The JimH Crossword Blog

MAN Descending a Staircase

We don't hear from Stanley Newman that often. Today's Tuesday, September 2 puzzle (answers) is his 12th in my database stretching back to his first nearly 15 years ago. It was typical Tuesday difficulty but the theme was completely unhelpful for the simple reason that I couldn't figure it out while I was solving.

In fact, I couldn't figure it out after I had finished solving it either. Robin looked at my answers and spotted the MAN stepping down to the right through the five 15-letter answers. I guess that's it. If there's something more, please let me know.

The image is Duchamp's famous Nude Descending the Staircase No. 2. This seemingly innocent piece of, uh, erotica I guess, was rejected by the Salon des Indépendants in Paris and caused a huge scandal when it was finally displayed in New York City in 1913. I wonder if this is what Mr. Newman was thinking about when he devised his equally scandalous crossword.

Here's the Freshness Factor surprise du jour. The word CLOCK has never appeared as an answer in a NYT puzzle before today. TEN COMMANDMENTS has now appeared 7 times. My favorite clue was Peter Gordon's: "contents of some tablets," in 2002.

GPS is a fairly common answer that until recently referred, somewhat awkwardly, to "family docs." Modern technology has made this a better answer ever since Global Positioning Systems have become more popular.

I suppose this puzzle gives me an excuse to include another fine art morphing video. This one is called Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase.

Finally, here's the answer to the question I posed yesterday: which crossword holds the record for most occurrences of a single letter? In 1994, Cathy Millhauser constructed a Sunday puzzle called Eland which repeated one letter 138 times. (Once again, that's a direct link to XWord Info since it predates the NYT puzzle archives.) The daily record holder is perhaps even more amazing. One letter is repeated 78 times in a 15 by 15 grid.

Haven't we met somewhere recently?

You know that sense of déjà vu you get when you fill in an answer and you think, haven't I seen this one recently? Didn't this just show up yesterday, in fact?

It's not as surprising as you might think. For example, today "many an ex-pat takes it" is ESL. That answer showed up yesterday as "night school class, for short."

We can play this Common Answer game all the way back to last weekend. UNION showed up yesterday (Thursday) and Wednesday. TNOTE was in Wednesday and Tuesday. ONEAL was Tuesday and Monday, and NEED appeared in Monday and Sunday.

This seems strange because English has, say, a quarter of a million words and yet 42% of NYT puzzles have at least one answer that also appears in the previous day. In fact, nearly 150 Shortz-era puzzles have 3 or more repeats from the day before, 24 puzzles have four repeats, and on five separate occasions, 5 words have been repeated. An example: ESPY, ERASE, END, ALAI and DEER each were answers on Monday, Dec. 29 and Tueday, Dec. 30, 2003. The record is 6 answers repeated from the day before: SARA, ODOR, TIP, HAHA, CHE and ACHE on October 22 and 23, 1995. That's a Sunday to Monday transition where repeats, for reasons you can guess, are most likely.

Here's a three-peat you might remember because it was only a few months ago. OLDIE, ERASE, and AMOK were Tuesday and Wednesday answers on April 15 and April 16 this year.

The reasons for all this have to do with the nature of combinatorial statistics but also, of course, the environmental pressure that allows some combinations of letters to thrive in the grid while others, unable to adapt, look for different niches like physics textbooks or diaries of teenagers.

The Friday, August 29 puzzle (answers) is by Mike Nothnagel. No surprise. It's his ninth puzzle of the year and six have been Friday's. He's found his ecological niche.

As usual, it's a good one. I'll hit some of the highlights. "At the Center of the Storm" is George Tenet's book about his years leading the CIA. Ibsen and his countrymen are NORSK, pronounced norshk. Jacques TATI starred in Mon Oncle in 1958. "Sorry souls" are, indeed, PENITENTS. "Step the meek fowls where ERST they ranged" is from Emerson's Threnody. Tough clue. And this one's tricky: "Rice product." That would be Anne Rice who writes NOVELs.

I'm not sure SINUOUS is "making waves" but I guess it's ok. OCTUPLETs or twins for that matter might be infants but they might also be grandmothers. Calling them infants reminds us of how fragile multiple-birth babies are since survival is often tenuous.

My friend Danny never was able to buy the Batmobile. Too bad. I always hoped he'd give me a ride around Gotham City in it.

