Brian: Sunday, 4-13-08
New York Times – 40:17
Los Angeles Times – 27:40
Philadelphia Inquirer – 26:36 (or thereabouts — screwed up the timer, and estimated some time missed… not that it matters to you).
New York Times: How Insulting!
by Cathy Millhauser; edited by Will Shortz
I am supposed to be cleaning my office right now, and instead, I took forty minutes to do a puzzle. I am an idiot. But I was able to do this puzzle with limited help from the outside world. Fun little gimmick here, based on the title, “How Insulting!” — the three letter slang “DIS” appears in all the theme answers, changing them from normal phrases to cute new phrases:
- 22A. Foul weather condition? : [DIS]GUSTING WINDS
- 30A. Some moralizing about getting off a balance beam? : SERMON ON THE [DIS]MOUNT
- 38A. “Do your thing, Jack the Ripper”? : GO [DIS]FIGURE
- 59A. Sophistication of clubs like Sam’s and BJ’s? : [DIS]COUNTER CULTURE — Something doesn’t sit right with this one. Sam’s and BJ’s are known for their discounts, not their discounters. I don’t even know what a discounter is, except maybe a person who applies the savings to my purchase.
- 68A. Concerns of someone who’s choking? : FOOD AND [DIS]LODGING — Again, I’m not wholly satisfied with this answer. I got it very quickly, so that wasn’t the problem. It’s just that the altered phrase doesn’t really feel comfortable on its own, whereas most of the others do. “Food and specifically the dislodging of it” is the sentiment here. But specifically, I don’t think that someone choking is concerned for the food. I choked on a jelly bean last year, and was scared out of my mind. I only thought of the jelly bean after I had coughed it up — and then, only to find out what color and flavor it had been so I could avoid those specific enemies for the remainder of my days.
- 88A. Her Royal Daunter? [DIS]MAY QUEEN — I don’t understand this one at all. What is a May Queen? (I asked Wikipedia, and in case you don’t like to click on links, they told me this [and I paraphrase]: The May Queen is also known as the goddess of spring and the Queen of Elves. She embodies purity and the potential for growth. She personifies the energy of the earth.) Now that I’ve read that… I still don’t know what a “dismay queen” is. A queen who is dismayed? Is daunt a synonym for dismay? I had the answer in place, and doubted it the whole time, until the applet told me it was all okay.
- 96A. Coleslaw-loving children? : CABBAGE [DIS]PATCH KIDS — Okay, sure. To dispatch, though, is to send out or possibly to kill, right? So these children are either sending the cabbage to… the cole slaw factory? Or they are killing the cabbage by either chopping it up (working in the factory) or eating it. Or do we think that they are sending it off to its mortal coil by eating it?
- 111A. Find chewing gum under a desk, perhaps? : DUCK AND [DIS]COVER
The rest of the grid posed a few challenges to me that required some research — crossings for which I knew neither bit of trivia. Do you really care which trivia I knew and didn’t know? Probably not, so I won’t bother.
Los Angeles Times: “Tax Audit: The Musical”
by Nora Pearlstone; edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
If Friday’s New York Sun puzzle (with musical theater themed clues) was up my Shubert alley, this puzzle was a one-night flop. All the theme clues were set up as dialogue in a script, but they were titles of songs sung by pop stars.
Rather than go into what the clues and answers were (you’re solving this in Across Lite, which has the answers built in — you don’t need me for that), I’ll instead discuss how much I hate the kind of musical that this alleges to be. Please note: I don’t hate this puzzle; rather, it was quite delightful. Despite the crossings of imaginary words that you all made up just for this puzzle, like G-SUIT/DIGRAM, ARRAU/OAS, ADENI/DSO — I think it should be a law that you don’t get to cross random acronyms with words or names based in other languages. There’s just no way to figure it out, if you don’t happen to simply know everything in the universe — I had a good time.
No, if this was actually a musical, and the songs were all by different pop artists (The Beatles, Frankie Avalon, Elvis, etc.), it would be what we call a jukebox musical. And a jukebox musical is where someone takes a bunch of songs they like and makes up some convoluted story to attempt to string some characters through a concert of hits. Sometimes, it seems to work (”Movin’ Out” with the songs of Billy Joel or “Mamma Mia” with the songs of ABBA), and often it fails miserably (”All Shook Up,” “Good Vibrations” or “Lennon,” to name a few).
Why does it fail? Because although it seems that hit songs are enough to engage an audience, we are still a culture that likes stories. Right now, we seem to like imaginary stories about famous people (do you think People magazine really has the authoritative answer on why Britney has gone insane?) or imaginary stories about normal people put onto television (Survivor, Dancing With My Mother, Who Wants To Be A Surgeon, etc.). These are engaging because they involve people actually doing things, usually things we can’t (or don’t want to) do. In “Good Vibrations,” it was a bunch of people going to the beach and being in love with each other. So what? Where’s the magic? Where’s the mystery? Where’s the journey that I need a play for, because I can’t do it myself?
[NOTE: My apologies to anyone from "Good Vibrations" who reads this. Feel free to write to me and complain at rbxblog@gmail.com.]
Sigh. Maybe I’ll write a humongous crossword puzzle musical, where the entire grid turns out to be the score or something. And right after that, I’ll file my taxes.
