The JimH Crossword Blog

TypePad woes

First of all, my apologies to readers who have been stuck trying to access my blog lately. It's been slow or unavailable for most of the past day. Do you think there might be a little excitement down at TypePad HQ in San Francisco over all these problems on top of a very rocky beta rollout? Software, despite its name, is hard and you can bet there are swarms of engineers scurrying around trying to figure it all out. TypePad is a "pay for" service in a field of mostly free competitors so they've got to be feeling the pressure. Just coincidentally, plans are in place to do a complete redesign on this blog and move it to a whole new system sometime in the fall.

The crossword community is full of fascinating people. I got mail today from the author of yet another blog, this one called Star Tribune Crossword Corner. She writes every day about the Tribune Media Service puzzle which is widely syndicated throughout the U.S. (including here in the Seattle Times) and beyond. The author who calls herself C.C. grew up in Xi'An, China and only moved to the U.S. in 2001 when she was 30 years old. She says she has a passionate love for crosswords but finds them astonishingly daunting for non-English speakers. I would think so! She has a very successful blog, by the way. Her site meter shows she gets several times the number of visitors this site does.

If C.C.'s is the newest, the longest established permanent floating crossword blog on the Internet is Diary of a Crossword Fiend by Orange. C.C. conducted this charming interview with Amy Reynaldo providing some nice insight into both of them. Maybe she'll take on Rex next.

Update: What the L?

Wow, another NYT debut!

The Wednesday, June 18 puzzle (answers) is by Adam Fromm and it's a very accomplished puzzle. The theme is simple but it's fun and the fill is funky, flavorful, and frabjous. Speaking of F, I started right in at 1 Across, confidently scribbling in FLOP for Ishtar. Of course I was wrong, meaning I was disposed early to like this puzzle.

It seems Mr. Fromm is no puzzle amateur. He seem to be associated with Games magazine where he contributes puzzles and occasionally comments on The Unofficial Calculatrivia Discussion Place. Check it out. He loves math puzzles and word puzzles? My kind of guy.

This could be just coincidence, but I have a theory about Will Shortz. I think he likes to reward frequent puzzlers by repeating certain clues. We had Goya's Naked Maja fresh in our brains from last week and now we get to feel all smug and educated by immediately popping in the answer today.

If TypePad can settle down and behave, I'm turning this site over to Guest Bloggers for the next few days. I return to my very first guest SethG for the Thursday and Friday puzzles and then new guest Joon takes over for Saturday and Sunday. I'm already looking forward to reading what they have to say.

Adam G. Perl is Mr. Natural

Four letters in his first name. Four in his last name. Apparently the temptation was too great and Mr. Perl sneaks his name into today's Tuesday May 27 puzzle (answers) in the first and last Across clues. This takes a certain amount of ego and even superego, it seems to me, but he makes up for it by dropping the ID. Still, that's chutzpah.

Oh, he's a tenor. That explains it. PhillySolver sent me this link where you can read something about Mr. Perl's performance history. He played the lead role in a stage production of Mr. Natural in Ithaca. Not content to just be a star, he also owns an Antique Shop. (There's just no privacy on the Internet, is there?) I wonder how any of this background affects his crossword work. Well, here's one way. Only an antique TV would have a TINT control. Not sure modern lockers have PINUPs either.

We know for sure he didn't sneak his middle name in. The puzzle is G-less. Try harder next time, Adam!

Mr. Perl's previous puzzle brought back childhood memories with its Superman theme. Today's gimmick wasn't as charming but it still made for some humorous answers. There was a fair amount of early-week crosswordy fill but some twists too. Can someone explain the difference between et ALIA and et ALII? They're both plural, right? I need to find a native Latin speaker to set me straight.

Finally, I was amused by TEN being described as "our base system." As oppose to whose? Computer's? Martian's? It would, of course, have been far more convenient if we had settled on base twelve instead of ten, thereby allowing exact decimal representations of not just 1/2 and 1/4 but 1/3 as well. Maybe it's not too late to change. I think I'll start a petition.

Update: There's a detailed explanation of the et alia vs. et alii question in the next day's post.