Popular long answers

I get a lot of email here at The JimH Crossword Blog. Sometimes readers take issue with one of my random opinions, sometimes they just want to let me know they read my blog, often they ask interesting questions.

Julia, a Deputy Editor at that ezine (sic) Slate thought my readers might enjoy this diatribe against puzzles and puzzlers. I found it hilarious, or maybe I was outraged. Or both. What do you think? Discuss.

I blogged recently about the most popular answer words and another reader wondered if any answers longer than fifteen letters have been used more than once. That's not something I track but I dug into the database to find out. The answers are surprising.

16 letters: You might correctly guess that FLY IN THE OINTMENT, PASS INTERFERENCE, and SHRINKING VIOLET would appear more than once, but what about that famous "Jane Austen book about Rosa Parks," RIDE AND PREJUDICE or that "Henry James story about a mutiny," THE TURN OF THE CREW?

17 letters: TURN THE OTHER CHEEK, WEARING OF THE GREEN and SYDNEY GREENSTREET make sense, but don't forget the "unfinished Norman Mailer work about strip-searching narcotics smugglers" known as THE NAKED AND THE DEA.

19 letters: There are no 18-letter duplicates but this "homily about gymnastics" has been used twice: SERMON ON THE DISMOUNT.

20 letters: Yes, disturbingly, there's a reused answer this long too. "Nose-picking and belching in the White House" is one of the clues for GROSS NATIONAL CONDUCT. That phrase has the honor of being the longest reused answer.

The Thursday, August 21 puzzle by Gary J. Whitehead (answers) doesn't use any of those answers. The idea of an ageless theme is fine but it's made even better here because all the de-aged answer phrases are clever.

I like how crosswords have a way of keeping you humble. Well, not you probably, but me anyway. "Beethoven's ____ Symphony" was a piece of cake for me. Old Ludwig only named two of his nine, and since Pastoral didn't fit it had to be Eroica. Herr von Beethoven may have given the rest only numbers but the ninth is commonly and, I'm afraid, famously referred to as the CHORAL Symphony for reasons that make sense if you listen to it. Better yet, go see it. Wherever you live, your local professional orchestra trots it out every year or two. Don't worry, the music is great enough to withstand repeated performances.

The last Down clue is "U.S./U.K. divider." I wonder if it's an intentional reference to George Bernard Shaw's famous observation that "England and America are two countries separated by a common language." Today, the answer is ATL.

As a matter of interest, today's constructor has his own Wikipedia entry.

Inside Jokes

I don't usually blog about what I happen to find difficult in a puzzle because, you know, who cares and I'd rather talk about what I find interesting, but today they overlap. The Sunday, August 10 pangram by Will Nediger (answers) has a typical Sunday sort of theme. It worked as intended for me. Once I figured out the trick, the circles helped me solve some of the clues but I still got tripped up in a few corners.

31 Across and Down was a tough cross. You had to know either that TITUS was "Vesparian's successor" or that TSURIS meant trouble or woe in Yiddish. Post "I, Claudius" rulers are tough but Titus is a good guess for any 5-letter emperor since there were a few. In fact, Vesparian's first name was also Titus. He was part of the Roman force that successfully invaded Britain in 43 AD.

The "divine epithet" clue had me humming Handel's Messiah in my head. There's that sequence plagiarized from the King James Version that goes "And his name shall be call-ed..." followed by a long string of divine epithets. It didn't help because CREATOR was not on that list. I can barely abide that piece but I have a friend who has conducted it every December for many years and loves it every time.

"Cereal killer" is a great clue for ERGOT. It's a disease caused by a fungus that wipes out rye and other grasses. Number 4, Bobby ORR gets a break today with his surname clued as "Yossarian's tentmate in Catch-22." Orr was the guy who was always crashing his plane but never had any casualties. It was all part of an elaborate plot. I liked the clue "Athos's arm" as well. What's the French word for arm again? Doesn't matter; we're looking for the English word MUSKET. Athos was one of the Three Musketeers.

"Razor handle" is a brilliant clue for OCCAM. William of Occam invented the KISS principle back in the 14th Century: Keep It Simple, Stupid. It's amazingly useful advice. "People who no what they like" are PURITANS. I suppose so.

I got lots of mail on the new Word Count page I added yesterday, so I've now included two pages with Daily and Sunday stats. The thumbnail views on these are interesting. Thinking about word count made me remember the deceptive Thursday July 26, 2007 puzzle by Joe Krozel. Try to solve the Across Lite version and you'll see why. If you're not a Times Premium subscriber, you can see the puzzle with answers here. The notepad says "While some Across clues in this puzzle are blank, every answer is in fact clued."

