Boy this was a doozy. I didn't get 14d Thursday, and it cackled and taunted at me from the page all afternoon and all night. Once I got the answer, I had an idea of how it parsed out, but you really have to sit down and count "nom"s to understand it, and then, it's elegant in how entirely by the rules it is.
Some will complain about the difficulty, but it's the best straight cryptic I've solved this year.
Solution and annotation below the fold.
Monday, April 29, 2013
Sunday, April 28, 2013
New York Times diagramless crossword solution: April 28, 2013
Click over (or scroll down) to Sunday Brunch to get the solution to this week's New York Times variety puzzle plus lots more good cryptic and crosswords to solve this week.
Saturday, April 27, 2013
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike (Sunday brunch: April 28, 2013)
"Twisty" is the operative word for some of the weekend's variety crosswords too. There are at least four puzzles where words aren't traveling the straight and narrow.
There are two from Nathan Curtis today, since he posted this weekend's entry early. That one is a "Some Assembly Required": a cross between a crossword and a jigsaw puzzle. The way I approach these is to get some different colored pencils and shade over each jigsaw piece as I place it. Start in the corners and work your way to the center. Once you place a couple of pieces adjacent to each other, they will greatly narrow down the pieces that will fit nearby. Great challenge.
Nathan also tried out an "Around the Bend" (originated by Mike Selinker and Thomas Snyder, we're told). The last letters of each word are turned around to become the first letters of the next word. Unique.
The Wall Street Journal has a Labyrinth by Mike Shenk. It has some similarity to the jigsaw crossword in that there are normal acrosses to help you fit the words, but the intersecting words are streamed together with no enumeration. You have to spot the letter patterns within that winding stream that approximate the location of a word in the stream, and then you can work out from there. If you're having trouble with it (I didn't think it was very difficult), I've posted a hint grid elsewhere on the blog.
Puzzazz launched its "Year of Puzzles" project with the standard freebie: it's a double spiral called "Dawn in Seattle" with a meta reading through a shaded path. It's not too hard, though you'll probably want an eraser. Or do it on their iPad app, and it will look really nice. The whole hunt is a little pricy at twenty bucks, but it's more than just the puzzles themselves (of which there are 18).
You prefer your puzzles cryptic and your words in straight lines? That's OK. Hex have their weekly puzzle in the National Post. Falcon reports that it does turn a page though.
The New York Times puzzle (behind the paywall) is a diagramless by Fred Piscop. I'll have the solution here Sunday night. Deb Amlen at Wordplay (spoiler warning) reports there is a theme to it.
Bonus: Play Colossal Cave online!
Solution to the New York Times diagramless is below the fold.
There are two from Nathan Curtis today, since he posted this weekend's entry early. That one is a "Some Assembly Required": a cross between a crossword and a jigsaw puzzle. The way I approach these is to get some different colored pencils and shade over each jigsaw piece as I place it. Start in the corners and work your way to the center. Once you place a couple of pieces adjacent to each other, they will greatly narrow down the pieces that will fit nearby. Great challenge.
Nathan also tried out an "Around the Bend" (originated by Mike Selinker and Thomas Snyder, we're told). The last letters of each word are turned around to become the first letters of the next word. Unique.
The Wall Street Journal has a Labyrinth by Mike Shenk. It has some similarity to the jigsaw crossword in that there are normal acrosses to help you fit the words, but the intersecting words are streamed together with no enumeration. You have to spot the letter patterns within that winding stream that approximate the location of a word in the stream, and then you can work out from there. If you're having trouble with it (I didn't think it was very difficult), I've posted a hint grid elsewhere on the blog.
Puzzazz launched its "Year of Puzzles" project with the standard freebie: it's a double spiral called "Dawn in Seattle" with a meta reading through a shaded path. It's not too hard, though you'll probably want an eraser. Or do it on their iPad app, and it will look really nice. The whole hunt is a little pricy at twenty bucks, but it's more than just the puzzles themselves (of which there are 18).
You prefer your puzzles cryptic and your words in straight lines? That's OK. Hex have their weekly puzzle in the National Post. Falcon reports that it does turn a page though.
The New York Times puzzle (behind the paywall) is a diagramless by Fred Piscop. I'll have the solution here Sunday night. Deb Amlen at Wordplay (spoiler warning) reports there is a theme to it.
Bonus: Play Colossal Cave online!
Solution to the New York Times diagramless is below the fold.
Wall Street Journal hint grid: April 27
Below the fold is a hint grid for this weekend's Wall Street Journal variety crossword: "Labyrinth" by Mike Shenk. The hint grid shows the starting points of the labyrinth answers.
Friday, April 26, 2013
You are in a maze of little twisty passages, all different (Puzzle No. 3,281)
Link to puzzle: http://www.thenation.com/article/174007/puzzle-no-3281
Degree of difficulty (by standards of this weekly puzzle): very hard. Several of the clues stumped me for a while. I broke through with 26a, got some more, and was stumped again on a few more individual answers,which finally came to me in the morning. You need hints? I'm ready: ask in the comments.
