Thursday 5/22/2008

OK, after talking it over with a few people, I've decided to switch to a daily format. I'll still write the weekly essays and note the best-ofs for the week, but this way the size of each post won't be nearly as overwhelming. (Hell, they may still be too long; any feedback, good or bad, would be appreciated.) I have also stopped recording the partial counts/theme ratings in the Excel file. I will post the theme ratings for each individual puzzle in the daily posts, but I'm going to hold off on tabulating any fill statistics for now.


I won't retroactively go back and review all of the puzzles from Monday-Wednesday in detail, but there is list of all the entries in them which I think do not have dictionary nature at the end of this post.

CrosSynergy

Author: Raymond Hamel
Title: "Playing With The Detroit Lions: An Anagram Puzzle"
Theme clues:
{"Taxi Driver" star flipped?}--DE NIRO LOST IT
{Tested some skin products?}--TRIED LOTIONS
{Dig up a treasure chest?}--DISINTER LOOT
{Soggy chip?}--SILENT DORITO
Theme rating: -1

I really don't like this type of theme. It's too easy to come up with, and to me it's not very interesting that a set of common letters like DETROIT LIONS can be rearranged to form four sensible, if at times surreal, phrases. I made a list a while back of all the puzzles published by CrosSynergy with "An Anagram Puzzle" in the title; there were over 30 of them. I think the first puzzle with this type of theme was published in GAMES around 1999, by Harvey Estes and Nancy Salomon--the central entry/punchline was MIXING METAPHORS, and the theme answers were things like HOP MASTER, MOTHER SPA, etc. Does anyone know of an earlier example? Anyway, I didn't much like it then, but at least the punchline was a common phrase.

The fill was so-so. I didn't like A SET and CHESS SET in the same puzzle, and I don't much like A SET to begin with. Also, there's the jargon term TRET--a word which doesn't appear in my dictionary, and a word I doubt most solvers would ever come across in their day-to-day life. The best entries here were PRINGLES, LUGOSI, and CHESS SET.

L. A. Times

Author: Gary J. Whitehead
Theme clues:
{Apt region for this puzzle}--NAPA
{Talk show gig}--GUEST APPEARANCE
{One reason for rhinoplasty}--CROOKED NOSE
{Doc Holliday was born with one}--CLEFT PALATE
{Painter's option}--SEMIGLOSS FINISH
{Cellar supply, judged by the ends of 17-, 31-, 38-, and 54-Across}--WINE
Theme rating: 1

A standard category theme. There was a similar theme in "The Quarterly Review Of Wines" (of all places), and that one had a bit of a twist to make things more interesting, but that does not in and of itself invalidate the theme at hand. The only thing that troubled me is that CROOKED NOSE seemed slightly unidiomatic (BENT NOSE seems about as common, and there aren't many other good synonyms for "crooked"), but I think it'll pass. For those who don't know, the QRW crosswords are available in .puz format at http://www.qrw.com/crossword.htm. Lots of well-constructed puzzles there.

I don't much like I DO TOO. I think ME TOO is fine, though, for reasons I can't put my finger on. At least it wasn't clued as {Playground retort}. (As an aside, I will note that puzzles of late have been very pleasantly playground-free. ARE SO still pops up now and again, but it can be clued legitimately as a partial {"You ___ Beautiful"}). ONE C is pretty lame, I think. If this is legitimate, why not TWO CS, SEVEN CS, etc.? I let ONE G slide in a previous puzzle because it can be clued as the not-very-good-but-legitimate {Universal donor's type: Abbr.}. Putting the entry NAPA in to balance WINE caused a bit of awkwardness (AGHA, AGUA, AAS) in the upper left. I probably would have left it out, but that's a personal choice. I think LATIN I is OK because it's one of the standard AP test subjects, but there aren't many other ___ I phrases that I'd accept.

New York Sun

Author: Tom Heilman
Themeless

Nice puzzle; I believe it's Mr. Heilman's debut. I really dislike I NEED A NAP, but the rest was very good. Colorful fill throughout (ZETA-JONES, DOGNAPPER, SHOE PHONE, TACO SALAD, DEEP-SIXES), and very few clunkers (ARS, ORO, and SOPPIER were the worst non-I-need-a-nap entries, and that's saying something). I would have preferred ROPES/URGES/RIPE instead of ROVER/URGER/RIVE, but that's pretty minor. Great clues, too--see below for the highlights. All in all, I can say without a doubt that this is the best themeless of the week so far.

New York Times

Author: Richard Silvestri
Theme clues (in the puzzle, the theme clues were asterisked):
{Five-time Wimbledon winner}--BJORN BORG
{"Numb3rs" star}--ROB MORROW
{Famed restaurateur}--TOOTS SHOR
{Co-star of "The Andy Griffith Show"}--DON KNOTTS
{Harpers Ferry raider}--JOHN BROWN
{"Newhart" actor}--TOM POSTON
{Sign...or a description of the answers to the six starred clues?}--OMEN
Theme rating: 1

Very nice theme. (Potential title: "Hoopsters"). NEGEB was unfortunate; there may have been a more amenable way to place the theme entries, but with 6 9-letter ones it's a crap shoot. Nothing else was really that bad here except U-TWO (I don't like entries where numbers are spelled out, unless that's the way the phrases are commonly written anyway. I'll have more to say about this later.) I know one of my regular readers doesn't like ERNO; I think it's all right, but not any earlier in the week. The clues at 9A and 22A--{Party to a Highland fling?} for LASS and {Start court proceedings?} for SERVE didn't really wow me, but there were some other clever clues here.

My favorite clever/tricky clues:
NYS 19A: {King's English?}--TOPSPIN. A Hall-of-Famer, IMO.
NYS 25D: {Cross product}--PEN
NYT 4D: {Perfect pitch}--STRIKE
NYT 40D: {Athletes on horses}--GYMNASTS

My favorite trivia-style clues:
CS 8D: {His last film was "Plan 9 From Outer Space"}--LUGOSI
LAT 50D: {Its jurisdiction doesn't incl. miners}--OSHA. I liked the fact here, but remember, cluers, the ": Abbr." tag can be your friend!
NYS 32A: {___ Chimpsky (chimp in a language experiment)}--NIM
NYS 6D: {Trumpeter nicknamed "The Round Mound of Sound"}--AL HIRT

Clues I don't get (hopefully this won't be a regular feature):
NYT 1A: {Lively group?}--ARTS. (As opposed to the art-nots?)

NDNPs (including ones from Mon.-Wed.)--I DO TOO, I NEED A NAP, ONE C, VACANT APARTMENT, WEE LAD.

Also, AS BAD, PART II, RED SKY were in puzzles--I think these are at best partials. AS BAD is especially awkward because the only legitimate phrases it's a partial of repeat the word "as"; {Start of a Dennis Rodman title} seems the only way to make this one work. I feel unqualified to assess the legitimacy of SHOWER GIFT; I've never been to a wedding shower. Is this a canonical term? WEDDING PRESENT, sure.