Redd's Roster of Crosswordese: Do not read if you hate DRNO

or MRED

or
ELO
ENO
ONO

or
ONEA
ONEL
ONER

or
ATT
ITT
OTT

or if you have
ALOTONONESPLATE

This may not be the Best Thread Ever but hey
ITRY

EKE
ALOU
ETA
ANTE

ANIL
ANILE
ANISE

ERE
ESNE
UTNE

I discovered the ETUI from my US crossword app

ADZ

ETUI
ETTU
ERITU

OSHA
EPPS
AETNA

ESAI

what vistas would open up to american puzzlemakers if these supermarket brands ever opened their doors in north america:

LIDL
ALDI

also ASDA

ETD
AONE
ASTI

I'm a big fan of working in five or ten minute chunks on a hard puzzle, for exactly the reason mookie just gave. Conveniently, five or ten minute chunks what my schedule permits. I'm also noticeably better at solving puzzles between, like, 6am and 4pm. Before/after my brain is mooshy. I don't like a lot of the NYTimes regular constructors, but I (honestly) don't know where to go to find other free, dece quality puzzles I can do on my phone. I'm so weary of the ETTA / ASTA /ARIA / ERIE / ETALIA fill style.

soda on the main thread

AIDA
ARIA
NORMA
TOSCA

(xpost!)

ETAL
ETALIA
EIRE
ODED
CCED

ELLS
EELS

EIRE really grinds my gears

UEY (as in u-turn) is the worst

north america has ALDI!

ASTA
ELOI

^Two favorites

*Note from OP: repeats are allowed and encouraged, bonus points awarded for any kind of rhyming, internal or external, wordplay, word ladder, etc you can make out of your grouped entries

UEY (as in u-turn) is the worst

agreed, for many reasons, not the least because the "UIE" spelling makes a lot more sense

this thread could go on for EONs

AMNOT
ARETOO

ASAMI

brb gonna board an ELAL SST and fly NNE over the URALS

ERN
ERNE
ENYA

xp while performing an ARIA?

ASAMI
SODOI

You know I started a parody song using this stuff once for a theoretical performance at the dreaded ACPT talent show. Maybe I post what I had later if I can remember it.

this year there's been a weird shift toward THE___ clues a la

THESOX
THEFED
THEBREAKS

and I hate them all and they make me go

ERR
IRR
ARR

I despise clues of the 'direction between CITY 1 and CITY 2' sort where the answer is

ENE ESE SSE SSW WSW WNW NNW

Yep

(To the tune of "Take a Letter, Maria")
Last night I was ONKP
Across from the APO
I was EYED up by a dog named OTTO
Who report to the NCO

reports

ENE ESE SSE SSW WSW WNW NNW

What's the big deal? Just travel to one of those cities, find a high vantage point, get out your lensatic compass, and point it at a known landmark in the target city. Easy peasy.

Take your dog ASTA with you.

(some story about receiving a Dear John letter I haven't flesh out yet. Then...)

IBEX

So take a letter, a rebus
With pen or pencil you can write
To solve it electronically
You'd better find Across Lite

(Which is the chorus, which will repeat, with the last chorus changing to)
So take a letter, Merl Reagle
Address it to Will Shortz
Sit on a potato pan
I put soot on warts

There's just a weird lot of common / borderline crosswordese stuff. Seems like with a theme this (relatively) light, the fill wouldn't be so IRR AROD RIIS ESTA TELEX ORES ORSO ACTI ANTE AXLE etc. The worst of the short fill, though, was the GPO / EEOC crossing. Truly awful, if only because their crossing *initialisms*, which means if you don't know what the letters ... stand for ... you have no hope.

from rex parker's blog entry today. when i used to do the NYT crossword more often i enjoyed reading his takes and particularly his low tolerance for lazy crosswordese, when applicable

I think reviewing the crossword every day for however many years has driven him to madness, like Andy Daly in Review

I know it drove me a little mad, just doing them every day. Duolingo is a moderately better addiction.

ISSA RAE

ooh one i hate is EAPOE. have seen it in at least three xwords

oy and all those french rivers!

RHINE
RHONE
SEINE
LOIRE
OISE
YSER

ODER

(side note: I am probably way more forgiving of these than most, because my delight in solving is rooted in good cluing, interesting and/or tricky themes, interesting long answers - not, primarily, in avoiding crosswordese.

