Home brew (Sunday brunch: June 21, 2015)

(wishing Raydoc a happy Father’s Day)

One Oktoberfest isn’t enough for the folks at our church, so they held a beer and brats night yesterday to raise funds for the youth group trip.  Part of the reason people like these events is the very talented guild of home brewers in the parish (motto: “Sharing God’s love, twelve ounces at a time.”

Beer is the official beverage of Father’s Day, so beer making kits are a popular gift around this time. I ran a brewery back when I was in college, and it took a few tries, but we eventually got to the point where the product was pretty good.  Not quite as good as what the “St. Pauli Guys“ were serving last night, but I made a prize-winning malt liquor.  It’s not hard to make beer, but making something good enough to make people put down their professionally-made beer is another story.  So if you want to to try brewing as a hobby, find a local homebrew club and join them rather than just getting a kit.

Kevin Wald would have been a good guest last night: this week he brewed up a tasty variety cryptic to go with German food.  Elsewhere this weekend, the Wall Street Journal published a Labyrinth by Mike Shenk.  Last time out was easy, this one is harder.  I have a hint grid up elsewhere on the blog as well as the solution.

The New York Times variety puzzle is a Split Decisions by Fred Piscop.  Deb Amlen (spoiler alert) notes that Piscop seems to be finding his stride in constructing this unusual style.  Deb is getting better at solving them, but Piscop is starting to make his Split Decisions a little harder.

Of the regular weekly puzzles, the syndicated cryptic in the Globe and Mail is noteworthy: I found it had a strong Puns and Anagrams feel to it.  Be prepared for some clues without indicators: they’re usually going to be anagrams.

And there’s the Hex cryptic in the National Post, blogged by Falcon.

New York Times solution (January 18, 2015)

Below the fold is the solution to this weekend’s New York Times variety puzzle: a diagramless by Fred Piscop.  I thought it was easier than most diagramlesses.

New York Times solution: October 26, 2014

Below the fold is the solution to this weekend’s New York Times variety puzzle: a diagramless by Fred Piscop.

Once you’re done with it, stay around for Sunday brunch.  This weekend we have all kinds of new puzzles on the menu: straight and variety cryptics, a Rows Garden, and the Times puzzle contest.

New season (Sunday brunch: October 12, 2014)

While my hockey season started last month, the NHL had its opener this past week (and the Flyers are winless in 3)  A few rules changes were made, most of them pretty minor.

• Larger area where the goalkeeper can handle the puck (an easing of the Marty Brodeur rule).
• Wider spacing of the hashmarks where wingers line up on a face-off (will lessen interference).
• New fines for players who dive or act like they’re hurt in order to draw a penalty against an opponent.
• Face-offs will no longer go out to the neutral zone when a shot is deflected out of the rink.
• A change to face-off procedures to keep teams from stalling after an icing violation.
• Tripping will now be called when a player takes out an opponent with his body or arm, even if he contacts the puck first.
• More situations where the league office can use video replay for goal/no-goal calls.
• Automatic suspension for two game misconducts involving physical fouls.   
• Changes to overtime procedures: a dry scrape of the ice before OT and teams change ends. 
• The “spin-o-rama” move is now outlawed on penalty shots.

Care for opinions? Retired NHL referees Kerry Fraser and Paul Stewart have blogged on the new rule.  Care for puzzles?  Look below.

Our regular cryptics are in the Globe and Mail (watch out for a British degree in 25a) and the National Post.

The Wall Street Journal has a novel Patrick Berry crossword called Changing Direction.  Amazing are the ideas he comes up with.

The New York Times has a Split Decisions by Fred Piscop, blogged (with spoilers) by Deb Amlen.  I just can’t get into those.  

New York Times diagramless solution (Sept. 14, 2014)

Below the fold is the solution to this weekend’s New York Times variety puzzle: a diagramless by Fred Piscop.  Turns out to have had a theme.  A little bit of cruft around the edges, but a nice challenge due to the grid form.  Definitely has the jigsaw puzzle character of a good diagramless.

