The JimH Crossword Blog

Second Sunday: Puns and Anagrams

But first, some xwordinfo errata:

I received three emails in a row today with corrections for the xwordinfo database. Two came from shiftless joon who discovered a couple of missing late-week rebus puzzles. He found them the same way I usually do, by noticing odd answers in Quick Clues. The first is a Frances Hansen puzzle from Friday, December 8, 1995. The second is a Michael Shteyman construction from Saturday, September 16, 2006. If you're keeping score, there are now 169 rebus crosswords in the Shortz era. I'm no doubt still missing some.

A different kind of error has now made it a little bit easier for every other constructor to catch up to Manny Nosowsky's record. The March 9, 2000 puzzle had been erroneously attributed to Mr. Nosowsky but the real author is Myles Callum. The still-outrageous Nosowsky total now dips to 240. The big news here is that with this proper attribution, Mr. Callum now has a Thursday puzzle and joins the elite Hitting for the Cycle club.

Puns and Anagrams

I'm often asked about cryptic puzzles and today's Puns and Anagrams second puzzle is a good entry into this world. It's not as hard as a typical cryptic but it starts you in the right direction. I don't include these crosswords in my database but I thought I'd do an analysis of the upper-left corner to give newbies a head start on these wacky inventions. I put words to be re-sorted into an anagram inside [square brackets].

1 A: The [press at] meals. REPASTS
13 A: [Giant G, I] see. Replace "see" with "c" and then GIGANTIC is an anagram.
16 A: What drink does [Tina love]? OVALTINE
17 A: More brimming with [fuel] left and right. FULLER combines fuel, L, and R.
22 A: The Spanish is for some Ivy Leaguers. The is EL in Spanish, with IS makes ELIS.
25 A: "Ouch" preceder. RET + ouch makes the word retouch.

1 D: Brook in ['54? True!] 54 is LIV, plus TRUE gives RIVULET meaning brook.
2 D: With [it, "Eagle"] is a cry of the French Revolution. EGALITIE
3 D: Tires out everyone in postscript. ALL in PS gives PALLS.
4 D: Vigil's end is ANTE. Yes, ante means "before" in Latin but vigilante is a word.
5 D: Ado in Belfast, Ireland. STIR is in the words.
6 D: Material in some plating. TIN is inside plating.
7 D: In which writers see [sense]. Again replace "see" with "c" for SCENES.

Get the idea? Go tackle the rest on your own.

Jersey parts

Pete Muller has come up with a terrific Tuesday, June 3 puzzle (answers.) It worked for me exactly as I imagine it was intended. I figured out the question at 35 Across but the answer wasn't immediately obvious. When I finally sorted out 43 Across, I looked around and was completely delighted to see it was true. It caught me completely by surprise. What fun.

A three-letter word for "do zigzags, maybe" starting with S must be SKI, right? Nope, wrong sport. And who came up with "Jersey parts" as a clue for UDDERS? I laughed out loud at that one. Great job, Mr. Muller. (It's just a coincidence that there's a photo of Mae West here in a post about Jersey parts. I do love My Little Chickadee.)

I don't know anything about the constructor. This is his fourth puzzle and they've all been outstanding. You wanna have some fun? Try this one from July 6, 2006: (NYT Across Lite, or if you're lazy, my solution.) If this site is to be believed, and it must be the same Pete Muller, it's a fascinating story. Wow.

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Trope School

Modern crossword clues often make use of various figures of speech to make the puzzle more interesting. Yesterday, LaurenB asked about the word trope and of course PhillySolver, who apparently knows everything, replied with a list of trope types. If it's been a few years since your last Rhetorics class, let's review. Tropes come in various flavors:

Metonymy	[mi-tawn-uh-mee] substitutes an attribute for something larger. "Counting noses" or "the pen is mightier than the sword."
Irony	relies on the contrast of opposites or on outcomes contrary to expectations. "That Saturday puzzle was too hard to finish. How delightful."
Metaphor	makes an implicit comparison by describing something in terms not literally true. "The White House said today..."
Synecdoche	[si-nek-duh-kee] uses a part to describe the whole or vice versa. "My old car broke down so I bought a new set of wheels."
Antanaclasis	[ant-an-uh-klas-is] repeats a single word with a different meaning each time. "If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you'll be fired with enthusiasm" — Vince Lombardi.
Allegory	is a story with a deeper parallel meaning. Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies are common examples.