It's great when a constructor avoids EKE or ALOU, sure; but I don't construct puzzles so I don't know how easy or hard it is to do consistently interesting themed puzzles without ever resorting to ANTE or YSER or whatever. Definitely seeing some 20th-century stuff just age out of common use. ERNE and SST still pop up but are waning, in my experience.)

EIRE really grinds my gears

Sure, but it is at least Irish for Ireland - Erin and Erse can get to fuck, though.

sure could use a MRPIBB

what gets me are the ones that are slightly out of date, e.g.

EMAG
PDA for a device
HIRES for a monitor instead of HIDEF

equally annoying are the ones that are just a tad too current, like
1 Across: "It's ____!"
and the answer is POPPIN

Yeah the "archaism" is part of what makes me itchy about the clueing for Eire

always exciting to see if it'll be KEA or LOA

equally annoying are the ones that are just a tad too current, like
1 Across: "It's ____!"
and the answer is POPPIN

― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Wednesday, July 15, 2020 3:42 PM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

better clue would be "my lip gloss is _____"

okay, maybe not TOO current

The phrase TINKERS to EVERS to CHANCE just popped into my head, which used to be a crossword staple when I was coming up, seems to linger on and pop up every once in a while nowadays.
https://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/2009/04/tuesday-apr-21-2009-rj-nj-byron-1946.html?m=1

https://wordplay.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/gonfalon/

always exciting to see if it'll be KEA or LOA

yeah this is like the cargo shorts of crossword clues. try harder

https://www.xwordinfo.com/PS?date=7/3/1949

Yeah, when I see MAUNA __ and already have the final A, I wanna throw my UKE up in the air in frustration.

that 1949 puzzle is hardcore

In defense of crosswordese, sometimes it is the only way to crack into a difficult Saturday grid. Also sometimes it's fun to know all the different ways to clue, say,the hero of the thread title: Joseph Wiseman role, Crab Key denizen, etc. Or that famous fellow from the OP played by Bamboo Harvester.

45D Man's name. : ISIDOR

foh

what gets me are the ones that are slightly out of date, e.g.

EMAG
PDA for a device
HIRES for a monitor instead of HIDEF

ETAIL and EZINE always make me lol

Pearl Buck heroine

Oh man, I still have problems spelling that one.

ESAI

which led me this this old related thread somebody started long ago

When MRT studies to the NTH degree, he gets a PHD and is henceforth called DRT.

LORI and TONI drank an ORANGE NEHI in front of the ELHI.

OUIOUI, SISI
ADIEUX, MES AMIS

LIEU EKE

LIEU EKE

We gotta go

I said
UIE UEY
UAE UZI
Me gotta go
YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH

🎵 UEY UDAY
thou little tiny child
WIFI UEY UDAY 🎵

WII OREO now

I said

WII OLEO

(To the tune of "Take a Letter, Maria")
Last night I was ONKP
Across from the APO
I was EYED up by a dog named OTTO
Who report to the NCO

I’m with YMP, don’t actually know why, actually I think I do know why, people complain about crosswordese so much, it’s kind of the DNA or building blocks of XWORDS. It’s like people complaining about cliched chord progressions or cliches in general: they can be problematic but they can also be used creatively, it depends.

I only started noticing the gluey fill when I was exposed to xword blogs (RP, xwordinfo), but they've never really been a huge impediment to my enjoyment, ESPECIALLY if a grid has interesting and/or long entries or wide open spaces.

I do like Jeff Chen's puzzles a lot though, and he's pretty dedicated to avoiding glue.

And he is the keeper of xwordinfo too I guess.

when you're filling up so much of the grid with letters it's unavoidable that you're gonna need these repeating mini-words, so i understand

but like, mel OTT has been dead for 60 years. bobby ORR has been out of hockey for 40. we're gonna be seeing USB long after that protocol has been deprecated. i have never actually seen ESAI morales in anything. so many of the acronyms are awkward reaches . . . i just wish the NYT were a little bit more ambitious with the possibilities, and i have to think that having the same editor for decades at a time doesn't help

I think people very much in the center of the scene avoid pointing out that Shortz is something of a tired drip but people slightly outside it don’t hesitate to say so

redd and mookie, I tend to grade for an overall average level of creativity, as opposed to requiring a complete absence of ERSE / ERNE / OTT etc.

