Ryan and Brian Do Crosswords

New York Times 10:08 (I am an idiot)
Los Angeles Times 8:13
New York Sun 15:30 (I continue to be an idiot — and on Tuesday, no less!)

New York Times
by Steve Salmon, edited by Will Shortz

I am very unhappy with my time. I got the left and center of the grid done in about four minutes. While this is no howardb_42 time, it was certainly lovely by my own standards. But then I hit 37D. A key passage? which I decided was AISLE ISLE. It solved the bottom right for me just fine, but of course screwed up everything else. I’m looking at 42A. Exam for a future Atty. and 45A. “Lohengrin” lass, and I’m thinking they have to be LSAT and ELSA. But my second letters are I and S… What have I done wrong? (In case you read too quickly and missed my error — the answer to 37D is ISLE AISLE, not AISLE ISLE.) (Of course, if you’re reading this at all, you have way too much time on your hands, and you have no business reading anything “too quickly.” RELAX.)

I was also baffled by the top right, where for 10A. Tortilla sandwich, I was stubbornly certain it was TACO. And I know it’s not a sandwich, but technically, neither is a WRAP:

	Main Entry: 1sand·wich
	Pronunciation: \?san(d)-?wich, ?sam-; dialect ?sa?-\
	Function: noun
	Etymology: John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich died
		1792 English diplomat
	Date: 1762

	1a:  two or more slices of bread or a split roll
	     having a filling in between;
	b:   one slice of bread covered with food

	2:   something resembling a sandwich; especially:
	     composite structural material consisting of
	     layers often of high-strength facings bonded
	     to a low strength central core

16A. Breezy greeting also tricked me, as I thought it would be WAVE — far more clever than anything else available. Somehow, this led to a plethora of wrong answers and empty spaces, and I really should have just erased everything and started over. Which I did not. Instead I stared at it for a while. And then a while longer. And then suddenly, I was nearing the ten-minute mark (my current Tuesday average is about 8:30), and I was getting pissed off. WAVE was later replaced with HEYA before finally the correct answer, HIYA.

Ryan has given all the good answers, and included fun pictures from a trip he took. I have no photos, and only a cranky insistence that a wrap isn’t a sandwich. Now I have to take my cat to the vet. I’ll do the rest of the Tuesdays (as many as I can stomach) when I return.

Los Angeles Times
by Michael Langwald, edited by Rich Norris

Not that you can tell, but I have returned.

This was all very straightforward until the left section of the grid, which totally baffled me. In part, this was due to my incorrect answer to 48A. Fuss (TO-DO). In the crossing at 26D. *Fall guy in films?, I had –U-T-OUBLE. I wrongly assumed an R in that last blank to make something-TROUBLE. Hence my incorrect TORO (not much of a fuss, unless you’re the matador), and my complete inability to discover STUNT DOUBLE for 26D.

The rest of the theme had to do with 63D. Casino game, and hint to the theme in last words of answers to starred clues. I was hoping the clue could be a little longer. This wasn’t awkward enough for me.

COME ON. Starred clues? Lots of question marks on long answers? Where was this puzzle published, Los Angeles? Oh, right, it was. Hee hee. Anyway, the answer to 63D was BLACK JACK, of course. And the other themed answers were:

• 17A. *Where hacks wait? (TAXI STAND)
• 39A. *Batter’s success (BASE HIT)
• 11D. *Fruity ice cream treat? (BANANA SPLIT)

The theme was painless, but the execution was rough. Asterisks? And using question marks for non-cryptic clues was lame. I had TAXIST–D for a while for 17A, and reluctantly filled in the correct answer, looking for a play on words that didn’t exist.

Maybe I’ll try the Sun puzzle next… Stay tuned.

New York Sun
by Lee Glickstein, edited by Peter Gordon

Nothing like a crossword puzzle to show me that I have a complete lack of knowledge on just about every subject.

