This is the crossword puzzle thread

ELDO? Do you mean EBRO?
EHRE? That's the German word for "honor," don't know the river
As for ARNO, I think the most important thing about it is not to confuse it with Thomas ARNE, composer of "Rule, Britannia!"

Today's Jonesin' puzzle, "Juggler's Blues," is awesome: http://groups.google.com/group/jonesin-crosswords

yeah nice! thanks for the recommendation!

nice. i always do jonesin' in my local free weekly, but the puzzles are consistently 2 weeks behind the online version (or whatever gets posted at crosswordfiend).

This week's Jonesin' wasn't bad either.

Joon Pahk is everywhere!

OK, Patrick Berry's contest this week in the NYT? Pretty amazing.

Didn't even try the metapuzzle until a few minutes ago. Pretty cool.

Wow, lots of people entered that contest. http://wordplay.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/drawing-contest/

For the record, we received 4,763 entries in the contest, of which 4,576 were correct.

Here I will admit that, before I figured out the "fill in the circle" bit and just had a bunch of scrambled letters, I thought the "leader" was "Justice Scalia."

Ha, before I did that my first guess was "Judas Iscariot" but I couldn't figure out how that was going to play and couldn't think of anything else.

jaymc, I have an idea for you: for November 11, 2011 you should write an "eleven" themed crossword. oh wait

Sorry.

I did the Patrick B. puzzle package that come out end of last year but never got most of the metas. Have until Valentine's Day I guess. Have since taken a break from doing regular-style crosswords and have focused on cryptics instead but I probably need to switch back soon.

Just did this month's Patrick Blindauer puzzle which had a good twist.
http://www.patrickblindauer.com/play.html

So I wrote a tiny search engine for The New York Times crossword - spanning 15 years worth of clues and answers as a little weekend project. There are 432,205 clues from Oct 23rd 1996 to the end of 2011.

http://donohoe.tumblr.com/post/18789743183/nytimes-crossword-search

http://gawker.com/5890676/new-york-times-crossword-puzzlemaster-updates-his-definition-of-ill

wtf at SEXT being an answer to a clue to a recent Sunday puzzle.

Also been wondering, is finishing a puzzle in say under 10 minutes something that becomes achievable through practice alone, or do specific techniques have a significant impact on one's time?

To do a weekday puzzle, an early in the week puzzle? No special technique, just practice, and eventually you can do a Monday puzzle in five or maybe four minutes. To get to three, maybe two minutes now that's when people are using the hand-eye

Well, I guess this is not physical technique per se, but one thing that helps is to be aware of the kind of words that are always in puzzles, to try to be thinking of the answer from the letters in the grid before you even look at the clues

aargh. Just did yesterday's and today's puzzle and made stupid mistakes in each.

Wonder where that guy got his NYTImes database from. Also, just had to donate to xword info to get access.

Don't need to log in on iPhone yet though

So I wrote a tiny search engine for The New York Times crossword - spanning 15 years worth of clues and answers as a little weekend project. There are 432,205 clues from Oct 23rd 1996 to the end of 2011.

Um...
http://www.xwordinfo.com/Finder

Yeah, exactly. Wonder if that's why registration is now required

Oh, I had no idea registration was required -- haven't used it in a couple of weeks.

I just noticed it today, don't think it was there last week

Maybe Tumblr dude created his own database as a reaction against Xword Info going registration-only?

Maybe. But I suspect he might have been one of the "screen scrapers" mentioned in the Xword Info FAQ.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/17/technology/computer-matching-wits-with-humans-in-crossword-tournament.html?_r=2&ref=technology

(forgive me for being lazy and posting a link with no commentary, but I think the URL provides sufficient explanation)

Dr. Fill, I presume.

Anyone ACPT-ing this weekend? Ken?

Yep. Right now I'm 93rd. They haven't graded Puzzle 5 yet which I think I did well on. But Puzzle 6 I had a mistake on a nasty cross, where I flipped a coin on the two possible letters and lost.

Rex Parker is sitting it out with food poisoning but Mrs. Parker is competing.

Merl R is there but he will not be announcing the final.

BBB did not come this year. I talked to Amy R for a second. I forgot to ask her if she knew you.

Also saw some people I hadn't seen since summer of 1980, which was kind of interesting.

Going to go see some music now, which I may regret, because getting down to Brooklyn by 9AM is kind of brutal on a Sunday.

are there any harder puzzles in America than NYT Saturdays? Not counting the Times of London one, which I know I could never do...

Peter Gordon's Fireball puzzles are up there. But you have to subscribe. You could try his Sunday Washington Post Puzzler first

Was 64th after puzzle five, but missing the IEOH EEW crossing put me back to 78th.

Note: Peter instructed me earlier today to spread the word about Fireball, but I would have done so anyway.

Amy and I have met a couple of times, and we're FB friends, but we probably haven't talked to each other for longer than 5-10 minutes.

Wow, Anne E is in the lead right now, followed closely by Tyler

Got a clean solve on Puzzle 7, so looks like I can hold my place around 80th. Final should be really interesting

Looks like they found Anne had a mistake in puzzle one so she's dropped to fourth and now Dan F is in the top three. The guy in second I've never heard of but he's A division so he must have been in a final

Announced all the rest so looks like final will be Dan, Anne and Tylet

Tyler, of course

Liane Hansen is announcing the finals since Merl wrote the puzzle

OK, the champ successfully defended against the prior champ and the newcomer.

My friend that I always go with had a bad break with little mistakes in three puzzles but he still managed to beat Dr. Fill. Best is when all your mistakes happen in one puzzle.

Really good puzzle by puzzle writeup here. http://throwingthings.blogspot.com/2012/03/i-am-just-ordinary-citizen-who-relies.html. Lots of spoilers of course.

is Dr. Fill a colleague of Dr. Beat's?

Haha.

Andrew Ries recap also pretty good. http://ariespuzzles.com/

so this is bothering me, from the AV Club crossword:

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2emonhr1p1qzb8z0o1_400.png

it's apparently the correct answer. has anyone ever come across a number in a crossword? and can someone explain how "E3CIST" is the answer to "One concerned with right and wrong"?

It's not supposed to be "3", it's "THI"