Like, if a constructor can get something surprising like MCJOB or RUNDMC or POKEMON in there, I will likely forgive the occasional ALOU. I'm assuming it takes a lot of compromises to make an innovative word work in a grid.

However, if everything in a puzzle is rooted in the culture of 1950s Manhattan, then I get annoyed. I will still finish the puzzle - not least because I've learned all this bullshit trivia from doing thousands of puzzles - but I will be annoyed.

this would be a terrible word for reasons of age and obscurity but i would still like to see MCDLT sometime

pretty sure i've seen clara peller referenced before

I actually have heard whispers, well maybe heard is the wrong word, just sort of been in the big room at the ACPT when in the distance I seemed to see some insider or two talking quietly which turned out to be grumbling about successors to the throne. It was done very discreetly and my internal parabolic mic couldn't pick up any of it, but I asked someone later and they told me discreetly and in a roundabout nudge nudge way what that tiny Blow-Up moment I thought I witnessed was about.

Back to the topic at hand. Please forgive my POP PSYCH approach, but feel like people (excessively) grumbling about fill is partly or mostly really about their addiction to XWORDS not giving them the high it used to. Not saying, just saying. Is that all there is, as Peggy LEE sang.

Not every constructor is going to be the Crossword JESUS, sorry.

I can think of maybe one constructor who jumped out at me, that wasn't already some kind of name, well exactly one, Dan Naddor, who I came across while solving LATIMES puzzles.

let's make an ilx crossword

FUCKWASHINGAHAT is a handy 15 letters

Lol

https://wordplay.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/dan-naddor/
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-jan-07-la-me-dan-naddor7-2010jan07-story.html
https://crosswordfiend.com/2009/12/31/dan-naddor-in-memoriam/
which links to https://crosswordcorner.blogspot.com/2009/04/interview-with-dan-naddor.html

jaymc used to construct, not sure if he is still doing that.

i don't mind crosswordese but i'd like better clues!
As noted above, enough already with Mel OTT; how about "way, way too much" instead?

"nhl's senators on a scoreboard"

Right? My problem with a lot of fill isn't the fill – it's trite crosswordish cluing. (Cluing, by the way, is a great word).

My favorite 'regular' constructor is Zhouqin Burnikel. Among the standards I like Lynn Lempel and Jeff Chen, because everybody does and they're great. Trenton Carlson is the only regular whose name alone intimates that I won't have fun. Too many Qs and Js and Zs. Oh, and whoever wrote last Sunday's puzzle. I don't like that person either.

Whoops. I missed your post, ulysses. Coulda just written 'ditto.'

let's make an ilx crossword

Athlete who "knows" about uranium? = BORAD

2 x 33 + 11 = SEVENTYSEVEN

Greetings from Ditka? = BEARSAYHITOME

Rockist setting for a bicycle? = GEIR

Unlikely event = NOTGONNAHAPPEN

Dave Matthews Band pan = BADANDHATED

I constructed three blatant failures a couple years ago (https://spooky.camp/~evan/) and I did try to be as annoyingly creative as possible with my cluing

Atop benjies

thing occurring in a marsh, seven letters

FENHAPS

lol

ilx would be a boon to any constructor, FUIUD

there was this article critical of old white editors a few months ago
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/03/fight-to-make-crosswords-more-inclusive/608212/

especially this editor's note

MARIE KONDO wouldn’t be familiar enough “to most solvers, especially with that unusual last name.”

I was I could say I stopped doing them to take the high ground, but yeah, they basically occupy some ultimately bland middle ground with various tweaks now and then here and there to make them a wee bit edgier.

(Don't tell my kitty corner across the street neighbor I said that!)

kitty corner

too blatant a provocation, sorry

last sunday’s was pretty uninspired.

today’s themeless on the other hand is extremely pleasing.

americans once you crack tomorrow’s sunday nytimes crossword we need to talk about 82 across.

Haven’t done a Sunday in months.

Friend of jaymc’s and mine who posted on this board once for a minute or two had an interesting post on social media about his solving times the other day.

why not James Redd?

