Brian: Friday, 3-28-08
New York Times 39:51 (idiot level: fairly low — two clues required help)
Los Angeles Times 27:50 (idiot level: low — one clue)
New York Times
by Barry C. Silk, edited by Will Shortz
Let me take a moment to acknowledge a few sites that have linked to us: Madness… Crossword and Otherwise and Crossword in Gothic have both help support our fledgling efforts. Thank you!
Today was a rough day. I had eight hours of auditions, which got rather tedious by mid-afternoon. At these auditions, people come in and sing a song or two. We’ve asked that if people want to sing two songs, that each one be no more than sixteen measures long. SIXTEEN. That’s a number, and if you count upwards by integers starting at one, it’s the sixteenth number. It’s amazing how many people say to me, “Well, this is about twenty or so. Close enough, right?” The truth is that sometimes it’s close enough, and sometimes when you say “it’s about twenty” and you mean “it’s more like forty” because the truth is that it’s actually fifty-three — come on. When we say “sixteen bars,” it’s not because we don’t like watching you perform. It’s because we’re not looking for a full performance, we’re looking for a simple representation of your talent.
And in much more serious news (although not life-shatteringly serious news), my wife jammed up her knee pretty bad today. She’s in rehearsal for a show (she’s a singer/actress), and was scheduled to fly out to Raleigh, NC on Monday. Now with a strained tendon (?), she’s on crutches for at least a week, and embarking on a combination of physical therapy and pain medication with the hopes that she’ll be able to get back into the show around mid-April. If you send good thoughts my way, forget about trying to vibe me toward solving Saturday’s puzzle (I may not even attempt it), and instead hope for my wife’s swift recovery.
Sigh.
Okay, enough ranting. The Friday puzzle was, in typical fashion, impossible. I read the entire list of across clues, and the first one I was able to enter correctly was the last one: 63A. Brandy holder (SNIFTER). Okay, truth be told, I entered a lot of other answers, too, but they all turned out to be wrong. But this last one somehow opened up my eyes to a bunch of the downs in the lower right, and before long, I had that whole quadrant filled. Being the sports fan that I am, I was pleased to see 28D. His #13 was retired in 2000 by the Miami Dolphins (MARINO) and 38D. Best substitute on the court (SIXTH MAN). I initially tried SPORTS GEAR for 31D. Gym shoes, e.g., and as it turned out, the errant G was the last square I needed to correct before my puzzle was complete. (SPORTS WEAR, of course, is the correct answer.) And on a side note, the “e.g.” did not flummox me as it has been known to do.
I had more trouble with both the lower left and the upper right, as I was combining shot-in-the-dark guesses with answers that had too many options. 11D. Its scores range from 120 to 180: Abbr. seemed like it could be MCAT or GMAT, as well as the correct LSAT. 57A. Six bells, nautically was clearly not going to make sense numerically, but was it THREE, SEVEN or EIGHT and was it A.M. or P.M.? (THREE P.M.) I don’t know where my brain found EPPIE as the answer to 48D. “Silas Marner” girl, since the truth is that I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of Silas Marner (or Eppie Marner, if that’s even her name). Also, no matter that it was right, I didn’t like WHELP as the answer to 47D. Whippersnapper, because the words were too similar to one another. And sadly, 13D. Major conclusion? (ETTE, which I did guess correctly) led me in the wrong direction for 53D. Major start? (apparently not DRUM, which is what I insisted was part of a cute pair — I should have known better, and gone with URSA from the start).
Back to the top right… I struggled with 14D. Coin on the Spanish Main (REAL) because while I had no idea what the Spanish Main was, I deduced it was going to be some random spelling of that four-letter R coin… REAL, RIAL, RIEL, RYAL RYEL, RYUH, RJEW, RAQT, RXCP, R&@!… And for some reason, I decided that 12D. Capital of Upper Austria was BENZ, not LINZ. This led to major confusion over everything else before I focused on 16A. A mouse may help you get there (WEBSITE, and I knew all the while what kind of mouse was in play here) and sorted everything else out from there.
But then I got to the left side, which had me lost. I got the top three rows (ACQUIRE, TOURNEY and T-MOBILE), and knew that 2D. Follows was going to be either COMES LATER or COMES AFTER (the first, as it were). 1D. Where it’s happening had me sitting at my desk saying aloud, “Where it’s happening… what is ‘it’? Where is ‘it’?” I figured out AT THE to start, but the rest eluded me. I also had a big mistake at 23D. Be glued (to), where I put ATTACH. This, of course, was the one clue I felt secure about. So I had the -TER at the end of 2D and the incorrect ATTACH at 23D. Oh, and I also started with SANE instead of SANO for 26D. Not loco, despite recognizing that I was not looking for an English word. This all led to a big goat rodeo of wrongness in the 32A/37A/40A/43A zone. And as all four of those clues were specific things in categories that will always stump me (Foreign airlines? Gases that aren’t INERT or NEON? Psychological problems? Four-lettered anythings?), there was little I could do except stare at it forever — or look it up.
Using our friends at XWord Info, I snuck a peek at 23D (ADHERE) and 1D (AT THE SCENE), which cleared the way for everything else. (Seriously — 3D. W.W. II shelter: QUONSET HUT? Wow.)
In related news, I have designed a puzzle. It’s my first effort, but I think it’s not too bad. Maybe I’ll post it here for people, and get some feedback on it…
Los Angeles Times
by Lee Glickstein, edited by Will Shortz
Not much time to write about it, but I got up too early this morning so I did the Los Angeles Times puzzle. Or, most of it. The theme was fun, and a trick often used in cryptic crosswords (which I like better than normal crosswords). 62A. Reverend honored in this puzzle — well, any regular solver of cryptics (if not of other puzzles, too) would know SPOONER. So then it was just a matter of recognizing the spoonerisms in the theme answers:
- 1A. Reverend turns game stick into neat church area? (COOL PEW) — I spent too long trying to make sense of either “bat” or “apse” as one half of the pre-spoonerized answer.
- 20A. Reverend turns utility pipe into service improvement? (MASS GAIN)
- 30A. Reverend turns wage issuer into Mother’s Day minister? (MAY PASTOR) — I’m not familiar with this term. And also, I found both “wage issuer” and it’s original term, “pay master” both rather obscure, even relative to this puzzle’s clues.
- 38A. Reverend turns fighter planes into proper chapel towers? (FIT SPIRES) — like with 1A, I focused too much on a wrong idea; in this case, it was something to do with “jet” something.
- 50A. Reverend turns quiet waters into a hymn setting? (PSALM KEY) — I liked this one a lot, although I’m not much for “key” as the right word for a musical setting. From a composer’s standpoint, I see “setting” as something more to do with style and arrangement, not the key signature.
I had a little trouble with the lower left, because I wanted DETENTE, not ENTENTE to be the answer to 59A. International alliance, even though I don’t know what either word means. And on the subject of words I don’t know, EGESTED was a new one at 61A. Expelled, and is also apparently new to this blog editor’s spell check.
The last clue that required some Across Lite help was 46A. Fortune (MINT). I had -IN-, but didn’t know 29D. Muslim judge (HAKIM – which is a word I sadly only know from the musical Oklahoma!) or 43D. Loud speaker (STENTOR – which is another word that my spell checker apparently doesn’t know either). Since every option I put into that crossing at STENTOR looked wrong, I never was able to find the proper answer at 46A. Thank you, Across Lite, for cleaning up my mess.
Now off to work…