Few people who don't do crosswords care about this stuff. PS went on to say that the Marx Brothers were excellent rhetoricians. That's true and I think it explains why they're so popular with my readers.

I guess that comment justifies another clip, right? This one's from Animal Crackers.

Update: Be sure to check the comments below for more info on this amazing constructor. Thanks, Dan!

Spy Glass NYT Sunday Puzzle

From guest blogger PhillySolver:

The upcoming Ian Fleming Centennial on May 28th will be fresh on our minds thanks to the deep background work done by Liz Gorski. This is her 41st Sunday and 162nd puzzle and it charmed me from clue double O one (001). I mentioned yesterday that our top constructors are multi-talented and that aptly describes Ms. Gorski. If you would like to see some beautiful design work, check out her website for Cross Stitch dealers. You can read her bio there and see what I mean by talented. I asked Liz about her work on this puzzle and want to share a few things she told me.

"I love to make Sunday puzzles because they're the most challenging form for me — the most difficult day of the week, constructing-wise. Developing themes that can sustain a Sunday solve is very tough, and I like trying to crack that nut. Last year, after seeing the latest Bond film, Casino Royale, I knew that I had to do a Bond puzzle. In sketching out the pattern, I discovered that the six actors sharing a common "Bond" (DANIEL CRAIG, SEAN CONNERY, TIMOTHY DALTON, GEORGE LAZENBY, ROGER MOORE, PIERCE BROSNAN)... along with IAN FLEMING — make up seven entries that fit perfectly into a symmetrical grid."

Did I say that she is impressive? Could you do that? To complete my case that she has extreme talent, she adds, The clues provide an "appropriate gimmick for a "spy" puzzle — the solver will have to crack some codes." Her proposed movie anagrams became year codes for the players, however.

Where to start? How about with the big events going on in Britain by posting the Centenary website. I know where I could end. Once you have proven your code cracking mettle, you can connect the points and get a cocktail glass with a MARTINI inside (39a). I enjoy this added element to puzzles. You get to take your solving work to another level. I would say I was stirred by the fill, but some of you may have been more appropriately shaken by it. I promised you last night you would rely on intelligence today.

As to the puzzle (answers), here are some of the clues you needed to solve in order to earn your martini.

Tricks of the Trade:
St. Joseph makes ASPRIN (97a)
Med Plans are HMOS (Health Maintenance Organizations) (78a)
A GOLF COURSE is full of holes (74d)
Alexander Hamilton was killed by Aaron Burr in a DUEL (82a)
We have Ouzel thrushed upon us as OUSEL at (46d)
In NYC they have SOHO (South of Houston St.) and the newer NOHO (North of Houston St.) 35a
AORTAL refers to the main artery (ah, that blood line)  41a
Name drop? deserves the ? since the answer is ERASE (121a)
Ditto for MTG representing a Brief encounter? (10d)
Second start? is a NANO as in nanosecond (112d)
A gut course provides a student with AN EASY A (80a)

Here are the four anchoring long fills:
14d    GRECO ROMAN  (Like some wrestling) Olympic fans and Big Ten schools really care.
4d      CARGO PANTS (Attire with super sized pockets)  Here's a popular YouTube entry Pants
77d    BILL HUDSON (Former Mr. Goldie Hahn)
74d    GOLF COURSES (a tricky clue above)

And in summary, here is the stellar constellation of Broccoli entertainment:
3d       Sean Bond
23a     George Bond
48a     Roger Bond
68a     Timothy Bond  
71d     Daniel Bond
115a   Pierce Bond
90a     Ian Fleming (see photo above)

Thank you Liz for the great entertainment!

Horne, James Horne, returns tomorrow.

PhillySolver

Much Tzimmes About Nothing

From guest blogger PhillySolver:

Today marks Charlie Barasch’s sixth NYT puzzle and his first Saturday puzzle. I sometimes become too focused on evaluating crosswords and seeing what I can learn form them to pay much attention to the talented constructors who make them. Weekend puzzles require a great deal of special talent, so it should come as no surprise that these contributors are talented in other ways. For example, Charlie teaches linguistics at The University of Vermont and has published in several academic fields.  His first book will appear in September and it is not a book of crosswords. It is a book of poetry reflecting on the dreams of 42 past presidents (not sure about the current nightmare). Check out this link to see I am not making this up (Dreams of the Presidents).