I stopped doing xwords regularly a few years ago and especially find Sundays a slog.

i only do sundays when i'm streaking; i can't say i actually enjoy them

tbh all i want are fridays and saturdays

B-b-but what about Thursdays?

dnw rebuses

there was a thursday a couple years ago where like the NW was normal, the NE downs were normal but the acrosses were backwards, the SW had normal acrosses but the downs were backwards, and everything in the SE was backwards. (i am probably remembering this slightly wrong)

and, well, that's quite a technical feat! also incredibly joyless to solve, particularly on the app

Really hated solving on the app in general.

And yeah, rebus+app=not a good look

::SPOILERS:: (sort of)
Tracer, re:82 across. No, afaik that is NOT a thing here. Maybe it's some bougie molecular gastronomy thing?

It’s definitely bougie but how is the clue spelled? In my paper it’s “palette”.

Ha! Guess they fixed it for the app.

Yeah there's a note in the blog.

At first I thought “ooh clever” and went down a rabbit hole. Some kind of solvent? You do “courses” of bricks when building a wall and you might use a palette for your mortar. What do you clean that with? Etc

What blog?

I guess what is meant is Wordplay:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/crosswords/daily-puzzle-2020-07-19.html

I always thought the 82A between courses things was French. It's not common here but it's a good idea and I welcome it when I chance across it.

I get that palette was plainly an error. As the tired stock clerk at the art supply once said, "I can't palate another pallet of pallettes!"

But the culinary practice is right in the dictionary definition

SPOILER ALERT

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sorbet

Haven't done today's puzzle- yet! Meanwhile, back to the original purpose of this thread
DELE PELE TELE UELE

Also I see there is something called the Universal Crossword on Amy R's blog. Not sure what that is but the one I just tried was not bad.

BAST HAST OAST NAST

Maybe people hate XWORDESE because every piece of such they haven't committed to their already extensive Rolodex of such slows down their speed solving a microsecond and gives the advantage to the competitition with an even more extensive internal database?

OFAN OLAN OMAN ONAN ORAN
and, real old school
OBAN.

OBI
EMS and ENS

Speaking of LOA/KEA, I just died on the peak of OSSA/ETNA

Have I ever told you the full jeremaid of my dabbling in competitive speed solving and subsequent burnout? If not, would you like to know?

Aargh,there's no MAID in JEREMIAD, sorry (the latter of which appeared in a lucky seven Maleska puzzles, but not since)

I want you to tell us the story James Redd. Of how you flew too close to THESUN.

Heh, exactly, those SUN puzzles were my favorites for a while.

Also, Auden's poem about Breughel's Icarus or the painting itself often seem to come up in Learned League

is my weather being borked by EL NIÑO or LA NIÑA

IDUNNO might ASWELL THROW DARTS ATA BOARD

Okay, finished the NYT and the rest of today's puzzles and am reading the blog post at Wordplay now. Really like this blogger, Caitlin Lovinger, who I had never heard of until today. My solve experience was very similar to hers.

ABUT
ATOP
ABED

Exactly

I didn't know there were pictures of some of these people: https://www.xwordinfo.com/Cards?select=topcons

ALBA ALMA ALVA ELBA

Not to mention
ELLA OLLA ELEA

My times for today's puzzles were awful by my old standards. Did tomorrow's in 3:46 which is not competitive but okay for me.

Trying to turn my rise and fall in competitive solving into some kind of Behind The Music saga but it ain’t happening.

Nutshell comes back to: slowly got hooked on competitive solving, despite my wariness of it, did lots of puzzles got somewhat faster every year until one year I finished 77th, then the next year my friend stopped going with me to the tournament, my rank dropped, couldn't go to the next year's tournament because my daughter had a concert that weekendl and in the end got so burned out anyway that I couldn't even enjoy non-speed solving anymore, the thrill was gone. Still liked doing cryptics though, although hadn't done too many recently. Just did Patrick Berry's easy one in The New Yorker.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWN-adiDNtM

got kinda bogged down by today’s Sunday NYT - cluing just vague enough throughout that I kept putting in wrong answers. theme was whatever. i really need to fill my days with other puzzles.

Jeff Chen’s rundown gives a little history of that type of theme.

