MGWCC #33 - "I Need Your Undivided Attention"

After looking at Joon's post on the Diary of a Crossword Fiend site for January 20, 2009 about this puzzle I am nothing short of amazed... 11:34 minutes to solve, and the correct answer guessed! I was unable to come up with an answer for the 2nd or 3rd time in solving these puzzles, and it took me well over an hour to complete it. Even more amazing--no, astounding--is the way the answer is secreted in the puzzle. I can't imagine how one could place a certain letter sequence at every prime-numbered square and then force a fill on that to include three theme-related answers as well.

Actually, I began to guess what was going on this very day. I was convinced that the nineteen letters in the three theme answers could be reduced to seventeen by removing two letters based on some logic, and the logic I choose was to take out the ME in MERIDIAN because of the odd MEGOD angling off of MATT. But I never found an anagram I liked and the deadline passed. However, one of my UCI co-workers, John Mangrich, mentioned at lunch yesterday that the word 'prime' could precede all three of the theme answers, and today while out walking back from lunch I was mulling that over and it hit me that the three theme answers were not letters for an anagram, but pointers to the real answer. I mentioned this to another UCI co-worker, Lyle Wiedeman, after we got back from the walk and he asked, "But what would lead you to those words if that were true?!" (or something like that). With that, he checked to see if the answer was up and discovered the depth of our solving folly (we both went the anagramming route last weekend).

I am fairly sure that John is by now kicking himself for having brilliantly hit the truth but missing what to do with it.

So some comments about the fill. The NW corner slayed me because I knew none of the things in that corner except RON and ONEOUNCE. I guessed IMO and LIONS, then finally ANUS. After working the middle a bit I had SOUP and finally remembered where I had heard of Freedonia. DUCKSOUP.

The next problem area for me was the SE corner. Like yet another UCI co-worker--John Lenning--I resist writing in answers that I know can't be right, but I have discovered that for that puzzle whatever the author intended for the grid is what has to be there to solve it. So it was with great reluctance that I considered MINTJAM for green spread. I know that jam refers to a product made with whole fruit, cut into pieces or crushed. Mint is not a fruit, so there can't be mint jam even if there is mint jelly. And in fact I was going to scathe Matt for that one but now that I see why the grid was a little tortured I am going to forgive him (but don't do it again :-).

Then, as Joon commented, that word CENTAURY is "say what?" And of course I had no way of knowing what the City on the Indian Ocean was. Sheesh, that is the biggest ocean, I think--how many cities are on the Indian Ocean? Egad! Then there is that damn clue Mass for BAYSTATE and no indication of an abbreviation, so of course it was incredibly misleading. Groan. But eventually I managed to make it all fit together.

Last area of trouble and last part of the puzzle done is where 23D and 24D are. I finally reluctanly concluded that PAYS is French for country and SENDSUP is the answer for does. Ugh. Sends up? Does? I don't get it. I guess I should ask Lee Knutson (yet another UCI co-worker and previous MGWCC winner) about that one. He explained 6d to me Tuesday.

This puzzle was just too clever. I'll give it an A-

MGWCC #013 -- Friday, August 29, 2008 -- "Stroker Ace"

As Orange (of "Diary of a Crossword Fiend" fame) said about Matt Gaffney after solving his MGWCC #011 Kaiduko, "Sneaky Bastard!" I'll add to that devious. This puzzle contains a cleverly crafted riddle, and because it winds through five rows of the puzzle (65 squares worth) and is not a quote you can't know what the heck it is like a quote might be and so you have to get it through cross clues. The cross clues are mostly quite difficult.

On Matt's Weekly Crossword Contest web site he said of last week's and this week's puzzle, "Nice guy face off; evil guy face back on -- let's get to this week's contest crossword!" Because of this I am able to say after working this puzzle, what a rapscallion!

Crossing the first line of the riddle are these clues:

• 1D Officer: Lawman
• 2D Really wish one could: AcheTo
• 3D Much of Australia: Heaths
• 4D Q-U link: RST (gimme)
• 5D Braid: Plait (stock clue/answer)
• 6D Delineated: Limned
• 7D "I guess that's ___": ANo
• 8D ___-Isenburg, Germany: Neu
• 9D Language since 1964: Basic

So I got lawman after figuring out that 30A was NOSE [Narrow margin of victory] and [ 20A [Strawberry, once] was MET after texting a friend with a WTFO? on the clue (I'm not a sports trivia buf). This gave me ACES for 14A [Drives into the hole], which gave me 2D's ACHESTO [Really wish one could]. After taking a leap of faith on 1A with LAHR [Much of Australia] I had the NW corner and refocused on the middle-top.