Not exactly word count related, but yesterday's constructor Mark Diehl left a comment on Amy's blog noting that his Saturday puzzle broke the previous record of most 8-letter or longer answers in a 15 by 15 crossword. Frank Longo held the old record of 22. Mark Diehl is the new champ with 24. It's not a stat I track on my web site, but it's a very worthy accomplishment. Congratulations!

Ever since John Keats published Ode on a Grecian Urn back in 1820, crossword constructors have taken advantage of it to clue either ODE or URN. The final couplet is justly famous and ends my post today.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

An N-igmatic puzzle

Today's Tuesday, July 22 crossword (answers) is the fifth this year for Lynn Lempel. (Did you know xwordinfo has one-page thumbnail views for each constructor? Here's Ms. Lempel's ouevre in a nutshell.)

Somehow in all that activity she ended up with a batch of superflous Ns. She used them all today to good effect N-serting them into common phrases to create wacky answers. DIADEM was my crowning achievement as a solver — an odd word for a Tuesday but gettable from the crosses. Were western pioneers really SCALPED? Apparently so, but it's an icky clue.

Does moonshine production need YEAST? I'm not an expert but I would have imagined that particular beverage was distilled, not fermented. Live and learn.

That's THEDA Bara in the image. She was the original vamp, short for vampire at the time. In the silent era, she was one of America's biggest film stars but she's little seen today. A 1937 fire at Fox's nitrate film storage vaults in New Jersey destroyed forever 37 of the 40 films she made.

If you're intrigued by the Wordplay movie but happen to live on the Left Coast as I do, you can experience a miniature version of the big event in Alameda, California on Sept. 13. Here are the details for The Bay Area Crossword Tournament. If you've never been to a crossword competition, it's more fun than you might guess. Just hanging out with other people who love puzzles is a treat. Check it out.

Finally, I asked a few days back what portion of all the answer words in my database have appeared only once. It turns out it's just over half. I added yet another new page to my stats site. Unique answer words shows a different random selection of one-timers each time. It's interesting and sometimes surprising.

Day when courts are not in session

The Saturday May 31 puzzle by Robert H. Wolfe (answers) is a killer. Yes, I know, Amy finished it in 3:48 but it was just over the line for me, too hard to be fun. I had to resort to looking up answers multiple times. Rather than try to be amusing or clever today, I'll just list some of the tough clues. I'll end with a math quiz. By the way, my answer pages now all have links to thumbnails of all other puzzles by the same constructor. I added that a while ago but didn't mention it so I'm not sure how many people noticed.

The Wreck of the Mary Deare was a film Hitchcock was going to make but didn't. William Pitt, the First Earl of Chatham, was Secretary of State during the Seven Years' War (aka French and Indian War.) Pittsburgh is named for him. I'd give my eye teeth to be able to play tennis like Nadia Petrova. If you forget the lyrics, you can sing na na na rather than be silent as a clam. Ceres was discovered in 1801. Last year NASA launched the Vesta probe which will visit Ceres in 2015. Toni Sailer was the first skier to win all three Winter Olympic alpine events in 1956. Toni is a he, short for Anton. I studied atomic spectroscopy in grad school but I still have no idea what n radiation is. I may have that wrong or maybe I was sick the day that was covered. Second hand is a devilish answer for tick source. Dies non juridicus or non-judicial day is when courts don't sit. Postmosaic (after Moses) describes the part of the Torah after the first five Moses-written books. Chichewa is an official language of Malawi. Good grief. That's a lot to expect someone with my tiny brain to know.

I liked PBS for Oscar show airer. Oh, that Oscar. And speaking of the playwright William Inge, I re-watched Picnic yesterday. It's a rare case of a good play also making a fine film. The plot is straightforward but the intensity of the sexual tension is amazing even 50 years later. Crossword solvers should eat oreos while viewing it.

Also, I kept changing my mind about which Marx Brothers video to add to my previous post. I ended up using the contract scene from Night at the Opera. Click here and scroll down to see it.

Update: PhillySolver sent me this link which has photos and bios of several constructors including today's. "Robert H. Wolfe, 57, a veterinarian from North Woodmere, New York, has been married for 32 years and has two grown daughters. He has been creating crossword puzzles since 1974. Bob is also a long-distance runner, and writes poetry, screenplays and novels."

