| Moving |
[Apr. 11th, 2008|02:06 pm] |
Hi everyone,
I've decided to start up this blog again, but at a new site with a new name, so I'll soon be deleting this account. An opening post is up at xwordcritique.blogspot.com, but regular content will not begin until May. Hope to see y'all there. :)
Jangler |
|
|
| Walden, NYT, Sat Apr 21st |
[Apr. 27th, 2007|01:48 am] |
Finally got around to doing last Saturday's NYT puzzle, the one that took everyone twice as long as the typical Saturday. I don't really know how long it took, since I was on an airplane and fell asleep during takeoff, but I do want to note:
( etc. etc. )
For shame, Byron; for shame, Will. |
|
|
| Thursday's NYTimes puzzle |
[Apr. 15th, 2007|10:54 pm] |
I'm all for informed consumers. This post is to inform consumers that a certain recent grid which contains such wonderful entries as TWI, ALETA, REZA, FMS, FLENSE and NEOSHO that a grid for the same theme, without all that awkwardness and obscurity is possible. What's more, it didn't take me an inordinate amount of time to assemble this grid. Which begs the question, of course: do puzzle consumers really want entries like this in their puzzles, or do they just put up with them?
--Craig
BEAM.ADOBE.THAW
ELLA.RIVER.EAVE
DEFROCKING.STAB
.CRIB.EDU.ATALL
STENOG..MEL.ROO
IRS..EYEBALLING
DICE.TAP.ROY...
.COMEDYCENTRAL.
...ILO.OWE.EVIL
WHOLENOTES..OVA
HIC.GEN..TARGET
ARTSY.EAT.REAL.
MEAL.ORTHOPEDIC
MOVE.DUVET.DREI
ONED.ONSET.SORT
|
|
|
| NY Sun Friday 1/12/07 (by BEQ) |
[Jan. 16th, 2007|12:30 pm] |
Am I the only one who thinks this is too obscure?
I solved it correctly (in 23:45!) by good guessing and general knowledge of crosswords, but had no idea what was intended by words #1-20 (ie, 20 of the clues in the 15x15 were simply #1, #2, etc, and scattered throughout the grid). I even wrote them all out in order by number, and have no idea. The title, "You Can Say That Again!" didn't help.
Finally, I put words 1-10 into Yahoo! search, and the first hit was a BBC News article that explained it. A news article from last June. Maybe you have to read the Sun every day to understand it... was this topic discussed at length in the Sun? |
|
|
| Thursday solving anecdote |
[Nov. 2nd, 2006|03:31 pm] |
|
( NYT 11/2/06 ) |
|
|
| Another blog |
[Oct. 19th, 2006|03:59 pm] |
Here's a blogger who doesn't hesitate to gripe about the day's puzzle:
http://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/
(Beware copious spoiler's for the day's NYT, not behind any kind of cut.) |
|
|
| Cruciverb |
[Oct. 5th, 2006|01:41 pm] |
|
Anyone know what's up with Cruciverb? I haven't been able to log in for a few days. |
|
|
| NY Sun crossword, 8/18 |
[Sep. 30th, 2006|05:34 pm] |
As an antidote, I've been doing some old New York Sun crosswords I'd missed, and wow, it's nice to have good crosswords. But a gripe about the 8/18 puzzle:
( Just in case it'd spoil for someone )
(On the other hand, "He might have described himself as a coated knowledge professor" is brilliant.) |
|
|
| |
[Sep. 11th, 2006|04:24 pm] |
Hello, I have a simple question if anyone remembers this puzzle.
There was a puzzle (I don't know when it appeared in the NYT; I do the puzzle in a local newspaper) to which I only saw the answers, and one of the answers could be either "BLACK" or "WHITE" (depending on how you filled in the down answers), and I was curious as to how this was clued.
I appreciate it! |
|
|
| Gripes about cluing Wednesday's NYT |
[Sep. 6th, 2006|03:39 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | gripy | ] |
| [ | music |
| | [4D] | ] |
( Gripes ) |
|
|
| Back to both ways |
[Sep. 5th, 2006|09:59 pm] |
In preparation for a crossword tournament at the end of the month, I've gone back to using both across and down clues.
NYTimes:
Sat 9/1 about 14 minutes -- sucks, but done in 2 shifts on the subway today, the second with the woman next to me trying to strike up a conversation, which is unusual among the emotionally undisturbed on the train.
