Ryan and Brian Do Crosswords

We got super monkey hacked.  Some jerks went in and destroyed everything after Oct. 22nd (which was our last backup).  So, things are a little wonky here.  We are currently working on restoring the posts and the podcasts.  Unfortunately, I think the comments on the destroyed posts are gone forever.

If you’re experiencing any weirdness with the podcast (particularly episodes 77 and 78) or the blog please let us know.

Neither of us really know what we’re doing but we’ll try to get over this hump as smoothly as possible.

Thanks.

[Somehow comments from last week's Friday puzzle have attached themselves to this post.  I haven't asked Brian yet but I'm going to guess neither of us know how that happened.]

Can’t do it. I’ve been staring at this thing, about 85% done for the better part of an hour, and I give up. Fair warning: this is going to be an angry post. The combination of answers I don’t like in the grid plus the fact that I can’t complete it makes Brian a cranky boy. So if you don’t like this sort of thing, call Ryan. He’s always cheerful.

It’s a Patrick Berry puzzle, which in my opinion has come to mean two things. One, it’s masterfully crafted, and usually contains very clever wordplay, a fun gimmick, and a buttload of trivia, much of which I don’t know. The other thing it means is that Patrick Berry has written a zillion puzzles, and I wonder if he gets a bit of a free pass based on his reputation as a master puzzle crafter. Maybe the more seasoned constructors, like Mr. Berry, get certain puzzles accepted, puzzles which would likely be rejected had they been delivered by rookies. Maybe? Maybe. I’m thinking specifically of the very frustrating puzzle from August 2, 2009, which contained, essentially, unchecked squares with Greek letters spelled out in them. Today’s puzzle has another multiple-letters-in-a-box gimmick, but its inconsistency leaves me dissatisfied and annoyed.

The gimmick is hinted at by the title: “That Is Two Say.” Okay, this title doesn’t actually make any sense, except that the word “two” probably means that there will be, duh, two of something. Fine. In this case, it’s that some squares (randomly scattered around the grid) will get two letters in them. And these squares, when read in one direction, will sound like the two letters as syllables, and in the other direction, the letters will just be part of the bigger word.

Did that make sense? No? Good.

The first one I got was 60A. Music compilation marketer and 60D. “Married… With Children” actress. In this case, it’s K-TEL Records and KT (Katey) SAGAL. Get it? See, across, it’s the normal spelling of… wait, not really. I guess not really, because K-TEL isn’t a normal word. So in this instance, the K is a letter, and the T is part of TEL. But the down version seems to follow the vague formula, in that the name Katey and the letters KT both sound the same, when spoken aloud.

Okay, let me try to find one that works better.

108A. It’s not to be touched and 96D. Flu symptom, with “the” : POISON IV and SHIVERS. So this one works a little bit better. Except I’m not 100% sold since IV looks so much like the word it sounds like, ivy. I mean, the I isn’t even representative of a longer-spelled-out syllable. It’s just I.

Fine. One more try. Let’s see if there’s one instance of the theme actually working. How about 103A. American everyman and 104D. Carny booth prize : JOHN Q. PUBLIC and QP (Cupie) DOLL. Nope. Same kind of problem as with K-TEL.

Seriously? So this so-called theme doesn’t really follow a terribly consistent pattern, unless that pattern is to kind of work and kind of not.

Now, there are sections of the grid I haven’t even finished yet. I gave up, because I found solving this puzzle to be so frustrating and un-fun that two hours was more than enough. Below is my grid. The circled letters are the “theme,” and the grayed out boxes are the things I had to cheat on.

Oops. I already see a mistake I only partially corrected. 77A. Driving surface is TEEPAD, not TEEWAD. What’s a TEEPAD? I guess it’s some kind of golf thing. I had previously tried FREEWAY here, with the FR in one box, and then attempted to come up with the name of a Pointer sister that had an FR in it. I don’t know what I was thinking.

