Friday, July 18th, 2008 NYT syndicate crossword (Friday, Jun 06, 2008; Puzzle No. 0606)

Author: Ashish Vengsarkar / Will Shortz

I found this to be a difficult Friday puzzle. It was themeless, with five horizontal 15-wides and two vertical 15-deep answers (most impressive, by the way). Working with only what knowledge is in my head I don't believe I would have completed it had I not had some luck guessing at the long answers. In fact, I was unable to actually complete the puzzle because there was one letter I did not write down because I did not know it. I guessed it to be 'P' and that turned out to be correct, but I did not write it down. This was at the intersection of 25D and 34A.

Looking to get started I went for anything that looked like a gimme:

• 51D End of ___: AnEra
• 29A Fortune 500 company whose toll-free number ends with 23522: AFLAC
• 33D Chlorure de sodium: SEL
• 42A Wall St. Deal: LBO (either IPO or LBO and SEL gave me the 'L')
• 40D Duty for a docent: TOUR
• 60D Field divs.: YDS
• 47A Considered groovy: DUG (with the 'U' from TOUR)
• 56A Nitwit: ASS
• 8A Zeroes: RESETS (could have been "losers" but for 8D)
• 8D Split: RanOff (which confirmed my guess for 16A)
• 16A Saint whose name means "good": AGATHA (with 8A this gave me 13D)
• 13D Flip: SASSY
• 5D Wall Street Deal: IPO (LBO already in use in 42A; this gave me 5A)
• 5A Return addressee?: IRS (this confirmed my guess at 7D)
• 7D Psalm ender: SELAH
• 9D Graded item: EGG (obvious from having 8A and 16A)
• 10D Posed: SAT (obvious from having 8A and 16A)

Let me explain why 29A was a gimme. I looked at the letters on the phone for the numbers given and AFLAC was so obvious I wrote it down without even thinking about it.

So now I looked at 17A [Mean crossword clue writer's challenge to solvers?] and here is what I had: _____O_L_NGTH_S. With the 'NG' I tossed in an 'I', which looked like the end of a word, so I tossed in another 'I' to make _____O_LING THIS. I was thinking TRY SOLVING THIS but had one too many blanks. Decided 6D must be RIGHTARM [Very desirous person's sacrifice] and with that 'G' I completed 17A with TRY GOOGLING THIS (blanks added for clarity). Show time!

Next correctly guessed 11D with only 'ETH' as ETHNIC CLEANSING [Heinous war crime]. After getting NARD in 24D [Olden ointment] and MOTIF/FAA for 15D [Interior designer's creation] and 28A [Flight data recorder?] (lame) I was able to guess RUNS IN THE FAMILY for 22A [Gets passed down, perhaps]. I then polished-off the top of the puzzle with some delay after writing in "stat" for 1A's clue [R.B.I. or E.R.A] but recovered with ABBR after getting BRR for 2D's [Cold Evidence?] (nice one).

But though I shortly guessed YOU HAD ME AT HELLO for the third 15-wide at 37A [Movie line spoken by Renee Zellweger after "Just shut up" I was greatly slowed down in the middle-east area with (to me) unfathomable clues like:

• 25D Fictional River of verse
• 26D Three-time skiing world champion
• 35D ___ acid (no, not boric and not malic but yes it ends with a 'C')
• 36D Best Actor nominee of 1991
• 34A Molly of early stage and screen
• 43A What you might wind up with (crank, handle, key... nothing else came to me)
• 49A Land in the Thames (this one felt familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on it)

So this area is basically kaput for me. I saved it for later.

Okay, another flyer--this time at 3D where I got BEYOND SUSPICION for [Unimpeachable] and then again on the last 15-wide at 57 A with only _EI______Y__I__ I guessed BEIJING OLYMPICS for [Event starting on 08/08/08 at 08:08:08 p.m.].

After that I slogged around the bottom of the puzzle and cleaned it up a bit at a time, then the middle-west. I found that I once again forgot that dang mayor's name in 52D (CUOMO) and discovered yet another new and obscure geography name with ESPOO in 53D for [Neighbor of Helsinki]. Dig this: Wikipedia says of it: "Espoo shares its eastern border with Helsinki and Vantaa, while enclosing Kauniainen". What do you know about that?