Hey all.  I’m out in LA, my Dad’s doing much better so I thought I’d do a little quick blogging.  Before I hit Tuesday’s puzzle here’s a few pictures from our trip to Graceland.  In honor of Monday’s Elvis-themed puzzle.  Here’s his basement:  Here we are in front of some jumpsuits: Here I am in the middle of a rib-eating contest.  This has nothing to do with Elvis but it happened on the same trip: And here’s Cousin Jimmy who beat me in the rib-eating contest.  It wasn’t even close: Anyway, Tuesday’s puzzle.  I got the theme on this one:

•  62A. Lovely hotel accommodations? (SWEETSUITE).  What are those, homonyms?  Homophones?  Something like that.

The others were pretty easy:

• 18A. Blasé group of directors? (BOREDBOARD)
• 3D. Farm-grown labyrinth? (MAIZEMAZE)
  
• 7D. Wake at dawn? (MORNINGMOURNING)
  
• 10D. Pit in its entirety? (WHOLEHOLE)
  
• 33D. Mooing group of cattle? (HEARDHERD)
  
• 37D. Key passage? (ISLEAISLE)
  

I got really stumped in the center.  Three music-related clues all close by.  I finally figured out RIT which led to ACETATE which gave me TEMPO.  ELGAR was filled in by the crosses.For the second time in as many weeks I parsed ATE AT incorrectly.  Last time I wondered what AT EAT meant.  Today I couldn’t figure out why A TEAT would be so bothersome.That’s it for now.  Once I get back into town and on my own computer (I am not comfortable on this little MacBook.  Feels like a Fisher Price “My First Highly-Overpriced Computer”.) I’ll get back to more detailed entries.  And I’m hoping our first podcast will be recorded Sunday night.Stay tuned. 

New York Times 5:37
Los Angeles Times 4:28
CrosSynergy 5:48

New York Times
by David J. Kahn, edited by Will Shortz

Meh.

I don’t know very much about The King. I don’t know what movies he did, I don’t know where his life took him. I appreciate what he did in music history and American pop culture history, but I’m just not that interested.

That said, it took me too long to do this Monday. It wasn’t that satisfying. I took more time than I should have on both the left and right sides because I did all the across clues instead of the few downs. Plus, I still suck at maneuvering around the grid on the NY Times website (in Across Lite I can TAB from one clue to another; is there a way to do that on the NY Times site? If you know how — please tell me!). Plus I still suck at crosswords in general.

I am not interested enough in Elvis to post any answers here. Use the links to the right to find someone else’s blog of answers today…

Los Angeles Times
by Mike Peluso, edited by Will Shortz

I’m just tired. The long answers here seemed like they could have been from any of the dozens of other puzzles I did today. Nothing standout.

I’m in a bad mood.

Okay, the long answers here were:

• 20A. Graveside service phrase (ASHES TO ASHES)
• 33A. From Maine to California (COAST TO COAST)
• 41A. How a book is usually read (COVER TO COVER)
• 56A. Very sincere, as a conversation (HEART TO HEART)

Fine. Very nicely done, Mike Peluso. I’m just tired and hungry, so nothing is satisfying me. I have to work in the morning, and that annoys me. Grr.

CrosSynergy: Exit Poles
by Sarah Keller

This time, I actually looked at the title. And then saw that it would do nothing to help me fill in the squares.

I’m falling into a bad routine here, with the Across Lite puzzles. I don’t check my answers. I make guesses and leave them there. If I were re-entering the ACPT, I’d lose tons of points for my errors (not to mention that I still suck for times).

Anyway… The theme here was answers that ended with kinds of poles:

• 17A. Vegetable used in a traditional Thanksgiving dinner casserole (GREEN BEANS) — Did the clue need to be this long? Aren’t there smarter ways to clue GREEN BEANS? How about “Jolly Giant’s fare” or even “___ casserole.”
• 37A. “A New Leaf” actress/director (ELAINE MAY)
• 42A. Surrender symbol (WHITE FLAG)
• 62A. Navigator’s director (TRUE NORTH) — I didn’t like this clue either, even though I got it. Something about “navigator” made me dislike it.

A couple of stumpers for me, though:

• 36D. Hindu deity (SHIVA) — Really? This word means more than Jews mourning a death?
• 43D. Asmara’s republic (ERITREA) — Asmara is a… person? City? School? No idea.

