The JimH Crossword Blog

Root word?

Dr. Pangram is back. Four of Barry C. Silk's previous five puzzles have used every letter. Even more impressive, four of the previous five pangrams that anyone has constructed are by Mr. Silk.

Back on July 26, he started 1 Across with MR WIZARD which I thought described him pretty well. Today's Saturday, September 6 puzzle (answers) starts with "Westinghouse/Intel award winner". The answer is WHIZ KID. Indeed.

There is so much I love about this puzzle I'm not sure where to start. It's amazingly fresh according to my formula despite including OLE, but look how brilliant that clue is: "Root word?" A question mark on a Saturday means something very special is going on. Should I ever find myself watching a blood sport in Spain, it's a word I'll be sure to employ should I choose to root for the matador. Frankly, I'm more drawn to the underbull.

"Sounded like a bufflehead" made me laugh but it turns out a bufflehead is a duck, and probably one who is tired of being laughed at. You can hear one here for a very precise answer to that clue.

"Alert while driving" is another outstanding clue. Alert is a verb, not an adjective. I like to think that when other drivers HONK AT me, they're merely alerting me, not suggesting I do something obscene.

I had to look up Sal MAGLIE, the losing pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1956. Don Larsen of the Yankees pitched a perfect game and won the game 2-0 and the World Series at the same time. This seems obscure but I suppose it's legit. It's the only post-season perfect game in history. In fact, it's the only post-season no-hitter. Baseball fans care about these things even more than they care about pangrams, probably.

Hitchcock's Notorious was an RKO film, as was King Kong, Citizen Kane, and so many great movies of the 30s and 40s. Such brave filmmaking for the time, and it holds up well today. That's Ingrid Bergman with Cary Grant in the photo. Would you send her off to sleep with the Nazis to help win the war?

Butterfly with black-and-white eyespots

ROUEN (clued here as "Hundred Years' War siege site") is famous as the location of the demise of The Maid of Orleans but it will always remind me of my favorite inadvertent joke. Years ago, I was visiting a friend (or as we say in puzzledom, un ami) in Paris and Rouen came up in conversation. "Oh yes," said my friend, "that's the town where Joan of Arc finally met her match."

Kevin G. Der is the Sarah Palin of Crosswords, having burst into the major leagues last month with two outstanding accomplishments in three days: a record breaker and a paper bender. His Friday, September 5 puzzle (answers) isn't as ground breaking but it's a very fine themeless challenge.

I especially like that he debuts both CREDULOUS and CRAZY TALK, almost symmetrically placed. I'm also amused that if you happen to use the most popular search engine to help you solve crosswords, you didn't even need to type the clue to figure out the "phrase on a Google search button." I think Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have to pay Clint "Dirty Harry" Eastwood a royalty every time they display it.

Let's talk about that "noted shopper scolder," MR. WHIPPLE. According to this L.A.Times obit, the character created by actor Dick Wilson was one of the most recognizable faces in the history of American advertising. He uttered his catch phrase "Please don't squeeze the Charmin" in more than 500 commercials and apparently loved to share in interviews that the first of those was filmed in, yes, Flushing N.Y.

WOOD NYMPH also debuts today but instead of some mythological clue, it refers to the butterfly seen above. An "explosive time in history" is the ATOMIC AGE. It's too bad that "atomic" makes people think about bombs but I understand the connection. GMAIL isn't really an "AOL alternative" because one is simply an email service and the other started as an ISP and evolved into a web portal that happens to have email as well, but that one's ok too.

I could go on and on but I'd better be PUTTING TO SLEEP this post in case I'm "boring the pants off you."

To answer some questions from yesterday, I'm not done yet but yes this blog is wrapping up soon. That doesn't mean I'm done blogging, though. I'd say more but a very special guest star will explain it all when the time comes. Here's a puzzle for you. I bet you can't guess who the special guest will be. And here's the clue. In retrospect, it will seem like the perfect and obvious choice. No, it's neither Kevin Der nor Sarah Palin.

XWord Info is too much fun for me to abandon but it will undergo some changes as well, and work on that will be keeping me busy for awhile.

Doing the Splits

I love puzzles like this despite the fact that they completely screw up my database by introducing new answers that aren't real words. The Thursday, September 4 puzzle by Matt Ginsberg (answers) requires us to parse the five symmetrically placed theme answers in a unique way. If you've done the puzzle you know what I mean. If you're still working on it, go back and keep trying. It's worth the effort.

Since I'm apparently not going to talk about the theme clues, let's see what else is interesting. A "three-wheeled Indian taxi" is a TUK TUK. That's one in the photo. One of the reasons it's possible to breathe in New Delhi now is that they've converted these ubiquitous conveyances to natural gas, although I see the masked driver here is taking no chances.

The other debuts today are SUN DECK, cleverly clued as "Tanner's locale," and the lovely word ANDALUSIAN meaning, well, from Andalusia which is the southern-most region of Spain.