I was able to ask Charlie a few questions and here is what he told me about his art.

I'm a very part-time puzzle constructor, although once I have an idea (either a theme or some interesting entries for a themeless) I throw myself into it with abandon. I've had more luck with themeless puzzles recently; they take a long time for me to create because I try to stay away from obscure entries. I love it when a theme or an interesting phrase pops up and my mind goes "Aha!" Then you might see me counting letters on my fingers for the next few days, trying to come up with entries that fit.

Well, his entries certainly 'fit' this time and made me wish I were a Professor of Linguistics. Jim will post the answer grid soon [here - JH] but to complete your degree in language arts, here are a few answers on the final exam:

1a/d  One taking a shot = GUNMAN and GUESSER
17a   Second in Court = ASST DA (think Sam Waterston)
18a   Like a family man = MARRIED WITH KIDS (inspired the picture)
23a   Pitch between columns = NEWSPAPER ADS
38a   Couples aspiration = QUALITY TIME (gotcha!)
46a   Be like Clark Kent = LEAD A DOUBLE LIFE (wear nerdy glasses almost fit)
8d     Split = DASHED AWAY
15d   Its stuffed with dough = FAT WALLET
25d   Area of interest for Archimedes = Pi R SQUARED (Area of a circle, right?)
32d   Beer brand since 1842 = SCHAEFER (wanted Schlitz for some reason)
39d   Tzimmes = ADO (hence the title of this post)
57a   Woman with a future = SEERESS (my least favorite word, but if I construct a puzzle, I want to use it. Just look at those end of word letters!)

Someone else will have to explain UNIATE and SATI as they just fit in and may not be real words.

This was certainly one of the hardest puzzles since late last December and yet it was a total pleasure. I guess I said 'aha" about twenty times. I need to go rest up now. Tomorrow will really test our intelligence, I promise.

PhillySolver

Like a Bridge Over Troubled Waters

Update: Today's Monday puzzle by Janet R. Bender (answers) seems trickier than usual for a Monday despite its squeaky clean theme. It includes a French word APERCU, only the second reference to a NABE as a neighborhood theater in the past decade (the last was three days ago), and the technical term WASH SALE for a type of stock transaction. Ms. Bender does almost exclusively Monday and Tuesday puzzles so maybe she's trying to raise the Monday bar. Still, DRACULA provides a bit of a bite and, unusual for a Monday, it is only one letter (Q) shy of being a pangram.

The Transylvanian Count reminds me of this puzzle from 1995 where DRACULA was clued as 1 + 76.  1 Across was VAMP and 76 Across was IRE. Nancy Nicholson Joline provided seven such theme clues.

In other news, John Farmer had an interesting comment about yesterday's Sunday puzzle which he created, and the rest of this post is devoted to cleaning up some loose ends I've been meaning to talk about.

 

A New Old Puzzle

The NYT archives puzzles on its web site going back to October, 1996. Only three are missing because for one reason or another they don't fit the constraints of the Across Lite software. I'll talk about each of them in future posts. One might be my personal favorite of all time but more on that one later.

Do you want to try something rare and unusual? This is the crossword equivalent of finding a lost Beethoven manuscript in an attic somewhere. The November 10, 2005 puzzle has an odd grid that breaks one standard crossword convention. I've managed to create a close-enough Across Lite version which you can try to solve if you like, and I've modified XWord Info to be able to display it with answers. If you prefer the purist approach, you can print PDFs of the puzzle and answers exactly as they appeared in the paper.

Update: I couldn't figure out who wrote the puzzle but Ellen cleared up the mystery. I'm apparently blind because it's right there in the PDF where I'm used to seeing the copyright. The co-authors are Lee Glickstein and Craig Kasper.

 

Constructor school?

I often get asked how one becomes a constructor. When I correspond with successful authors that's a question I often pose as well. I don't construct so I usually direct people to Patrick Berry's Crossword Puzzle Challenges for Dummies as the most interesting book I've read on the topic. Cruciverb.com is a site specifically geared to constructors so I point folks there too.

