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Saturday May 4th 2019, NY Times Crossword

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Time: 44:24 Saturday Average: 35:44 Best Saturday: 10:34 As you can see from my time, I struggled mightily with this puzzle, spending over forty minutes in a coffee shop in St. Louis. But St. Louis is a new location for me and has been added to places in THE UNIVERSE that I dig. I hope to SIDLE on back here again in the future. We’re currently renting out our house and escaping Bloomington both for the sake of IU graduation, so if we take the money from that and use it for our fairly exorbitant trip, we have BALANCED BUDGETS , more or less. I’ve never heard of popular 60s poet Rod MCKUEN and I’ve barely heard of John O’HARA , although Appointment in Samarra sounds familiar.  Those couple proper names along with the dog that I always forget but crosswords love, Lhasa APSO , slowed me down. The puzzle did start to click once I realized that we had a stray “4” in the grid, which gave us the appropriate theme, of sorts, in MAY THE 4TH BE WITH YOU . I saw doormen in sto...
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Friday May 3rd 2019, NY Times Crossword

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Time: 22:54 Friday Average: 27:16 Best Friday: 10:21 It’s been called into question whether RC Cola is often paired with MOON PIE or whether those are just two Southern food items. I had IN A dAZE instead of IN A HAZE , which prevented me from completing this puzzle for a solid minute, I’d say. Meanwhile, I’d forgotten that ALI BABA was a woodcutter because I think only of the 40 thieves. I’m not sure why you’d go with Dr. Ruth to clue SEXPERT when the obvious clue is “Travis insists he’s a...” Finally, I’m thrilled to see IZOMBIE make an appearance, because the first two seasons are, in many ways, everything I want from a television show. Cheers to Friday themeless!
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Thursday May 2nd 2019, NY Times Crossword

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Time: 20:48 Thursday Average: 24:40 Best Thursday: 10:18 "Kind of case in grammar: Abbr." is an ice cold first clue in a puzzle, but any time cases come up I am fondly reminded of my early mornings in Russian class. It turns out to be OBJ , by the way, but it really could have been anything. No revealer for the Thursday trickiness today other than the central answer ( ON ) AND ( OFF ), which shows that we are dealing with ON/OFF rebus squares. It all clicked for me with my certainty that "One's partner" had to be ( ON ) LY . From there, I figured out that the ON/OFF rebus squares were always next to each other and I was off to the races (eventually after a lot of milling around in this puzzle). I don't think I'd ever bothered to look up SLOE -eyed and have just let it sit as an eye descriptor like any other. Apparently, it means dark, attractive, almond-shaped eyes. I also enjoyed BELA and KARL ( OFF ) appearing right about the S ( ON ) ( OFF ...
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Wednesday May 1st 2019, NY Times Crossword

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Time: 8:16 Wednesday Average: 16:37 Best Wednesday: 6:52 Today's theme is STATE CAPITALS that are, as the clue points out to us, in anagram form. MUST I ? OK, let me see if I can figure this out even though it's past my bedtime. I'll get the easy ones first with Salem ( MALES ) and Dover ( ROVED ). After that, we have Austin ( ANTIUS ), Lansing ( IN SLANG ), and Raleigh ( HAIR GEL ). Finally, there's Madison ( DOMAINS ) and the tricky St. Paul ( UP LAST ) There's an exercise I wouldn't have bothered with if I wasn't writing this blog. I know the phrase well, especially since it seems so popular lately, but I never knew the spelling for "Bury the LEDE ." I always assumed it was "lead." I love slang that comes from typesetting. OK, those anagrams thoroughly wore me out. My final observation is that I don't love the way THE EU looks right above S AND P. Both just look deeply wrong.
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Tuesday April 30th 2019, NY Times Crossword

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Time: 7:43 Tuesday Average: 12:47 Best Tuesday: 5:01 I've never heard of BUBBA Watson, but, I MEAN , he sure looks like a golfer. Also, ROYGBIV doesn't seem like the best "Rainbow mnemonic" because I don't see what's at all memorable about it, but maybe there's an aspect that I'm not aware of. As far as the theme goes, we have GROUP SHOTS , which indicates that each of the long theme answers has two words that can precede the word "Shots." These are CHEAP TRICK (Cheap shot, cheap trick), LONG JUMP , HEAD SLAP , and BODY DOUBLE . I'm actually impressed by this theme since every answer is at least a fairly common phrase and each "Shot" phrase is well-known and common as well. I'm disappointed that we still can't get Game of Thrones related UMBER clues. I would imagine there are many people who are familiar with the Great Jon than with the Crayola colors. I don't know why, but I can't stand the shorte...
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Monday April 30th 2019, NY Times Crossword

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Time: 4:55 Monday Average: 8:13 Best Monday: 4:10 Today's puzzle urges us to GET CRACKING the various types of eggs hidden throughout the puzzle. As you can see, the grey squares each have egg types that are cracked by a single black square. We have chicken, ostrich, goose, and, of course, dinosaur in to round out the theme. It works well, even if we might not get much out of cracking open those dinosaur eggs, unless we find ourselves in A Song of Ice and Fire Book 1 situation and those are actually dragons. I don't believe I've ever taken a moment to look at ANDORRA on a map, but I still remember its capital, Andorra La Vella, unlike most of the capitals that I memorized several years ago. CAN YOU just stop by on the drive from France to Spain?
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Sunday April 28th 2019, NY Times Crossword

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Time: 40:53 Sunday Average: 47:09 Best Sunday: 21:55 Title: Words of Introduction Unless I’m missing something, this theme seems to be lacking approximately one element to make it really click for me. The title stands in lieu of a revealer, telling us that the capitalized words before the word “words” end up being acronyms for phrases or, in one case, a proper noun. As much as I enjoyed that nonsense sentence, I think giving examples will explain better. “KIND Words?:” KOH-I-NOOR DIAMOND . As you can see,we’re starting off with a bit of a stretch, in that it’s the only proper noun (one of the largest cut diamonds in the world and part of the British Crown Jewels). Something about coming out with Persian words right off the bat, especially ones that can be written in English in various ways, FEELS a bit rough. “HAS Words?:” HEART AND SOUL . H-A-S, the first letters of each word. Get it?  “BIG Words?:” BELIEF IN GOD . I guess this is a phrase. “ROOT Words?:” RUN OUT O...
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