I got PLAIT on 5D and after getting FEE on 18D [Service Money] and EIN on 21A ["Dann singe Ich ___ Lied fur Dich..." (Nena lyric)] I nailed LIMNED on 6D, and ANO for 7D, leaving me with PLAN_ and LINE_ on 5A and 15A [Backup Operations and Tax form phrase, respectively], and I had the first part of the riddle.

But what the hell is this language in 9D that showed up in 1964? I'm thinking that "backup operations" must be plans, and the letter missing in LINE_ must be a vowel, but I am drawing a blank on the language. Finally, I ignored it and did the NE corner, and cross clues around the 2nd line of the riddle, and got the second line of the riddle and realized the language ended in IC.

___IC? What is that? I took a walk. After the walk I had it: BASIC. So it is PLANB for 5A and LINEA for 15A.

The whole puzzle was like this.

Killer clue/answer pairs:

• 20A Strawberry, once: Met
• 44A Calendar abbr.: THU (I hate these kind of clues; they are so open)
• 46A "How about me?": AMI (I still don't understand this one)
• 49A 2003 Comedy co-starring Bob Newhart: ELF (I saw this stupid movie, but did not remember this immediately)
• 51A Language spoken in New Mexico: TAOS (I did not know it was a language as well as a location)
• 60A "You're a conformist": Moo (This took me a while to figure out)
• 68A Order in the court: OYES (I do not understand this one, either)
• 72A Title surname in a 1970's spinoff: Roper (never heard of this)
• Traditional wedding wear for some: Kimono (makes sense, but this was difficult for me to get)
• 13D Dude: CAT (I don't believe I've seen this association before)
• 29D "That's hot!": YEOW (this eluded me for quite a while)
• 34D Strikes up the band: HITSIT (one of my favorite clues)
• 35D Bombers in Britan, for short: IRA (this really had me going initially because I was thinking of airplanes at first. Great clue)
• 40D Dynasty that lasted nine centuries: CHOU (This is more commonly known as Zhou, and my list of Chinese dynasties at home did not have Chou, only Zhou. Ouch)
• 50D XX: FEMALE (this totally eluded me until I got cross clues for this one)

Okay, if you are still with me then let's talk about the riddle. By the time I was done with this puzzle grid my brain was pretty fried. But now I have the riddle:

WHAT FAMOUS

ATHLETE RECENTLY

ACQUIRED FOUR NEW

AU PAIRS YET HASN'T

GOT ANY KIDS

The MGWCC puzzle page says we are to come up with a two-word answer of seven and six letters, respectively. The only clue we have to this is the title of the puzzle: "Stroker Ace".

Well it so happens that I heard a thing on the news several weeks ago about someone who had hired au pairs for each of his several houses so no matter which one he was in there was always someone there. But of course I could not remember who this was. So I decided it was time to Google.

Here is where I can call Matt a rapscallion. Do you have any idea how many hits one comes up with Googling au pairs? It is a ridiculous undertaking. By saying athlete rather than, say, tennis player, there is no way to narrow that scope down, other than saying how many au pairs. I Googled "4 au pairs" then "four au pairs". For these two Googles I got 543 and 511 hits, respectively. Effing ridiculous!

So I considered that Stroker Ace might mean the athlete is a golfer. That got me down to 8 hits, but nothing looked like what I needed. So they I tried tennis. That got me 4 useless hits. Okay, let's try swimming...no--how about swimmer!

"four au pairs" with swimmer got me 22 hits--all useless, and "4 au pairs" with swimmer got me 174 hits. Nothing. Finally, I made a leap of faith and decided that the it must be a swimmer, and the swimmer must be in the news, and that likely from the Olympics, and so I just looked to see who the swimmers were, and that gave me Michael Phelps. This, by the way, is the correct answer! But I tell you, I did not figure it out the way it was meant to be figured out, and now that I know how I was supposed to have figured it out I feel kind of dumb.

Au pairs is a play on words, sort of like when Barry Goldwater ran for office and there were these Au H20 bumper stickers and pins all over the place. The riddle is actually: What Olympic swimmer recently won 8 gold medals (four gold pairs).