A reader named Allen emailed me asking if there were any courses for proto-constructors in the New York City area. I have no idea so I thought I'd ask you. Perhaps you know of support groups or have other suggestions as well.

Update: see Amy's comments.

 

Simon & Schuster Mega Crossword Puzzle Book #1

I received Mega Crossword Book #1 in the mail recently and it's absolutely beautiful. This is the way puzzles should be published in book form: high-quality opaque paper, large size, tear-out sheets, clear and crisp typography.

I haven't tried many puzzles yet but there are 300 of them, many by well-known constructors: Patrick Jordan, Victor Fleming, Richard Silvestri, Bruce Venzke, Fran & Lou, Harvey Estes, Fred Piscop, N. N. Joline, Elizabeth Gorski, and on and on. These are original puzzles, not reprints, so I have no idea how this project was put together but as I say, it looks great.

 

Funky plurals

Reader Patricia took me to task for using octopi in a recent post. She followed that up with a pluralistic comment on rhinoceri. They're interesting reads.

Enforced Letter Order

If you play or follow sports, there's a seasonal rhythm that you accept without questioning: off-season, exhibition games, regular season, playoffs, championship. In NYT crosswords, that slow annual cycle is replaced with a weekly whiplash. Monday is a warm up, Tuesday through Thursday separates the high flyers from the just-wait-until-next-years. Friday and Saturday are playoffs and championships, I suppose, although I'm not sure what to make of Sunday. The off-season marathon?

This rhythm method of graduated difficulty serves an obvious purpose. It provides something for everyone. If you're a regular NYT solver you just accept this and even look forward to it. Surprisingly, perhaps, even as I anticipate the weekend, the early week breezes are still fun, and I can make them even more fun by making them harder.

Do you add extra challenges to the easy crosswords? I used to time myself on Mondays until I discovered how slow I was compared to the pros so that's not as much fun anymore. Yeah, I know I should compete against myself and try to better my own times, blah, blah, blah. Instead, I now do other tricks to make Mondays more challenging. Here's the recipe for my favorite which I call Enforced Letter Order:

• Grab a pen. You're going to do this on paper with ink.
• Fill the letters in order, left to right on the top row, then left to right on subsequent rows until the end.

Do you see what happens? You have to fill in 1 Across first, left to right. If you're not sure because there are multiple possible answers, you look at the Down clues and figure them out, without writing them in. Maybe there are still multiple possibilities so you have to keep looking at various Down and Across clues, keeping it all in your head, until you're sure of 1 Across and then you firmly pen that in. Next, you go onto the second Across clue, and so on. If you're stuck, you can't jump over to an easy clue later on. No skipping ahead. You work out the answer in your head before you go on. The extra-pro version would be to solve the whole thing in your head before you write a single letter, but my ELO idea seems far more sane to me.

Here's an even better suggestion for what to do with an easy Monday puzzle. Find a friend who loves words but isn't hooked on crosswords yet. Sit down with her or him and work it out together. Today's Monday puzzle by Christina Houlihan Kelly (answers) with its theme of punny impediments would make a great introduction to our sport.

Ancient meeting place

In order to complete the Tuesday puzzle by Dave Mackey (answers) you had to know either "Greg of My Two Dads" was EVIGAN (debut) and REA Irvin, "longtime cartoonist for The New Yorker," or you had to know that an AGORA is an "ancient meeting place."

Those all seem like tough Tuesday clues but two of them should be added to your repertoire because they show up a lot. Agora is just way too convenient for constructors to ignore. It appears 50 times in my database, always clued as ancient or Greek marketplace or meeting place. Rea has 103 occurrences and while usually Actor Stephen gets the nod, Rea Irvin is called in from the bullpen often enough to add to your list.

The theme today put me to sleep. Hang on, that was a joke. When I saw the first theme clue was for a Ronald Reagan flick my first thought was that I hoped Bedtime for Bonzo had 15 letters. When it did, I could guess the theme and the others fell quickly. That's what I want for a Tuesday.

I wonder if Mr. Reagan will ever live down that dreadful film. What did he do when he quit Hollywood, anyway? Anyone remember?

