solving all the tourney puzzles, after taking a stab at KenKen and not finding the joy in it, after taking a longish vacation from puzzling in general, I decided to jump back in with a NYTimes puzzle on, of course, the second-toughest day of the week, Friday.

So I opened the Times to a David Lawrence Wilk challenge featuring 10 -- count 'em! -- 10 15-letter entries, a feat I just had to sit back and admire (honestly, I don't know how constructors manage to find 15-letter phrases that will stack & cross like this!) before diving in. With a pen. Because I hadn't brought a pencil with me on my ride to work. So I tried to fill in the blanks *lightly* while despairing of ever filling in trivia type entries like "Carol Kane's role on 'Taxi'". Oh, I watched "Taxi" religiously back in the day ... but ... yanno, I'm gettin' old and forgetful. Heh.

True to my usual Friday experience, I managed a few entries before having to get to actual paying work. When I returned to the puzzle, I was excited to fill in one of the 15-letter entries ... then the 2nd one fell ... and I was off and running, even in spite of some misdirected wrong entries: I'd filled in "kin," for instance, for the "Fathers and sons" clue. Wrong! All right, then it must be "men," right? Wrong! (If you must know -- turn your head if you don't want to see -- it's "hes" which is, IMHO, hardly a legitimate plural, but it's only a minor groan for the crossing 3-stacker payoff.)

The upshot is that I *almost* -- I came this||close -- finished the puzzle with nary a tour to Google. Where I stumbled is in the lower left where I know nothing about a "Royal from the planet Alderaan" nor who was the Oscar nominee for "Stand and Deliver" in 1988.

Still ... I'm pleased. And off now to pick up the Saturday Times (in spite of my online subscription to the puzzles, I still prefer the old-school pen[cil]-and-paper experience) to see what challenge awaits within ...

Boston Tourney in April

Don't forget the puzzle tournament to be held at the Harvard University Science Center in Boston on Sunday, April 5, from 1-4 p.m. It's free to attend, $10 in advance if you want to compete, which you can do as individual or get together with a friend to solve as a pair. Will Shortz will preside, and prizes are signed books. Only 3 hours for a tournament sounds intense but it also sounds very fun. I briefly considered attending but that would be 4 hours on the bus each way for 3 hours at the tourney. Add the cost of bus fare, and I'm afraid I have to pass. Darn.

I very much like the idea of solving pairs. I enjoy tackling a puzzle, especially a large Sunday or a tough Friday or Saturday, with friends, but so rarely get to do that.

Otherwise solving is such a lonely pursuit. (Cue violins.)

If you're in Boston, or closer to Boston than I am, read all about it here -- then definitely go!

Grumpy Friday

Mumble mumble grumble gripe ...

Friday's NYTimes puzzle always defeats me when it is more of a trivia contest than an encounter with words / wordplay. I both feel these are cultural things I ought to know and that there's no way I (or any one person) could keep track of these minutiae.

And so I turn to Google but I don't want to turn to Google, I want to solve on the subway or sitting at a table in Starbucks or Connecticut Muffin, time on my hands, a cuppa coffee on the table, and, nope, no laptop in sight, sorry.

All I can do is sigh deeply.

And wish I knew more.

Life Lessons

Constructor Matt Ginsberg reported, on the Cruciverb mail list, a close encounter of the conversationalist kind he had with a travel mate as he was on his way home from the ACPT. He told the story of Tyler Hinman's nail-biter finish; and she related the story to her profession, which involves helping folks build confidence. Here's her take on the tale.

That memorable A Level Finals competition brought back memories of my own, from long ago, although it was Trip Payne's flub, not Tyler's win, that so resonated with me.

One thing I was good at, in my childhood, was spelling. So I was pretty good at spelling bees, and I was very, very bad at losing them: embarassed, upset, mad at myself, I'd erupt in unstoppable tears with each missed word. Fast forward to 8th grade and, finally, a school-wide win that sent me to the big deal: the all-city finals. Which I proceeded to totally blow on an easy-peasy word I'll never forget: pursue. I managed to control the tears, but I'm sure my disappointment was written all over my face, as my teacher-escort bought me an ice cream cone on the way back to school and my classroom, which I was not looking forward to enter after decidedly *not* winning any glory for the class. Well sir. Waiting for me behind the classroom door was a party. In my honor. Smiles and cheers and welcoming words despite the loss. And, on reflection, lesson learned: that there is thrill in winning, certainly, but the joy of the competition ... and the road to improvement ... is simply in the participation.

I'm still gonna do better than 635 next year, tho! Yeah!

A Lesson a Day ...

If you solve the NYTimes puzzle online, as I did today, you'll run into a bit of a problem filling in the grid. There's more to the theme entries than meets the eye, so you'll have to either remember where those squares occur or devise a way to indicate that the unfilled-square isn't really unfilled. What I did was type an askerisk into the appropriate square; for some reason only the programmer knows, that placed an open circle, not an askerisk, in the spot, but that was okay as it hardly mattered what was there, only that something be there temporarily.

It was a neat twist that didn't take long to figure out ... unlike my experience at the ACPT, where time pressure tends to freeze the brain.

And I know it's the time pressure that does the freezing, because at home I handily solved all the tournament puzzles -- except the infamous #5, of course -- without reference to the answer key. Okay, okay, some of that was re-solving but still ... places where I'd been stumped were suddenly glaringly obvious. Puh-lease! (The piggy puns were real groaners, btw -- boartoxinjections? oy!)