Apparently SHEA Stadium hosted four World Series. Well, sort of. Half the games were played elsewhere, so maybe it really hosted four Half World Series or two total. Ok, that's beyond geeky.

"Trample, for example" is my favorite clue of the puzzle. It's prime and sublime. The answer's RHYME.

As I start to wind down this blog, I'm thinking about which essays I have in the works that deserve to be finished up. The Critique of Crossword Blogs is nearly done but I'll hold off on that for just a bit. (Why shouldn't blogs be subject to the same kind of analysis as crosswords?) My "mini-biographies of people I don't know anything about" fizzled out when I started learning more actual facts about crossword people but there are a few folks who it would be fun to highlight that way. I'll figure it out.

In the mean time, let me leave you with a Double Blast From the Past. If you think you can handle it, here are two X-Rated Crosswords you'll want to try if you're, you know, in the right mood. Calm down, they're both from the NYT archives.

Wednesday, October 9, 2002 by Peter Gordon
Thursday, March 15, 2007 by Michael Shteyman.

Have fun.

More men do this than women

I remember thinking while the Olympics were happening that ignoring them completely was going to hurt me eventually. Some crossword was going to ask me who won the Bronze Medal in the three-legged race and I would have no idea. When I realized today's theme was going to be Olympic-related and saw the name David J. Kahn on the puzzle, my heart sank.

Fortunately for me, MICHAEL PHELPS was able to accomplish something so dramatic that it even seeped through to my consciousness. EIGHT GOLD MEDALS seems nearly as hard as constructing an 18-block puzzle and it means that if I want to beat the new record I now need to win nine at the next games. I better start training right away. Nah, it can wait until tomorrow.

The Wednesday, September 3 puzzle (answers) makes me wish that more puzzles could be this timely. I can't imagine what the back-stage scramble looks like to pull this off, although I bet Mr. Kahn had already calculated that whether the final total was seven or eight gold medals, it was still a 15-letter answer and he could start on at least the bottom half of the crossword before the final race even started. Thank goodness Mr. Phelps finished out of the medals in the R&B Twister Competition.

With women catching up and surpassing men in so many categories these days, it's nice to see studly guys like Michael and me still own one non-Olympic category. Apparently we SNORE more. Take that, Hillary and Sarah!

The pressure the NRA has been applying to Mr. Shortz and the rest of the NYT Box Team is finally starting to pay off. BULLET makes it's debut as an answer today.

It makes me sad that SST is now correctly referred to as a "bygone aircraft." I was fortunate enough to fly Concorde between Heathrow and JFK and it was such a fantastic experience aboard one of the most beautiful machines ever created. It always surprises me when technology backslides and civilians can no longer take the supersonic shortcut across the ocean.

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.

Like some kisses and bases

"A woman at 20 is like ice, at 30 she is warm and at 40 she is hot." So said Italian actress, Gina Lollobrigida, and who am I to argue? She, MIA Farrow, and AVA Gardner grace today's Monday, September 1 puzzle (answers) by Crossword Star Andrea Carla Michaels. The theme is all about keeping secrets.

Speaking of secrets, I wanted to let you know that since my database is expanding at the (non-exponential) rate of one puzzle per day, I've decided to up the minimum bar for constructors to appear in my stats from 10 to 15 puzzles. Hey, Andrea, I'm kidding! This is the tenth solo puzzle for Ms. Michaels (along with a couple of collaborations) so her name starts appearing on pages like Most Prodigious Authors and Authors by Day of Week and Authors by Year. That means more search engine hits on her name, probably more Hollywood contracts, no doubt increased wealth and other such benefits. Probably time to warn your agent so he can put in a second phone line.

This is a very smooth Monday puzzle. It must be tough to keep things at a Monday level but still be fun. I love clues such as "like some kisses and bases." They can both be STOLEN. It's a charming metaphor whether your sport is baseball or wooing.

"Ecce homo" means "Behold, a man" in Latin. That dramatic moment when Pontius PILATE presented a bleeding and beaten Jesus to the crowd was a favorite for early Christian artists. Whatever your thoughts on the story's likely veracity, it's great drama.

My most recent Blast from the Past linked to a puzzle where a single letter was repeated 69 times. Several people asked if that was a record. It's not. Two daily puzzles beat that count. Here's the second-place puzzle. (The link is direct to WXord Info because the puzzle is older than the NYT archives.) Drop me a note or comment if you think you know the winner.

Extra Play

Lots of people adore, say, Woody Allen (me too) but if you ask them if they liked his latest film, they say not so much. If you keep going back through the one before that and the one before that, none of them were great either, but they still like the director. I feel that way about constructor Alan Arbesfeld. I know I like him but when I read my posts on his last few puzzles, I noticed that I whined about them. Not this time. Extra Play, the Sunday August 31 puzzle (answers) seemed to just match my sense of humor or my mood for the day because I found it a good challenge but good fun too.