I Get Mail

The Wednesday May 7 puzzle (answers) is the second in four days for Richard Silvestri. It's back to the ballpark today after only thinking we might be headed there yesterday.

Other than the dead center, this was a fun and easy romp with so many clues I enjoyed. The "man of principle" is PETER. Back in 1970, The Peter Principle was one of those aha books that suddenly made the world make sense. Everyone you have to deal with is an idiot because they kept getting promoted to just beyond their level of competence, or so goes the theory. It's absurd or at least overly simplistic in retrospect but it made a big impression at the time since it's such a satisfying explanation.

"White house" shows up now and then for IGLOO but it's a great clue. A "big jerk" is, of course, a SPASM. And if I were to signify anything, what would it be? ONE. Got it. That's NEVE in the photo.

---

Three recent blog posts have generated A TON of mail. One was yesterday's Sudoku discussion. It turns out there's a lot of passion around that topic. For the record, sudokus are fun, at least when they're not absurdly hard, but the point of my stupid essay is that one aspect of crosswords that makes them special is that they are conducive to interesting conversation afterwards. That's what crossword blogs are all about. The genius of sudokus, on the other hand, is that they require absolutely no special knowledge and no special skills except the ability to think hard for a while. It's a completely different kind of cranial exercise but one that can also be satisfying. What it shares with crosswords and Rubik's cube is the joy of creating order within constraints. Nothing wrong with that.

My second email magnet was the mini-biography on the dark side of Will Shortz. Not surprising.

What I didn't expect was the flood of email when I talked about Nancy Salomon. Ms. Salomon is the Queen of Collaborators. I didn't know is she is the Much Loved Queen of Collaborators. Several people sent private mail telling me how much she had helped them, often pointing to her essays at cruciverb.com as the best collection of advice for beginners. Nancy herself sent me a gracious and modest note, but I hope she knows how appreciated she is. My favorite quote was forwarded by Orange who pulled some remarks by Stephen Edward Anderson from the NYT forum. With Mr. Anderson's permission, I'm including them here. It's an inside look at the creative process. The discussion refers to the recent April 23 crossword (puzzle, blog.)

Having found the four theme entries and arranged them horizontally in a grid, I sent it to one of the most remarkable persons I have ever known. Nancy Salomon sent it back, in her signature lightening turnaround time, with the comment that it might look better with the twin elevens running vertically. 

In an almost incidental sort of way, she dropped in the grace notes that make this more than just a run-of-the-mill themed grid built around some rather dated movie nags. Checking the database, I found that HADABIT was spanking new. Nancy sagely advised me against giving it a theme-related clue, and likewise steered me away from the flatfooted temptation to clue the theme entries with mention of horses or cowboys: 

"That's what RIDE 'EM COWBOY is for," she wrote. 

What I deserve credit for is having stopped arguing with my wise and kind mentor, who has declined my suggestions of co-authorship: "Looks like a rocky road," says she, self-protectively.

Pity makes suffering contagious: Nietzsche

Patrick Berry gives us an absolutely delightful Saturday May 3 puzzle (answers) complete with six, count 'em, six, trick clues! This is approximately 6.0 more than we're used to seeing on the toughest end of the crossword week and that surprise made it even more fun.

Is this a rebus puzzle? I suppose it is but it won't show up as one on my stats site because there are no letter or symbol substitutions. Should it?

The image is ELEANOR of Aquitaine, whom I like to think of as the Oprah of the Middle Ages. She might not appreciate that analogy but she held power most kings could only dream of. If you've seen the play The Lion in Winter you know all about her. Some of it may even be true.

Did you know EL GRECO was tutored by Titian? I love clues like that where the point is not do you know some trivia but, for example, there's a famous person, obviously a painter, whose name you can get and by the way here's an interesting little tidbit about him. In addition, we get a useful tip on being a cat burglar — keep the NOISES down! Damn, that is good advice. I'll be sure to remember it next time.

---

Robin and I will be out of town over the weekend so that means you'll be treated to another guest writer here at The JimH Crossword Blog. This time I tapped KarmaSartre because either I liked some of the comments he's posted or maybe I just like his snazzy nom de web. It's like some triple portmanteau you can tease apart in different ways. Anyway, he's going to be doing the write up on the Sunday puzzle so tune in for a completely different point of view. He's new to blogging so go easy on him with your comments. After all, I may be tagging you next! Ah, what the heck. Rip away. After all, pity makes suffering contagious, apparently.