Back to the puzzle at hand ... I mean, on the screen ... I learned a new word today: basinet (this wouldn't be obscure crosswordese, would it?). Googling the word, I found that, according to its Wikipedia entry, it can be spelled three ways: bascinet, bassinet, or basinet. I also found that there is a jazz singer, Cynthia Basinet, known for her take on the Eartha Kitt classic "Santa Baby," and well enough known for her work in Africa to have been nominated recently for the Nobel Peace Prize. It would have been nice -- and I think with the same level of difficulty -- to see her clued for the entry rather than a medieval piece of armor.

There was also a geography lesson for me in this puzzle: India's Malabar Coast, 525 miles of southwest India coastline. Further googling also reveals a London company, Malabar, that sells designer fabrics handwoven in India. I shall definitely have to check them out!

Not A Crossword But Not To Be Missed

This is one of the things I missed Friday night when I had to go home to rest up for the competition Saturday: Amanda Yesnowitz's KenKen song via Cole Porter's "CanCan."

What a treat! And many many thanks to Nancy Shack for posting this to YouTube for all to see.

The musicians are crossword constructors John Lampkin (bass), Victor Fleming (coffee cup) and Harvey Estes (guitar).

Tournament Time: Part Three

Tyler Hinman did it again, in a thrilling finish. If you weren't there ... if you enjoyed the excitement of the final A Division round in Wordplay ... you owe it to yourself to download the Quicktime video of this year's A Division Final kindly posted online by Nancy Shack. Wait for the download (it's a large file and takes a while). Then thrill to the drama as the 3 top players -- Trip Payne, Francis Heaney, and Tyler Hinman -- all with identical scores -- vie for the championship. (Fair warning, though: I wasn't able to actually watch this, as my Quicktime software is woefully out of date.)

Or just watch the very end as the light finally dawns for Tyler:



As for me, I proved once again that I am soooo not a speed solver, one reason I really enjoy getting the collection of tournament puzzles, with the answer sheet, at the end. I solve them again, in leisure, at home, able to just enjoy the puzzles' clever twists and turns as they (slowly) reveal themselves at last.

So, this year: I finished at 635 out of a field of 685.

Next year: God willing and the creek don't rise, as my Mom used to say, Ellen and I have vowed to return, complete with hotel room rental so we can have the full Tournament experience and won't have to miss the evening festivities.

Oh, and I shall practice diligently in an attempt to climb up into the exalted ranks of those who place among the 500's in the rankings. Not that I'm competitive at all. But the challenge has been made.

Tournament Time: Part Two

One day and six puzzles later, I have proved once again that I am soooooo not a speed solver! My ranking in the competition, out of 684 registered contestants? A solid #630. Which proves you don't have to be good at it to love it.

We started off with an easy-peasy lull-you-into-complacency puzzle, got into the nitty gritty with puzzles #2 and #3, broke for lunch, and came back to reasonably challenging #4, then an impossible #5, followed by what I expected to be a smooth #6 -- which turned out to be a little tougher than I'd expected.

I don't expect puzzle #7 -- served up for breakfast at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow -- to advance me any in the rankings. Not that it matters, mind you. No, no, it's really all about the experience of being among fellow puzzle fans. Yessiree. That's what it's about. ;)

That and entering the raffle for a NYTimes puzzle-related prize (I'm going for the cookie jar); seeing Jim Jenista with his pants down (see him in his fine regalia in Nancy Shack's tournament photos gallery); discovering the clever puzzle-related artwork of Emily Jo Cureton (I bought a "Visibly Blank Expression" tote that called to me for some unknown reason but, really, I wanted to own them ALL); and did I mention meeting and chatting with tablemates between puzzles?

And now I have to go rest up for tomorrow's challenge. And the piece-de-resistance, the final three at the big board!

Tournament Time: Part One

I arrived at the Brooklyn Marriott for the 32nd Annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament tired and wet (I'd been working all day ... and it was raining).

I hadn't intended to ... and didn't ... attend the opening night festivities, interested though I was to hear what the more famous crossword bloggers (they have been at it for quite some time, after all, and I have only just begun) had to say about online experiences. To do that, I'd have to: 1) stay awake; 2) either eat a very late dinner indeed or go without; and 3) arrive home in the wee hours of the morning. So, alas, I missed the blogger talk, the appearance of KenKen inventor Tetsuya Miyamoto and the "Pick Your Poison" contest (I probably would have chosen the cryptic in Round 2).

Never fear, however: I have my spy, who has orders to report back.

I picked up my registration packet, however, gathered up the puzzle goodies on the goody-table, and found my friend, rookie tournament attendee Ellen, happily chatting with others at a table near the registration desk. After registering (there were constructors put to work manning the table), I joined the group at Ellen's table for some pleasant anticipatory chit-chat. Indeed, the atmosphere was, as usual, one of cheerful anticipation. And, of course, we were surrounded by the truly great joy of this tournament: the world's nicest, friendliest people.

So I startled a couple of folks by taking my leave. Once home and properly fed, I looked over the goodies in the registration packet with the ones I'd grabbed from the desk. First up: "The World's Hardest Crossword" from, apparently, a 1965 issue of Esquire magazine. It came with the promise of a $100 prize to "one person or team, selected at random," who manages to correctly solve & submit the puzzle by Saturday at 8 p.m. It's a 23x23, and I managed to fill in the grand total of two entries. There is no doubt that I will not be winning that Benjamin!