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition

For me, a nice, pleasant solving experience starts with a puzzle tough enough that there's nothing obvious to enter right away. Today's Thursday effort by Kevin G. Der (answers) met that criterion. Then I like to find a foothold somewhere and let everything slowly fall into place, and this is where the whole theory fell apart today, at least for me. I had nothing to go on for the longest time. Finally, I saw "Old Turkish title" which had to be AGA and I was off to the races, but of course on the wrong racetrack. I think it was OXEN who finally snorted their way into 14 Across before I made any progress at all. Before then, everything I guessed was either completely wrong or just wouldn't fit. That's the beauty of rebus puzzles. They always catch me off guard. They're my Spanish Inquisition.

I have no excuse. Thursday is named for Thor, the God of Rebus, so that should have been a clue. Furthermore, I'm in the middle of adding over 1,000 new puzzles to my database and all the rebus ones have to be hand massaged so I've had rebus on my brain. I just typed in 17 new puzzles which you can see on this page if you scroll to the bottom. (More are coming!) Still it fooled me.

When the breakthrough finally broke through, the crossword was still far from easy but at least I could eventually nail it. Thanks, Mr. Der, for, for what? Causing me to pull my hair out? I guess. Plus I learned that an "old Turkish title" is BEY so if I run across an old titled Turk, I now know what to call him.

Jewish theory for crossword solvers

Oy vey!

What did I get myself into? Jim H kindly offered me this gig, and I said "Sure, I'd love to write something about what crossword solvers need to know about Hebrew, Judaism, Israel and the like." Thought that'd be more useful than my other strengths: math, 80's movies and sitcoms, and the Pittsburgh Steelers. (Though if any of you ever want to discuss any of those I’m always willing...)

My original plan was to tell you a little something about what might appear in crosswords related to

• the Hebrew language
• the Hebrew calendar
• Jewish holidays
• Jewish culture
• Israeli geography
• Israeli names

I researched all of these, and here's what I quickly discovered: that's A LOT of material. I don't want to write that (at least in one sitting) any more than you want to read it, especially given my propensity to ramble. Jim had it right in his recent post on music theory. Instead of naming every composer that ever lived, he focused on one area that would be useful to puzzle solvers. I'm not sure what would be most useful, but I'm gonna talk a bit about the major holidays, and maybe we can delve more deeply into those other areas in the future.

First, though, some words about spelling. Those words: good luck. Semitic languages use different alphabets than we do, and unfortunately there's not one single transliteration system. (Quick: is it AMIR, EMIR, AMEER, or EMEER? Anyone?) And Hebrew itself is sometimes pronounced differently depending on the speaker’s origin, which doesn’t help. As a general rule, keep in mind that

• B ~ V You might see SHEVAT or SHEBAT.
• -A ~ -AH Word endings can often take either
• H ~ CH The letter chet is a voiceless uvular fricative for which there's no precise English equivalent. Yes, I looked that up.
• BB, KK, NN, PP, SS, etc. Consonants may sometimes be doubled. Or they may not.

We wind up with what Rex called the "Jewish Holiday Spelling factor". The holiday HANUKKAH, for example, has also appeared as CHANUKAH or HANUKAH, and other spellings are possible.

Anyway, the major holidays are as follows:

The new year is ROSH HASHANAH. (Literally "head of the year", and ROSH, "head" or "beginning", might appear in other contexts.) It's in the Hebrew month of Tishri, usually falling in September or October. In SHUL (=synagogue) a SHOFAR, a ceremonial trumpet made from a ram's horn, will be blown. May also be spelled Hashana, ha-Shanah...

Ten days later is YOM KIPPUR, the day (YOM) of atonement. It's likely to be used to clue ATONE, or especially its active forms.

HANUKKAH is the festival of lights. In the Hebrew month of Kislev, usually in December. For eight days we light a MENORA, spin a top called a DREIDEL, and eat potato pancakes called LATKES.

On PURIM we retell the story from the book of ESTHER. Purim is in ADAR, which should be your default Hebrew month with 26 appearances in Jim's database. (ELUL, the last month of the year, would be your next guess.)

Finally, Passover, commemorating the biblical exodus from Egypt, occurs in the month of Nisan. A Passover clue probably refers to SEDER, the ceremonial feast. We eat unleavened bread called MATZO (also MATZOH or the plurals, MATZOS or MATZOTH).

Once you know these, MAZEL TOV! (Congratulations!) You're well on your way to solving like a Jew!