Here’s the rest of the theme entries:

• 14A. Club and 14D. Casual farewell : CUDGEL and CU (see you) LATER
• 24D. Post decorations on four-posters and 31A. Dental problem : BEDKNOBS and TOOTH DK (decay)
• 40A. Praiseworthy and 13D. Latin catchphrase sometimes seen on sundials : ADMIRABLE and CARPE DM (diem). First of all – Latin has catchphrases? Is that why the language has lasted the test of time so well? And second of all, the sundial thing – is that just there so that when you think of the one Latin phrase you know (carpe diem) you second-guess yourself because there were no sundials in “Dead Poet’s Society”?
• 47A. Chianti and Beaujolais and 48D. Singer who player herself in “Ocean’s Eleven” : REDS and ED (Edie, or maybe Eydie) GORME
• 67D. How drunks drink and 74A. “Fer-de-Lance” mystery novelist : TO XS (excess) and REX STOUT. Yes, use this one horrible time to not talk about Nero Wolfe, which is the only way anyone knows who Rex Stout was.
• 70A. 1873 adventure novel that begins and ends in London and 55D. Units of fineness : AROUND THE WORLD IN AT (80) DAYS and KARATS.
• 83D. Chisel face and 87A. Stop worrying : BEZEL and REST EZ (easy)
• 93A. Dipstick housing and 94D. Driver of the Cannonball Special : CRANKCASE and KC (KC? Or Casey?) JONES
• 116A. Jealous and 107D. Sneaker material : GREEN WITH NV (envy) and CANVAS. This may have been the one theme crossing that actually seemed to a) work, and b) be solvable by the idiots in my office (me).

My last series of gripes is with the entries that just don’t make sense for me:

• 56A. Authors’ aids: Abbr. : AGTS. How does this work? If the agent is helping the author, is he not an aidE? Or does the mere fact that he’s aiding the author make him an aid? And what agents aren’t really just in it for themselves anyway? The author is merely a vehicle to bring income to the agent.
• 78D. One end of a digression, for short? : PAREN. What is this, for parenthesis? Who says “paren”? And why does this clue get a question mark? It’s not clever, and it’s not wordplay. In fact, it’s not even a word.
• 83A. Republic once known as Dahomey : BENIN. Joon, don’t even bother. I’m in a bad mood already.
• 89D. Mug with a mug : TOBY. What on earth is this?
• 97A. Masters piece : POEM. Who is Masters? Someone famous? I’m sure. I’ve never heard of the Bard Masters.
• the crossing of 106A. Unaccented syllable and 100D. “Peer Gynt” princess : ATONIC and ANITRA. First of all, ANITRA and ANITA in the same grid? Feh. See also: SMIT/SMUT and TEATS/YEATS. Second of all, stop crossing two things that aren’t words.
• the crossing of a whole bunch of names and a theme entry made the middle of the grid a big-time goat rodeo. REX STOUT crossing with TO XS, TROLLOPE and DUANE.
• 101D. Bad connection, say : MISHIT. I had all but the first two letters in place, thanks to crossings. And thanks to that, my crossword puzzle had a naughty word in it, and all the letters were right. Ha ha ha.

You know – I’m going to stop here. I just didn’t like this puzzle. I didn’t like that the theme squares were randomly placed, that they had no consistency with across and down, that they had no consistency with whether the letters were parts of words or initials or letters or whatever.

I admire Patrick Berry’s puzzles a great deal – most of the time. I admit, I didn’t care for the one with the Greek letters. And I don’t care for this one very much. It’s clever, but I wanted it to be done thoroughly, not arbitrarily.

I look forward to the rest of the world singing Mr. Berry’s praises in the comments below.

I’m still playing around with different things, so here’s my latest effort. It’s two miniature puzzles, both 7×7. I used bars instead of black squares to separate words — although there aren’t that many words to work with. For cluing, I checked up on old clues that had been used for many of the entries here (yes, the fill is nothing out of the ordinary), and tried to keep things a little more consistent than I had in my last puzzle. They’re both probably rather easy, considering that if you get one answer, you’ve got most of many other answers, too.

I’d love your opinions on them, so please feel free to say anything and everything in the comments. I use this blog as a place to try out first drafts, so it’s not like I’m pretending that these are polished, finished products. Heck, there might even still be wrong clues or misspelled entries.

Also, what do you think of the 7×7 form? Is it too small to be worth it? Too easy to be challenging? Maybe I should really go for far more complicated fill? Really, any opinions are welcome.

Oh — and if you know anything about PDFs, maybe you can tell me how to make both of these into a one-page PDF. Don’t they look silly, with all the huge white margin?

• Puzzle Snack 1 (PDF, sorry no PUZ available)
• Puzzle Snack 2 (PDF)

It’s enough with the hackers already.  What do they want from us?  Do they really think that taking over our podcast feed and screwing with everyone’s subscription will convince people to buy weight loss pills?  Have any of you bought weight loss pills as a result of seeing spam on our site?  If you haven’t, please speak up.  Maybe we can show the hackers they’re wasting their time.  All their attacks serve to do is aggravate Brian and me.  Neither of us know what the hell we’re doing when it comes to technically running this blog so it takes hours and hours to undo what the hackers have done.  Oy.  You heard me.  Oy!!