The last Across answer in today's New Yorker crossword is DRNO

:)

So is this the new default cruciverbalist thread? If so, kudos to redd

there's another Crossword Puzzle Thread

I thought the other was the default thread, I just started this thread for the xwordese.

Why is it so bad and hated?

S
M
E R I N
E

yeah, fuck that

My heart briefly leapt that they might've meant Cork.

what are some abandoned crosswordese words? i heard that before will shortz became nyt xword editor, INEE was common fill.

Good question

struggling to work out a clue for that...

Arrow poison
Curare cousin

wow. okay

Did you think maybe it had something to do with bellybuttons?

that would be INNIE surely...

"Celebes wild ox = ENOA" was the one that made my mother stop doing crosswords entirely. She never went back.

I have a friend who got so infuriated by ERN / ERNE that she canceled her NYT subscription (back when that meant something). To this day, she's like "Don't get me started on the fucking sea eagles."

I still see it from time to time, but nowhere near the frequency it appeared in its heyday.

Also seeing some drop-off on appearances of OLEO and ALOU.

SST seems unkillable, decades after the last Concorde flight.

ERN/ERNE still getting used quite a bit these days - and don't sleep on TERN either!- although, yeah, not nearly as frequently as in the pre-WS era.

Last week saw LALAW raise its head above the parapet; they haven't given up that white upper-middle-class touchstone. Nor its inevitable cousin, DEY.

Two classics! B-b-but what about their bicoastal cousin, ESAI Morales?

ERN and ERNE each have more than 100 references in the WSE but about 500 each in the BWSE.

ALER and NLER became rare after this blog post: https://devilcross.com/2014/10/15/fill-that-must-die-alers-nlers/

wild ox is ANOA lol that's a terrible word

B-b-but how do you folks feel about ALOHA?

coming or going?

Or even ALOHAOE?

I feel like ANKARA has been absent for quite a while

there's a lot of actually kinda normal words that i feel like you never see.

AUGUR, for instance. ENEMA. NORA. you'd think they'd come in handy.

ANKARA has tapered off a wee bit but is still hanging on.

AUGUR appeared twice last year, eight times total in the WSE, ENEMA never, NORA is very common, two or three times a year at least, sometimes a half dozen, 112 times total so far in the WSE.

ALOHA actually exists outside of crossword puzzles, though; I presume it's still in regular use in Hawaii and by Hawaiians. I'm also inclined to give OREO a pass because people really do buy and eat them, in this century.

Not so OTT, ERNE, ALOU, OLEO, SST, ASTA. It's not just that they're dated references; they're largely mid-20th-century references, and rooted mostly in U.S. Eastern Seaboard culture to boot. To me, the world of crosswordese has its lexical center in the Manhattan of maybe 1959.

Also. Unless you are a meteorologist or are extremely interested in reenacting historical methods of maritime navigation, you have no need for NNE, SSE, NNW, etc. If I understand correctly, a serious mariner nowadays would prefer the precision of using the numerical compass bearing. Like, you're more likely to say "202 degrees" than "South-Southwest." Happy to be corrected if that's wrong.

I see a fair amount of NORAS - the fact that ATTABOY is still showing up seems more inexcusable.

OTT has a newfound importance to me because of my Duolingo Hungarian, but yeah.

7 ATTABOYs in the WSE, including one by the XWORD JESUS himself!

oh man i didn't even think about 'sleepless in seattle writer' or what have you, duh. you could also go with 'neither a borrower ___ lender be' i suppose. i guess i missed them.

There are tons of different clues, the most common being a variation on "Author Roberts."

I will stan for ALOU, not just because I was a Giants fan, but because it's also a multi-generational baseball family from the Dominican Republic that helps balance out all the times that OTT appears. Furthermore, at least one member was active in baseball through 2008.

the current manager of the mets is actually an alou

puffins that hate erns, typical

I am sick of all variations on MST/CDT/DST, mostly because I can never remember which is standard time and which is daylight savings

Don’t forget EDT!

or GMT/GST - just had the latter in the NYT Sunday

EKEBY? really? that's... not a thing, is it?

it absolutely is not

i mean....... to use language that will shortz might understand but never god forbid use..... GTFO

and like... when was the last ipod nano sold??? that’s the clue? christ

Last ipod nano was 2017.

