This is the crossword puzzle thread

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

Was there one extraneous circle today?

Yes, as far as I know.

Thanks for the confirmation. It was the last in the sequence but didn't really figure into the special clues or the bigger picture.

OK, I guess you kind of need that last circle for the big picture.

lol, was going to say, its a weird boat with the "i"

i mean, WITHOUT the i

Oh, I didn't even think about connecting the dots A to B, B to C, etc. I was drawing the lines in the patterns that the clues dictated, and after doing 49-Across ("E-F-G-H-E"), the "I" seemed superfluous.

ditto

ah, see, the way i was working i realized it was a sailboat before i had filled in those clues, so i had basically drawn the whole thing already

Or maybe I should have said "dotto"
(xp)

Yeah, I'm embarrassed to say that I was the one of the people who got 1-Across wrong, because I didn't bother checking 2-Down. (I was too busy tearing my hair out over the bottom-left, since I'd never heard of YEGGS before. I originally had YOGIS.)

yeggs annoyed the shit out of me

Yeggs is old school xwordese too. See also "Pete". Often clued by "Second story man."

http://www.google.com/search?q=yegg+pete+second-story&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

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.

Haha, me too -- it seemed uncharitably un-Tuesday-like to cross baseball names with a college athletic conference, a Biblical location, and a boating term, cause I had no chance on those.

i connected on today's puzzle pretty well but didn't get the drawing until i looked it up online after finishing it. maybe if i had done it on paper instead of in across lite i would have been more apt to draw a big ol' boat on it.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/97/257848457_24bcb4bcec.jpg

I was scared going in after reading jaymc's friend's blog, but today's wasn't so bad.

But today's I could not finish.

By which I mean I got nowhere on the SE and next to nowhere on the NW.

But Saturday's was a lot better.

Constructed a pretty solid grid yesterday with one exception that I can't seem to get out of: OHER.

Here's hoping that Michael Oher becomes a huge NFL star and/or The Blind Side becomes a buzzed-about box-office hit. I might just have to wait a few months to find out.

uh, something about an Ohio emergency room?

i dunno if "Subject of Michael Lewis's 'The Blind Side'" is a terrible clue so long as its not crossed w/ anything else as obscure

I kinda wish we could all see that corner and try to do something with it

I'll e-mail the .puz file if anyone wants to see it.

Wait, I've got it:

66. Response you might make after someone spends ten minutes going "oh c'mon, you know, that one show, it was really popular, on Thursday, like a drama, you know that one guy was on it, that guy that was in those Las Vegas movies, and for a while there was that one woman ..."

^^ haha actually you'd have to remove the "oh" from the beginning of that clue

max OTM--referencing the Michael Lewis dude doesn't seem that obscure or tough

Chicago airport changes from a rabbit to a woman

haha "rapper Nelly's favorite Chicago airport"

wouldnt that be oherr

xxp No? OK. I read the excerpt of the book that was in the NYT Magazine in 2006, but I couldn't tell how well-known he was. He might end up being a boon to crossword constructors.

I know some constructors got excited when this movie came out:
http://sachem.suffolk.lib.ny.us/Reel_Rebels/images/post_iousa_crop.png

haha "rapper Nelly's favorite Chicago airport"

In fairness, though, I think it would be Midway, because he can get a good deal on Southwest coming from St. Louis.

ben tausig is killin' it these week with the funny clues (in the inkwell and av club puzzles).

3. ybaB eman taht yltnecer emaceb yrev ralupop, yllaicepse htiw lacilegnave snaitsirhC

50. Runs around naked covered in feathers, or whatever, for the privilege of living in a house that smells like Busch light

23. Norwegian king who...oh, as if you know anything about Norwegian kings

43. Country that recently certified its election results, thus forever ending any doubt about the legitimacy thereof, totally

also the av club puzzle gets points for using "SABIAN" as an answer, finally

these = this

those are like cryptic clues!

3. ybaB eman

Ha, I especially appreciate #3 (although I was reading that as "eBay name" at first and was confused).

(Although tbf, the AV Club puzzle this week was constructed by Francis Heaney. I don't know to what extent Tausig changes the clues, but I'd guess it's less so than Shortz does.)

NEVAEH, RUSHES, IRAN, and is other one just kinda "fill in the Norwegian king name that winds up fitting?"