The JimH Crossword Blog

Sexing the Constructors

What are the differences between crosswords constructed by men and by women? This is just one of the new areas of statistics I plan to pursue in the future. Unfortunately, I can't always check authors' Y chromosome counts directly so I have to guess.

The Shortz Number page now shows my best guess. There are some holes. I've listed all the currently unsexed constructors here. If you happen to know whether, C. W. Stewart, for example, is a man or a woman, please let me know.

Speaking of the Shortz Number, some of the assigned numbers have dropped a peg or two. Doing historical research with the help of a few friends has yielded a couple of cases where two presumably different constructors were combined when it was determined that one was just a misspelling of the other. Ashish Vengsarkar, for example, drops from #443 to #441. I hope you haven't already ordered t-shirts, Ashish.

Anyway, please help out if you can by identifying the "unknowns" or pointing out sex errors in the Shortz Number page. Thanks.

 

Update: Thanks to a certain Puzzlemaster, the "unknown" list is down to a single constructor. For those who placed bets, Carolyn W. Stewart turned out to be a woman.

Will Nediger

It's amazing what you learn from crosswords. Today I learned that ANNE RICE was born Howard Allen O'Brien. Her mother liked the name. The Saturday, September 13 puzzle (answers) by Will Nediger wraps up Teen Week at the Times.

Artists of any stripe struggle to find their voice. Mr. Nediger is starting to establish a recognizable personal style. He has an unusual sense of humor that I enjoy and a confidence that belies his youth. And maybe great software. Whatever, it works.

Back when I interviewed Caleb Madison I was able to include a photo of him with Jemaine Clement. (Knowing who Mr. Clement is will be important if you ever want to pass yourself off as a cool teenager.) Will Nediger joins in with his own celebrity photo, a definer of cool in an earlier age. That's Tommy Chong in the middle and Mr. Nediger on the right. I can't tell where the photo was taken but it seems clear the trio traveled either years into the future or to a galaxy far, far away.

JH: Hi, Will, and thanks for speaking with me. According to today's notepad, you’re an 18-year old second-year student at the University of Western Ontario. What are you studying?

WN: I'm majoring in linguistics, which is no surprise to anyone who knows me and my love for all things word-related, which is also what got me into cruciverbalism and Scrabble. Of course, it turns out Scrabble isn't really a word game at bottom and a lot of linguistics is pretty mathematical, but at least crosswords are still an activity for logophiles.

JH: What is your solving and constructing background? What first prompted you to build your own? Tell me about getting your first puzzle published back in May, 2006.

WN: I've been solving for as long as I can remember. I wore out many a pad of graph paper constructing when I was younger, but my early efforts were full of entries like MITSU (clued with relation to Mitsubishi somehow) and worse. I never constructed themelesses, either, though nowadays those are mostly what I construct. I sent my very first attempt at a themeless to Peter Gordon and, predictably, it was rejected but I sent in a few more and slowly improved with Peter's guidance. I had lots of experience with the NY Sun by the time I tried the Times, so I think my second submission to the Times was accepted.

JH: How does being a Canadian affect your puzzle construction?

WN: There are lots of things most Canadians know that would be a mystery to Americans and vice versa, so some things which don't seem like obscurities actually will be to American solvers who make up most of the audience. The Quebec Act, for example, which I included in my Q&A Session puzzle, is part of every Canadian schoolchild's education, but fairly obscure for non-Canadians. Still, that didn't stop me from crossing QUEBECACT with EGOYAN. On the flip side, there's lots of Americana I don't know that most solvers do.

JH: What other puzzles besides crosswords do you like?

WN: Most anything, but I'm a professed anti-Sudokist.

JH: Which constructors do you particularly admire?

WN: I'm a themeless fanatic and I especially like Karen Tracey's creations which usually have creative grid designs framed with plenty of fresh and Scrabbly entries. Frank Longo's grid-filling prowess is also amazing, particularly in his large puzzles in Simon & Schuster. These are often packed with fill entries intersecting multiple theme entries which is always hard to pull off. I can always count on a puzzle with Byron Walden or Ben Tausig in the byline to be fun.

JH: How specifically has Will Shortz or Peter Gordon helped you?

