I forgetfully omitted the clue for LEIBNIZ--{Philosopher who coined the phrase "the best of all possible worlds"} (Fri. NYT, 51A) in my favorite trivia-clue list for yesterday. My apologies.
CrosSynergy
Author: Sarah Keller
Title: "Ladies Last"
Theme clues:
{Country of one's birth}--NATIVE LAND
{Standard file cabinet color}--STEEL GRAY
{Impetuously}--HEADFIRST
{Travel accessory}--GARMENT BAG
Theme rating: -1
Not much to say here. ALEE is pretty high on my list of entries which most solvers would never have any opportunity to come across. It's similar to AGLARE, because both of these words have more common synonyms formed from the same root (LEEWARD and GLARING resp.), and ALEE's even worse because the "side away from the wind" sense of LEE isn't exactly household knowledge to begin with. I'm sure that upper right 4x5 corner could be redone to remove ALEE (and, to a lesser extent, AERIE), but I don't really feel like trying to do so right now.
L. A. Times
Author: Brad Wilber
Themeless
The fill here is a standardly mediocre affair, with a few flagship entries (POISONED CHALICE, TALE OF WOE, MIKE WEIR) held in place by a fair amount of compromises (ELENI, ON OR, A WAR, ALAR, ISR). What really struck me here was the large number of poorly-worded or otherwise misguided clues:
{Stereotypical country song}--TALE OF WOE. {Country song, stereotypically} sounds better, I think. They get worse, don't worry.
{Argentine "Hey!" that became a noted nickname}--CHE. Uh...what?
{Mojito (Cuban cocktail) flavorings}--LIMES. I sort of live in a glass house when it comes to excess parentheticals, but come *on*.
{Stable element?}--HAY. As all horse-owners know, hay is an essential element of any good stable. Um.
{Homie's accolade}--PHAT. I think this one speaks for itself.
{In the month preceding this one}--ULTIMO. Not {In the previous month}? I almost put in APRIL'S here.
{Almost a ringer}--LEANER. Almost a grammatically correct clue!
{"Pure as the driven slush", in Bankhead's words}--UNCHASTE. Nice quote, though using it to clue this entry seems a stretch.
{Louis XIV, to himself?}--ETAT. Yes, I get the reference. I still think it's too clever by half.
I did think {Graced with a number}--SERENADED was nicely phrased.
New York Times
Author: Charles Barasch
Themeless
Didn't much like this one. First of all, MARRIED WITH KIDS is a big no--MARRIED...WITH CHILDREN is fine (clued as the TV show), but I don't see how MARRIED WITH KIDS is any more acceptable than MARRIED WITH TWO CHILDREN or MARRIED WITH A DAUGHTER, etc. I guess I got too complacent about the lack of playground phrases; I CAN SO took me longer than it should have to solve. I'd never heard anyone say IN IDLE (IN NEUTRAL, yes)...is this a Britishism, perhaps? ASST. DA is awkward. PI R SQUARED falls into the same category as U-TWO, I think. I did like the entries QUALITY TIME and HAM SALAD.
I didn't like the clue {Girl with a future?} for SEERESS. I suppose the solver is supposed to just see the words "girl" and "future" and ignore the fact that the clue as a whole doesn't make much sense. I'm a sucker, however, for the gimmick of using the same clue for two adjacent entries (here, {Split} for REND and DASHED AWAY), though that device can be misused as well.
{Kind of song}--SWAN is one of my least-favorite types of clues. A "swan song" isn't even a song, a lot of the time, it's just a final performance. Tyler Hinman has cited some particularly bad examples of this type from USA Today puzzles; I can't remember them offhand.
Non-dictionary-nature phrases: IN IDLE, MARRIED WITH KIDS.
None of the clues really stood out to me this time around, though there were a number of better-than-average ones throughout.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Saturday 5/24/2008
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3 comments:
The absolute worst "Kind of X" clue I ever saw was [Kind of fire] = CEASE.
Jangler, I think you're way off base on the LA Times puzzle. It was a lot of fun. That CHE clue was a cool bit of trivia I hadn't known, and more interesting than the typical CHE clues I've seen. There are plenty of people out there who don't know that a mojito is a cocktail; why is it harmful to include that parenthetical? If you don't know that a mojito is a drink, learning that it contains limes doesn't teach you a damned thing. Bankhead is from decades ago, and "chaste" is a quaint, old-timey word; the "driven slush"/UNCHASTE pairing is thus apt. And you feel compelled to quibble over whether the "country song" clue is accompanied by an adjective or adverb? Now you're just looking for things to criticize!
Heh. Re: the CHE clue, I was just boggling over the awkward wording--{Revolutionary nickname derived from an Argentine word meaning "friend"} reads better IMO--that's what it means, btw. "Friend", not "Hey". I guess we'll agree to disagree the UNCHASTE and LIMES clues...however, I don't think my complaint with the TALE OF WOE clue is unwarranted. HOME ON THE RANGE is a {Stereotypical country song}; I wasn't "looking for things to criticize", this did actually trip me up in solving the puzzle (though not for long).
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