Ryan and Brian Do Crosswords

Yesterday was Cinco de Mayo. This year, to celebrate, I ate at Taco Bell. I might be spending the next week recovering from that horrible choice.

New York Times – 6:41
Los Angeles Times – 7:44
(more…)

I’ve had a difficult time tearing myself away from a new XBox 360 game this weekend, so my blogs are coming about a little late… What can you do.

New York Times – 3:21
Los Angeles Times – 4:09
CrosSynergy – 3:24
New York Sun – 6:50
(more…)

Noses totally stuffed. Head throbbing. Can’t think. Tried to do puzzles anyway.

New York Times – 9:12
Los Angeles Times – 3:19 (I’m beginning to like this better than the New York puzzles…)
New York Sun – 5:16

(more…)

My cold is not better. I feel like crap. Over the past week, I managed to twenty-one Monday-level puzzles in a row in under five minutes. I was thrilled with this streak. This morning, I picked one up, and took seven minutes. Now I’m in a bad mood all day. This is not healthy.

And then I took a crack at today’s New York Times puzzle. Five minutes, forty-one seconds. I totally suck.

New York Times – 5:41
New York Sun – 3:40
Los Angeles Times – 3:50
CrosSynergy – gave up after ten minutes with only ten answers filled.

(more…)

I can barely see straight… The weekend was full of nephews and noise, today began with a 6:00am wake-up call courtesy of one young Mr. Levi Pontti — oh, so very cute, but oh, so very loud. Tonight, an enjoyable concert but a painfully unfortunate piano. And outside the theater tonight, I happened to see Jon Delfin. I didn’t say hello — Jon, if you read this, I saw you!

I also want to say, before starting in with the puzzles, that we’re getting lots of positive feedback on our podcast. If you haven’t checked it out, try the links to the right. iTunes has it, and you can also listen straight from this site. We’ve done six episodes so far (the next one will be this coming weekend), and we’re having a blast. Email us your thoughts and comments at rbxblog@gmail.com.

Finally — we have a group on Facebook. I don’t know if this links there successfully, but if not, get on your Facebook, and search the groups for one called “Ryan and Brian do Crosswords.”

Anyway. It’s Tuesday. Yesterday kicked my ass, but today, I’m trying again. Here we go…

New York Times – 6:30
New York Sun – 6:45
Los Angeles Times – 6:40

(more…)

Got home from the Yankees/Red Sox slugfest at about 12:45 am. Exhausted. Wife went to sleep, I went to try and tackle the Thursday in under 20 minutes. And I barely made it, with two cheats and a nearly frozen Firefox window.

New York Times – 19:35
Los Angeles Times – 13:10
(more…)

Yuck, yuck, yuck. And now, extra yuck. The first yucks were for the fact that I’m already exhausted from Podcast Episode #005 (get your download now!), and then that I ate too much Chinese food, and then that I just watched Night At The Museum, which was simplythemosthorriblethingI’veseeninyears.

After that, I tried to to Wednesday’s puzzles.

New York Times – 12:54 (worst Wednesday for me in what feels like centuries — except I’ve only been doing crosswords since early February)
Los Angeles Times – 8:59
New York Sun – 9:55
The Onion – 8:56

(more…)

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.

Haven’t started on the 25-foot deal yet… Not sure exactly how to begin. I suppose at the left edge, since it apparently gets harder as it progresses rightward. I have some work to do over the weekend (i.e. taxes), so we’ll see what happens. The wife is still rehabbing her knee, so I’m tending to her needs as well. Late Wednesday night, though, I tackled the Thursday challenges. Or, at least, some of them. (I still think that the Sun puzzles are out of my league.)

Also, I’m trying to use different colors for clue answers… Brown yesterday, purple today. We’ll see what I eventually like.

Scores
New York Times 18:55
Los Angeles Times 9:30
CrosSynergy 8:09
New York Sun 21:56 (with one gimme)
Wall Street Journal 29:52

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

Loved this. Absolutely loved this. The only bad part is that I took too much time looking for the gimmicks, I think it added minutes to my (already pathetic) time:

• 64A. What you can find in the grid after completing this puzzle, looking up, down, left, right and diagonally, word search-style : A DOZEN ROSES

And lo and behold, there are a dozen “ROSE” sequences hidden throughout the grid. Oh, such joy. The long center answer at 38A. Classic 1911 children’s novel… with a hint to this puzzle’s theme was THE SECRET GARDEN, which sadly I learned as a musical before I learned it as a book.