WN: Will always includes useful comments with his rejection letters and even sometimes with acceptance letters. (I'll resist the temptation to make the inevitable "constructive criticism" pun here.) And he's very in touch with the cruciverbal zeitgeist which makes it a lot easier for constructors to know what he expects from submissions.

I remember Peter redoing a corner of an early themeless which he accepted. Initially I was really concerned with keeping the short fill clean, to the detriment of the longer fill. So I had a corner in which every entry was decent, but none of them had any sparkle. This works well for a themed puzzle (Stan Newman does this well), but not so well for a themeless, so he jazzed up the corner a little. I don't remember my original fill, but his had BARSCENE / IRISHSEA / TEETOTAL stacked.

JH: What advice do you have for other people wanting to get into crossword construction?

WN: Keep an eye on the blogosphere so you know what solvers like and what they don't. Then, once you've figured out what people like, ignore it. With time, you'll be able to satisfy editors while still sticking with your own style.

I particularly like that last quote.

Tube Talk

Rumor has it that the Editor of the New York Times Crossword Puzzle and Recent Guest at the Inaugural Lollapuzzoola, Mr. Will Shortz, will be appearing this evening (Tuesday) on The Colbert Report. The listed time is 11:30 PM / 10:30 Central on Comedy Central.

There's no word on whether he intends to make any announcements regarding his own political future.

Kevin G. Der, the new record holder

Since I seem to have fallen into the role of Keeper of the Crossword Statistics in the blogosphere, let's start today with a look at how unusual and amazing today's Friday, August 22 puzzle by Kevin G. Der is.

Most of the crossword numbers I track are just for fun. That's another way of saying they're mostly meaningless. In sports, there are few stats that even fans really care about. In baseball the one that captures our imagination is home runs in a season. In hockey it's goals in a season. In basketball it's the number of groupies you seduce (Wilt Chamberlain claimed 20,000) and in football, I think it's most criminal convictions in a month but that's just a hunch.

In crosswords, it's fewest blocks (black squares) in a standard 15 by 15 puzzle. Here's a little history.

An even dozen puzzles in the Will Shortz era have only 21 blocks. Amazingly, eight of those are by Manny Nosowsky. Then on January 19, 2001, Joe DiPietro went one better with this puzzle. That record stood for over four years until Mr. Nosowsky reclaimed the title with this incredible 19-block puzzle. Like Babe Ruth's record, it seemed invincible but today in only his fifth at bat for the NYT, Kevin G. Der knocks one out of the park with an astounding 18-block construction. If you find this sort of thing intriguing, here's the list of puzzles with the fewest and most blocks, and this collection of thumbnails shows what the puzzles with the fewest blocks look like.

As a solver, of course, these sorts of records are interesting but rather incidental to the puzzle experience. If you're a successful editor, you understand that completely. I asked Will Shortz about this puzzle and here is his response:

As I've said many times, but it bears repeating, I don't run puzzles to break records. A crossword has to have great vocabulary and be exceptionally fun to solve in order for me to accept it. To me Kevin's puzzle more than meets this test. The record is just a bonus.

I got a heads up that something unusual was coming so I was able to interview Mr. Der for this special occasion:

JH: Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed, Kevin. How long have you been constructing and how did you get into it?

KGD: I sporadically did the syndicated Boston Globe daily puzzle in high school but I didn't really get into crosswords until I saw Wordplay in the summer of 2006. I think I saw it twice in theaters. There is a good theater in Cambridge that shows independent films and I remember seeing a trailer for Wordplay at some point and that got me excited about it. Before Wordplay I wasn't aware of the level of creativity that went into the best crossword themes, or that anyone could submit a puzzle for consideration. I started solving the New York Times after that as well as constructing. I think Will accepted my fourth submission and I was ecstatic when I got the email; anyone who has had puzzles accepted knows the feeling. The first couple of puzzles I sent in were embarrassing and I had no idea what I was doing, but I got really nice feedback about them.

JH: You're a computer science guy at Stanford, is that correct?

KGD: I work at a startup in Palo Alto and I'm also a PhD student at Stanford in computer science though I'm taking some time off school currently. Normally being a PhD student means doing research, so constructing has helped fill the gap here because in both cases you're trying to do something that no one else has thought of before and that takes a lot of creativity. For me, themed puzzles are in general much more fun to make.