Looking for easier fare, I found a puzzle by Todd Gross, which I put aside for later. Then there was a copy of Friday's puzzle from the Times, which I appreciated as I hadn't picked up Friday's paper. Joe DiPietro had put two stacks of fifteens in this Friday challenge, but I've confronted those before and sometimes managed to solve them, so I wasn't too intimidated. I should have been intimidated. Heh. Or maybe I was just too tired. So it proved to be a solving pleasure to move on to the much easier but still interesting "Bonus Puzzle by Puzzazz.com." This one posed a question that was to be answered by anagramming circled letters in the puzzle; however, I got the answer from the question and the number of letters in the answer alone before I even put pen to grid. Well then of course I still had to solve the puzzle just to be sure I was right. Right? Right! Yes, Ellen, I was right, and yes, the puzzle was still fun to solve, and, no, it was not too easy, either: I still have the lower right corner to fill.

Also in the packet, should one be so inclined *and* have time and money to spend: a flyer for Will Shortz's Wonderful World of Words at Mohonk Mountain House November 13-15, and a flyer for Stan Newman's Crossword University 10-Day Southern Caribbean Cruise January 14-24, 2010.

Oh, my goodness, don't I wish! I've been to Mohonk Mountain House and just did not want to ever leave (warning: it's expensive). And what could be a better excuse to indulge in a cruise than 10 days' worth of crosswords? Especially at the prices listed in the flyer -- now, that's a deal!

Well, I'll just sit here and dream a bit. Meanwhile, the 32nd Annual Tourney awaits -- time to shower, get some breakfast, and be on my way to greet the day at the Brooklyn Marriott.

It's A Pangram

When I see a "series ender" XYZ in a puzzle, I immediately start to scan for the appearance of all the rest of the alphabet in the grid. Sure 'nuff, constructor Kevin G. Der gave us a bonus: the ever-elusive pangram. We also got some "bonus" letters -- that's the theme, folks -- hinted at in the old street cry (think newsboys back before any of us was born) at 57 across. And an added treat for this sci-fi movie / TV fan: references to both Star Trek and Star Wars. Neat!

I solved this one in two spurts: half on the commute in to work and half on the way home from work, which included its own "bonus" stop-off at the Union Square Barnes & Nobel to visit the 2nd floor offering of puzzle books.

I wanted something different. Hence, the rows and rows and rows of Will Shortz publications just seemed ... sad. And I already had the two Fraser Simpson New-Yorker-style cryptic books ... these are such a delight, I was hoping for a third. I do hope another is in the works! I rejected an offering of ... ahem ... adult ... themed "dirty" crosswords, not that I mind, particularly, I'm just not in the mood.

And then I spotted the orphan: one lonely copy of the Mensa Big Book of Acrostics, Vol 2, by Michael Ashley. One hundred Acrostics that I figured would be good practice for the every-other-Sunday Times Magazine offering. So I brought it home with me and settled down at once to #1, which I ended up solving in its own two spurts: half before bed, the other half before breakfast. I needed to look up only one entry, the 4-letter answer to "Author of Buddenbrooks" and probably didn't really need that if I'd been a little less impatient.

New to me, from this puzzle, is the name "Old Scratch" for Satan. The American Heritage Dictionary explains that the term was used in New England (so I should have known it) but now is mainly a US Southern expression (which explains why I'm not familiar with it). "Old Nick" also apparently refers to Satan. Good to know. They're sure to turn up in crosswords some time.

Double Trouble

Alas and ALACK, Tuesday brings us broken hearts and on Wednesday, we GRIEVE (unless of course we incorrectly filled in ROI instead of REI for the "King, in Portugal," clue, in which case we spend some downtime wondering what it is to GRIOVE ... yes, yours truly did that!

The theme is all about shifting gears, for all you licensed drivers out there, and there is quite a bit of shifting to do. If the clue is "nada" and you're already entered ZI for a 5-letter word, you'd naturally think of ZILCH, wouldn't you? I would and I did. Sorry -- think again! Likewise, the three-word entry for "For Shame!" is not TSK and the 3-letter "monk's title" is so not FRA. Think a Jaguar is a CAR, especially in a driving-themed puzzle? No, no, no. Likewise, gnats are not PICKY (that would be nits, not gnats), even though 3 of those 5 letters are correct. Given _ A _ E R, would you say a "hoops player" is a LAKER? Nahhhhh, too specific!

Keep your hand on that gear shift while you go for a ride in this puzzle, a NYTimes debut, I believe, for constructor Susan Gelfand. I'll be keeping my eye out for that name -- 'cuz in spite of the grieving and that Dickensian cry, this puzzle was *fun* !

Heart of my Heart

I was feeling the romance as, just after Valentine's Day, I watched HEARTs form in the theme entries in Tuesday's Times puzzle. There was even a HEARTH in the midst of "richearthtones" which made me feel all warm and cozy on a chilly February morning.

And then ... and then ... came the explanatory theme entry: broken hearted! Awwwww, such a downer. And there I'd been thinking of love newly found in unexpected places. Darn. But at least these broken hearts have been mended, stitched together to make whole hearts once again. Or so I'd rather think of it anyway.

And, on the way home, thinking these thoughts, an old forgotten song came to mind ...

Heart of my heart,
I love that melody ...
Too bad we had to part.
I know a tear would glisten
If once more I could listen
To that gang that sang
Heart of my heart ...

Author, Author ...

I took today's puzzle very appropriately, it turns out, to breakfast (at Starbuck's) to solve. I even had cereal -- albeit oatmeal, rather than the cold-cereal subject of the puzzle theme.

But 'twas a double-themed puzzle, as not one, not two, not three, but five fiction authors and one poet popped [ahem] up in the fill. One pair of authors shared a clue (as opposed to an entry), and a pair of sisters -- both writers -- shared an entry.

The choice of authors had nothing to do with the theme, that I'm aware of, but it was a nice extra bonus hunt for a lazy Monday holiday.