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I promised a math quiz and here it is:

Today's puzzle has 68 words. (Mr. Wolfe's previous effort had 58, close to the record low of 52.) Those are all even numbers. Of the 4524 daily puzzles in my database, all but eight have an even word count. If you're curious, the eight oddities are 8/9/2007, 10/31/2006, 8/8/2006, 8/2/2006, 9/29/2005, 11/29/2001, 10/27/2001, and 3/16/2000.

Why are almost all word counts even in weekday NYT puzzles? What properties are necessary for an odd word count? Send me your proof or add it as a comment. The most elegant gets, uh, a valuable prize. Yeah, that's it.

Gary Cooper western

The Wednesday, May 28 puzzle by C. W. Stewart has a lot of BALLS. So does Gary Cooper in HIGH NOON. This is a film which famously builds its suspense over the course of the action which happens, more or less, in real time. It's an effective gimmick.

"Fell off" is a terrific clue. Constructors or editors must love it when they find a phrase so utterly correct yet so completely misleading. The answer is EBBED.

I didn't know anything about Gerry SPENCE but according to his official site at gerryspence.com he's a heck of a guy. I'm sure his official site wouldn't lie. He's apparently "America's Finest Trial Lawyer" (the capitalization is his.) Who am I to argue? His home page starts with this quote: "My intent is to tell the truth as I know it, realizing that what is true for me may be blasphemy to others." With all due respect to the many fine attorneys who read this blog, oh never mind.

Suppose you wanted to clue the answer word LECHER. What mental process takes you to recalling a 1971 rock album? This is why I could never be a constructor.

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Yesterday there was some discussion about et alia vs. et alii. For the definitive word on this subject, let's turn to Liffey Thorpe who has taught Classics for 25 years at Earlham College. I find all this fascinating:

Both are adjectives, but "alia" is neuter plural and thus refers only to "things" or to nouns that are grammatically neuter: "other ones" or "other things."

"Alii" is masculine plural and refers to people or to nouns that are grammatically masculine: "others" or "other men" or "other people."

(A group that includes women would still be "alii," but an alumnae reunion would, I suppose, be "et aliae".)

As commonly abbreviated-- "et al."-- one cannot be sure whether the ending is neuter or masculine.

Similarly, "etc." is an abbreviation for "et cetera," which is strictly neuter plural and cannot refer to people ("and the rest" or "and the remaining things"). A masculine plural ending would be required for the phrase to refer to people ("et ceteres" — you don't see that in English, but you do in Latin).

Liffey Thorpe

The JimH Sudoku Blog

Like you, I live my life in fear. In my case it's fear that I've bet my blog on the wrong horse. Crosswords are so old school and, after all, there are plenty of crossword blogs. In the mean time, it's becoming increasingly clear that sudoku is not a flash in the pan. Shouldn't I be investing in that instead? Today, I take a stab at what just could be the next great blogging trend. Let me gather my notes on today's sudoku, clear my throat, and launch into my new venture. Ok, here goes...

 

Welcome to the first ever entry in my new blog! What a thrill to speak to you today about our shared passion — the joy of sudoku. I'll be coming to you regularly with a full analysis on each day's puzzle and through your insightful comments and naive questions together with my gentle admonishments for not being as clever as I am, we'll have a great time.

Today's Tuesday sudoku has some lively numeric combinations not seen in precisely this way for weeks. Beginning with a 6 in the far NW corner is 0.0328% more likely than any other number so that was no surprise for those who follow my statistical analysis closely.

This was, once again, a themeless sudoku. I know some of you are annoyed to see the number 3 crop up so frequently in today's puzzle but my advice is, get to know that numeral. Sure, it's sudokuese but it comes in handy for constructors trying to work out of a jam so you're going to encounter it again and again.

What killed the puzzle for me personally, though, was 7. Hate it, hate it, hate it! That number's insistence on showing up in every single row and every single column sucks the life out of what was otherwise some very sparkly fill.

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Update: The Tuesday puzzle (answers) is by Gary J. Whitehead who seems to have regained his middle initial after losing it in his previous puzzle a couple of months ago. If you saw the circles arranged in a diamond and thought baseball, you're not alone. The Delaware Diamond is, in fact, a star in Ursa Major (Big Dipper) and if you want to see it yourself just walk outside some very dark night, twist around to a right ascension of exactly 9h 40m 44s, look up to a declination of 48d 14' 2" and there it is! It's twinkling a little brighter tonight because its namesake state is the star of an NYT puzzle.