JH: I presume it was a conscious effort to break a record. True? Can you say something about the evolution of this puzzle?

KGD: On the Wordplay DVD, there are some excellent featurettes about really special puzzles that have been in the New York Times. One of them was about Manny Nosowsky's 19 black-square puzzle and I love the way Joe DiPietro says "I'm talking six hours, every day, for months!" when he talks about how long it took to make a 20. I worked on trying to break the record on and off for about a year. It took a combination of publicly available software, online dictionaries, software I wrote myself, manual construction, and a bit of patience.

JH: What influence did Will Shortz have?

KGD: Aside from starring in a movie that I love, Will is very supportive of new constructors which was a big help. He knows what makes a strong submission so there is a constant motivation to make the puzzle as high quality as possible.

JH: Have you ever met Manny Nosowsky, the previous record holder?

KGD: Pretty much I've only met other crossword people at ACPT that I went to for the first time this past year, and I don't remember seeing Manny. He has certainly set the standard for both themed and unthemed puzzles, and according to your website he has had over 200 puzzles in the New York Times, which is jaw dropping. I also really like Elizabeth Gorski's beautiful themes and Merl Reagle's humor. The fact that Merl makes puzzles completely by hand is astonishing as well.

So, let's talk about the puzzle. The top and bottom have triple-stacked 15-letter answers and they're all smooth. Three of the six long clues are debuts but they all sound natural: RUSSIAN LANGUAGE, INSURANCE BROKER, and NEAREST RELATIVE.

You would expect a lot of rare words in a record-breaking puzzle and you'd be right. Most of them are great. Like the CIA, the NYT puzzle doesn't like to admit to TORTURE but that word debuts with this wonderful Marcel Proust quote: "Love is reciprocal ____.”

A surprisingly few words are iffy. "Open" is UNSHUT. "Condomless vis-à-vis protected" is UNSAFER which makes some sense. You might suppose sex is either safe or unsafe but I guess some unsafe practices are less safe, I mean are unsafer than others.

I couldn't finish this one without Internet assistance but I could tell the shape was special so I wanted to slog through to the end. I'm glad I did. What a puzzle. Congratulations, Mr. Der. I can't wait for your next one.

Caleb Madison, Crossword Prodigy

Want to be a star? Here’s my simple two-step process for becoming famous. Try it yourself:

1. Do something remarkable.
2. Oh, and do it before your 16th birthday.

It was just last April that 17-year-old Oliver Hill became the youngest constructor of a Sunday puzzle. Caleb Madison is still 15 and the old record is now toast. Yes, I know, you were amazing when you were that age too, but you didn’t have three published puzzles under your belt, did you?

Before I get to the puzzle itself, it seems like a good day to run an interview I did with the precocious Master Madison. Did I mention he's 15? That’s him on the right in the image. The gentleman on the left is Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords. Caleb saw FotC in concert and describes himself as a HUGE fan.

Hi, Caleb. How did you get involved in crossword design?

I started in about 8th grade. Most of my interest stems from my grandmother, an avid Times solver, who brought a book of puzzles with her wherever she went. The whole family would get into the Sunday puzzles and it would become a group effort. Soon after, I began to do dailies on my own, working up from Monday to now about Thursday-Friday difficulty. I can do a Saturday with help from my dad, but my goal is to be able to finish at least half of a Saturday by the next American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

How does it feel to be the youngest constructor Will Shortz has published?

It feels amazing. I hope I can keep making puzzles no matter how old I am. There is nothing like that first time, though!

What support have you got from friends and family?

I got so much support from everyone: my dad urged me at the ACPT to ask Will Shortz for the internship, my mom took my first puzzle and got it beautifully framed as a gift, my sister, whose name appears clued as the Irktusk river in my last puzzle, of course, my grandparents and other relatives, they have all helped.

What do your school friends think of your success?

They've also been greatly supportive. On the day my first puzzle was published, my friends Catherine and Sophie made me a homemade crossword congratulations card. Everyone was very excited.

What other puzzles do you solve? Or create?

Besides the NY Times puzzle which I do religiously on my train ride to school, I do the Sun crossword and occasionally the LA Times. I also love Will Shortz's NPR puzzle. I have a couple of puzzles coming out in the Sun soon, the first one I think is on 9/9.

What are your future goals?