Puzzling in the Digital Age

A couple of weeks ago, juggling time and dollar considerations, I finally subscribed to the NYTimes premium crosswords online. AcrossLite, far from something to avoid, is a marvel to be embraced: put the grid and clues where they work most comfortably for you on the screen, and solve away with abandon and no fear of eraser crumbs or ink blots. No disappointment when the newsstand has run out of the Times, or waiting until the newsstand opens -- solve the day's puzzle at 4 a.m. if you'd like and be on your way ...

So the theory went, anyway. In practice, I was beginning to wonder if all I'd done was waste the $40 annual fee. In two weeks, I'd used the site once, and scrambled for the paper version the rest of the time. It was nonsense. I'd spent the money. I felt guilty about trees dying to supply my habit. And, even if I missed getting the paper, I still did not log on to get my solving fix.

Sunday's second puzzle was the expected Double Acrostic, which I've challenged myself to solve from now on, since Ellen recently broke the spell of my never managing to finish them. I found this one, as I usually find them, a bit of a rough go and took several wrong turns in my determination to get further than a word or two into it. I was using pen, not pencil, absolutely a mistake, but I really don't like pencils, especially on the slick paper of the Times magazine.

I needed to go online anyway to look up a couple of references in the puzzle, so, looking at the ink-blotty mess the Acrostic was quickly becoming, I logged into the premium crosswords for some onscreen solving. I filled in the few entries I already knew, looked up Maine's state tree, realized what event it was other than childbirth (much on my mind what with the Valentine's Day arrival of my 3rd grandson) that involved an umbilical cord, and used the Visual Thesaurus resource to help figure out the heavy useless burden clue ... and, voila, had the Acrostic happily solved sans crumbs and blots.

I still did the Monday puzzle on paper ... but I can see I'll be doing the Acrostics online from now on ...

Decisions Decisions

Lately I've been getting the Times either later than usual or, a couple of times, not at all ... I could subscribe, and did, for many years, but as part of paring down on a number of things, including all that paper going to recycling ... well, I'm still not going to resubscribe. So I've spent the last few weeks considering subscribing to the Times puzzle online and today -- running late, no time to pick up the paper -- I decided to succumb to the digital age finally and do the puzzle onscreen in Across Lite instead of on paper with a pen. The cost is $39.95/year, a bargain I'd say, especially since digital subscribers get a bonus puzzle thrown in as well as access to the "cru"-written cryptics.

I subscribed this afternoon but had to save the solving experience until tonight. I've used Across Lite before, but that was several years ago, and I must say the program has grown up in those years. There are all sorts of options: you can choose where the clues are displayed (if at all) in relation to the puzzle, what fonts you want used, how you prefer the mouse jump from square to square, and so forth, all easily and intuitively configured. And you can easily get rid of the timer that displays automatically on first opening the program, which is a good thing because I found the timer to be particularly annoying. I really don't care how fast or how slow it takes me to solve a given puzzle and don't want, much less need, a timer nagging away at me.

Nevertheless, even though I care not one whit how long the solving takes, the end of February will find me hunched over the puzzles of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, being held this year February 27-March 1 at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Brooklyn. I don't do it for the prizes -- of which I'll win not a single one -- I do it for the cameraderie of like-minded folks. And, this year, my friend Ellen plans to attend, too, so I'll actually know someone there. Woot!

So that's decisions 1 and 2. The third decision was to put the Harper's puzzle aside for a few days to regroup. I've filled in more spaces, and discovered a few of the "upgrades," but still the majority of the entries totally elude me. Ellen gave me a bit of help by naming one of the upgrades but I still didn't get the crossing for it. I am, in fact, completely stuck, totally frozen ... absolutely ready to cry Uncle. Ellen, meanwhile, has long since completed the whole thing, although she tells me there is still one upgrade that eludes her. Wow. I'm impressed.

I will say that this is the furthest I've even gotten with a Harper's cryptic, and the first time I've ever managed to figure out the added twist, so I'll be looking forward with some eagerness to next month's challenge.

Game Out of Gas

No, no, I'm game, not out of gas! Har! The reference, clued in today's Times puzzle, refers to the card game Mille Bornes ... remember that? I certainly do: it was one of the family games I played as a kid, back in the late '50's - early '60's. Another flashback for me in this puzzle is a reference to tab sets, although I remember setting tab stops not tab sets. I learned to type on a Royal manual typewriter -- had to bottom those keys! -- in that same 50's-60's era. (And, speaking of tabs, who could forget Tab Hunter? But I digress ...) 

After seeing the Y's and the Z's crop up in today's puzzle, I was thinking we had a pangram here, possibly one with 2 of each letter of the alphabet. But, no, there's no X in the puzzle so there went that theory right away. Just as well -- I'm all about lively wordplay over letterscores any day.

I'm still plugging away (ever game!) at the Harper's puzzle, and have a couple more entries to report. Still have no idea what the upgrades might be, although Ellen's comment here lets me know I'm at least on the right track. I'll no doubt still be working on this when the next issue comes out ... and I'm betting I'll be thwacking myself on the forehead when I see the solution next month! 

Not a Bad Idea

When is a Bad Idea a Good Idea? When it's the theme of a Times puzzle that features 3 ways to say "Bad Idea!"

One thing about a Monday-level Times puzzle is that even the entries that slide easily into the grid are not boring. Today we have MRLEE, "My Sweetie" from a 50's hit tune; a STOOP that can be the bending you do to go through a doorway, or what's in front of the doorway; an OLMAN River; and "Phooey" with an old-timey feel: NERTZ, a word I've not heard used since my dad passed away 30 years ago. 