Fine, I suppose… I seem to have settled into the 5-6 minute range for most Monday-level puzzles. In terms of the ACPT, that’s already a three-minute improvement over my Puzzle #1 time.

And now, off to work…

New York Times 46:50
Boston Globe 23:01

Ryan is still away with his family, so I’m posting solo. Also, our planned podcast will wait until next weekend. More of my post below…

(more…)

I’d like to open by saying that Ryan is with his family this weekend. His father took ill, so Ryan and his wife left today for California. Let’s all hope for good news in the days to come.

And in the meantime…

New York Times 32:22 (with internet help)

New York Times
by Byron Walden, edited by Will Shortz

There is no way in the world that I’d ever finish a Saturday. Period.

There is really no way I could do it without help. Last week, I helped Ryan complete his partially-done puzzle. This week, I let Wikipedia help me complete mine. I really only needed a little bit of assistance, though. I got the whole upper left on my own. (Aside: I tried using compass terms for puzzle-square location for a while, but I don’t like it. I’m going back to normal words.) Little bits of things came into place until I had a few breakthroughs and got the four big 9-letter down clues:

• 1D. Jigger that jiggles? (JELLO SHOT, pictured at right)
• 2D. Alternative to a water ski (AQUA PLANE)
• 3D. Begin to blossom (BURST OPEN)
• 4D. Lance Armstrong foundation? (BIKE STAND) — this was the hardest one to wrap my head around. His actual program is called Livestrong, I think. At least, that’s what all the yellow bracelets say. But I knew “strong” couldn’t be part of it. And for a while, I actually had BIKING in the last six spots (thanks to the compound 22D/24A. Number one position, which I thought was TOP RANK — it’s TOP SLOT)

This all set up the rest of the top left, which looked awfully impressive to me. Down to the bottom right area, which got off to a good start when I guessed almost correctly on 29A. Salt with the maximum proportion of element #53 (PERIODIDE – I had PERIODINE in there for a while, which hurt my work on 33D, but otherwise was a good start). Incidentally, I think this clue is rather clumsy, but maybe appropriately so, in that the answer itself is also clumsy.

But as I got 26D. Minute Maid drink brand (HI-C), 32D. Lifeless (INANIMATE) and 34D. Parts of makeup kits (EYELINERS), I thought I also had found 37A. Star of “London After Midnight,” 1927, of which I knew nothing but still guessed CARNEY. I have since learned that Art Carney was only nine in 1927, which made him a much less likely movie star than, say, Lon CHANEY.

I have never heard of 51A. Volkswagen Polo, for one (SUPERMINI), and even now that I have and know the answer (and see the photo), I probably still wouldn’t be able to pick one out of a lineup. I made a handful of other random guesses, but eventually found several across answers in this area, including 55A. One suspended in adolescence (BOY-MAN), 57A. Split personality? (EX-MATE — maybe my favorite answer on the grid), 59A. Street lighting specialist? (RIOTER – not sure what this means), and 61A. Claim of convenience in ads or otherwise (NO MESS — also not sure what ads would use this phrase; I’ve never seen it). Once I replaced Art with Lon, I made sense of the rest of this zone, and moved onto other otherwise blank squares.

18A. Geographic feature depicted on the Armenian coat of arms was quite a doozy. Here, we are mixing together a plethora of things I know and care nothing about: geography, Armenia (is it actually a country? I never know!), coats of arms and truthfully, general depiction. In fact, aside from the definite article the, there’s not a single word in the clue that even appeals to me. Should I feel like a fool, then, to find the answer (MT. ARARAT) and recognize it oddly as the name of a school I used to play high school sports against? Yes, my tiny little school in Maine had to find other tiny little schools in Maine to play Class D sports (soccer, basketball, lacrosse). I have a vague recollection of having a generally lousy basketball game against Mt. Ararat during my senior year. I had 25 rebounds and 6 blocks (along with a paltry 8 points) when I fouled out with two minutes to go. We lost by three. The fouls were stupid little ticky-tack things. The final one was an over-the-back foul I apparently committed against a player who had tripped on his own left foot.