I have a beef with the clue for 22D (REDDYE) because it is worded [Turn red, maybe]. Well, that would be "dye", wouldn't it? I think the clue should have been worded, "Turned red again, maybe". By the way, while I was looking at that clue I was thinking that a good answer to it as clued would be "Lear At".

I also personally think it a stretch to use the clue [Inspire] for AROUSE (as seen in 63A).

Okay, now to deadman's gulch in the mid-east area.

I finally decided with _O__E that 36D must be NOLTE [Best actor nominee in...]; as above.

Then that 43A must be REEL [What you might wind up with].

Finally my brain yielded OLEIC for 35D [___ acid].

So now I had AIT for [Land in the Thames] on 49A. I later googled this... check it out:

The Ait (island) is one of London Wildlife Trust's reserves and it is rarely visited by the public.

The 25D [Fictional river of verse] is AL_H. This is where the 'P' goes that I didn't write down until I looked it up (hey, with an Island like AIT that missing letter in the fictional river could have been any number of letters).

26D is MA_ER (the skier clue) and because 34A is __CON and they cross at 34A's second letter I decided that it must be MAIER (which proved to be correct).

Okay, now done and later on I went off to google. Do you know what? If you type in the 34A clue exactly as it is shown [Molly of early stage and screen] you get back PICON as the very first hit.

Now, about that mythical river of verse... it is the river in In Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan". This also could have been clued as a river in Antarctica.

This was a great though hard Friday NYT but I must say that the middle-east area was going nowhere if you did not already know these things or have access to google while working it.

Thursday, July 17th, 2008 NYT syndicate crossword (Thursday, Jun 05, 2008; Puzzle No. 0605)

This puzzle was created by James Sajdak. It was a trickless Thursday with what was to me an initially inscrutable theme identified by 57A: [Where things are freely bought and sold... and what the starts of 17, 23, 36 and 46 Across do?]. So the answer to this was OPENMARKET, and what I finally realized is that this is shorthand for "the first word of {these 4 answers} create a phrase when paired with the word MARKET".

The four theme answers are: FLEACIRCUS; FARMERSALMANAC; SUPERBOWLSUNDAY; and BULLMOOSEPARTY, respectively. So we have "Flea Market," "Farmer's Market," Super Market," and "Bull Market."

While some of the clues gave me some trouble (more on that) I pretty much steadily worked my way through the puzzle until the NE corner, which I decided to save till last. When I finally got there I was faced with these across clues:

• 10 Casa ___, Toronto castle
• 16 Rapper with the gold-record album "O.G. Original Gangster"
• 19 Juggling nine balls, e.g.
• 22 Cyberball maker

Well, this is trouble for me. I know not the castle; nor do I know the rap album (I don't listen to rap because it is ___); I have no idea what the ball juggling thing is about; and I've never heard of Cyberball. (10, 16, 19 across are all four letters, and 22A is five, by the way.) So, the down clues in this area are:

• 10 Do anything to help
• 11 Place to use an echograph
• 12 Half a popular comedy team
• 13 Ancient Greek

10D is eleven letters, and 11, 12 and 13 down are five each. I don't yet have the cross on 22A (22 down [I'd like to see a ___]) nor the one next to it and down a row (26D [Projector part]), I'm missing the end of FARMERSALAMANAC, and I'm missing bits of middle-east. It looks pretty grim, because I don't know 10, 11, or 12 down, but I'm thinking I've got 13 down.

So I wrote in "ascetic" for 13D, and tried to make it work. I figured out that 22D was AMENU and 26D was LENS, threw in ATARI for 22A, put in REEF for 28A [Shorten, as a sail] and in a Doh! moment realized 23A was FARMERSMARKET.

Then, in an eclat I realized what was being looked for in 10D was LIFTAFINGER.

But now nothing is looking right in this corner but because I was though I was sure of LIFTAFINGER and of ATARI I decided ACETIC going into the ending 'I' in ATARI and the ending 'C' in ALMANAC could not be right at all. I took a flyer and guessed that 11D was OCEAN. With 'FO' on 10A I guessed Loma (which also works with "acetic"--damn!). After some pondering, I wrote in ICET for 16A and FEAT for 19A with a sniff of disdain for the clue. The half a comedy pair clue by cross-clues turns out to be MEARA. I've seen this before but it just did not stick with me.

Now I finished the few things in the middle-east section and the puzzle was done. But here was the real puzzler: How could an [Ancient Greek] in 13D be ATTIC? WTFO!?