I had some trouble with a handful of things in the left area… 38D. One way to get to the top is always always something clever, and never something logical. I have probably missed cutesy clues for T-BAR on more occasions than I can count. A life in Maine apparently did not provide me with enough skiing jargon. And I went with the opposite guess on 39D. “Too great a burden to bear”: Martin Luther King, Jr. by trying to make HOPE work when he was talking about HATE. Up in the top right, my errant choices of ANOL, HARDWOOD and INK for 10D, 11D and 12D led me into all kinds of trouble. If only I knew that ALEPPO was a city in Syria, I might have avoided what felt like hours of cluelessness. (Can one suffer from cluelessness in a crossword puzzle, where one is inundated with clues?)

My Excel spreadsheet is getting out of hand. I’ve included a screen shot here. I think you can right-click and View image… to see it at it’s full resolution.

In other news, I’m making flash cards for myself on words I never remember. I’m starting with the list in Amy Reynaldo’s book, and adding to it as I go through archives of New York Times puzzles. To be fair, I’m not actually sure what my goal is here. I think my goal has many facets: 1) to be more smarter, thank you for playing; 2) to finish higher than 563rd at next year’s ACPT; 3) to complete a full week of New York Times puzzles without the aid of Google, Wikipedia or other internet sources (or any sources, for that matter). Perhaps I also need to buy a book of 1,000,001 useless facts.

Los Angeles Times
by Gary Steinmehl; edited by Rich Norris

Did it in half the time as the New York puzzle, but had about half the fun. It got off to a great start as the 1D. Sound of sawing wood was ZZZ. Initially, I hoped that triple letters or grouped consonants or something would be the trick. Alas, no. Instead, the trick was saved for the last of the down clues, 67D. Word that can precede the first word in the answers to starred clues (SKY). A little boring, and with it as the only throughline for the puzzle, left me wanting more. Maybe this was because of the absolute utter joy I had with the New York Times puzzle. I mean — a dozen roses! So cool!Because I’m more interested in the New York Times than the L.A. puzzle, I’ll just list the long answers here and be done with it:

• 18A. Doing the macarena, e.g. : LINE DANCING
• 23A. Stationery : WRITING PAPER
• 53A. Carefree : LIGHT HEARTED
• 61A. Cannonball origination spot : DIVING BOARD

There you have it.

CrosSynergy: “Ster-linguistics”
by Randolph Ross

Cute puzzle, if a little generic. The title was the most confusing part to me. Is the title a play on some long word I don’t know? Or a phrase I don’t know? Or is it just a random made up hyphenated word to explain that the long answers within the grid will get STER added to them somewhere?

• 17A. Physicians who treat unmarried women? : SPIN[STER] DOCTORS
• 25A. Dictionary reader, at times? : WEB[STER] BROWSER — I think this would have been better clued as “Online dictionary reader” or “Electronic dictionary reader.” The “at times” thing is a clue trick I really don’t care for that much.
• 42A. Those with affection for cool cats? : HIP[STER] HUGGERS
• 55A. Rodent in the rye? : HAM[STER] SANDWICH

Otherwise, there was one little gem within the grid: 36D. Pupil in the 70s? (C STUDENT)… Other than that, fairly straightforward. I was distracted in the middle (and paused the clock) while my wife killed a bumblebee in our foyer. I am deathly afraid of flying insects, and this guy was huge. I am still having a mild coronary, and it’s been twenty minutes.

New York Sun: Themeless Thursday
by Doug Peterson; edited by Peter Gordon

I tried. I let Across Lite show me a few mistakes (not answers, just where squares were wrong), and then I asked for one free answer at 8D. Rose’s home (PBS), which I still don’t understand. I assume there’s someone named Rose who has a show on PBS. Or lives at the station. I don’t know.