Today’s puzzle is by one of our favorites, Brendan Emmett Quigley Down Under Starring Tom Selleck.  As usual he provided us with a fun theme and a tricky yet fun puzzle.  As many of you know, we here at the Be More Smarter offices think Brendan is the coolest guy in crosswords and today’s puzzle only helped to confirm our feelings.

The theme appended an extra S onto in-the-language phrases.

17A. Band without a drummer? (THE BEATLESS).  Brian is a musician and plays in bands.  My dream is that he will play in a band that doesn’t have a bass.  And he will call his band the Baseless Accusations.  So far, this hasn’t happened.  I continue to hold out hope.

24A. “See ya, idiot!”? (SO LONG ASS).  Both the clue and entry made me laugh.  Both are wonderful ways to say goodbye to someone.

35A. Mission of an Army officers’ school (TRAINING BRASS).  Can someone please explain the concept of the training bra to me?

47A. Nice touch from Roger Daltry and Pete Townshend (WHO CARESS).  Considering Townshend’s legal troubles, this entry takes on another ickier dimension.

54A. Playful kiss on the Discovery (SHUTTLE BUSS).  This one doesn’t seem to fit with the rest.  All the other entries are pronounced differently than their in-the-language counterparts.  This one is pronounced the same.  It doesn’t mean it’s bad, it’s just different.

Very fun theme.

Other highlights:

5A. ___ Thule, distant unknown land (ULTIMA).  I don’t know anything about Ultima Thule but I did play a lot of Ultima on the computer in high school.  Good times.

16A. Musician who started the Obscure Records label (ENO).  Much like you almost always see a baseball clue in puzzles constructed by Barry C. Silk, Friend and Confidante to Doug Peterson, Crossword Gentleman and Man About Town, you can bet there’ll be references in Brendan’s puzzles to bands and labels of which I’ve never heard.

63A. Like this puzzle…not! (EASY).  I can’t tell if this is a pun about the theme or if Brendan is using the last clue in the puzzle to warn us about the difficulty level.

5D. Home of Arches National Park (UTAH).  I’ve been there.  It’s great and makes you feel like you’re walking on another planet.  I have video of me there.  Unfortunately, it’s on a HI8 cassette which means it’s a pain in the ass to watch it.

9D. Rapid, to Rossini (MOSSO).  Dude, c’mon, seriously.

57D. One to one, for one (TIE).  Great clue.

Another great puzzle by Brendan and, shockingly, my 25th no-google in a row.

Next stop, Friday.

Lollapuzzoola is here!

Anybody who reads this blog is probably there so I think writing anything is probably pointless.  So, I’ll just say I’m almost done with this Karen M. Tracey puzzle.  I just figured out 4D. Swinger’s get-together? (JAZZ SESSIONS).  For quite a while I thought it was ORGY SESSIONS.  Hee hee.

Anyway, I just need that top left and I’ll be done.

But, hey, we’ll see you at Lollapuzzoola!

Next stop, Sunday.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Due to some technical difficulties, the next episode of Fill Me In is going to be arriving a little bit late today. Those difficulties may or may not include my ability to stay awake for enough hours to get the program done. Let the record show that Ryan completed his portion of the podcast preparation in a timely manner, and all the delay is solely my fault. Sad, but true.

Watch this space for the next episode of Fill Me In, a little bit later today. Thanks for your patience.

- Brian

Okay, who has gone and switched around Fridays and Saturdays on me? This is the third time in the last four weeks that I’ve been able to complete the Saturday and not the Friday puzzle. Confounding this further, today’s puzzle was co-created by Mike Nothnagel, Penpal Extraordinaire and Constructor of the Friday Puzzle (along with Byron Walden, who has not yet been given a nickname). I credit Mike’s nickname with all the clues I was able to get easily.

Oh, yeah — no-Google, baby. No-Google.

The big obstacle for me, and the last part to fall, was the top left. I had four clues (three downs and one across) that all collaborated at keeping me at bay:

• 1D. Hindu musician’s source material for improvisation : RAGAS
• 2D. Methyl orange or Congo red : AZODYE
• 3D. Woman’s name meaning “peace” : ZULEMA. Okay, this is ridiculous. Who the hello is Zulema? I have 978 friends on Facebook (most of whom I haven’t spoken to in years), and none of them is named Zulema, as far as I know. Perhaps I would know more if I spoke to my friends occasionally.
• 17A. “Haw” : GO LEFT. I’m going to use this on Ryan. Just wait.