New York Times solution: June 22, 2014

Below the fold is the solution to this weekend’s New York Times variety puzzle, a diagramless by Fred Piscop.

Happy birthday, Raydoc (Sunday Brunch: May 11, 2014)

Raydoc (right) and family
on a blustery day in Nantucket

Today we wish a very happy birthday (one with a zero!) to Raydoc.  Being a diagnostician by trade, it’s not surprising he likes puzzles too.

We have a nice Rows Garden (by Patrick Berry) in the Wall Street Journal this weekend. Hints are available if you need them.  They’re in white print so you can take as much or as little help as you need.

Mark Halpin has composed a tough variety cryptic in honor of the documentary “Six by Sondheim.”

There is a diagramless by Fred Piscop in the New York Times today.  Comment (and spoilers) by Deb Amlen at Wordplay.  The solution is posted elsewhere on the blog.

The National Post cryptic by Hex has a few baseball-related clues, but is otherwise themeless, and not too difficult.

Fraser Simpson’s Globe and Mail cryptic isn’t as easy as last week.  2d is a good example of the difference between his puzzles and most other North American cryptics: the clue is “close of play” and the answer is EPILOGUE.  The clue is a single definition and no wordplay.  The cryptic element comes because the phrase “close of play” is usually used to describe the schedule of a cricket match and not a drama.

New York Times solution: May 11, 2014

Below the fold is the solution to this weekend’s New York Times variety puzzle, a diagramless by Fred Piscop.  Once you are done with this one, take a look at the rest of the Sunday Brunch menu.  There’s a Rows Garden by Patrick Berry, a Hex cryptic, a Mark Halpin variety cryptic, and more.

Valencia (Sunday brunch: April 27, 2014)

Continuing the wine theme, let me tell you about how I found a soccer allegiance.  When Sabers started German in seventh grade, the teacher had an exercise where each of the students was given a Bundesliga team to follow.  It gave them something to read about and to talk about in class, and played into the sports interests of the typical teenager.  Sabers’s team was Hoffenheim, and I still keep an eye on their results each weekend.

That’s nice, but I should have a team too.  But I don’t any direct connections to Europe (the other Doctor Mitchell was born in Ingolstadt); how do I pick one?  Go with the herd and buy a Barcelona or Manchester United jersey?  How unoriginal.  Then I found an inspiration.  In my wine cellar is a collection of mourvèdres: mourvèdre bring a flavorful but somewhat uncommon grape of the Rhône. There aren’t any big-time soccer teams in Châteauneuf-du-Pape or Contra Costa county, but there are in eastern Spain.  So I picked up a map of La Liga teams, located Jumilla, and saw that the home team there is Valencia.

Anyone else have some soccer stories to share?  Are there any teams out there with jerseys that could pass for a crossword grid?

Erica has blogged this month’s Harper’s and also introduces us to the mercenary she brought in to win the Chicago bedbug wars.  On top of that we learn that Erica likes anagrams almost as much as she likes salads.

Trip Payne has announced his annual Extravaganza; ten bucks gets you a dozen puzzles, a meta, and a crack at a $100 prize to be awarded to two solvers who submit correct solutions by the deadline.

Also vieing for your puzzling dollar is Peter Gordon of Fireball Crosswords, who’s announced another Kickstarter project for a series of bi-weekly crosswords filled with answers ripped from the headlines, or as Peter puts it: “All the News That Fits Symmetrically.”  Subscriptions start at six bucks for twenty crosswords, and the funding is open through June 15.

The weekday cryptic in the National Post is syndicated from the Daily Telegraph (London), running several months behind.  So on Tuesday they ran DT 27,367: their puzzle commemorating the 100th anniversary of the crossword, and Christmas fell on Wednesday (links are to Falcon, who shares Big Dave’s posts and adds some notes on degree of difficulty).  Even if Brit cryptics aren’t your cup of tea, this is worth trying.

Patrick Berry fans, raise a glass. Your favorite constructor is at work in the weekend Wall Street Journal, with a Section Eight.  Hints are posted.

Regular service resumes north of the border.  After two weeks of harder-than-usual puzzles, this weekend’s National Post puzzle (blogged by Falcon) is fairly easy.  The Globe and Mail puzzle by Fraser Simpson is hard.