I like IT'LL DO as an answer word. DELINQUENT makes its overdue first appearance at the Times. CUT A RUG is such wacky imagery for "dance" that I wonder where it comes from.

How to find your favorite puzzle

I'm busy tonight so I won't get to the Saturday puzzle until later but in the mean time, here's my promised tutorial on how to find your favorite puzzle in xwordinfo.com.

If you're new here, XWord Info is my database of NYT puzzles going back to the first one edited by Will Shortz in November, 1993. That's over 5000 puzzles! If you're like me, there are some stand-out favorites in that list that you might want to recall for nostalgic reasons if nothing else.

There are various tools on XWord Info but the most important is the Finder Page. Read the explanation there carefully. You type in answer words or patterns that represent answer words and you can see lists of puzzles that include that answer. This is often the most efficient way to find what you're looking for. Let's try some examples.

 

Q. I just watched Word Play. How do I find the puzzle with the Indigo Girls?

This is a great job for the Finder Page. Type INDIGOGIRLS and click submit and you'll see this list with only two entries. Then click each entry to see which is the one you want. It's probably the 1993 puzzle which was Will Shortz's first; the famous Roy G. Biv tribute crossword where all the colors of the rainbow are included in order.

 

Q. What about that rebus puzzle about the World Series that didn't happen?

This is only a little trickier. On the Finder Page you can use ? to mean any letter or * to mean any number of any letters. If you type in *WORLDSERIES* (note the * on either side) you'll find every answer word that includes WORLDSERIES somewhere inside it.  Here's the complete list. The first entry is 1994WORLDSERIES with the numbers all spelled out (so the crossing words work correctly) and if you follow that link you'll see the definition and if you follow that link you'll get to this puzzle.

 

Q. Speaking of baseball, what was that Sunday puzzle last year with the circles arranged in a baseball diamond?

Let's look at several ways to find that one.

Method 1: You know it's a Sunday and Sunday puzzles have titles which often helps. Go to the Sunday page, click on 2007 since it was last year, and scan the titles. There's one called Diamond Jubilee and that's it.

Method 2: You remember the diamond was represented with circles so you can see all such puzzles on the Circles page. I have recently added titles and authors here.

Method 3: If you recall that the puzzle had HOME, FIRST, SECOND, and THIRD as rebus entries you can go to the Rebus Page. This includes titles and authors as well and Diamond Jubilee jumps right out. As far as I know, no other web database has a rebus list like this.

Method 4: The Finder Page can help here too although in this case it's less efficient in this case. I would probably try entering *THIRD* since that was one of the rebus answers and poke around from there.

 

There are lots of ways to poke around the database. The Finder Page is a more flexible tool than you might realize. Explore, and have fun. I continue to add features over time.

Like some glasses

Earlier this month I called Rich Norris Mr. Saturday. Today's puzzle (answers) is by Byron Walden who could make the case for Mr. Saturday Jr. with 79% of his puzzles appearing on the hard day. He's still 85 Saturdays behind Mr. Norris, but he's on his way.

His puzzle today was fittingly difficult. I got stuck for a long time because "like some glasses" seem to want to be THREED and I read threed as an adjective. Was it some hip way of saying tri-focal or something? Nope, it's 3-D. Ahhh.

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I continue to get questions about my database. People want to know how I got the data, what computer language I use (C#), if it's an official NYT database (no), and so on. One of the most common questions is, why are my results different than ones on Cruciverb.com?

Cruciverb calls itself the Crossword Constructors' Community Center. It provides support for authors and editors and probably every constructor you know hangs out there. Like xwordinfo.com, it has a database of puzzle answers and various stats. Check it out and support them with a donation. The big difference is that they index nine different publishers while I only do the NYT. Still, I provide some unique advantages, other than being free, that I hope complements that site.

Here's an example. If you look up the word SABRINA on Cruciverb, you'll see five different references, but only one from the New York Times.

Look up SABRINA on my site and only you only see NYT references, but you'll find three instead of just the one Cruciverb shows. We both have this one, but I also include this Trip Payne rebus entry (Cruciverb doesn't find rebus clues) and this entry from 1994 (Cruciverb only goes back to 1997.