Okay, so I solved the puzzle Saturday, decided late Sunday that the answer had to be Michael Phelps, then promised myself I'd email in the answer first thing Tuesday morning at the office, and promptly... forgot on Tuesday. Possibly it was the Labor Day BBQ I went to. I have a headache.

Garrett

August 29th, 2008 WSJ--Double Dealing By Myles Callum/Edited by Mike Shenk

A relatively easy puzzle for the weekly Wall Street Journal puzzle, and for author Myles Callum. I haven't seen a puzzle by him for a while, but my recollection is that the previous onces I've done by him were much harder. The theme seemed to simply be that them answers would have two words which both start with D. If there was something else there it was too subtle for me to pick out. Theme answers:

• DollarDiplomacy
• DishingDirt
• DearDiary
• DraftDodger
• Demolition Derby
• DimeDefense
• DannyDeVito

The last two of these were downward answers in 35D and 38D. The other five were across answers.

The level of difficulty of the clues varied as I moved through the puzzle. Some were easy, some medium, some hard and some just really obscure. As an example, ENDGAMES for the clue [Board finishes] in 57A, or AWLS for [Punches] in 3D. Because there were a lot of references to proper names which I did not know many of, it took me fifty minutes to complete this 21x21 grid while eating lunch.

MGWCC #012 -- Friday, August 22, 2008 -- "Another Nine-Letter Word for a Stupid Waste of Time"

Matt Gaffney's twelfth weekly crossword contest puzzle was the easiest to solve of any of them but in order to participate in the actual contest part of it one had to create a limerick. The had to make reference to an article written by Ron Rosenbaum which was published in Slate. It was called "Crossword, Sudoku Plague Threatens America! with a subtitle of "The puzzle of puzzle people." After reading it I decided the author must be a prat. He calls puzzle solving a "useless habit" and suggests that their "uselessly filling empty boxes" is a metaphor for emptyness in their lives, and tells us that we could be doing something else involving words and letters--reading. Well, I tell you what, Ron--I read all the time, and everyone I know who is good at doing crosswords does also.

Anyway, back to Matt's puzzle. (Okay, one more snipe. Read what Matt wrote on his blog here.) There was an interesting part in Rosenbaum's article where he pokes fun at a solver who has not filled in the answer to the clue [Mauna ___] by saying, "Whoa, tough one, dude." Of course the answer could be either LOA or KEA and one does not write either in until one has a verifying cross clue. In this weeks puzzle, Matt had KEA in the answer grid twice (that's unusual) and LOA once. All three had the same clue [Mauna ___]. I thought that was hilarious.

The puzzle taught me that I had not read the article carefully. 8A had the clue [Hillbilly ___ (crossword-solving, according to 22-across--] for the answer HEROIN. 22A is, of course, RONROSENBAUM.

One clue which had me stumped for a while was 49A: [The real crime of 22-across's piece] ITWASNTFUNNY. But I only needed a few letters to figure it out after I corrected my mistake on 35D [Heart tube] which I had filled in as aorta but which turned out to be STENT.

There were a few typical misdirecting or vague MG-typical clues just to spice things up a bit:

• 19A One of four: SEASONS ("one of four what?" was my first response)
• 38A Kay follower: ELL
• 42A Compass dir.: ENE
• 1D Sent down: KOD
• 4D Rhyming word in a soft drink brand: Yello (I think this is Mello Yello--a caffeinated, citrus-flavored soft drink from Coca Cola.)
• 6D Brunch's less well-known cousin: LINNER
• 8D Laughter syllables: HOS (really?) Here's another possibility: employees, to a pimp.
• 50D X: TIMES

Oy, that last one killed me. But the one which had me going the most was "brunch's less well-known cousin". I thought LINNER right away, but I then thought, "no, that can't be it!" because I thought my sister and I had made that up years ago and know one would know it (I've never heard of it being used until this puzzle). That's going in my clues file.

So now, the puzzle done, I ended up writing several limericks but will only show the two I liked best here. This is one:

The author who comes from Bay Shore
Disdained puzzlers with words we abhor

He penned with his nib
Tripe that sounded so glib

That we likely will read him no more

I found out he is from Bay Shore, Long Island in his online bio. Kind of hard to fit Rosenbaum in a limerick with the correct meter. I also found out he is an older guy, so that is used in the next limerick:

There once was a man of late years
Who wrote of the "Starbucks of Tears"

With prose he distorts
As he disses Will Shortz

With his head firmly stuck up his rear

Unfortunately, neither of these won. But I did have fun writing them--and learning about them. My first try looked good to me, but when I shared it with a friend who writes limericks he said, "the meter is wrong," and I had to toss this one. Here it is:

A columnist who regards crosswords with fear
Wrote in Slate of the "Starbucks of Tears"

Rosenbaum dissed Will Shortz
And puzzle solvers--of course!