I asked him for a brief bio and he suggested that, as is my wont, I just make stuff up. With nothing at all to go on other than my inerrant intuition, let me introduce KS with another Mini-Biography of Someone I Don't Know Anything About.

KarmaSartre was forced to grow up early. As a child, the only bedtime book his great uncle Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre would read him was Being and Nothingness which left him permanently psychologically scarred. His only escape was in the world of crosswords where the neat meshing of Across and Down promised some sense of order in his otherwise bleak existential life. Wandering for years through the mountains of Tibet sharpened his mind to the point where even Patrick Berry puzzles came easily to him, sometimes without even having to read the clues. KarmaSartre spends his non-puzzle time scratching grids in the sand with a sharp stick.

What a gal has that a gent doesn't

I didn't have to wait long to be able to use my new word. Today's Tuesday puzzle by Nancy Salomon (answers) has a quarfoot right at 1 Across — "What a gal has that a gent doesn't." It's too bad the rest of the puzzle wasn't more quarfotic. Ok, ok, I just wanted to use the adjective form, don't mind me. As a bonus, the clue was what passes for mildly naughty in Crosswordland. I initially penciled in BOOBS but it didn't work. Come to think of it, I'm not sure telling a gal she has a hard G is any better.

This was the Monday puzzle we didn't get yesterday in terms of degree of difficulty. ARA is the altar in the sky, last seen through the telescope less than a month ago. HAAS has been clued more than half the time as "Lukas of Witness." Someone should tell the Haas family that there's a huge opportunity for crossword fame if some kin can just do something noteworthy and take the pressure off future clue writers.

I want to know more about Ms. Salomon. She's the Queen of Collaborators. Besides the 66 crosswords she constructed solo, she's co-written with Harvey Estes (43 times), Lee Glickstein, Sherry Blackard, Bill Zais, Bob Peoples, Bob Frank, Marjorie Berg, Kendall Twigg, Gail Grabowski, Karen Riekert, Norma Johnson, Courtenay Crocker, Deb Amlen, Earl Reed, Elayne Cantor, Holden Baker, Joe Bower, John Minarcik, Levi Denham, Bob Klahn, Kyle Mahowald, Louis Hildebrand, Nancy Shack, Marjorie Richter, Kelly Clark, Richard Leva, and Nick Grivas. I don't know who most of those people are either but that's a very long list.

If I can't get any real info, I'll resort to another "mini-biography of people I don't know anything about" but Ms. Salomon seems interesting enough that her real story ought to be told.

 

Update: Ellen provided this link in the comments and it's such a great article I wanted to add it here. Nancy Salomon is even more amazing than I suspected!

Update2: There is some discussion about this puzzle from the constructor at the bottom of this post.

Spaced Out Solar System

Today's Sunday puzzle (answers) is by John Farmer who has become one of my favorite constructors. He has a unique style. I asked him how he thinks about crosswords, and here's what he said:

I got into the crossword habit relatively late, in my 40s, and most everything I learned was from reading comments of Hex and the Cru on the NYT forum, back when it was the only game in town. Like most things I like, I tried my hand at making puzzles and eventually figured out how to make them good enough to be accepted. Not always, but often enough. The tricky part of being a constructor is finding new ideas. I enjoy puzzles that are like nothing else I've seen before (e.g., the "inside the box" puzzle, a baseball-themed puzzle that ran in the Sun), but those themes don't come every day. Sometimes very simple themes work the best. And if the theme muse happens not to visit, I may take a few words I've been kicking around and use them for a themeless. In any case, every puzzle should be fresh in its own way.

Make sure you follow that "inside the box" link above if you don't remember it. The rest of his NYT puzzles are listed here. This one is elegant and this QWERTY keyboard puzzle is especially clever.

Today's puzzle was also delightful. I got the theme right away and since the theme entries were listed in order, I could scribble them all down. PLUTO was, of course, relegated to a themeless clue. Poor wretched planetoid. FRUSTA ("truncated cones, in math") is a great word. There were a few nice mathy entries today.

