Ryan and Brian Do Crosswords

Gaaahhh!  One box away from a no-googling this Byron Walden puzzle.  Same old story.  The grid was complete, it wasn’t accepted and I couldn’t find my error.  I finally had to look at Orange’s blog to figure out where I went wrong.

30D. 100 aurar (KRONA).  I put KRONE.  Krone is the standard unit of currency in Norway and Denmark.  Krona is the standard unit of currency in Sweden and Iceland.  Seriously?  That’s like going to Canada and paying for everything in dollers.  This error also gave me SECRUM for 45A. Pelvic bone (SACRUM).  Again, very close, as you see a sacrum forms the posterior section of the pelvis and a secrum is the standard unit of currency in Finland.

I got everything else in this very enjoyable puzzle.  Perfect Saturday offering as I knew exactly 2 things on my first pass through the clues and gradually the whole thing came together.  What were those 2 things?

22A. “Lost” actor Somerhalder (IAN).  Just one of those names that’s stuck in my head.  I know Brian doesn’t want to hear it but Lost really got good again this past season.  It’s still totally ridiculous but very engaging.

31A. Playwright Peter of “Equus” (SHAFFER).  I was a little iffy on the spelling but I know this playwright well.  Amadeus is one of my favorites.

Hey, it’s Brian here, tacking on a few additional insights and/or useless wastes of space. I also knew these two answers on the first pass, although I couldn’t be sure I knew how to spell SHAFFER — could have been Schafer or Shaefer, for all I know.

This puzzle had a lot of great clues and answers.  My favorite section was the top left (Kretinga on a map of Lithuania).

1A. Holder of many a sandwich (ZIPLOCBAG).

15A. Piquant base for a sandwich (ONIONROLL).  I love onion rolls.  Seriously, what’s better than an onion roll?  You know what else I like that has onions?  Bialys.  They don’t get nearly as much press as bagels do but I’ll take a delicious, oniony bialy over a bagel every time.  Get yourself some.

17A. 2005 reality show hosted by Fabio (MRROMANCE).  There are a lot of competitions for which I’ll never be asked to participate.  World’s Tallest Triathelete, Neatest Vertical Handwriting, The Snowman who can Bench Press the Most Weight.  The list goes on.  But the top of that list is certainly reserved for Mr. Romance. (Ryan, I really want to photoshop this picture to have it include you.)

1D. Corps of corpses (ZOMBIES).  So what’s scarier?  The fast zombies or the slow zombies?

Over in the Kupiskis area I enjoyed:

10A.  They come with strings attached (HARPS).

18A. They come with strings attached (YOYOS).  I knew one of these was going to be YOYOS.

12D. The “I” of Elizabeth I? (ROYALWE).  Hands down, my favorite clue in the puzzle.

The Vilnius area had some good ones also.

57A. Ingredient in a mojito highball (SPEARMINT).  Why do I think this is spelled Speariment?  Have I been pronouncing it wrong this whole time?

59A. Goes yellow, say (TURNSTAIL).

61A. Will work? (OPEDESSAY).  I’m assuming this refers to George Will.  We also would have accepted the answer MOST BORING BOOK EVER WRITTEN ABOUT BASEBALL.

Here are the things I absolutely did not know.

19A. Steam-driven devices that pump water from mines (BEAMENGINES). For the longest time, I could not parse this answer… Be a mengines? Beamen Gines? I couldn’t figure out if it was a proper name, a person’s name, whatever. And even now that I know what it is — I don’t know what it is.

35A. “Gilgamesh,” e.g. (EPOS).  A word I have never heard before.

39A. Heart failures? (RENEGES).  I’m not sure I totally get this.  Oh wait, I think it has something to do with cards.

46A. Eponymous oilman Halliburton (ERLE).  Interesting little fact to know.

49A. Janissary commander (AGA).  The free dictionary tells me a janissary is a soldier in an elite Turkish guard organized in the 14th century and abolished in 1826.

51A.  Item called a geyser in Britain (WATERHEATER).  Well, I figured it had something to do with water.

4D. 1785 invention of England’s Edmund Cartwright (LOOM).  Looms have only been around since 1785?  That doesn’t seem right to me. Was this any loom? Or a particular kind of loom? I did a couple quick internet searches to try and be more smarter about things I didn’t know, and I may have seen (under duress of being very, very tired) that it was an electric loom…?

28D. “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” instrument (CELESTA).  This clue brought together 2 of my absolute favorite topics: Music and Things I’ve Never Heard Of.  Here is a picture of a celesta.  Explain to me why this isn’t a piano.

A celesta isn’t a piano because of a number of things. While both instruments use a mechanism in which pressing a key triggers a hammer to swing back (inside the console), a piano’s hammer strikes against strings that have been stretched to achieve certain pitches. A celesta’s hammer strikes back against metal plates, shaped and cast as to be certain pitches. I’m not 100% certain, but I think that the material of the hammer itself may be different as well — a piano’s hammer is a stiff felt-like material; the hammer of the celesta might also be metal (?).

And what I think makes this such a good puzzle is the obscure clues where positioned in such a way with the more gettable clues that a not more smarter person like myself was able to figure out the grid.  Great job.

A quick note about the live crossword battle royale.  I think it’s going to happen.  Somewhere in NYC and hopefully this summer.  More details to come on the blog and podcast.   Please continue to email us or comment about your interest in atttending, constructing a puzzle or both.

Next stop, Sunday.