The Sunday, May 18 puzzle by Brendan Emmett Quigley (answers) takes me back to my misspent youth when I spent a lot of time tilting at arcade windmills. Other than crossing a mideast prayer call with a marathoner I'd never heard of, it was as much fun as flipping the silver balls through the special rollovers and off the bumpers for a bonus jackpot.
Speaking of which, there was really a record-setting football player named Flipper? What, his parents wanted a bottlenose dolphin? Man, you'd have to be good with a name like that.
I was very pleased to see Siân Phillips, the deliciously evil Livia in the best television series I've ever seen. Get I, Claudius on DVD. That circumflexed first name indicates her exotic origins. She's Welsh. Don't eat the figs.
"Sure application spot" took me awhile to get, but it's a completely accurate and fair, not to mention funny, clue.
It's been a blast for me playing around with the new thumbnail feature on XWord Info. I've added a bunch of links in various places so you can see, for example, all the puzzles by one author, all the rebus puzzles, and so on with more to come. I collected a few of the grids that I particularly like for one reason or another and stuck them all on a new page called Grid Art. (Thanks, John Farmer.) I'm sure I'm missing a lot of great ones so if you know of any that ought to be immortalized, please let me know.
I only blog about NYT puzzles here but if you're into the sport you know the NY Sun also has great crosswords and they're often challenging. There's a terrific new blog specifically on these puzzles with a great name; Sun Blocks. Pete Mitchell is the author. Of course Amy also blogs the Sun and many others besides.
Yep, that's it for me today. But don't despair, tomorrow is another day and another guest blogger! Wendy is an occasional commenter here and the Monday puzzle is hers to dissect in public. Since, once again, I know little about her, I have to resort to making stuff up. I know she's from Akron which is sort of unbelievable to me because I had assumed Akron was kind of like Oz; this magical kingdom that doesn't really exist. Perhaps she can clarify. I'll add that she, uh, once sang with a rock band but it broke up over artistic differences, she believes anything anyone ever tells her except that she's gullible, and she has not yet won an Oscar. Have fun, Wendy.
Update: Check out KarmaSartre's lyrical comment below :)