Causing cruciverbalists to jeer ala Lear.

By the way, this "Starbucks of Tears" thing is a Rosenbaum-coined term. Apparently where he was observing people doing these crosswords and sudoku puzzles there were a lot of sad-looking people in there. His presumption--probably correct--is that they were out from visiting a nearby hospital and were depressed. What was he doing in there?

Friday, August 8, 2008 NYS Weekend Warrior

This puzzle was created by Barry C. Silk and edited by Peter Gordon. Themeless. There were a number of difficult clues sprinkled about which slowed solving down, but nothing that would bring you to a grinding stop. One thing which I had no idea of but has a commonplace answer is the clue [Repeated action in a mathematician's random walk] in 23A, and the answer is COINTOSS.

In order to complete the fill CLI needed to be in 23D [One-twentieth of MMMXX] and my friend John wondered if in the old Roman days they had a system for doing math in Roman Numerals. Anybody know? I just convert to cardinal numbers, do the math and convert back again. How did they do it then?

There were two things in this puzzle I thought were really difficult: 8D [Another name for the sugar apple] with the answer SWEETSOP and 55D [Place in a Robert Redford movie] with the answer ETTA.

55D - Place in a Robert Redford movie

It turns out that the role Katharine Ross played in
"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" was... Etta Place

About the Sweetsop apple--clued as [Another
name for the sugar apple]: It is a semi-evergreen shrub
which grows six to eight meters tall. It bears edible fruit:

The fruit is usually round, slightly pine cone-like,
6-10 cm diameter and weighing 100-230 g, with a
scaly or lumpy skin. There are variations in shape
and size. The fruit flesh is sweet, white to light
yellow, and resembles and tastes like custard. The
edible portion coats the seeds generously; a bit
like the gooey portion of a tomato seed. Sugar-apple
has a very distinct, sweet-smelling fragrance. The
texture of the flesh that coats the seeds is a bit
like the center of a very ripe guava (excluding the
seeds). It is slightly grainy, a bit slippery, very
sweet and very soft. The seeds are scattered through
the fruit flesh; the seed coats are blackish-brown,
12-18 mm long, and hard and shiny.

It is grown in the tropics and warmer subtropics. I've never heard of it before. The picture at the top of this post is of the fruit of this plant.

Thursday, August 7, 2008 NYS--"Gevalt!"

This Thursday puzzle by Patrick Blindauer and Tony Orbach had as theme answers common phrases or titles which had been altered by inserting an OY in them: CLOYINGWRAP (Cling Wrap); ANNOYINGLANDERS (Ann Landers); TOMBOYRAIDER ("Tomb Raider"); and BUOYSDRIVER (Bus Driver). The theme clues were clever enough that you could not guess much about the answer without getting some part of it done through cross clues but not so obscure that you couldn't begin to guess as the answers began to flesh-out, which made it fun. The one exception is the clue at 61A [Lifts actress Minnie's spirits?], which made me expect to put DRIVER in there somewhere.

There were a number of clues which were pretty tough and as usual I can't tell whether they got there through the efforts of the authors or were peppered-in by the editor, Peter Gordon. Also, there were some things I just did not know.

Did not know: LENTEN [spare]; GIA [1998 Angelina Jolie TV movie]; DUNDER [___ Mifflin (company in "The Office")]--which could have been clued ___ head!; KIX [Band with the 1988 album "Blow My Fuse"]; and UAE [Fed. whose 18-letter full name alternates vowels and consonants]. Actually, I know what UAE is but the clue left me clueless, though I won't forget it now.

Tough clues:

• 24A Painting place: atelier
• 50A Fanta rival: Sunkist
• 54A Binding: final
• 1D Big supplier to Boeing: Alcoa (lots of big suppliers to Boeing)
• 5D Ice cream mix-in: raisins (this could be so many things)
• 7A Cheek by ___: jowl (I had an "aha" moment when this became apparent)
• 35D Playmates?: team
• 40D Noted: OnRecord
• 52D Mount with vigor: steed

My favorite theme clue was 45A [Peppermint Patty's panty thief?] with TOMBOYRAIDER

Good puzzle for a Thursday.

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.