On the Harper's cryptic front, 26-a finally unscrambled itself, and I do believe I got 28-d as well. That's four down and entered in the grid even though I don't yet know whether or not they get an "Upgrade" or what the "Upgrade" is.

 

Harper's "Upgrades"

The gauntlet was thrown, so on Saturday I picked up the February issue of Harper's Magazine and spent Sunday staring at the cryptically cryptic puzzle, "Upgrades," by Richard E. Maltby Jr.

The cryptic clues are challenge enough, one would think. But, no, apparently one thinks wrong. This month's special directions state that before they can be entered, 25 of the answers must undergo some sort of (unspecified) change, an "upgrade," in a consistent system to be discovered by the solver. There are 25 such upgrades available in the system, and each appears once in the puzzle.

So my first (and only) thought is that the "upgrade" is alphabetical, with 25 rather than 26 iterations available possibly because there is no A-Z wraparound. And if there is no wraparound, then we are talking about either one letter prior or one letter after whatever letter it is that is to be "upgraded."

Which brings us to the clues and resulting entries themselves. Of which I have, after hours of staring, only 1-d (given me by Ellen when I couldn't come up with it immediately, as she did) and 18-a.

I can do cryptics. Really I can. Fraser Simpson (he of the New Yorker style cryptics) and I are on the same wavelength, apparently, but I manage to solve other cryptics as well and greatly enjoy them.

Of course, for the Harper's cryptic, I have a whole month of pencil-chewing available before admitting defeat. Who knows? I may get another entry today. Stay tuned.

Where did the week go????

Will Shortz must have had a mountain of Obama-related puzzles come his way and couldn't resist publishing a whole slew of them in the runup to Tuesday's historic occasion. To the consternation of some (see comments over on Jim Horne's Wordplay blog) but to the pleasure of many, me included. My favorite was the "OBAMA" Easter Egg buried in Monday's solution. I was also mightily impressed by Tuesday's puzzle constructed by Tim Wescott: how on earth did he manage to place the letters to YESWECAN in all the right places like that? In my book, that's a standing ovation accomplishment.

Wednesday settled down into some punny play, which ... um ... puzzled me until I caught on. CORECURRICULUM, I thought, but why are there only 3 spaces for the 4-letter CORE? And what does that have to do with "non-pedigree"? Oh! CURcurriculum! And then the rest of the entries just fell quietly into place. Well, quietly except for the low groans that puns elicit in general.

I never finished the Thursday Times puzzle, and I'm just now -- on Saturday morning -- looking at Friday's puzzle. I'm trying to see how much of it I can manage to solve before I leave to pick up today's paper and tackle the always-evil Saturday puzzle. So what kind of clue is this, said she, blinking and moaning: Film with the line 'By the authority vested in me by Kaiser William II, I pronounce you man and wife. Proceed with the execution.' Is that the winner of the longest-ever-clue prize? Clue that the least number of solvers would possibly know the answer to? Is it even google-able?

Ha! I have five, maybe ten, minutes to give to this. Yipes.

Lucky for me, the answer will be in today's paper. That's why they do it that way. Right? Right!

That's What Friends Are For

My thanks to Ellen, who helped me crack Sunday's Double Acrostic. Once I learned that two of the words I'd semi-confidently entered on the wordlist were definitely wrong, wrong, wrong, I could figure out the real answers, then just to kick it up a notch and make sure I'd hang on till the very end, Ellen allowed me one free fill-in. It was a challenge to try to determine which one of the many blank words in the list would help the most.

I had by then googled the "Old Rough and Ready" clue, was wondering whether the constructors were counting "Q.T." as a single word, and figured that Glinda in "The Wiz" could be googled if it came to that ... and then a couple of other answers jumped out at me. Finally, I decided I needed to know what to call a "post-inaugural procession" (some kind of PARADE?), Ellen wrote back with the answer, and -- voila! -- a very apt quote began to appear.

There will be another Double Acrostic in a couple of weeks. I shall have to give it a try!

Inaugural Weekend

As expected, the Sunday Times puzzle had a Presidential Inauguration theme, with a gimmick: the nine theme entries held the letters of OBAMA's name, in order, left to right. It was a pleasant solve though I had to put it down a few times and walk away to ponder over it a bit. But, to my mind, that's what a Sunday should be: lazy and leisurely and eventually yielding.

As promised to my friend Ellen, whose favorite puzzle is the double acrostic, I gave today's second puzzle, an acrostic, a good try. Alas, as usual with me, I couldn't crack it. I did get (I think!) several of the wordlist entries, but most of the wordlist went unanswered, and working 'backward' from the letters entered into the quote didn't help at all. I'm afraid I just need more hints. I kept wishing the quote, whatever it was, was a cryptogram instead. Those I can solve!

I'm looking forward to a nice, smooth, easy Monday puzzle today!

Cheatin' and a Challenge

My level of crossword solving, even after all these decades, is around about the Times Wednesday point. I can often finish the Thursday puzzle; once in a while the Friday puzzle yields up its answers to me; and on Saturday ... well, on Saturday, I count it a victory if I can place a correct entry or two without resorting to the dreaded google "cheat" ...

Of course, long before google was a verb, much less a website, puzzle solvers were looking for answers wherever they could find them. I know I saw my first crossword puzzle dictionary on my parents' bookshelf, and considered it a welcome find. In those days the puzzles were unabashedly replete with words only crossword solvers ever heard of, and I wasn't such an avid solver that I had any of them memorized. They could be found in the puzzle dictionary, along with all sorts of foreign words and phrases, the names of months of many calendars, gods and goddesses of bygone times, and so on.