Last SST was 2003, but it's still a popular crossword answer.

*barely audible muttering*

EKE's pretty perennial for good or ill.

EKE is overused for sure, but ‘eke out’ is at least a thing. ‘eke by’ is not

I look forward to the day when SST will be clued by "Punk label" or somesuch.

"I had trouble but i managed to eke by" sounds fine to my canadian ear.

take by, hoser

I finished today’s none the wiser how the gimmick was supposed to have worked

Me too, but I did it online so there was a cute reveal at the end.

Do you (a) care, and (b) want to know?

a) not really b) 10000% yes

SPOILAGE

SPOILAGE

SPOILAGE

The revealer is "shipshape," and if you connect the circled squares it makes a stylized sailboat. But that's not all - the theme answers each have a shape word: LOVETRIANGLE, STORYARC, SECURITYLINE, and TOWNSQUARE. The boat shape is made up of a triangle, an arc, a line, and a square.

like so

also ETS, AMI, ATEIN, PTA

Yeah. In hindsight it looks like I erred by omitting SKISLOPE from the theme answers

i thought it was something like that. i didn’t think to actually do a connect-the-dots. usually “getting” the gimmick is an aid to solving and it wasn’t this time.

ACAI

GOJI

ALOE

UGLI

ELOI

EPEE

a few days ago FBPOSTS was, i thought, a step too far

ILE

before i forget i just want to give a shout-out to last friday's nyt. most pleasurable one i've done in a long time. was really much more about the funny/lateral cluing than the words themselves, if that makes sense.

i got a DRNO in the wild on my phone app last night!

ALEE

ACK ICK OCH UCK OCH
all these suck as "exclamation of disgust/surprise"

DRNO was in matt gaffney's xwordcontest.com puzzle this week. not meta related.

Feel like an interesting thing to do would be to go through the week to see how the clues change for one of these

like this?
https://crossword-solver.io/crossword-clues/drno/

Never saw that particular search engine, nice. Assume clues that mention Bond are Mon-Wed, whereas Joseph Wiseman/Crab Key are Friday-Saturday, Bond & Julius an easy Thursday, just Julius a hard Thursday.

disappointed that we have yet to see FAUCI

seriously!

In the Mini, last Saturday.

i don’t do the mini - it’s not in the newspaper

I was about to say, it was in the mini last Saturday.

Does anyone do the Times online-only? I feel foolish for wanting to give myself a Christmas gift of a sub to the crossword, but kind of want it at the same time. Is it worth it?

I'm sure a lot of non-Americans do, myself included. I mean, I could probably find a NYT in print, but I'm not honestly sure where.

larger WH Smiths, Waitrose, newsagents etc - it’s not too hard to find. outside London forget it though.

I get it delivered.

i only subscribe to nyt games and not the paper itself. officially a spelling bee addict too

The print version is ludicrously expensive in comparison to the online version, even if one subscribes to both the paper and games.

I begin each day with Spelling Bee and the Mini in bed, before the coffee. Helps me wake up.

Gotta say that every time I see this thread bumped I think DRNO must be a city in Poland or Slovakia or something

beat my previous record for solving a Friday puzzle today. KAC’s one of the best constructors, always happy to see his name on a puzzle

Does anyone do the Times online-only? I feel foolish for wanting to give myself a Christmas gift of a sub to the crossword, but kind of want it at the same time. Is it worth it?

I do, for puzzles only though. For $20 a year, totally worth it.

^^^

Brno is in the Czech Republic - a lot of my employer's European staff work there.

Oh that’s why!

thought saturday was really hard. it almost defeated me. first time in a long time i’ve had that feeling.

same

(This is just above Blue Saturday in my bookmarks - some confusion)

the Saturday took longer for me to finish than today’s Sunday

Been feeling very annoyed lately by the proliferation of "schoolyard comeback" "schoolyard retort" etc. - AMTOO, ARENOT, CANSO, etc

while I'm reviving the thread, can anyone direct me to a good primer on the common mechanisms, tricks, logic of Cryptics? I am beginning to find regular puzzles a little too straightforward (I do the NYT Sunday every week, and sometimes the Saturday). But I am usually at a total loss to even get started on cryptics. I did complete a Puns and Anagrams in the NYT Mag a month or so ago when it was featured as the second puzzle, which made me feel like Cryptics might be something achievable when in the past they just felt way too far outside my capacity. But I'd need to raise my baseline a little to get started.