I want to keep creating and solving crosswords as much as possible and compete (and have fun in) the ACPT. In other aspects of my life, I'll be happy just to make it through 10th grade and have some time for fun :-)

What makes a great crossword, for you personally?

For themed puzzles, I think it's all about the impact of the "aha" moment as Will Shortz calls it. It depends on the day. For a Wednesday or Thursday, the more original the better. Joe Krozel is an example of a constructor who, no matter what, is always innovative. For a Monday or Tuesday, I like good, not necessarily groundbreaking, but solid puzzles.

Which constructors do you particularly admire?

So many: Elizabeth Gorski, Henry Hook, Byron Walden, Joe Krozel. Also, Lynn Lempel and Andrea Carla Michaels for early week puzzles, as well as Bob Klahn, Mike Nothnagel, David J. Kahn, Peter Gordon and Rich Norris (both as  editors and constructors). Also, all of the other teen constructors: Kyle Mahowald, Will Nediger, Patrick John Duggan, Oliver Hill etc. I'm sure I've missed some.

What has Will Shortz meant to you personally?

Wow, so much. Interning for him taught me a great deal about puzzles; it turned crosswords from a hobby into a passion for me. He revolutionized the puzzling world and he's a constant reminder of how, if you love doing something, you can make a career out of it. It was a lot of fun watching him in action.

Caleb always seems to get short shrift here because his puzzles come out when I’m doing an interview or some other special feature but this time it’s his own fault. The Sunday, August 17 answers are here. In his excitement to work on a big Sunday grid for the first time, he didn’t realize that some of his answers didn’t quite fit until it was too late, so they just Fade Out in the end. The theme is good, and no the puzzle doesn’t seem like it comes from a teenager. In fact, the thematic references are all from decades past.

Here’s a statistical oddity. “A Clockwork Orange” (16 letters) has appeared only once in a Will Shortz puzzle. A CLOCKWORK ORANG now has four occurrences.

And that reminds me of the very first puzzle Mr. Shortz edited for the TImes. It’s too far back to be on the nytimes.com web site but thanks to Barry Haldiman, I have a copy and you can try it here. I highly recommend it.

Michael A. Charles, Crossword Animator

If you follow this blog, you'll know that I recently fell in love with an animated short film called Garson Hampfield, Crossword Inker.

The evil genius behind this story of a would-be great Bumfry artist is Michael A. Charles and he and I finally got in touch. That's him sitting in his Saskatoon, Saskatchewan studio looking somewhat like, well, like a certain crossword inker.

The film's gentle humor reminded me a little of Bob and Ray. The animation style echoed some of the famous National Film Board of Canada shorts that have been so successful over the years. And yes, it's true, I'm instituting the annual Garson Hampfield Prize for Crossword Humor. Of course, Merl Reagle is the odds-on favorite again this year.

I wanted to learn more about Garson, so Michael granted me an interview:

JH: Hi, Michael. Congratulations on your latest hit.

MAC: The animation seems to have caught on (in a small but, to its creator, highly gratifying way) among the crossword puzzling community — a community I had no idea even existed. I've been working on Crossword Inker for about six weeks, most of that time procrastinating on the vital but boring task of making the lips move. Garson is modeled on me, but older and with a slight Midwestern accent for some reason, and his apartment is a replica of my own. Just now I'm sitting in that apartment here in Saskatoon, where it's a balmy, breezy day, and trying to figure out what to do next with myself.

JH: How did you get into animation?

MAC: I stumbled into it. My band put on a rock opera about five years back, which was a combination of live-action and video elements, but we were never able to pull off some of the ideas we had. A couple years ago I got thinking that maybe the story (which is about a haunted tuberculosis sanatorium) would work better in animated form, so I started playing around with Flash just to see what I could do. I never got around to making an animated version of the whole rock opera but I continue to experiment and I think each video is a little better than the one before.

JH: What inspired the topic of crossword inking?

MAC: There's something funny about inkers — I mean, comic book inkers. Their work is so important to the look of the comic, and yet no kid ever says, "When I grow up I want to be an inker!" I've never met any inkers, but I imagine they'd be full of this ferocious and justifiable pride in what they do, and quietly seething at the lack of recognition they get. I started thinking, who would get even less respect than a comic book inker? Obviously it would be someone whose job is to ink straight lines and fill in black squares.