Hozom's comment: Setting an Example, in which Hot and Trazom discuss how rules can be bent in the definition instead of in the wordplay. In particular, some people differ on whether or not it's fair to give an example of something as a definition of its class, such as "tabby" as a definition of "cat."
New York Times crossword constructors often use example definitions in their straight puzzles. They have the advantage of being really brief, which is good when you have a limited amount of real estate on the page. But usually they give you some kind of indicator to warn you this is an example definition, and most people consider that a sufficient concession to the solver.
Solution and annotation posted Monday-join us this weekend for Sunday brunch!
Monday, April 22, 2013
Finger food (Solution No. 3,280)
ed. note—Apologies to Hot and anyone else whose comments disappeared: I was clearing out some spam, and deleted too many posts.
A fun theme in this puzzle, one of the kind you don't realize is a theme until you get to the bottom of the puzzle and see the connection.
Themework: Hard, until you figure out the theme.
Difficulty (by standards of this weekly puzzle):
Solution and annotation below the fold
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Spaces (Sunday brunch: April 21, 2013)
As I continued to work on The Crypt, I came across a variety cryptic with a remarkable feature: blank spaces in which one could write the extraneous letters taken out of each clue and spelling out some meta-solution. What a convenience! I'm so used to having to pencil them in next to the clue number and make sure not to write anything else nearby. Thank you, Patrick. All other variety cryptic publishers ought to take note.
Where else I would find these kind of spaces handy is in puzzles like the new Sixes and Sevens (subscriber link) by Richard Maltby in the latest Harper's and other puzzles where you have to figure out where certain answers go. As a means of keeping track of which answers are placed and which aren't, I put the location next to the clue after I place an answer. So the first entry in row 3 would be "3a."
Maltby likes the Sixes and Sevens format. I think he does these at least once a year. If you're new at them or other puzzles where some of the clues are unnumbered and you have to figure out where they go, here's one way to attack them: First go through all the numbered clues and solve as many as you can. At that point, you may be able to place a few of the unnumbered clues that have uncommon letters, but be careful; if a pattern of a few letters can fit several common words, don't fill it in yet. Now comes the key part: go through each of the unnumbered clues and figure out which unnumbered spaces it can possibly fit in. If you're fortunate, and you've gotten enough of the intersecting words, there'll be only one place for some of those answers. Each successive word you fill in narrows the field for the other words until you get most of the first batch of answers placed. At that point, your partials are more complete, and might lead you back to some of the answers you missed the first time. It goes like that two or three more go-rounds until the full puzzle is solved.
The new Harpers (and the passing of last month's contest deadline) also means that Erica has last month's solution and critique over at tackyharperscrypticclues.blogspot.com.
Hex have a very easy variety cryptic in this weekend's Wall Street Journal. If you have been intimidated by puzzles with funny-looking grids and sections without numbers, try this one. 90 percent of the puzzle is straight, and the second stage is particularly easy if you think logically.
Nathan Curtis has been remarkably prolific lately: this week he has another Pathfinder. So if you strolled through the Harper's and WSJ puzzles, this ought to give you enough of a challenge.
The Times has a Hex acrostic behind the paywall. It is bird-themed, and rather than telling Deb Amlen something about the construction of the puzzle, they shared a birdwatching story. The National Post cryptic is also bird-themed and blogged as usual by Falcon to wrap up your weekend.
Where else I would find these kind of spaces handy is in puzzles like the new Sixes and Sevens (subscriber link) by Richard Maltby in the latest Harper's and other puzzles where you have to figure out where certain answers go. As a means of keeping track of which answers are placed and which aren't, I put the location next to the clue after I place an answer. So the first entry in row 3 would be "3a."
Maltby likes the Sixes and Sevens format. I think he does these at least once a year. If you're new at them or other puzzles where some of the clues are unnumbered and you have to figure out where they go, here's one way to attack them: First go through all the numbered clues and solve as many as you can. At that point, you may be able to place a few of the unnumbered clues that have uncommon letters, but be careful; if a pattern of a few letters can fit several common words, don't fill it in yet. Now comes the key part: go through each of the unnumbered clues and figure out which unnumbered spaces it can possibly fit in. If you're fortunate, and you've gotten enough of the intersecting words, there'll be only one place for some of those answers. Each successive word you fill in narrows the field for the other words until you get most of the first batch of answers placed. At that point, your partials are more complete, and might lead you back to some of the answers you missed the first time. It goes like that two or three more go-rounds until the full puzzle is solved.
The new Harpers (and the passing of last month's contest deadline) also means that Erica has last month's solution and critique over at tackyharperscrypticclues.blogspot.com.
Hex have a very easy variety cryptic in this weekend's Wall Street Journal. If you have been intimidated by puzzles with funny-looking grids and sections without numbers, try this one. 90 percent of the puzzle is straight, and the second stage is particularly easy if you think logically.
Nathan Curtis has been remarkably prolific lately: this week he has another Pathfinder. So if you strolled through the Harper's and WSJ puzzles, this ought to give you enough of a challenge.
The Times has a Hex acrostic behind the paywall. It is bird-themed, and rather than telling Deb Amlen something about the construction of the puzzle, they shared a birdwatching story. The National Post cryptic is also bird-themed and blogged as usual by Falcon to wrap up your weekend.
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