But is "looking it up" cheating? I remember that question being asked of Will Weng, who smiled and allowed as how that all depended on the solver's own sensibilities and expectations. "It's your puzzle," he said, "and how you solve it is up to you."

Which makes perfectly good sense to me. So. People. It's Saturday. There's quite a bit in the puzzle today that I would have no way of knowing about, if not for the good offices of google. And, still, even with looking things up, I didn't manage to fill in the grid.

My puzzle googling took me to this site where I re-learned the name of the tone-blending technique that DaVinci used for his wonderful Mona Lisa. It's always good to be reminded of these things, to gaze again in awe and appreciation at this masterpiece.

I didn't need to go to the web to fill in the places for Sir Elton (John), which brought me to guess that it was probably Annette whom Disney himself chose for Mousketeering, and I even managed to think that the legendary athlete of 1975 could maybe be Pete Rose, but the landslide election winner of 1945 totally escaped my ken (the answer so was not Truman -- my excuse is that at the time I was less than a year old), and I would certainly not have thought of the UK and of Churchill (who was the landslide loser) without turning to the Web.

As for the challenge: my friend Ellen, who commented here about the Harper's Magazine cryptic crosswords, tells me she enjoys the double acrostics when they appear as the alternate puzzle in the Sunday Times, and really I should give them a try again. So I promised to give tomorrow's acrostic a go.

I will be visiting with friends tomorrow afternoon ... but I'll devote the morning to it, see how far I get, and will report back tomorrow.

Methinks the Monday Times puzzle will be all the sweeter for Sunday's anticipated struggle.

A-Deke-Adout

Do I know a DEKE (hockey fake-out) from ADOUT (deuce follower in tennis)? Nope, I'm not knowledgeable about sports, so you couldn't prove either of those by me. I'm sure there are non-cartoon fans who wouldn't know Bart's aunt's name, either, as well as the non-musically inclined who never heard of Reggae's relative or that popular record label ... and, really do you know what the explosive initials TNT stand for? 

Oh, the things you can learn! It's part of the art of crossword construction that entries of words you've never run across before can reveal themselves even in an easy-rated Tuesday Times puzzle. The crossings happily give it all up on the way to discovering the actual theme, which today involves one of my favorite foodstuffs, and reminds me that I still have in a kitchen drawer two nut spoons given away long ago (in the '50's, as I recall) as premiums by Planters Peanuts. Mr. Peanut jauntily tips his hat atop each, and they are still in pretty good shape especially considering they were give-aways. 

Of course, I love peanuts -- and peanut butter -- way too much, but, like chocolate, they are a good-for-you food in moderation.

I don't think it's harmful not to be moderate in the number of puzzles one attempts to solve. In fact, I'm quite sure it's good for the waistline to turn to puzzles instead of food for a little comfort!

A Crossword Connection

Occasionally I "meet" again in a puzzle someone I've met before in other circumstances or times. Today was such a day:

The late, great, photographer ANSEL Adams makes an appearance in today's Times puzzle courtesy of the puzzle's constructor Lynn Lempel. I had to smile, especially when I saw that Jim Horne had put up his picture at the top of his Wordplay blog this morning.

Many years ago, I was looking over some of my photos taken for a photography class when a fellow student, looking over my shoulder, exclaimed, "Wow, you got a photograph of Ansel Adams!" I had, at the time, no idea who Ansel Adams was. "Who's that?" I asked, and "Where?" The fellow student pointed to a photograph I'd taken of my husband.

"Oh, no," I said. "That's just my husband." "No, no, it's Ansel Adams." As if I didn't know my own husband. Heh. My interlocutor kindly explained what a famed photographer Ansel Adams was and I found myself on high alert for a photograph of him.

Before I found that, however, I noted that Mr. Adams was scheduled for a talk at MOMA, so I made sure I was in that audience. It was a surreal experience: Adams, I discovered, was taller than my husband, and the voice was different, but in all other respects the two could have been identical twins, right down to the black-frame glasses and musical backgrounds.

After that, I found a picture of Adams and showed it to hubby Joe, who was intrigued ... but the two never met. I never really thought to seek that out, but perhaps I ought to have done so: what a photograph that would have made! 

Crossword Consumer

Friday and Saturday New York Times puzzles were toughies ... Friday's more difficult than Saturday's, at least for me. In fact, I was rather pleased to have filled in quite a bit of Saturday's puzzle before giving up with a sigh.

But I was in a bit of a funk. I wanted something I could solve, and I wanted it now. I went out for a copy of the Daily News, but those puzzles didn't do it for me, either.

It's at times like this that I really, truly miss the puzzles that Peter Gordon had edited for The New York Sun. Unfortunately, The Sun, a daily newspaper that ran for a few years, has recently ceased publication, although Peter Gordon still provides puzzles available by subscription over at cruciverb.com. And, I remembered, puzzles from the paper -- most of which would be new to me, as I so often was unable to find The Sun itself for sale anywhere -- are collected in wirebound book format ...

So off I went to the Barnes & Nobel at Union Square and found myself standing before a vast array of puzzle publications, by far the majority of them carrying The New York Times and/or Will Shortz names. But there were LA Times puzzle books as well, and, yes, the Sun crossword books I was seeking. I restrained myself from buying up a boxcar load of 'em. I settled on the latest of the Sun books (#17), then spotted 102 Cryptic Crosswords by Fraser Simpson.

