Saturday, October 13, 2012

Work vs. play (Sunday brunch: October 14, 2012)

In the shameless pursuit of traffic (and new solvers for the The Nation cryptic), I've already posted the solution to the NYT variety puzzle, a straight cryptic by Rosalie Moscovitch.  I thought the puzzle was something of a grind (which was Deb Amlen's conclusion about one of Moscovitch's earlier works).  Deb's blog will include her commentary on this puzzle Sunday.

If you're a regular solver of the Times puzzles, welcome.  I think you'll find this week's cryptic in The Nation to be a much more rewarding use of your time.  It's about equal in difficulty, but the cluing is much more artful.  You'll feel you've had a recreation, instead of a chore.

Patrick Berry is equally artful in the construction of his puzzles.  Solvers over at the Wall Street Journal were raving about his latest one, called "Telescopes."  Not only has he checked every letter both across and down, there's a quote that emerges at the end.  That's amazing.

The regular weekly cryptic in the National Post is blogged by Falcon.  This week's puzzle has three fifteens and a couple of question marks, so it should be an interesting solve.

No comments:

Post a Comment

If you're responding to a hint request, please remember not to give more information than necessary. More direct hints are allowed after Monday.