Erica (who does not seem like a blockhead, despite what her drawing might suggest) offers solutions and pictorial commentary on the Harper's cryptic, but not until the day solutions are due, so you cheaters aren't gonna get any help from her.
You won't get the full annotation of the Harper's over there, but then again if you're trying to tackle the Harper's, you're probably good enough at solving that you don't need the easy ones explained. Some of you braggarts out there might say you only read Erica's blog for the pictures and would never look at the articles (surrre....), but whatever, go look.
Now there won't be a new Harper's puzzle for another couple of weeks, but there's still solving to do this weekend. The Wall Street Journal has a Marching Bands variety crossword by Mike Shenk. "Fun" seems to be the popular description: I agree. I think the secret to satisfied solvers is to make things just hard enough that you can make steady progress but not race through the puzzle. The Marching Bands format is pretty good at that, aside from the overlapping words at top and bottom. If you're going to get stuck, that's probably where it'll happen. The solution is posted separately.
Over at the Times (and behind the paywall) is a "takeaway crossword" by Matt Ginsberg. I don't think I've seen the puzzle or the byline before, so look for a post on it later this weekend, in between my games, Bangle's moves in the field test, and Sabers' qualifying tournament for nationals.
Hex will have their regular weekly cryptic at the National Post, and Falcon will have solution and annotation for you. I think that's about it for new puzzles this week; if you're like me you still have some more of the Trip Payne puzzles left to do.
Enjoy your weekend, Erica and other friends, and don't let The Hawk get you.
Thank you for the link to Erica's Harper blog. Love it. Can't help but think, though, that when she says,
ReplyDelete"There are also pees and poos: totally taboo, totally juvenile, totally universal. Totally fit the bill! We invite Maltby to go there. G'head, Maltby. We're here waiting for you, dancing back and forth from one foot to the other. Doing the dance.",
she must have missed the one a while back where Maltby used
" chickens#(t" as an entry. Would love to have seen her post on that one. She may have liked it, I don't know.
Tried to post this there, but she only allows profiles which I don't know what any of them are, if you follow.
Bill