this PDF download is a really clear guide to cryptics

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nqqbfts95ywzluz/Introduction%20to%20Cryptic%20Crosswords.pdf?dl=1

The NYT Mag cryptic is on the easier side imo, lots of anagrams, and this indie crossword page has some cryptics too: https://www.ariespuzzles.com/2020/08/aries-cryptic-29.html

either the beginning or the end of a cryptic clue are a straightforward definition or synonym of the answer. I couldn't figure out how to do cryptics until I grasped that concept.

awesome, thank you! just DLed that pdf and will read through, but your comment here is illuminating on its own

looking back up at this thread. it's kind of a funny phenomenon how certain celebs get their stature cemented because of how useful they are for crossword constructors. issa rae is mentioned upthread, i imagine that if and when she fades into obscurity in the general zeitgeist, crossword doers will keep having their memories jogged. it's something like having a hit song that can be closely associated with a holiday or other recurring phenomenon - an easy path to canonization.

no problem! I only learned how to do them this last year (productive use of my newly vast amount of free time, yes), and I love them now. The New Yorker site runs old ones from their archives once a week, and the Guardian has tougher ones (with some incomprehensible to me Britishisms), and both sites let you check for mistakes

ooh nice, will try the NYer first

xxp ERMA bombeck will live forever

Apparently 'alit' and 'asea' aren't very common English language words based on usage frequencies on books released since 1980. Wouldn't have guessed that from doing crosswords.

http://app.aspell.net/lookup?dict=en_US-large;words=alee%0D%0Aalit%0D%0Aasea

Been feeling very annoyed lately by the proliferation of "schoolyard comeback" "schoolyard retort" etc. - AMTOO, ARENOT, CANSO, etc

yeah if there was one crossword cliche I could ban it would be this one

with some incomprehensible to me Britishisms)

lol yes, as an American learning cryptics, learning to bung in ER anytime I saw “queen” or AB for “sailor” was the most arcane and incomprehensible stuff when I was starting. My best tip is don’t get too hung up if you don’t complete a puzzle. It just means either you were just not on the setter’s wavelength, or perhaps the clue was just wonky. They’re not all perfect. Just check the answers on fifteensquared or elsewhere, and learn from your mistakes.

There’s a cryptics thread here, but it’s been quiet lately.

asea

This should be easy but I can never distinguish between the clueing for it and "alee"

Cheri OTERI hasn't been a member of SNL since 2000

And it's been quite a while since there was an ALOU in baseball.

Been a while since anyone wrote a significant ODE. Or cooked with OLEO.

The last time someone seriously sought the help of a Muse such as ERATO? Longer still.

Crosswordese is its own dialect and its own cluster of references. It is white and it is eastern and it is boomerish or older. If you were a decently acculturated sports and film fan in 1958 in Manhattan, you will do okay; the rest of us just learn that vocabulary through trial and error.

It sucks but that is where things stand at present. I love and applaud the constructors who push at the boundaries and get more DRDRE into the mix.

Came across an old pre-Shortz piece of crosswordese in a recent cryptic today: CYMA.

cover your motherfucking ass?

don't think that's what it means, lol, although perhaps that's what it says in the urban dictionary, will have to check

cyan, yellow, magenta, and ass

Sung to the tune of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUZvfpVfW0k

RIP, Felix Silla aka Cousin ITT.

beedybeedybeedy

Pre-Shortz word with exactly one appereance in the, um, modern era:
SLUB

CYMA was/is a curvy molding.

https://www.memphisdailynews.com/news/2012/aug/2/spare-moments-of-litzing/

KRAAL was popular throughout the first three NYT editor eras but disappeared in the Shortz zone, but KRAIT managed to live on for a quite a bit.

My mother gave up crosswords for good over ANOA ("Celebes wild ox") and I think that one has lingered a bit into the Shortz era.

Most of those I'm glad to see aren't in circulation.

They're still using "sea eagle" (ERN/ERNE/ERNES) and the anti-Crosswordese faction hates it. Me, I just shrug and fill it in because it's part of the culture. SNEE and SMEE remain frequent.

