This is the crossword puzzle thread

my guess is he means when it seems like a puzzle has a lame fill--and yesterday's had lots of lame fill IMHO--just to satisfy a gimmick or whatever, then it's not enjoyable

but here's his whole take on it

http://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/2008/12/tuesday-dec-23-2008-joe-krozel-arizona.html

there's definitely a difference between getting the answer to a hard clue and going "nice, that's really clever/funny" and "making up words won't help you".

i dunno--doing xwords like that for me can be like reading really beautifully constructed novels or stories--the joy in the reading/doing comes in that sort of oh wow look how perfectly structured this thing is

its like trying to figure out the mystery while youre reading the story--who cares if the method/motive/whatever is improbably or corny, the fun is in the figuring out

i like a good theme in my crossword with not too much trickery/corny-ness. but what do i know, i can barely finish a wednesday

i just finished it, its pretty boring--i mean its straightforward and not very irritating, but im not gonna remember it like ill remember yesterdays

i finished the Onion AV Club puzzle this morning but have no clue what the theme is. the theme answers are like "Hear 9-Across" but i can't figure out what the relationship between the clues are. :(

I'll let you know when I do it tomorrow -- I like to pick up the print edition and do it on the way home from work.

i didn't get sunday's NYT theme until i looked at rex parker's blog and was like "oh, duh"

Orange discusses this week's AV Club puzzle here (WARNING -- this post spoilers for all of Tuesday's puzzles):
http://crosswordfiend.blogspot.com/2009/03/tuesday-324.html

actually, her blog is a week behind what gets posted on the av club website.

Really? Does that mean the print edition is a week behind, too? Because I know I've checked her blog for AV Club puzzles I've just done.

maybe so. i'll pick up a print copy at lunch in a little while and see what puzzle is in there.

yup, the print copy is a week behind the website.

ohhhhh. i was focusing on the sound of the answers, not the clues.

Give me a couple minutes here...okay, I think I'm onto something. 69A PREYS is clued (Hear 51-Across), which is VIRGINS, clued as [They're chaste]. "Hear" that clue another way, as "they're chased," and you get PREYS. (Is that plural noun kosher? I think perhaps not.)

So let's look at the other theme clues. 1A is (Type A people), who are DOERS. Pronounce it as "Taipei people" to get 17A TAIWANESE.

9A is (One who gets a lot of booze), a DRUNK. The 28A clue (See 9-Across) is simply a standard cross-reference clue, and the answer is the synonym LUSH. 26A (Hear 9-Across) commands you to hear it as "one who gets a lot of boos," or a VILLAIN.

39A (Horse sound) is NEIGH. To 41A (Hear 39-Across's answe) is to pick up its homophone, NEE. Then there's 42A (Hear 39-Across), "hoarse sound"—a COUGH.

23A (Artificial) clues PLASTIC. 55A (Hear 23-Across) expects you parse 23A's clue as "art official," a CURATOR.

62A is (Not allowed), or FORBIDDEN. For 71A (Hear 62-Across), the clue becomes "not aloud," or TACIT.

ohhhhh. i was focusing on the sound of the answers, not the clues.

Me too. (I just did it on the train and stared baffled at my paper when I was done.) In fact, I feel like that's almost a rule, that cross-references are supposed to refer to the fill, not the clue. It's a fun theme, it just could've been clued a little less confusingly.

Also, I was glad that someone in Orange's comment section called out the error I noticed as well: the D in "ordinates" is worth two points in Scrabble.

wow @ the theme of saturday's ny times puzzle!

Was crazy theme, but once you got it the puzzle was way easy for a Saturday.

true (meaning that i could actually finish it)

Just mailed off my second NYT submission; hopefully, they'll like this one. :)

good luck homie

(If anyone wants to give it a trial run, I can send you a .puz file.)

id be up for it

Send me yr e-mail, Lamp.

send me one too j - my full name at gmail.com

hook me up

Sent.

v. nice theme jmc! i had to complete two of them before i got what it was and in total i think the puzzle took me 25 minutes which is about a wed/thurs time for me

a couple of the clues frustrated there were a lot of proper name clues i think? but overall it flowed really well

yeah dude good job--it probably took me about the same time as lamp did, but i somehow didnt get the theme at all until the next day (i thought the thrd one was a reference to samuel morse, which made me think it was a rhyming theme, and i was going, what rhymes with koala?). but i liked it!

Cool, thanks guys!

(I don't want to talk about it too much in public before it's accepted anywhere, but I will note that Jordan had the same thought re Samuel Morse. Which may not be a problem -- it could work as a useful diversion.)

in today's ny times, "modern way to put out an album" is ONCD = lol, will shortz u r old

ha yeah i was trying to think of an itunes/emusic type service w/ four letters

Who's the constructor?

someone who should know better, sounds like (from crossword fiend):

today's puzzle is, i believe, a debut for this constructor. i think i remember reading that this puzzle was used at the recent brown crossword tournament, and that the constructor is a student there. in any event, congratulations to joey weissbrot on at least his NYT debut.

I guess it still could've been Shortz's clue.

also--origami commonly depicts a crane, not a swan, right?

yeah, the swan initially made me think of ice sculptures for some reason

OK, after doing the NYT puzzle for a few weeks after a multi-year hiatus, I now notice the following clues and answers popping up regularly

1) Emmy Winner Ward = SELA
2) Parent's (or Sitter's) Scourge = IMP (or some synonym)
3) Argument Refrain = "AM SO" or "IS NOT" or variant thereof
4) Former Boomer = SST. This is a holdover answer from the Eugene T. Maleska days. Haven't seen ORT or TERN in a while. AERIE still pops up though.

To everything
tern, tern, tern
There is a season
tern, tern, tern

Haven't seen ORT or TERN in a while.

According to xwordinfo.com, ORTS was last used on 3/12 and TERN on 3/20.

Ha, I definitely did both those puzzles, guess I didn't notice/remember these classic answers. That site is pretty useful, thanks for the link. I see that ASTA is still going strong in the Will Shortz era and that ATTU hung around for a while, but died out in 2006.

My pal Ben did a write-up of the first Chicago amateur crossword tournament. Out of the 25 competitors, I was 6th on the Monday puzzle, 9th on the Tuesday (though I had one dumb error, so I would've been disqualified even if I'd finished 1st), and abysmal on the Wednesday, due to one corner that just wouldn't fall into place. Pretty fun afternoon, though.

i liked todays nyt theme even if the rest of the puzzle was boring

I might've done a little better at the tournament if I'd realized from the get-go that the Cubs players were going to be given in order. I knew who they were, I just held off on filling them in until I could confirm how they were going to appear.

Kind of cool that they're perfect 15-letter fills, though.

i had never heard of the players so that didn't help me at all. at the end i had the rest of the puzzle filled in except for those names.

That was maybe a tribute to old school Maleska-style crosswords, where those three guys appeared regularly.

yeah--one of those puzzles thats really easy if youre familiar with the rhyme and probably a big pain in the ass if youre not

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball's_Sad_Lexicon