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Saturday puzzle by Mike Nothnagel (answers):

Orange, Rex, I know your secret! You're not fast crossword solvers who blog, you're fast because you blog. At least, I assume that’s the case. Why else would I so have rocked today’s puzzle other than feeling the performance pressure, knowing I'd have to write about it in front of millions all of you?

Okay, maybe the fact that Brian BOSWORTH was a gimme for me helped, but the whole process felt strange. I built from The Boz to A WORD, and virtually every answer branched out from there. No skipping around, looking for areas where I could use logic to build partial answers to get some traction like on a normal Saturday — my progression in the grid was like on a Monday.

Yesterday's discussion helped me get GLUE ON. I'd have had no clue about LUKE except my sister called me "the prodigal son" when I returned from my trip, and we recently found out that doesn't mean I'm a prodigy. (It did take me a while to get TSARS, and as soon as this is published I'm gonna follow that link—is there any other word that’s clued so consistently with trickery? Some day I'll learn…)

In any case, before today I'd finished a Saturday puzzle in under half an hour exactly once, getting close one other time. I didn't want to talk about my time here lest people think I'm bragging/hopelessly slow/whatever, but I will say I lowered my personal best time by almost twelve minutes.

You wanna get faster at the puzzle? Apparently, the secret is to blog.

Shabbat Shalom,
SethG

What are the areas of your expertise?

Based on my email, my most popular blog posts fall into three categories. The most popular single post, I'm ashamed to admit, is my Offensiveness Index. What's with you folks? You're supposed to be intellectual word lovers but a little titillation and you go gaga. To answer many queries, ok, ok, yes, I'll do more!

The second most popular are my mini-bios of people I don't know anything about, but close behind are my posts that actually provide useful information for solvers like my music theory essay. It would be fun to build up a collection of these but to do so I need your help. These might be silly, serious, or mundane.

Here's a mundane but still handy example. I think I was able to solve yesterday's puzzle before many of you were able to download it. What's my secret? Careful attention to the URI. (Note to geek wanna-bes: the more prosaic URL would also be correct in this case but URI is a little hipper in the techno set and it implies you understand the subtle distinction between the two. Casually toss around that acronym at your next nerd party and watch the women swoon.)

The Premium Crosswords page at nytimes.com is supposed to kick over to the next weekday's puzzle at 10pm Eastern. Sometimes, like yesterday, it doesn't. There are many possible reasons for this — an incorrect "expires header" on the page, problems with whatever edge cache system they use to distribute their static content worldwide, I'm just showing off here. If you rely on that page you won't see the puzzle if there are problems, but look closer. Hover over the "Today's Puzzle" link and you'll see a reference to something like http://select.nytimes.com/premium/xword/Mar2708.puz. If you don't see the date you want, just modify that link to point to the correct day. The format is obvious. The fast way to do this in Windows is to right click on the link, select Copy Shortcut, paste the URI into the browser address bar, edit the date appropriately, and hit Enter. Mac users can do something similar. By the way, this works for almost any date back to October 23, 1996. I'll talk about the exceptions in a future post.

There, that was a tip about something I happen to know about but as I've reported earlier, I don't know everything. There are lots of useful facts that you know that help you solve puzzles. If those could be concisely codified, that might make a great blog entry.

Tomorrow's post will be my first experiment in this new endeavor. Seth Grossinger is a friend of this blog and I've temporarily made him a co-author. I've given him complete control over the Saturday puzzle post which he will upload sometime Saturday morning. He can talk about the puzzle in as much or as little detail as he wants. His only constraint is that he's promised to include useful solving data in an area I don't know anything about.

What are the areas of your expertise? If you have some clever thoughts you'd like to share, send me an email using the link in the left column.

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Update: The Friday puzzle by Barry C. Silk (answers) is close to perfect. Nothing was obvious at first but everything fell into place. I realize this is subjective and largely random. Everything I happened to guess happened to be right. That fortuitous happenstance is going to happen from time to time but I could have just as easily have erred and got stuck permanently in a corner. Rather than claim to be lucky, I prefer to think it's a great crossword. Thanks, Mr. Silk, for making my day. "Drag during the day?" NEED A NAP, of course. "Aid in picking things up" is ANTENNA. Good fun.