Wasn't that the email of Will's assistant, celebe✧✧✧@fu✧✧✧.c✧✧? Let me check.

celebesox

As seen here: https://wordplay.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/american-crossword-puzzle-tournament-brooklyn-or-stamford-a-special-message-from-will-shortz/

Old school variant spelling: FIORD. Although four uses in the Shortz era.

Now I want to call a trivia team or suchlike
CELEBE SOX. DO U SEE?

I doubt anyone will want to follow me down this rabbit hole, but really enjoying doing these Dawn of the Shortz Era puzzles.

Do you mean like deep 90s stuff? More power to you, JR+tB. I have only dabbled in that area.

Currently I am working my way backwards into the archive, year by year. Currently on 2012, generally doing Wednesday through Saturday. (I usually don't bother with Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday except to keep the streak alive.)

2012 has a couple of decently clever Thursdays and some tough Fridays, but it's all pretty recognizable Shortziana. Looking forward to some baffling stumpers and Celebes Oxyness as the project proceeds. I am getting a graduate-level education in baseball-playing Alous.

At the same time I am trying to nurse a decent streak of current puzzles. Hope to hit a year in March or April.

The only time I think of ANI Difranco is when I do the crossword.

November 21st, 1993 was the beginning of the Shortz Era, which began with a splash with a Sunday puzzle by Peter Gordon, who therefore has a Shortz Number of one. I have yet to encounter Celebe’s ox or even DRNO himself.

Actually I must have seen him on December 27, 1993, but won’t see him again for a year.

Kind of like the retro nature of doing puzzles that are from before the blogs and before XWord Info comments, but still in the database so I can see the stats along which answers and clues are still used.

You can even solve the Pre-Shortz puzzles if you want, but I don't want.
https://www.xwordinfo.com/Calendar/1993?type=pssolve

I have a book of Eugene Maleska-era puzzles, and trying to solve them is like getting ice water thrown in your face. They’re so insane you wonder how people actually finished them back then.

In Infinite Tuesday, Mike Nesmith talks about how he had an uncle who would do the Sunday crossword pretty quickly– presumably some Texas paper– and then throw it away. One day young Michael fished the paper out of the garbage and saw all these unpronounceable nonsense words. It was like that moment in the documentary when R. Crumb finally looks at his brother’s sketchbook to see his latest work.

Part of the enigma that was Uncle Chick came into a degree of focus one Sunday after he had finished the crossword puzzle and left for the golf course. It didn’t make sense to me, this extraordinary word skill, and Chick didn’t really discuss anything with me that gave any hint about his thought processes. So on this Sunday I pulled the paper out of the trash, where he had thrown it, and looked at the puzzle, searching for clues. When I first looked at the filled-in puzzle, it seemed normal. Words like moon and igloo and kayak were in their proper place. Then I started to notice words like fonqi and nmfberhng and qplltrkller. Then I finally saw that most of the words were unrecognizable, and weren’t words at all. As this sank in, I was glad I was alone in the house. I carefully folded the paper up, put it back in the trash, and backed away.

That is funny. I bet Maleska could find a way to clue fonqi though.

I remember being able to do early week puzzles and even a leisurely Sunday puzzle solve back in those days, although I never attempted to speed solve and barely even tried Friday and Saturday.

Interesting to see how the cluing of EGAN has evolved.

Check it out: EGAN was in three puzzles in a row, Sun through Tuesday, starting the week of Jan 9, 1994.

Prefer this clue for one of today's answers from 1994: Hagar the Horrible's honey.

bobdole/clinton entry in the NYT sunday puzzle apparently

Monday's puzzle chock-a-block with classic crosswordese.

crossword constructors breathe sigh of relief as ESAI morales is cast in the new mission impossible movie

Lol!

Was just reminded on Novelists No One Reads Anymore of SOBIG, which I recall seeing a lot although doesn't seem to be that often in Shortz Era NYT.

Have to ask - is there anyone who calls a peanut butter and jelly sandwich a PBJ irl? PB and J to be sure, or even PBNJ, but PBJ? this has recently risen to the top of my bugaboo list

i am okay with that one

less so with TAX BITE, which appeared the other day

Agreed, I remember that puzzle seemed to have a few answers that were questionable