"Like some twins" is a delicious clue for EVIL. "State quarters" is DORM, of course. And if you're tracking the roos, buck suffix is AROO and switch ending is EROO.

The Vancouver Canucks have a history of stupid logos. The latest is shown above. It's better than either the skate racing downhill or the hockey stick in a rectangle that preceded it. The Canucks missed the playoffs this year, probably out of fashion embarrassment.

Update: be sure to read Mr. Farmer's thoughts in the comments section below.

Update 2: check out the JNotes on this puzzle for a description of how the print version makes this puzzle even more elegant by using shaded squares — a technique not available in Across Lite.

The genesis and evolution of a neologism

I guessed who wrote today's Friday puzzle (answers) before I even read it. With only 21 blocks (black squares) it had to be a Manny Nosowsky. Check out my list of puzzles with the fewest blocks. Only two puzzles have fewer and one, the record holder at 19, is also by Mr. Nosowsky. Of the 14 puzzles with 21 or fewer blocks, 9 are by him and 5 are by everyone else put together.

Fewest blocks is different than fewest words. Today's word count of 66 is far from the record. It all depends of block distribution, and Manny doesn't compete at the top of that list. He prefers the dense looking grids even with the higher word count. The record lowest word count is 52 held by Frank Longo, who together has 3 of the lowest 4. (I don't have a page for word count on my database site yet.)

Not only was today's puzzle dense, it was fun. The 15-letter answers in both the top and bottom three-stacks were all good solid phrases. My favorite is "have cosmetic surgery perhaps" for IMPROVE ON NATURE.

Brilliantly done, Manny Nosowsky. And speaking of talented constructors...

---

My previous post posed the question: what do you call a sneaky clue like "something Elizabeth II has" for ZED where the has refers to the word itself rather than the subject of the sentence? (Not that a queen could be a subject — that makes no sense at all — but you know what I mean.) My readers came through with some suggestions. PhillySolver proposed autologal based on Greek roots but that sounds like an adjective to me. My favorite, suggested by Joon was a "Quarfoot special" after devious constructor David. I prefer to further reduce it to a pure eponym and call it simply a Quarfoot.

There's no central authority for the English language so how do we (let's make this a joint effort) make it official? Only through common usage, and here's where I need your help. Drop this handy word frequently in casual conversation, or better yet in your next NYT Op-Ed piece. Years from now scholars will debate the first reference and the mysterious Joon will show up in an archived web search sparking great debate in academia.

Of course words continue to evolve. The capitalized Quarfoot will soon become merely the quarfoot and eventually just the quarf. Similar clues will be described as being quarfy, and the even more clever clues of the future will be called neoquarfotic. I can hardly wait.

Did anybody notice I managed to juxtapose "genesis" and "evolution" in my title? I realize this may only amuse me.

A Queue of Qs

[This is a rewrite of my original post.]

I learn a lot of things from crosswords. Most recently I learned that I shouldn't attempt to a David Quarfoot puzzle while I'm feeling under the weather. When I tried this last night I got about 3/4 of the way through and became hopelessly stuck. After a good night's rest, I'm in a much better position to appreciate the poetry and ingenuity.

The Friday puzzle by David "Q" (answers) is, in fact, brilliant. I more or less assumed that even when I couldn't finish, but fits the very definition of an excellent puzzle for me. I even forgive the D NATURAL reference since I was unable to make the subtle point I intended, and it may not even make sense. In fact, it's just the kind of clue I especially like, the kind where I have to solve a puzzle within the puzzle and wij explains the logic in a comment to this post. It's the same reason that I do like Peter Gordon's Roman numeral math puzzles. By the way, the very first Will Shortz edited puzzle was by Mr. Gordon and he included the math clue "One-fifth of MMV" so he's been doing that for a while.

The rest of this post is from the original version:

 

Merl Reagle's on the radio! He's one of the true characters in crosswords and he gave this interview on NPR's Talk of the Nation.

What else? Oh, my stats site www.xwordinfo.com now has data going back to the beginning of the Will Shortz era thanks to Barry Haldiman. The stats changed a little with the new info. Manny Nosowsky still has the most (by far) but Rich Norris finished in second place. Lots more on both Mr. Haldiman and the new data in a future post.