Sun 9/2 17:49 with my ambulance partner repeatedly trying to strike up a conversation. The bad time, though, was not entirely his fault; I stumbled over the theme entries, which annoyed me to distraction with their contrivance. I need to get over that and be able to focus when the puzzle pisses me off.
Mon 9/4 3:48 fun theme
Tue 9/5 3:54
NY Sun:
Tue 9/5 4:50
Funny that both the Times (17A) and Sun (60A) today included essentially the same theme answer, but with completely different intent. I liked the Sun puzzle better today, with the straight-clued theme. |
|
|
| 8/31/06 NY Times and 9/4-9/11/06 New York magazine |
[Aug. 31st, 2006|07:16 pm] |
I do not like the new convention the Times used twice in today's puzzle: when there are two parts of a phrase located in two parts of the grid, putting the clue with the second half instead of the first half. How is "when preceded by 48-Down" any more interesting than "see 10-Down"? It's simply confusing a longstanding convention for no apparent reason.
And I have spent way too much time looking into 9/4-9/11 New York magazine's 41-Across:
Who the frig under the age of 70 is supposed to know what a "Pleat for a zoot suit" is? I got the answer from the down clues, and thought, with this assortment of letters, why has this word not appeared in at least 50 of the last 1000 crosswords I've done? The word itself is listed in Merriam-Webster's past two unabridged dictionaries as a dialectical variant of a common word, but I could not find a standard reference with the definition of zoot suit pleat, including Baus's Master Crossword Dictionary. Also, Stan Newman's crossword answer book does not include this four-letter word in its word list.
Google. There was a song or two in the 1940s with the lyric "zoot suit with a ____ pleat," and this song's lyrics were quoted by "a young Malcolm X" and a few dozen less famous people in various contexts.
Now that I've gotten this out of my system, I can spend time thinking about things other than out-of-date words and clues in contemporary puzzles. |
|
|
| Statement from Will Shortz |
[Aug. 30th, 2006|03:23 pm] |
Will has sent me a few emails clarifying his positions on some of the issues I brought up in this community, and he has given me permission to post one of them:
( E-mail from Will ) |
|
|
| Target solving times |
[Aug. 26th, 2006|09:45 am] |
After seeing "Wordplay," I've become inspired to become a better crossword solver. I consider myself fairly decent (although nowhere near the level of Trip, Ellen, et al.), but I'm always looking to improve. The question is how to measure that progress.
Currently, I time myself on forty puzzles per week: seven each of the NYT, LAT, CS, Newsday, and Universal crosswords, plus five in the Sun. What I'd like to hear from the community here is a sense of target times for each of these that are worthy but attainable goals. I know the Newsday and CS puzzles are considerably easier than the NYT, NYS, and LAT, but just how much easier? Also, the Universal puzzles don't vary in difficulty, so the same target would probably work for each day.
We need something to start from (because otherwise this is all going to be relative), so let's assume that my target for the Monday NYT is 4:00. Where should I set the rest of the benchmarks?
Thanks,
Mike Frentz
Seattle, WA |
|
|
| The future of XWP |
[Aug. 23rd, 2006|09:42 am] |
I feel suddenly bereft, as I did when Treesong stopped publishing GotS just as I started writing flats. I've started constructing seriously, and I found that this community served a unique purpose -- the assessment of the daily puzzles from a constructor's perspective.
Orange's blog is a great place to review each puzzle from a solver's POV -- which entries were particularly challenging or surprisingly fresh, what clues stood out in solvers' minds. C-L is a place for people to ask for help while constructing. XWP seems to be a unique place where we can analyze and deconstruct the decisions that the constructor made. I think that's a great way to learn and improve.
When puzzles were discussed on the day of publication, we had a lot more traffic. Things were fresh in people's minds, and it's easier to dash off a quick note about a given day's theme being clever and new or stale and inconsistent than it is to prepare a week-end report.
So, with deep gratitude to Jangler for getting the ball rolling, I suggest that we go back to the informal water-cooler approach and have a separate thread for each puzzle, when an individual puzzle is worth discussing. |
|
|
| |
[Aug. 22nd, 2006|07:53 pm] |
I will no longer be maintaining this community. It's a pretty big time commitment to write, and I feel there's not really that much more for me to say. I won't delete it, and others can feel free to post if they wish, but I think it's pretty much run its course.
Thanks for reading,
Jangler |
|
|
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
xword_critique