Now that I think about it, I guess Garson's inking has a lot in common with my animating. I can't draw, I can only trace. I trace from photos, or from other people's drawings. In order to create Garson I had to actually put on a jacket and bow tie, shave my beard into a moustache, and take photos of myself in various poses around my apartment.

JH: The names are all wonderful. Where do they come from?

The names were made up, there's no story behind them. Although I do put a lot of effort into coming up with good names. I was always irritated when I'd go to a movie and Arnold Schwarzenegger's character would be named something like "John Taylor". You'd think that, of all people, Arnold Schwarzenegger would appreciate the value of an interesting name.

JH: What is your crossword-solving experience?

MAC: I'm a big Scrabble player, but I only seem to do crossword puzzles when I'm away from home. I was on the road in Texas earlier this year, escaping the prairie winter, and sleeping in the back of a minivan in state parks. After the sun goes down there's not much to do — I was traveling alone — so I would get a copy of the Times when I could find one and do the puzzle by flashlight while listening to the radio.

I'm okay with the earlier-in-the-week Times puzzles, but the later ones tend to defeat me. I'm philosophically opposed to looking up the answers so if I run into a clue that stumps me, there's nothing for me to do but throw away the paper and go through the rest of my day angry.

JH: Tell me about your band.

MAC: The band known as Sea Water Bliss is kind of on the boundary between "band" and "art project". Our first break was being hired to write a series of songs to accompany an exhibition at the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon. Then we somehow talked the Mendel into letting us do a rock opera, which we spun off into a Fringe show. Meanwhile, we never really played that many "normal" gigs, in bars or wherever, though we did eventually record an album, which I guess is what "normal" bands do. Nowadays Sea Water Bliss is mostly an excuse to create videos that may or may not have anything to do with our music, though I'm optimistic that we'll get back into making music again soon.

JH: Thanks, Michael. Any big plans for the future?

MAC: Honestly, I have no idea what my future plans are, though I should probably look at getting a real job. If anyone has an opening for a self-taught musician-writer-animator, please get in touch with me.

Yes, there is a puzzle today and it's a good one too. The Wednesday, August 6 crossword by Caleb Madison (answers) will resonate with divorced parents who split child support. They should keep this puzzle for one of their kid-free weekends. The Thin Man gets referenced without a yappy terrier in sight. This time it's NORA as in Nick and Nora Charles of mysteries. No relation to Michael A. Charles, as far as I know.

Pancake Don jail honor

I could go on and on about the "Pancake Don" and his infamous jail honor, but let's first talk about today's Tuesday, August 5 puzzle by shiftless joon and ms. caroline pahk (answers.) Longtime readers will know that joon is a former guest blogger here and a frequent caps-free commenter, not to mention all-around genius. Caroline we know less about but perhaps someone can fill us in.

This is a NYT debut for pahk & pahk, and although nobody will expect me to be objective, I have to say it's a very good one. Sure, the Freshness Factor takes a beating with IRE, ENE, and even worse, ELI again, but it all seems smooth and appropriately Tuesdayish. I had never heard of ELI STONE. They keep making new TV shows, apparently, despite the fact that nobody watches television any more.

Snorri Sturluson is a wonderful name. It sounds Icelandic so EDDA seemed to be the right answer for his work, and sure enough, it is. Checking Wikipedia, Snorri wrote the Prose EDDA. In 1232 he was elected lawspeaker of the Althing based almost entirely on his fame as a poet. This says something significant about Iceland, I think.

There were a couple of clues I particularly enjoyed. "Big movie fan's option" is cleverly deceptive. "Big" modifies movie, not fan, so the answer is IMAX. "End of an illness" isn't the end of the illness itself but rather the end of the descriptive term for it: ITIS.

I love anagrams. The title of this post is an anagram of "joon and caroline pahk." Most such name anagrams are invented after the fact like the ones in this 2006 puzzle by Ashish Vengsarkar. The three in today's puzzle are unusual in that they were all created by the subjects themselves. Autobiogranamatic or something. Anyway, it's a nice theme. It's also a mere P short of a pangram, so this pair has something to shoot for in their next effort. Congratulations on a fine debut, j & c. Now you have to rush out and buy a bunch of newspapers so you can give signed copies to your friends.