And a comment: Where on that thing is Mt. Ararat? Is it the blob in the center section that looks more like a sack of gold coins? I’m not happy with this one at all. However, plugging in the crossword-friendly MT. ARARAT, I was able to get the downs in that area and complete it.

My last bit of internet help came on 53A. Shrub also known as Russian olive. And once I looked it up on the internet, I could barely find the answer anywhere. Apparently, it’s more “common” name is OLEASTER. But by “common,” I mean that maybe two people have heard of it (as opposed to the one person who had heard of a Russian olive in the first place).But like the other sections of the puzzle, this one answer was enough to trigger the rest of the solution.

So while my time is skewed by my internet help, I still feel good that I only needed to really hunt for a few things to otherwise make it through a Saturday. Truthfully, I would have never solved it without the help, as there were crossings against these words which I also did not know. 47D. First Justice alphabetically in the history of the Supreme Court (ALITO — I am ashamed not to have known this) and 48D. First African-American golfer with 12 P.G.A. Tour wins (PEETE) would have left me partially vacant in the lower left. In the upper right, without Mt. Ararat, I’d have never found 12D. Spanish festival (FERIA – which I know only as a hair dye, for I have a wife) and 13D. Animal in Poe’s “Murder in the Rue Morgue” (ORANG – with which I am not satisfied; upon later review, I discover that when I read “Rue Morgue,” the animal was called an “Ourang-Outang,” clearly a different spelling).

In the end, a relatively satisfying puzzle. I think looking up three answers is good for me for a Saturday.

In other news, I am practicing my skills on Monday and Tuesday puzzles, going through the New York Times archives. I will not blog about them here, but I am tracking my solve times. Currently, my Monday average is about 5:52, and my Tuesday is about 8:04. I hope to get those down to under five and seven minutes respectively by, say, June.

Again, my thoughts are out to Ryan and his whole family. Be well, my friend.

Aw, man! It took me a really long time to get going on this one but once I did I zoomed through the top left and worked my way in a very fashionable counterclockwise direction until I came to a screeching halt in the top right. I finally had to look up some stuff like AUER, NIELS and SQUEEZEBOX. Once I had the whole thing filled in, I clicked DONE! and got the old, “Submitted Puzzle is Incorrect, Please Be More Smarter, Thank You, Will Shortz, Star of the film Wordplay”. I looked the puzzle over twice, thrice, four-ice and could not find my mistake. I looked at the grid over at xwordinfo and after many minutes of cursing the NYTimes applet for being wrong I found my screwup:

• 50A. Eye of the tigre? (OJO). I put OSO there. Now, ojo in Spanish means “eye” which makes sense while oso in Spanish means “bear” which make no sense. Why didn’t I pick up this mistake when I looked at the down clue? Because the down clue was 51D. Norwegian P.M. Stoltenberg (JENS). I had SENS which looks just as correct to me. (Side note: I just looked up Jens Stoltenberg in wikipedia, expecting to see a picture of some old oil painting of a Norwegian leader from long ago. This guy is the CURRENT prime minister. So now I feel like a total jerk for not knowing.)

I won’t go through all the big clues since Brian has already done that. I have been tasked with adding some pictures though.

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New York Times 34:19
Wall Street Journal 33:48

New York Times
by Peter A. Collins, edited by Will Shortz

I had to look up a couple things, but for the most part, I was able to work this one out. The grid, full of twelve 10-letter answers, looked very scary as I first loaded it up. And when I went through the clues the first time, I saw very little I could actually write in. I was about to just abandon ship, and post something to this blog with the tag “Brian continues to eat moron pills on Fridayze,” when I clicked onto a long answer I actually thought I knew.

• 59A. Doll that was once a going thing (BETSY WETSY)

Why did I know this? Maybe because I was traumatized as a child during my father’s attempts to toilet train me. Maybe because I have always thought it was a funny thing, a funny name. Maybe because — well, who cares? I knew BETSY WETSY, and suddenly the bottom row of the grid had something in it!

(more…)

I had trouble all over this grid. This thing took me almost 2 hours. Of course, I did it at work so there was a bit of sneaking around involved. I had to submit it a few times to get it right and that was only after I checked one of my answers with google.