Well, I looked it up on the Web later and guess what? It turns out that the various forms of the Greek language eventually wound up in a dialect know as--you guessed it--Attic Greek. And Attic Greek eventually evolved into the common Greek known as Koine Greek, which was used in the writing of the New Testament. How about that, sports fans? Would it not be a better clue to have written "Ancient Greek language"? That sort of thing seems better placed in a Saturday puzzle to me. JMHO. Oh, by the way, "ascetic" would be an appropriate answer for the clue.

Here's a link on Attic Greek: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attic_Greek

Speaking of clues that gave me trouble, here are a few more:

• 15A. "A Dog of Flanders" novelist: OUIDA
• 27A. ___ Bridge, first to span the Mississippi at St. Louis: EADS
• 32A. City nicknamed Gateway to the West: Winnipeg
• 42A. Make: EARN
• 56A. Win: REAP
• 6D. Shamans: CURERS
• 31D. ___ tree: UPA

I actually knew 15A, but could not pull it up at first. 27A I had no clue about. 32A... uhhhhh... maybe I knew that... Sounds vaguely familiar. First time I've ever seen MAKE for [earn]. I can't in my stretchiest mind justify the clue [Win] for REAP. All I can do is shake my head. And is it just me or does it seem a stretch to call a shaman a CURER? 31D is a fine clue; it is just that I was trying to think of trees which have three letters and was just misled by the clue. I could not even get it when I had U_A. It was only when I jumped on SUPERBOWLSUNDAY that I _finally_ got it. It was a V8 moment, for sure. Worse thing is--I've seen it before, I'm sure!

I believe I like the [___ tree] clue the best of them all.

Friday, July 11th, 2008 -- MGWCC #006 -- "Can You Dig It?"

This is the sixth Matt Gaffney puzzle I have done since Matt started his weekly crossword contest, and I hope nobody posts a comment like the one from last week where someone said that MGWCC #005 was "too easy". As Matt commented, that "will not be a problem this week". This was a really tough puzzle. I can usually work through a Saturday NYT without touching google but for this puzzle I had to rely upon it for clues like: "Amy Goodwin's network"; "Late San Francisco poet Jack"; "___+ (French TV channel)"; "Penninsular nation"; and "French department Seine-et-___".

This puzzle was published--like all of them--on Friday, but the contest answer has to be in by Noon EDT, Tuesday. If you are still working on this puzzle as you read this, here is a spoiler warning.

DISPEL in 1A was the answer for [Brush aside], which I was thinking might be "offput'. Nope.

MAGICK was the answer for 19A [Occult activity]. All I could think of here in six letters was seance, but since then I have come up with this list: magic (5); magick, voodoo (6); sorcery (7); Idolatry (8); cartomancy, numerology, channeling, witchcraft (10); Soothsaying (11); fortunetelling (14).

29A bit me with "Who ___?" for five letters. I'm thinking of everything but the correct answer (CARES). Obvious when I got it.

Some very obvious answers for some questions really bit me. COURTS in 34A [With "the," system of justice]. ELECT in 5D [Put in, as in Putin] had me thinking, "I wonder what the Russian word is for that?". I also got bit by 41D [Treating impartially] by writing in 'fairly' when the expected response was FAIRTO. I finally deciphered this one by deciding that 57A [A kind gesture from] had to be NICEOF. It was the last word I wrote in this grid.

The best clue in the puzzle had me vexed almost the most: [Em preceder] in 48A. All I could think of at first as the em-dash. But the six letter answer turned out to be from the story of Dorothy: AUNTIE.

Of course as with all of the MGWCC puzzles one has to figure out an "answer" from solving the grid. This week the instruction was to find the missing letter. But after completing the grid I found no letters missing (It was pangrammatic). After going off entirely in the wrong direction I finally connected the title of the puzzle--"Can You Dig It?" with an answer in the grid: CANAL in 33A for [___+ (French TV channel)]. To the left of this was a black grid block and to the left of that was PANAM in 32A [It revolutionized 20th-century global transportation] and I saw in my mind's eye PANAM_CANAL. Aha! The letter missing is A. I don't know if it is intended as part of the mini-theme, but crossing the same black square downwards are the words SHIPS and CROSS, which with the 'A' would yield ShipsAcross. This makes sense because that is what the canal enables, in a way, as a shortcut.