Matt Ginsberg, crossword constructor

Matt Ginsberg is an interesting guy. His Thursday, July 24 puzzle (answers) only gets the job half done leaving us the task of doubling up to make the clues work. It's a clever theme. Skip the next paragraph if you hate math, but be sure to read on after that.

The EULER formula is e^{i x} = cos x + i sin x. If x is given the value π and you remember to do the trig in radians you get the elegant identity e^{π i}  + 1 = 0. That one compact equation combines five of the most important numbers in math: e, π, i, 0, and 1, the fundamental operations addition, multiplication and exponentiation, the equality relation, and nothing else. It's a beautiful equation.

It's also the only clue I'm going to talk about so I can devote the rest of this post to an interview. Mr. Ginsberg and I started corresponding after I blogged about his previous puzzle and linked to this year-old bio. For background, you should know he's a well-known figure in the world of Artificial Intelligence.

JH: Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed.

MG: Sure, I'm happy to talk. The RG article got my background pretty well; one thing that they left out is that after my British fiancée dumped me, I needed something to do in the evenings instead of sitting around being miserable. Not only did I write a play, but I also built a stunt plane that I still own and fly around in. It's a real plane, cruising at 165 MPH. I also have very odd (but very deeply held) religious views.

JH: How did you get into constructing?

MG: In 1976. I wrote a program to fill crossword frames (the first one, I think). I revisited the problem from a technical perspective in 1990, writing an article about it that was accepted to the American Association of Artificial Intelligence's annual conference. Then I put it aside until 2006, when my company hired an idiot as president (I'm the CEO). The guy was everything an executive shouldn't be. We fired him around 11/06 but I was such a wreck from the whole process that I took a month off. Two weeks into that month, I got bored and figured I'd try construction. This was partly because a friend of mine named Pete Muller had been doing some and was having reasonable success with it.

JH: Are there particular puzzles or even clues that you're especially proud of?

MG: The puzzle I'm most proud of is called Takeaway Meal. It will come out as a second Sunday puzzle in the Times reasonably soon, I think. The puzzle I'm second most proud of is When in Rome ... It's unpublished because no one else likes it, though!

One of my favorite clues is [Fabled slacker] for HARE. Also [Unstated? (Abbr.)] for TERR. I like cluing, although I don't know if how I do it is legit. I use my clue database tool to get ideas, and then go from there to generate the best clue I can. But a reasonable fraction of my clues turn out to be similar to others that have been used before as a result. Unfortunately, when I do it the other way around (generate the clue, then check the database), they don't come out any fresher. I do work hard to try to make sure that very few of my clues are actual repeats.

JH: Will computers ever be able to construct puzzles as well as humans can?

MG: Computers will eventually be as good as we are at any given task. But it will be a while on crossword puzzles because so much world knowledge is needed -- especially on the construction side. (I'm a hopeless solver, by the way. Wednesdays are my limit.)

JH: How does the grid construction process work for you?

MG: I generally get a theme first. It's usually some sort of weird "idea"; it's very rare that I do puns because I'm no good at thinking them up. I've done a few quip puzzles, generally quips that I find amusing and the puzzle with very low word count. The theme idea pretty much just pops into my head somehow; I don't know how. Probably it is triggered by something I hear during the course of the day. Not an interesting phrase, usually, just an idea I can twist around.

Then I generate a long list of potential theme answers and use CCW to fill a frame. I don't think I'm terribly good at making the frames themselves although I'm getting better. My A.I. comes into it because the search that CCW is doing to fill the frames is a problem that I'm familiar with technically — I know what to do when CCW gets stuck, and can generally do a good job of filling a frame with a lot of theme content. I use a word list that I generated myself; about 3M entries statistically ranked by a wide range of properties (# of Google hits, previous uses, scrabble score, etc, etc).

I did rudely ask about his self-described "odd" religious views and he pointed me to this 62-page document. You might have heard the notion that mathematics is God. Mr. Ginsberg seems to go beyond that and hold that God is, in a very deep sense, Mathematics. Perhaps the Euler Identity can help provide the QED.

What a swell party this is!

Long, long ago, in years gone by, when dinosaurs ruled the earth, in times past, one of my favorite words was antediluvian. It means long, long ago, but the genesis of this word fascinated me back when I was a boy. You already know it means "before the deluge" or "before the flood" referring to that unlikely event involving Noah and a few million species of animals. Two of each, in fact.