The big standout feature of this grid is that it does not have crossword’s standard 180-degree rotational symmetry. Instead, it has a self-referential design, mildly clued as follows:

• 5D. They may be seen on a lake’s surface : REFLECTED IMAGES
• 23A. Rectangular array that’s identical when its rows and columns are transposed, as this puzzle’s grid : SYMMETRIC MATRIX

This only confirms for us that Mike Nothnagel knows everything about all levels of math, pie-thagorean squares be damned.

It’s late, and I’m tired. But I finished the damn thing. And my no-Google streak is now back at one. Hooray.

Go register for the ACPT. Come see me and Ryan on a panel. We’ll say something witty. Just for you. Also, even sooner than that, episode 42 of Fill Me In will happen in the next couple days, featuring an interview with four-time ACPT champion, Tyler Hinman [insert kickass nickname here].

See you Sunday!

I’m annoyed at the fact that my brand new dishwasher came out of the box not working. What is the point of buying something new if I have to pay the same amount over again to get it fixed before it’s even been used?

In the meantime, I was unable to solve this puzzle. What a surprise. Here is a lengthy list of things that either I don’t know or don’t actually exist.

• 1A. Aids in artful deception : WEASELWORDS. Also acceptable : HOME DEPOT, since they tricked me into thinking that my brand new dishwasher would actually wash dishes.
• 3D. Part if 16-Across: Abbr. : AGCY. Yucky abbreviation.
• 6D. Square, in 1950s slang, indicated visually by a two-hand gesture : LSEVEN. Is this one word? Hyphenated? Honestly, I thought the two-hand gesture was to indicate SQUARE. Must be a different two-hand gesture.
• 12D. Pet with short legs and a hard coat, informally : SCOTTIE DOG. Is this for a Scottish Terrier? Scotty, Scottie, Scotch — so many ways to randomly shorten a name. And really, those little dogs? Those are for people who are embarrassed to be cat lovers. Just get a cat.
• 14D. Reviews repeatedly : HASHES OVER. Doesn’t this just mean “reviews”? I mean, to do it repeatedly would be RE-hashing. So one hash = one review. I disagree with this clue/answer team.
• 19A. “The Daughter of Time” novelist : TEY
• 20A. Big Daddy player on 1950s Broadway : IVES
• 21A. Gabfest : KLATCH. I feel like both clue and answer here are imaginary words.
• 24A. Sink : SCUTTLE. All my dirty dishes are now in the scuttle.
• 25D. Measure of a newborn’s health, named for its developer : APGAR’S CORE or APGAR SCORE (I don’t know). Clearly I either have never had a child or I have never paid attention. I’ll let you figure out which it is.
• 26D. Extension of the terms of a marine insurance policy : SHORE COVER
• 29A. ___ of Galadriel (gift to Frodo Baggins) : PHIAL. Is this another word for VIAL? I have watched all the Lord of the Rings movies twice, and I still can not tell you more about what happens than “a bunch of short people with big feet wander for about a hundred years to throw away a piece of jewelry that everyone hates.”
• 33A. Antigen attacker : TCELL
• 33D. Wealthy Cayman Islands resident, maybe : TAX EXILE. I don’t know what this is at all.
• 34A. Year of the last blah blah blah who cares, it’s a Roman numeral : CDIV
• 36A. Street show : RAREE
• 37A. 2003 memoir of a TV executive : ROONE
• 40D. Private detective Mike of Brett Halliday novels : SHAYNE
• 44A. Switch : BEAT. I don’t understand this at all.
• 45D. ___ Rivera, Calif. : PICO
• 48A. Duct opening? : OVI. Not VIA.
• 49A. 1970s-’80s sitcom putdown/catchphrase : KISS MY GRITS. I have never heard this before. I’m sure it was very popular. But I never watched much television until the 1990s, and I’ve never had that many friends (Facebook notwithstanding), so I clearly missed this very important element of our culture. Is this grits like food?
• 52A. Loch ___, on the River Shannon : REE. What am I calling it when the clue is an arcane mystery that just makes me feel stupid? I need a name for this kind of clue. The River Shannon? Whatever.

