Tuesday, January 27, 2009

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! 

Monday, January 26, 2009

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.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

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!

Monday, January 19, 2009

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!

Saturday, January 17, 2009

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.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

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!


Monday, January 12, 2009

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! 

Sunday, January 11, 2009

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.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

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 ...

Monday, January 5, 2009

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?)

Sunday, January 4, 2009

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.