---

Update: It's nice to have friends. Several people, all smarter than me, sent answers. I'd like to use the excuse that I'm getting over my winter cold (see, I'm even slow there, it's Spring already!) but I think this one would have bested me anyway. There were too many facts I didn't know.

I hope everyone put "_ M _ _ OR" right away for 23 Across, right? It was directly out of my music post. It seems I didn't call the 6th Symphony Pastoral (although a commenter did) so you would have had to be paying very close attention to get the rest of that clue just from my blog. It's a great piece, and there's a strangely wonderful recording of Glenn Gould playing his own piano transcription.

I loved "Burger replacement" being REHNQUIST and the queue of Qs was beautiful to behold. Any idea who Ngaio is? The QUEEN MUM lived from 1900 to 2002, but still not quite long enough to see her Times debut. May each of my readers become famous enough to be so immortalized well within 108 years of their birth.

Introducing Seth Grossinger

As mentioned previously, the Saturday puzzle blog will be posted tomorrow morning by guest blogger Seth Grossinger. By way of introduction, here are some random facts I know about him: Seth is originally from Pittsburgh, he studied Mathematics at Carleton, he went on a whirl-wind trip that included visiting 8 countries, swimming in 4 famous bodies of water, climbing 3 mountains including Kilimanjaro, and kissing 1 giraffe named Laura. He's a world-class Ultimate Frisbee competitor, a part-time grad student, and a cribbage fanatic. Now you know. Have fun, Seth!

The dark side of Will Shortz

Yes, it's time for another "mini-biography of people I don't know anything about." There are several in my queue and I've been sitting on this one for awhile, waiting for just the right moment, which may have come and gone without me noticing. Gotta learn to pay more attention. If you're new to this blog the rules here are simple. I try to remember what little I know about the unsuspecting subject and from there, I just make stuff up. Never believe anything you read on the Internet.

Will Shortz was born at a very early age. While still a toddler he showed many puzzling proclivities, memorizing the English, Greek and Cyrillic alphabets forwards, backwards, and upside down before speaking his first word — OREO. His befuddled parents finally sought professional help when young William spent the entire summer before first grade refusing to speak except in complete palindromes. "Norma is as selfless as I am, Ron" might have been hard for you or me to fit into casual conversation as a toddler, but then neither of us were budding puzzlemasters.

Teenage Will traveled extensively. Ere he saw Elba he had already calculated all possible anagrams of every country, city, river, and mountain he visited. Though not exactly a nerd, his friends found it difficult to converse with someone who answered every question with a clue. While fun for a while, this eventually becomes maddening even when you're told the letter count.

As is frequently recounted, Mr. Shortz holds a degree in Enigmatology from Indiana University. This is so clearly bogus it amazes this author he's not taken to task for this wasteful and pointless exercise more often. I mean really. The only possible job that line of study would qualify you for would be Crossword Editor of the New York Times, a situation so incredibly unlikely as to be absurdly obscene. I think the rather ludicrous and nearly irrelevant fact that he did somehow manage to attain that post weakens my argument only in the slightest degree. What were the odds? Totally nuts.

Unbeknownst to his Times employers, Will moonlights for a competing news organization. Disguising his normal voice in order to sound cool, sophisticated, and even sympathetic, he lobs word puzzles at listeners who call in to his NPR radio segment. Not wanting to waste even a moment's time, he can completely revise a Monday or Tuesday puzzle submission while waiting for the answers.

Does the fame and power go to his head? Sadly, yes. Mr. Shortz rules Crosswordland with an iron fist. Not a single grid, not a single clue gets published without being personally vetted by him. Who the hell does he think he is?

---

The Thursday puzzle by Stephen Edward Anderson (answers) brings together four portmanteau locations. The phrase "portmanteau word" was coined by one of my other heroes, Lewis Carroll. It means words like his own inventions slithy and brillig that have "two meanings packed into one word."  I loved that "Run (out of)" wasn't anything to do with what happens when the milk carton gets empty. It's a different sense. The answer is DRUM, as in drum out of town. Nice.