102 Cryptic Crosswords is a follow-up to 101 Cryptic Crosswords, which were small cryptics edited by Fraser Simpson and published in The New Yorker. How I loved those, and still much miss them since The New Yorker stopped including them in the magazine. They feature small grids, only 8x10, and provide a good, solvable challenge, unlike the Harper's cryptics with their involved additional rules to wade through (for me, the cryptic challenge itself is sufficient; trying to figure out which answers are entered in some odd fashion or other, have dropped letters, to say nothing of perhaps being unclued, renders the solving not only less than fun but impossible). The New Yorker cryptics were always a delight, and I saw these were similar, these apparently written by Fraser Simpson rather than written by others and edited by him, so I added that to my purchase.

On my way to the checkout counter, I spotted a small "crossword game" -- the size of a gift card, which the game is meant to carry with it -- and stopped to investigate. The box was sealed so I couldn't really give it a good look, but instructions on the box indicated that it was a game intended for 2 and that it included small magnets that were dangerous if accidentally swallowed. The price was $9.95, and I considered it, but I don't really have anyone I could play the game with, and I wasn't going to be purchasing a gift card, so I put it back.

Once home, I treated myself to an easy solve from the Sun book and took a pleasant dive into the cryptics book. Much better. Now I'm off to see what awaits in the Sunday Times.

Triple Play

After Monday's Adventure of the Pairs, and with some unaccustomed time on my hands, I picked up Tuesday's Daily News -- with its two (count 'em!) crossword puzzles -- along with the Times. So, three puzzles for the day; four if you count the Jumble puzzle, which I didn't just because the solution was so easy it didn't even qualify as a warmup.

The first of the Daily News puzzles is an unattributed one from United Features Syndicate. Usually one has at least an editor's name on a puzzle, but this one sports neither editor nor author/constructor, as if it just came alll unbidden out of the air. Or maybe there's a lowly lonely robot locked away in an air-conditioned room somewhere programmed to push a button that spits out a puzzle a day. This puzzle was also themeless as far as I could determine. Senator (STROM) Thurmond traveled from Monday's Times puzzle to this one, there was STUFF sitting on a CURIO shelf, and EMMET was clued as "Pismire," an archaic (so says my dictionary) word for an ant ("emmet"). Um. I preferred the "Ant Acid" clue for FORMIC that I remembered from a recent Times puzzle. MOSEYS was a nice entry, though, and ELLY Mae Clampett made an appearance, munching on a BOSC pear (viz., Theresa's comment to the Plethora of Pairs post below).

The second of the News puzzles is from the Tribune Syndicate and this one carries a constructor attribution, which I much appreciate, along with a city and state which one assumes is where the constructor may be found, should one wish to find her or him (or them). This one was by someone whose name I recognized: Diane C. Baldwin, who is responsible for the Woman's World puzzles which I also often do. I expected smooth going from Ms. Baldwin, wondered if there would be a theme, and then discovered it: the three phases of liquid, in three apt phrases. The solving was indeed smooth with a bit of misdirection (I kept wanting ABYSS to be CHASM, which it wasn't) that, however, did not ADDLE me.

In a bit of crossword coincidence, SEOUL was in both these puzzles. I guess those three vowels in a row come in handy, eh?

All a nice appetizer for the Times main course, a puzzle by John Greenman, a name unfamiliar to me. Kofi ANNAN (apparently another set of useful letters) showed up here as he had in another recent puzzle, along with the themed tall, dark and handsome matinee idol. Had a UFO and a YENTA, too, perhaps standing outside Milan's La SCALA, singing the Gene Vincent hit, Be-Bop-ALULA. You know, I've often wondered about writing crossword TALLSTORIES. That one's totally FALSE, but perhaps with a little practice I can do better ...

A Plethora of Pairs

I was looking forward to a breezy-easy Monday puzzle to start the solving week -- couldn't do it on the commute to work (no seats), so saved it up for a little lunchtime entertainment ....

... and found myself filling in the prisoner-weapon-slang SHIV early on. Huh, thinks I, what has the world come to when "shiv" passes the breakfast (now lunch) test? But it was just a momentary pause. What's a poor constructor to do, anyway? The I was needed for the crossing DIXIECRAT (Strom Thurmond, not my fave politician by a shot of any length, but hey ...) and the V was necessary for a nice neutral Roman numeral crossing. Hardly a capital offense.

The theme played on the triply-homophonic meet/meat/mete -- that last one being "mete out justice," presumably what happened to the prisoner with the sharp implement -- easy-breezy enough. But now, what was this in the fill? Oh, please, a first name of World War II infamy indeed, one Adolf. (For the record, I don't like meeting Uganda's most infamous leader in crosswords either.) Oh, heck, I've gotten used to AMIN, surely I could forgive a passing ADOLF, yes?

Well, no. Sure, I like a bit of rule-busting in my puzzles. But, dang it, rules exist for reasons, and the busting of same should have their (better be darn good!) reasons, too. Now I was a bit grumpy.

But I didn't just fling the puzzle aside in a minor funky fit. I looked around for some love, and so I found some: TERNS PREENED in their separate entries in the upper right corner; the upper middle sported the homophonic pair of PAIN and PANES; a French friend AMI stood next to his PAL (for a game of HOPSCOTCH?) just to the right of the Lone Ranger's friend TONTO, while Sgt. Snorkel's 4-legged friend OTTO cavorted in the lower right corner, perhaps playing hide-and-seek with The Thin Man's doggie ASTA in the upper left. Even the 1-across entry, ACDC, could be thought of as a pair of these PAIRS entered in the puzzle, to say nothing of the MATES in the lower left.

Had I stumbled upon a hidden theme? (I noted also Mr. MOTO's appearance--wowsa, do people still remember him? Isn't he PASSE by now?)

But that's not all, folks.