So the difference between Thursday and Friday is that Thursday had one square I didn’t know (which, to be fair, was pointed out on all of the other blogs as a trouble square), and Friday had 1,762,991 squares I didn’t know. Thanks for playing. I’ll see you in last place at the ACPT.

Current no-Google streak: DEAD.

Sorry, dear readers. I will deal with both Thursday and Friday’s puzzles at the end of the day Thursday. Real life got in the way. Ryan will be upset when he learns of the news, but then I have plenty of ways to upset Ryan on a regular basis, so this isn’t out of the ordinary.

I’ll be back this evening.

I’ll admit it — I cheated at about half of this puzzle. It would have been left almost entirely empty, if I hadn’t bothered to look at someone else’s solution and copy about ten entries.

Oh my god, Frank Longo, why are you torturing me? You alone scare the living something out of me when I see your name in a byline. This has been the case in Games Magazine, this has been the case with your 25-foot-long puzzle (that still remains about 53% finished in a box on a shelf in my office).

And I got mad mad mad when I saw that Dan Feyer (who I know is a million times smarter than I’ll ever be) did it in 3:41. THREE FORTY-ONE? I had about six answers in place at 6:41, and after looking some up, realized that four of them were wrong. How on earth do you know everything?

I knew 62A. Killer of Greedo in a sci-fi film (HAN SOLO). And yes, he shot first.

So here’s my list of things I don’t understand:

17A. Payback factor : ACCRUED INTEREST. I don’t understand. I see that the clue is about paying a debt, and the answer seems related, but I don’t get it.

29A. Between green and black, say : RIPE. This is a major stretch, and I’m torn between thinking it’s incredibly clever and completely horrible. I *do* understand this one, though, so no need to smack me in the face with a green banana.

40A. Fort Worth’s ___ Carter Museum : AMON. Sometimes, when the grid is just full of random letters, I guess one can just Google an entry and then later figure out if there’s a clue to go with it. This idiot blogger has no clue about this museum.

42A. Jack : LONG GREEN. Is this about golf?

52A. Pulsar, e.g. : RADIO SOURCE. Is Pulsar a brand name? Or is this something in outer space? Or both?

59A. Explosive measure : KILOTON. As in “a kiloton of explosive stuff.” But then, couldn’t BAGGIEFUL also be an explosive measure?

2D. Crackpots : LOCOS. Aren’t crackpots people who are experts at things? For example: “Dan Feyer is a crackpot at crosswords.”

13D. Certain twin : SIS. Who’s twin is this? It’s apparently someone certain.

18D. Nigerian native : IBO. That’s a word?

28D. Hokey jokes : CORN. Right.

30D. Like correctional facilities : PENAL. Yes, when I’m trying to describe one of the other million things that are penal, I usually struggle to find the word, and say, “Well, it’s like… it’s… it’s like a correctional facility.”

31D. ___ Bowl : ALAMO. Might as well have been “Five-letter word” for the clue. Super Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Aloha Bowl… Really? There’s an Alamo Bowl? I challenge anyone reading this to tell me anyone who has ever played in the Alamo Bowl without looking it up.

34D. Year in which Middle English began, by tradition : MCL. It could be anything. And “by tradition”? Isn’t a tradition something that we do year after year? Like we all tease my father for using an electric knife on the frozen meringue-sorbet cake. That’s a tradition. What year a dead language may or may not have started is not a tradition.

44D. 1990s President of the Philippines : RAMOS. President + Philippines = Imelda Marcos’ shoe collection. That’s all I have.

46D. German magazine article : EIN. Why “magazine”? And for what it’s worth, the list of six German articles I know does not include this one (das, der, die, sie, ich, ach — and I’m sure at least one of those isn’t actually an article).

53D. Marsh bird : SORA. Sora, Amon, corn… these could be rivers I haven’t yet learned.

55D. Boot attachment : SKI. I always thought we attached the boots to the skis, not the other way around. Or is “attachment” a mutual experience?

56D. 1961 hit song for the Angels : TIL. In 1961, the Angels were a brand new expansion team in the American League. Their best player was leftfielder Leon Wagner, who hit 28 homers and batted .280. They went 70-91 and finished in eighth place. I know a lot about baseball, but I had no idea that the Angels ever released an album.

57D. Each, in scores : ALL. What scores use this? Is this supposed to be like “all the violins play here” as in “each and every violin”? Every score I’ve read, when they want all the instruments to play, use TUTTI.

Ryan, I am pleading with you. Don’t ever make me do a Saturday puzzle again.