Ryan and Brian Do Crosswords

Ryan remains out of town, so you’re still stuck with me. I know, you all like him better. But even though I don’t contribute as much, I’m still half of this operation, so you have to deal with me from time to time. Today is one of those times.

Amy Reynaldo and Tony Orbach

And whaddya know. It seems that our fellow bloggist (and crossword solver extraordinaire) Amy Reynaldo has taken the day off from writing about puzzles to spin one of her own! She has teamed up with Tony “Yesssss” Orbach for today’s offering. The title of this one is tricky in itself: M N O P. Looking at that alone, I assumed I’d be seeing some wordplay involving those four letters.

Like a Thomas Heilman story, I was about half accurate. What’s really going on here is that standard phrases with the letter M in them have had their Ms replaced with Ps. It’s as if the title is being spoken by the coiner of said phrases. “Yes, I’d like that assortment of letters, and also an M. No — P.” Herewith, the theme entries:

• 23A. Give Axl and Pete a break? : SPELL THE ROSES. I’m not sure what kind of a break Axl Rose is looking for, but Pete obviously is trying to get the world to forget about his gambling addiction so he can slip into the Hall of Fame. Let’s hear from the baseball enthusiasts out there — does Charlie Hustle belong in Cooperstown?
• 33A. Tripping over a threshhold, perhaps? : PORTAL DANGER. Has anyone played Portal? It’s a video game. There’s a flash version available, but I played it on the XBox 360. Wow. Just awesome. Just an awesome, awesome game. Brilliant in its simplicity, its cleverness. If you have an XBox 360 and haven’t played yet, get thee to work.
• 45A. Pea farmers? : THE POD SQUAD
• 51A. Summer apartment with no air-conditioning? : BOILING PAD. This was what I lived in for several years when I first moved to New York. Now my apartment has three air conditioners, but you can only have one on at a time, or else the power goes out. Lovely for when I’m in the office and my wife is trying to sleep.
• 69A. Floral Technicolor dreamcoat? : FULL PETAL JACKET. I’m not sure why Technicolor is capitalized. Is it a proper name? Or is just to deceive us and make us think about that Joseph musical with Donny Osmond?
• 91A. Strutting bird on an ice floe? : STUD PUFFIN
• 94A. Residents at a Manhattan A.S.P.C.A.? : NEW YORK PETS. Was the Manhattan thing a misdirection, since the Mets play in Queens? I know it doesn’t matter for clue/answer agreement, but I wonder.
• 105A. Move a movie camera around a community? : PAN ABOUT TOWN. This clue is a slight shout-out to Doug Peterson, who is of course a crossword gentleman and a man about town. Doug is attending Lollapuzzoola next month. What, you don’t have your tickets yet? Sign up now!
• 122A. Explanation for an interception? : PASS CONFUSION

The rest of the grid was really pretty easy solving. I was a little surprised only because Amy expresses such a strong desire for tougher clues and more difficult puzzles. But in this New York Times debut (yes, her debut! Congratulations, Amy!), she left us mortals with a puzzle we could all solve. A few crosswordy words (ELOI, SSW, ASTI, EDGER, ONO, LOLA), but also a handful of trickier entries. A few I didn’t know:

• 13A. Watercolor technique : GOUACHE
• 27A. Saroyan’s “My Name is ___” : ARAM. I thought the only crossword “my name is” person was Asher Lev.
• 57A. English author Blyton : ENID. Enough with the Oklahoma city, right?
• 101A. DC Comics superheroine : ISIS
• 115A. Interlaken’s river : AARE. Ah, rivers. I love you all so.

A relatively quick solve for me, no Google necessary.

You know, on the subject of the crosswordy words. It’s damn hard to fill a grid. I look at some of the puzzles that have what Amy has always called Scrabbly fill — stuff with lots of rare letters like K, Q, X and Z. Or fill that has tons of “new” words in it. Jim Horne keeps a stat on his site called the Freshness Factor, which tracks how relatively new the fill of any given puzzle is. His top 50 list is peppered with the likes of Frank Longo, Brendan Quigley and Manny Nosowsky. Coming up with words for a grid that have never seen a grid before — not not not not not not easy. (That was meant to be an emphasis on “not,” not a six-way negative.)

I’ve recently started trying to create some puzzles, and I invariably find myself stuck in a corner needing either imaginary acronyms (courtesy of Wikipedia) or just to have a bunch of empty squares with a note to the solver saying, “Sorry, I couldn’t figure out this area. Consider yourself solved.”

Thanks for a terrific puzzle, guys. Amy and Tony — congratulations on a fun Sunday!

See you Monday!