This is the crossword puzzle thread

oh sorry that's THIS week, didn't mean to spoil

xp OLAF or OLAV, presumably.

yeah i didn't want to post spoilery answers. but as long as you're ruining it, i also like "male singer the italians used to go nuts for" for CASTRATO.

i'm sorry :(

NYT article about puzzles disappearing from newspapers:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/fashion/12puzzle.html

Oddest quote:
Dunn Miller, a 64-year-old librarian from Oakland, Calif., who was attending the National Puzzlers League convention in Baltimore last week, spoke of losing The Puzzler in terms usually reserved for the breakup of a favorite band, like the Beatles.

“It’s like, why are they murdering us?” she asked. “We’re losing one of our stars. It’s like if some great athlete, Dennis Eckersley, were told by the manager he had to leave early and he couldn’t play for anyone else.”

Dennis Eckersley is the first example that comes to her mind of a great athlete??

(Oh, I notice now that she's from Oakland. Still.)

I for one will miss The Puzzler. Hopefully Henry and Emily will find an outlet somewhere else.

Hey look.

Yeah, but you saw what amateurist said about him.

I have now.

yes

I made a crossword puzzle for Marbles: The Brain Store, a local chain that sells educational games and toys. It's a pretty easy one, I should think (especially since the site gives a hint about the theme).

nice! the linked down clues are good ones.

Anyone notice the glaring factual error in this week's Ink Well puzzle?

ha: is it worth making a point of doing the puzzle later?

Sure. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that Tausig just needed to have changed "won an Oscar" to "nominated for an Oscar" in the clue.

the warren beatty one?

xp

Yeah.

OOXTEPLERNON!

Good article in Slate by Matt Gaffney about how easy it is for crossword constructors to duplicate each other's themes.

Do you do Matt Gaffney's puzzle, jaymc?

Just saw this article for the first time: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/fashion/12puzzle.html?_r=1

I used to, but I got too busy to keep up with it. After he published this puzzle a few months ago, he posed a challenge to readers to come up with a 15-letter theme fill that contained no vowels other than U. The best I could do was "BURNSBURNSBURNS" ("What Johnny Cash's ring of fire does), but it did inspire me to write this poem. (The winning entry was "CRUSHCRUSHCRUSH," which I guess is a Paramore song.)

Nice. I think you might have done an embryonic version of it on this thread: Me Need Help! ( A Spelling Thread)

Wow, I don't remember that at all!

The NYT was very, um, challenging today. I gave up and looked at the blogs before I finished it.

While we're at it, the Marbles: The Brain Store puzzle I mentioned upthread has turned into a monthly assignment. You can do my September through December puzzles here. They have to be printed out, but I'll e-mail .puz files if anyone's interested. Also, I tried to make them solvable for a general audience, so there's nothing too-too clever. Just so you know.

(P.S. Ignore the bit under the September puzzle, which makes it look like that's the only puzzle I created. That was put up when that was the only puzzle on the site, and they haven't taken it down yet.)

I liked this comment from Rex Parker today: "Theme answers then lend themselves to preposterous cluing of the sort that adds much-needed thorniness to the typical Sunday solve."

OK, jaymc, I did your September and October puzzles and like you said, nothing too difficult but they were nicely clued. Did somebody edit them for you (although I can't imagine that) or was it all yours?

No, it was all me, although occasionally I look for inspiration here. Thanks!

(Actually, I feel like my cluing could be a lot stronger, because the sort of punnish wordplay that's inimical to good crosswords simply doesn't occur to me that often. I do try to avoid straightforward definitions, if I can help it, in favor of secondary meanings or synonyms.)

I've been ramping up again recently so I'm used to the punning, but sometimes I find it tiresome and I bet your intended audience for that puzzle would too

RHETMENTATEE!

Do you ever do the Brendan Emmett Quigley puzzle, jaymc? Themeless Monday is hard!

Aaargh!

If you haven't been doing Merl Reagle's Sunday puzzles, today is a good time to start.

http://www.sundaycrosswords.com/ccpuz/MPuz.php

RIP Dan Naddor.
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-dan-naddor7-2010jan07,0,3697756.story

Today's LA Times puzzle is one of his: http://games.latimes.com/index_crossword.html?uc_feature_code=tmcal

i enjoyed tausig's triple crossword in the mcsweeney's newspaper thing

Do you ever do the Brendan Emmett Quigley puzzle, jaymc? Themeless Monday is hard!

I don't, but he just added me on Facebook!

Still trying to decide whether to attend the ACPT next month. Guess I'll look into flights to NYC.

Will you be in the rookie category?

Yeah. I don't think the Marbles tournament I competed in last year counts.

i think i might do it, as the hotel is about a 15-minute bus ride from my apartment

also it is the last possible year for me to enter as a 'junior'

When is the last day to sign up?

dunno when the deadline is but if you register online you get $10 off the registration fee before feb. 13

Airfare is pretty reasonable. Think I'm gonna do this.