I think the Sun puzzles are like an insider game… You have to be brilliant to do them, to enjoy them. It’s like a secret society. If you have fun doing the Sun puzzles, you are part of the Crossword Society of the World. I am not a worthy pledge to such an organization. I need to be more smarter. Maybe next year…

Today, at Barnes & Noble, I picked up Frank Longo’s 25-Foot-Long Crossword Puzzle. I’m trying to figure out how best to proceed, and when I do, I’ll probably ramble about it here. Most likely, if you’re reading this, you’ve already done it yourself, but I’m a late (crossword) bloomer. I also got Amy Reynaldo’s book on conquering the New York Times puzzle. She’s a freakin’ genius — I will be lucky if I can ever consistently come in under five minutes on a Monday. Hell, I’ll be lucky if I can ever make it through an actual Monday day.

New York Times 9:37
Los Angeles Times 6:24
The Onion 12:02

New York Times
by Daniel Kantor and Jay Kaskel; edited by Will Shortz

After spending most of yesterday on the go, I only got to Tuesday’s puzzle this morning. As Ryan blogged about it (see below), I won’t bother. Instead, I’m getting up to speed on Wednesday, and took care of this little New York Times grid in just under ten minutes. As I check my nerdy spreadsheet, I see that my average Wednesday time has dropped from 11:30 to 11:23 with this recent accomplishment. Yay me! (And P.S. — Boo me for having a nerdy spreadsheet… Perhaps I will link to it from here, and you can all see that I’m actually more of a dork than blogs and podcasts show!)

While the dailies don’t have titles per se, this puzzle did give us one as something of a wrap-up to the theme clues. The first three of the theme:

• 20A. “I asked for tomato bisque, not gazpacho!” (complaint #1) : MY SOUP IS COLD — Incidentally, I only just noticed now that this is not just a reference to generic soup complaints (of which there may be several), but also that gazpacho is a cold soup. Duh. Come on, Brian — be more smarter!
• 28A. “Has our waiter even made eye contact?” (complaint #2) : ARE WE INVISIBLE?
• 47A. “What, are they growing the food?” (complaint #3) : WHERE’S OUR ORDER?

and all summarized with 54A. Title of this puzzle : WHINE AND DINE.

The rest seemed to flow smoothly. I was pleased to see myself with about 75% of the grid filled at just under five minutes. That it took another five to get the rest was frustrating, especially since I had errors that I didn’t know I had. Apparently, I thought it was ALAN Robert, not Robert ALDA who won a Tony for “Guys and Dolls” (56A), and that somehow Mitt ROMNEY was the German commander at the invasion of Normandy (29A), and not Erwin ROMMEL. Whoops.

Because it was easy to find, I’ve included a picture of 32A. “South Park” boy (IKE).

Los Angeles Times
by Donna S. Levin; edited by Rich Norris

I’m quickly skimming through the clue list, and can’t seem to find anything to explain the nature of this puzzle’s theme. The four long answers all rhyme with “Alice,” but aside from that — there’s little else to say. I seem to run the L.A. Times quicklier than the New York puzzles, so maybe I’m on the wrong coast.

So you’re looking for MARIA CALLAS, BLENHEIM PALACE, WYNTON MARSALIS and HOLY CHALICE. That’s what you’re here for, right? There you go.

The Onion

This is the second Onion puzzle I’ve tried to do, and I just don’t seem to wrap my head around them very well. The whole bottom left was full of things that I either didn’t consider or didn’t know:

• 51D. False flattery : SMARM – I had S—M, and was sure it was STEAM. I realize now that the phrase I was thinking of was “blowing smoke,” but no phrase I ever thought of was “blowing smarm.” I always just described generally icky people as being smarmy, never thinking that it meant something more specific. Oops. Thanks Onion, for helping my vocabulary!
• 55A. Vaccine mixture, for short : MMS – what is that even short for?
• 61A. Speedily : APACE – I don’t even know if I knew “apace” was a word, let alone what it meant.
• 66A. Scout’s mission : RECON – Part of my issue here was that I had STEAM back at 51D, so I was looking for something beginning with an A. The other part was that I was thinking about boy scouts and girl scouts and Thin Mint cookies, and nothing about actual military scouts ever entered my mind.
• 62D. Country’s David Allen : COE – I am now assuming that’s his last name.

This blog has taken me fourteen hours to actually publish, so I’ll stop here without doing the New York Sun. Besides, I ain’t smarter enough yet for that one…