Today's Tuesday, July 15 puzzle (answers) is full of antediluvian phrases. It's the first NYT puzzle in nearly three years from constructor Leonard Williams although he had one each in the L.A. Times and the N.Y. Sun last year.

Thor Heyerdahl was an ambitious Norwegian who had crazy ideas about ancient peoples being able to cross vast oceans in primitive boats, and then went on to demonstrate them himself. 25 Across refers to his attempts to cross the Atlantic from Morocco to Africa in the late 1960s. Although RA I has been clued many times as an "historic Heyerdahl craft" I'm not sure it really existed. The first boat was the Ra. The second was the Ra II. One could argue that the existence of the second requires a disambiguating suffix on the first, but I'm not sure Thor or his crew of tars ever used that name.

WORD is indeed a "popular Microsoft product" and it's nice to see some non-Apple software get mentioned. Speaking of trade names, Cherry GARCIA is very tasty. In the endless quest for new clues for OREO, we've never before talked about the floral design. Soon we'll be reduced to discussing the chemical composition of the crumbs since every other possible descriptor will have been used.

 

Update: Our favorite PsuperSleuth has dug up some fascinating info on today's constructor as well. Dr. Williams is a Professor of Political Science at Manchester College in Indiana. He teaches Political Analysis, Public Policy, Constitutional Law, and even Feminist Theory. Among his many books, essays, and articles, his most recent, published in New Political Science is titled "Anarchism Revived." You can read all his academic side on his Manchester College page.

What his awestruck students don't know is that he has another side. His Animated Adventures puzzle is #30 in a collection called Banned Crosswords, stuck right before Bedtime Ritual and right after Penis! Penis!

One other note: I've added a new feature to xwordinfo.com. There's a search box right on the home page which allows you to look for any word or phrase in both xwordinfo and this blog. This is particularly useful for looking up clues, for example, which I don't index.

 

EVAH is only possible in crosswords by mentioning Cole Porter. He wrote the song for his 1939 musical Du Barry Was a Lady. Put on your top hat, drink a little too much Champagne, and sing along to this excerpt. Why don't I evah get invited to these parties?

Have you heard, among this clan,
I am called "The forgotten man"?
Well, did you evah?
What a swell party this is!
Have you heard the story of
Dexter boy being gypped by love?
Well, did you evah!
What a swell party this is!

What frails, what frocks!
What furs, what rocks!
What gaiety! It's all too exquis!
That French champagne!
So good for the brain!
That band, it's the end!
Kindly don't fall down, my friend,

Have you heard the poor dear Blanche
Got run down by an avalanche?
Well, did you evah?
What a swell party this is!
Have you heard? It's in the stars
Next July we collide with Mars.
Well, did you evah?
What a swell party this is!

Missed it by that much

Yet again, my guest bloggers are awesome. Thank you Seth and joon for giving me a bit of a break. I'm still traveling so my posts may be delayed but I'm going to try to do the next few on my own for a change, I don't want to lose my Equity card for having understudies take too many performances.

I left so quickly on my trip that I didn't give joon a proper introduction. Not that I know anything about him (or Seth for that matter) but it's a tradition here that I make up bogus biographies. Joon filled the gap with what I presume are mostly true facts but I do realize my obligation now to help out this poor, shiftless lad. Let's show him the Crossword Community cares by pitching in to buy him a properly working Shift key for his computer. Send whatever you can afford, even a few hundred dollars would help, c/o this blog and I'll ensure that in the future Joon can capitalize on the many benefits of mixing the odd upper-case letter into his prose.

The Monday, June 23 puzzle (answers) is a collaboration between Andrea Carla Michaels and Patrick Blindauer where nobody ever wins. Four different theme answers come close, though, and the result is a very fine very Monday crossword. I loved seeing An Inconvenient Truth next to "I cannot tell a LIE." Then there were the two consecutive paper towel clues. I don't know why juxtapositions like that are so satisfying, but they are.

Rumor has it that Andrea Carla Michaels enjoys Scrabble. More surprisingly, she writes for TV and magazines and once won a motor home on Wheel of Fortune. I wonder if she used any of today's runner-up phrases to console the losers.