The theme phrases all come up two letters short (with the score tied, apparently) before adding some OverTime to match the clues. My favorite is "teacher's pet" which becomes SCHOOL MARMOT. "Part of a Beckett play" is nearly as good: AN ACT OF GODOT. By the way, if you're keeping tabs on that game, it's way into overtime. Vladimir and Estragon are still waiting.

As you see in the photo, TOUCANS do indeed have substantial bills. I assumed the clue referred to my old friend Ian whose bar tab might have grown large enough to be noticed by the New York Times.

Consider this clue: "Cable channel whose first showing was Gone With the Wind." This might be unfair to his predecessors, but I consider it a fine example of a Will Shortz clue. Perhaps Mr. Arbesfeld came up with it and it wasn't altered in the editing process, but it's the kind of small puzzle I associate with the modern NYT style. On its face, it's ludicrous but with a little thought it's quite gettable. GWTW is a generically Southern classic but it is particularly associated with Atlanta, home of, well, Ted Turner among others, so it has to be one of his stations, presumably one that shows movies. TNT. QED.

Name associated with spirits

We haven't heard from famous constructor Michael Shteyman in nearly a year. Today's Saturday, August 30 puzzle (answers) includes six especially smooth fifteen-letter answers, only one of which has appeared before and that one only once.

Let's start at 1 Across: "Bum." Don't make any a priori assumptions about this being a hobo or such like. The answer, rather more a posteriori, is HEINIE. "Play makers" are the components that make up plays: ACTS.

The EROICA symphony was, indeed, inspired by Napoleon. The story goes that Beethoven wanted to dedicate it directly, calling it the Bonaparte Symphony but he became disgusted when Napoleon crowned himself emperor and changed the name. Eroica means heroic. I wonder whether, in retrospect, Napoleon would have preferred the crown or the honor of having perhaps the greatest symphony ever written named for him.

I hadn't thought about Back in the U.S.S.R. being a parody of The Beach Boys hit CALIFORNIA GIRLS but that makes sense. I was too young when I first heard it to appreciate the reference. Following the Beatles train of thought, What Is To Be Done was written by LENIN. Oh, sorry, different guy. Yet another guy was the one associated with spirits and it's my answer of the day: EBENEZER SCROOGE. Those spirits.

There are so many great clues from the first "Bum" to the last "___ will die" from It Must Be Him by Vicki Carr. That heart-tugging ballad held the country in thrall in 1967.

Finally, I got a lot of mail about my Blast from the Past a couple of days ago so here’s a different but related feat of ingenuity.

On Thursday March 21, 2002, Patrick Berry pulled off an amazing coup. I’ve already given away too much so just try it in Across Lite. If you’re not an NYT Premium Subscriber, you can find it on my stats site.

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.

An EYE for an I

I enjoyed solving the Thursday, August 28 puzzle by Sheldon Bernardo (answers.) I like the theme, it's clever, but for me today the thrill's in the fill. There are so many terrific clues; way more than average.

This is Mr. Bernardo's tenth puzzle, meaning he starts showing up on my constructor pages. (Sorry, Andrea!) It's his first since I started blogging but I have fond memories of solving his previous constructions.

I'm just going to go through my notes in order, and I won't even get to them all. "Hot strip" is a fine clue for GAZA. It is very hot there. "Washington has some big ones" was easy for me since I live in Washington. The west coast version, that is. It's got to be FIRS. You don't notice how massive they are here until you go somewhere else, anywhere else, and the trees are so tiny! Only this is an east coast Washington clue so it was a clever way to clue EGOS.

"Record holder" is SLEEVE. You'll have to explain that to the kids but it's important they understand the cultural significance of that ancient technology. An object of ridicule is a BUTT, not because you have a funny-looking one but because you're the butt of a joke. Nine out of sixteen clues for SALS now mention that cafeteria in Do the Right Thing. As that movie fades from our cultural memory, we'll have to come up with something else.

"Part of a pound" is a great clue. Are we talking ounces or pence here? Neither. The answer is CAGE. Ah, that kind of pound. SPONGEBOB Squarepants lives in Bikini Bottom. What a fabulous location name. Mr. POE gets a humorous quote: "I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity." Who else could it be?

My favorite clue of the puzzle is "cold-blooded killers." The literal answer is ASPS. Yum.

After all that, I was disappointed with one clue. I thought there would be some clever reason why there would be a "1940s-'50s film/TV star with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame." Maybe it was someone who played both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Maybe it would be Jane Russell because, uh, just because. It turns out to be DESI ARNAZ for the more mundane reason that one is for TV and the other is for movies. Oh well.

One of the photos here is today's constructor Mr. Bernardo. He's apparently a school principal in NYC who requires his staff to solve his puzzles without the use of a dictionary. Tough school.

Blast from the Past: A recent post by Amy on her blog reminded me of this Tuesday crossword from 1999. The notepad says, and I'm paraphrasing a little here to be somewhat more obscure, that a particular thing is wholly missing in this puzzle. Try it out or if you're lazy, jump to the answer here.