The puzzle done, my lunch -- and indeed the workday -- over, relaxing in a seat on the subway home, I was finally paging through the paper when I came across a happy article headlined "A Good Day to Speak of Love, From a Rabbi Who Knows Hate and Forgiveness." Seems the Rabbi in question had suffered a number of run-ins with an unpleasant fellow who -- apparently, vehemently vocally -- wished the Rabbi nothing but ill. Who responded not in kind, but with kindness. With resulting remorse and complete turnaround of the fellow's unpleasantness.

Somehow ... the article seemed perfectly paired with the puzzle. Made my day. (9 letters; what are the odds I'll see that phrase in a puzzle sometime?)

The Year So Far

I live in New York City and so, I suppose it would be a given that, as a crossword afficionado, I would attempt each day's New York Times puzzle -- and, indeed, I've been solving and attempting to solve these for many years. I say 'attempting' because the toughest of them are for me still too tough to completely crack. And I go back a bit: I remember when Margaret Farrar was the Times puzzle editor, then Will Weng, then Eugene Maleska.

I enjoy the daily challenge -- and appreciate the various difficulty levels, from easy Mondays to tear-your-hair-out Saturdays -- and certainly consider the Times puzzles in the top echelon of word puzzledom. As a solver, I'd say I'm very middle-of-the-road: Monday- through Wednesday-level puzzles are usually solvable on my daily commute to work; Thursdays are tougher, Fridays I often get only partially solved, and I usually look on Saturdays as the ultimate challenge: can I maybe fill in an entry or two?

Sundays are my favorites: not only do their difficulty levels usually match my solving capabilities, but often their size allows the constructor to engage in some involved, clever, witty wordplay which can even reveal multiple levels of play/meaning. Those that accomplish this are, in my book, genuine works of literature in which constructor and solver bring their separate sensibilities to the table for a multi-layered conversation.

The only problem with this is that the hopeful solver (me) tends to expect/want too much. So it has been, alas, with the first 4 NYTimes puzzles of the year.

New Year's Day, I opened the Thursday paper expecting a New Year's Day theme. Wrong. Still, there were a couple of Presidents in it (G. Washington, JFK), it had its witty moments (I particularly liked "some kind of nut" probably because I got the answer at first thought), and I managed to solve it in all its Thursday-ness. It's just that ... well ... I wanted a ball to drop, or something. ;)

On Friday I was happy to remember Kofi Annan's name (it took a while) and to fill in a few other entries. Saturday I was off to a party, so my usual Saturday struggle with the Times puzzle (which, as I noted, I generally do just to see if I can manage an entry or two) lasted just long enough to convince me that, no, there was no way I was going to solve this one. I do think Saturdays are best solved with friends and a connection to Google.

Which brings us to the Times Sunday magazine puzzle, one I have come to expect much from. I want witty wordplay! I crave iconoclastic rule-busting! Give me a clever quotable quip! Delight my eyes with pictographic grids! Ahhhhhhhh ... no. Today's theme was a simple one: When in Rome was the title, and the gimmick, which revealed itself quickly, was to use numerals as the Romans knew them. I was happy to complete the puzzle, which certainly had its witty moments. But.

I wanted more.

Alas, the Acrostic -- the second, alternate, puzzle on the page -- while it beckoned, did not assuage my disappointment. Not the Acrostic's fault: it is likely a clever one. But Acrostics are far from my strong suit ... indeed, they defeat me every time, and this was no exception. Of course, I might have made it a New Year's Resolution to gain some Acrostic skills through diligent attention to same. But that's so much work. I prefer to play.

Non-Lame Word Searching

One of the joys of my life is to solve a good word puzzle. By that I primarily mean crossword puzzles, and by that I generally mean the puzzles published each day in the New York Times, although I also occasionally buy a book or two of crossword puzzles, as well as Games Magazine, and attempt the puzzles in those as free time permits. And I've certainly gone through my share of Dell Magazine puzzle publications with all their varieties of challenges.

I'm a solver -- unless, of course, the puzzle is unfathomable to me, way over my head, beyond my expertise -- not a constructor.

Still, the other day, I told my friend, John, rather vaguely that I was interested in constructing a word search puzzle. Word search puzzles are something I actually can construct, as their restrictions are less severe than crosswords. They are also usually easier to solve, as the words are given and all the solver needs to do is find the words within a given grid of letters. Hence the pejorative -- "lame" -- I was giving them even as I was considering constructing one.

So how to construct a "non-lame" word-search puzzle? John thought that possibly the only way would be to seed the puzzle with as many false paths -- parts of answers that would ultimately lead nowhere -- as possible. I remembered word-search puzzles in Dell publications of years past that could be difficult to solve because they employed duplicating series of letters: a preponderance of p's and pp's, perhaps, or lots of -ittle, -attle, -ottle, etc. A little way in to these, my eyes would start to spin, and it wouldn't be long before I'd be feeling more frustrated than entertained. On the other hand, word-search puzzles that didn't mislead in some way, I found too easy to solve. Easy success is enjoyable, certainly ... but ... well ... a bit lame, no?

Which is to say what I was thinking about was what a word puzzle ought to be: entertaining, a challenge, not just solvable but *fun* to solve. And what I consider a crossword puzzle at its best: a conversation, an interaction, between constructor and solver -- a contest perhaps, but one of skills, not of wills.

In fact, I'd just seen what I considered a non-lame Word Search puzzle. It wasn't particularly difficult to solve. But it was certainly fun, and what made it so, I commented to my friend, wasn't misdirection but a timely, lively word list that *invited* solving.

Have a look. Let me know what you think.