• 46A. Switzerland’s ___ Léman (LAC). I had LOC. As in a misspelling of LOCH. The “O” gave me SWOT for 41D. Team letters (SWAT). And while SWOT was clearly incorrect I simply could not come up with the right answer. I kept thinking it would be some sort of acronym for a sports stat.

The theme answers are as follows:

• 20A. South-of-the-border border town portmanteau (MEXICALIMEXICO).
• 25A. Plains border town portmanteau (KANORADOKANSAS).
• 42A. Mid-Atlantic border town portmanteau (DELMARDELAWARE).
• 47A. South-central border town portmanteau (TEXARKANATEXAS).

Here’s a fun game to play when your family gets together for the holidays. List border towns whose names are portmanteaus in descending order by population. Here goes:

• Mexcali – 653,046 people
  
• Texarkana – 26,448 people
• Delmar – 1,407 people
• Kanorado – 248 people

248 people! In the entire town! That’s less people than are currently in my kitchen. There’s not a lot of information about Kanorado on the internet. Their city page was last updated 9 years ago. From what I can tell, the town consists of two signs, a train and five large cylinders of varying sizes.

I put wrong answers all over the place:

• 43D. Hit the limit (MAXOUT). I put TAPOUT here. I suppose MAXOUT makes little more sense.
• 44D. Bells and whistles, say (ALARMS). I put in EXTRAS. I really, really thought that was right.
• 13. Palooka (PUG). LUG.
• 33. Abbr. before a date (ESTD). Not for the first time, I put in ESTB. I’ve done that in a few other puzzles. Well, I’ll just keep putting in ESTB and the puzzles can keep telling me it’s ESTD and we’ll see who blinks first.

Ok, I’m going to have to stop now. It’s 5:49am, I’ve still got an hour and a half of work left and I’m doing that head bob, eyes closing thing.  Good puzzle plus it’s given me some summer vacation ideas.

New York Times 31:39
Los Angeles Times 31:27

New York Times
by Stephen Edward Anderson, edited by Will Shortz

Six minutes and fourteen seconds to get all but four squares yesterday. Twenty-eight minutes and 19 seconds to get all but four squares today. What a difference an added T-H-U-R and a deleted W-E-D-N-E makes.

So first of all, I have to admit a slight cheat at the beginning. Seeing that the gimmick clues were “portmanteaux,” I felt it was important that I find out what that word meant.

THE FREE DICTIONARY

1. (n.) A large leather suitcase that opens
   into two hinged compartments.

(more…)

Much like Brian I was all set to break my own Wednesday record and actually crack 10 minutes when the bottom left stopped me cold. Six little boxes mocking me with their emptiness.

• 56A. Deceptive talker (JIVER). I had _I_ER and could not think of anything that could have fit.
• 61A. Really bothered (ATEAT). I had _T_AT. I tried STI AT but for some reason it didn’t work. On a side note, after I finally got this filled in my first thought was, “What does AT EAT mean?”
• 64A. Chocolatier’s gear (MOLDS). I had _O_DS. HOODS and MOODS were my two big guesses. Remember when you were a kid and got sick on a big bag of chocolate hoods? No, neither do I.
• 56D. What 20-, 37- and 53-Across may do (JAM). This was the key to the whole corner. After much staring and wringing of hands the answer finally came to me. I have to say, it’s pretty clever. Who knew RUSHHOURTRAFFIC, a HARDROCKBAND and a LASERPRINTER had anything in common?

Other than that, it was not the most interesting puzzle. It was oddly filled with a lot of car/vehicle-related answers: AUDI, REOS, IROC, FLATBED, VEL, OILER, DORY. Meh, whatever.

One clue that I definitely did not like:

• 28A. Baseball rarity (TIE). This answer doesn’t really have anything to do with baseball. It could have been clued Basketball rarity or Football rarity or Curling rarity (actually, I have no idea of the frequency of ties in the game of curling). To me a baseball rarity is a triple play or perfect game or the Giants having a good team (Go Dodgers, hee hee).

So, to sum up, if I had finished in under 10 minutes this would have been the greatest Wednesday puzzle ever. But I didn’t, so it’s not.