This is the crossword puzzle thread

One week and counting.

OK, today I did last year's puzzles and based on my score came in someplace between Ryan and Brian. So, not too great, but not last place.

Where did you find last year's puzzles?

Friend did it the past two years and he had them. I think they mail you a copy after the tournament.

Jordan, an old screenname of yours was in the Times puzzle today.

what was it? i did the puzzle but didn't notice.

Something about "The Wire"'s Little.

Today's puzzle is impossible. As is to be expected on the Friday before the tournament.

Just got seven emails from Peter Gordon with the beginning of the year puzzles. The man takes care of business.

wtf matt gafney in the av club, loki is not a goddess afaik

― rinse the lemonade (Jordan), Wednesday, February 10, 2010 10:39 AM (1 week ago)

Maybe an easily confused comics fan -- Loki was in a female body for a few months recently in Marvel continuity.

jaymc, here is the True Story of the Great Crossword Puzzle Battle between solver and constructor: http://wordplay.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/ring/

Ha, you know what, I think I read that at the time but totally forgot about it. Good to see you again, Ken.

Also: you did pretty well! Or better than me, at any rate.

Ah, I was at the bottom of C and you will probably win the D division next year. And you were only a few spots behind me as far as Rookies.

All these years I thought it was "alouette, chantez alouette"

What do you do when you have a whole puzzle finished except for 2-3 intersecting answers that are all proper names of people/places that you don't know? I feel like this is where I end up like 25% of the time and it's frustrating because there's no way to "figure out" those answers if you don't know the names of the tennis player or Olympic athlete or Wisconsin lake that they're looking for.

you bitch about the writer/editor on the internet

I just learned this weekend that there's a name for such an occurrence: it's a violation of the Natick Principle, a term coined by blogger Rex Parker in his review of a Brendan Emmett Quigley puzzle.

But does n/a constitute 1/4 of the solving public by himself? Maybe he caught a bad break because two out of three of those guys are xword favorites.

It was the one from the Onion this past week, which was pretty easy but the three I'm missing are: "Wimbledon winner in 1988 and 1990" (I've got ***erg), "Body of water by the University of Wisconsin" (lakemen*ota), and "Family name of twin Olympic skiers Phil and Steve" (mahr*). I just don't know tennis players, skiers, or lakes, I guess.

I don't feel like any of those are super obscure or hard, probably, it's just frustrating to get that close to being done and then get stuck and have to quit because there's no way to work those out.

the lake was a gimme (since i drive past it every day and all), and i guessed on the other vowels. but in general i hate those kinds of crossings.

esteemed tennis player johan phlerg

i hate this kind of shit, there was something in Sunday's NYT like that

Once you are stuck like that you might as well look them up.

Only one I know for sure is the tennis player. I have a guess on the skiers, but that's only because I think I've seen the name in a crossword before. Don't know the lake.

http://www.oneacross.com/

Tbh, that kind of crossing probably might happen more in a Tausig or a BEQ or, based on what I saw yesterday, a Fireball puzzle than in the Times. Although what sometimes happens to me in one of those big puzzles is there will be a little trainwreck crossing (one crosses the other two) of (1) Proper Name I Don't Know (2) Funky Abbreviation or Unknown Crosswordese(3) Strangely Misspelled Theme Answer, which is probably what got Mr. Que on Sunday.

Then there's the "is that really a word, or just a verb with a suffix attached to make a new noun?" on Saturday.

tausig & matt jones puzzles are usually pretty tight (and forgiving) imo

it was ENISLE and ALERS

94A: Strand: ENISLE
91D: Yanks and others ALERS

still don't get the Yanks thing?

Yanks = Yankees = members of the American League = ALers

ALers

ah. gotcha. thanks! sometimes i get so stuck on my first definition of a clue, i can't think of others. in this case i thought ALERS was a collection of people who make/drink beer

Heh, in that same Rex Parker post I linked to earlier, there was this comment from Joon Pahk about ALER:

one of my earliest puzzles included ALER with the clue [Brewer before 1997, e.g.]. everybody who solved it said 1) ugh, ALER; and 2) what's the 1997 doing in there? they thought i was using ALER to mean one who makes ale.

except for that Sunday's was pretty satisfying

Ha, jaymc, did anyone mention ALEGAR in that link which I can't see right now?

Anyway, I'm finally used to ALER, but I too hated ENISLE.

i haven't been following this thread but i have a complaint to crossword creators everywhere:

EMAG and EZINE aren't real words. not even salon editors use them. please stop putting them in your puzzles. thanks

I agree with you about EMAG. However: EZINE is in Webster's.

loved this week's inkwell, esp. "song they played over and over at this jamaican resort my wife and i went to" and "improve the taste of, generally"

Haven't done it yet, but ha: he just got married in November. Must've been on their honeymoon.

You know something I don't even do Tausig's puzzles that often so I don't know what I'm talking about, maybe I'll sign up for that group and have them emailed.

Here's a blog post I wrote about last weekend (purposely not hyperlinked):
www.britannica.com/blogs/2010/02/dispatch-from-the-american-crossword-puzzle-tournament

loved this week's inkwell, esp. "song they played over and over at this jamaican resort my wife and i went to" and "improve the taste of, generally"

― rinse the lemonade (Jordan), Tuesday, February 23, 2010 3:32 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I enjoyed this puzzle too.

I'm trying to get back into doing crosswords regularly. When I worked at the office, I'd do the NYT puzzle (usually with coworkers) most days. I've been lazy about it since working at home, plus no access to the NYT.

I finally did the puzzle and enjoyed it as well. Although I had a few errors in the top center: I had CAT for "Swinger?" and misspelled the Chinese guys name with a 'Z' so the arcade game came out NCAZAM. (I thought it might be some kind of Snoop Dogg expression). Maybe if I had actually read the clue more carefully and seen the word "basketball" I would have figured it out.

Ha, already forgot about "Flower's Bud."

Friday Times seems to be not too hard after pre-puzzle craziness.

jaymc, I read your blog post again when I saw it linked to, along with your friend's blog, at the official tournament site. Very nice.

i've lost the ability to do cryptics again. just when i thought i was getting the hang of it.

What cryptics are you doing exactly? There are some easy ones in the Fraser Simpson New Yorker books or, surprisingly perhaps, in the Mensa cryptic books by Cox and Rathvon, puzzles which were originally in a Canadian newspaper.