The New York Times variety puzzle (behind the paywall) is a Split Decisions.  I get the impression that Deb Amlen isn’t a fan either.

New York Times diagramless solution: January 5, 2014

Below the fold is—you guessed it—the solution to this weekend’s New York Times variety puzzle: a diagramless by Fred Piscop.

Did you like that?  Why not take on one or three of the other new variety and cryptic puzzles out there this week: check out Sunday brunch each weekend.

High definition (Sunday brunch: January 5, 2014)

A double Salchow by Bangle

Santa Claus brought a high-definition TV this year (we’re kind of slow on the uptake that way; I had a black and white set through most of grad school).  I’ve said that one of the great things of watching a hockey game in person is how much more detail of sound you hear: like players slapping a stick on the ice to get a teammate’s attention.

This is the visual equivalent.  You can see that the linesman in a World Junior Championship game is using an Acme whistle. Are you ready for your close-up?  Get out a nice sharp pencil and solve these:

I think the week’s highlight is the Marching Bands with cryptic clues that Tom Toce created for the accounting journal Contingencies, with a little help from his friends.

The Wall Street Journal has a Patrick Berry puzzle called “Jury Boxes.”  It’s one of the ones where a jigsaw of rectangles is intersected by clued rows.  I’ve posted the solution as well as the row enumerations as a hint (they can help you place those middle answers) elsewhere on the blog.

Hex are continuing to ring in the new year, with this week’s puzzle in the National Post, and Falcon is back for another year of blogging it.

The New York Times variety puzzle is a diagramless by Fred Piscop (behind the paywall).  Look for the solution here on Sunday afternoon, connectivity permitting (Sabers is going to be at his twice-postponed District 11 orchestra audition today).

A bouquet of roses for the gold medalist in your life?  Certainly—especially if she likes puzzles!  Aries has great news for us; he is bringing back his Rows Gardens, bi-weekly, on a subscription basis.  Sign up now: the sooner you do, the more puzzles you get.

BEQ used Boxing Day as a time to offer a year in review post.  Worth reading, and maybe solving some of the linked puzzles.

Puzzazz has an update out this week, and it’s a significant one.  They’ve set up a way to offer free puzzles like the ones you often see in .puz format.  It’s not discussed on their blog, but the info is at the app store for your particular device.   On top of that, they had an all-day improvisational construction festival, the results of which are posted for everyone to solve.

Keep your sweater untucked (Sunday brunch: October 13, 2013)

One of the other NHL rule changes taking effect this season is a delay of game penalty for players who tuck their jersey into their pants.  Some smart fans think this is a precursor to teams selling advertising on the bottoms of the jerseys, the way they do in European leagues.  In fact, their refs have advertising logos on their sweaters too.

Of course, there was one player they never would have dreamed enforcing such a rule on: Wayne Gretzky always tucked in the right side of his sweater and left the left side out.  So on Gretzky’s sweater, the manufacturers would move their logo from the bottom right (where the logo is on everyone else’s) to the bottom left.  And the day Gretzky’s number was retired, I wore a Flyers turtleneck to work and left the left side untucked in his honor.

Also on the equipment front: goalie’s pads are going to have to be a little shorter (about two inches), which the league hopes will increase scoring.  Their sticks are going to be a little smaller too.  Those changes could be more than a little annoying to some goalies: it could mess up their balance while making them get rid of their favorite old pads and break in new ones.

It’s the weekend, and we don’t care whether your shirttails are tucked in or not, or even if you’re still in pajamas.  Get comfortable and solve some puzzles now.  

The new Harper’s is out and timed just right to illustrate the comment I made at Word Salad about clues in verse.  The format is one we’ve seen before, where the grid has four-way symmetry and answers are clued in groups of four: you have to figure out which of four spaces each answer has to go in.  This makes for a good level of difficulty: challenging but not impossible.  If you get two or three answers from a couple of intersecting sets, you can eliminate most of the possible locations until you come up with the right one, or at least a good guess.  Since this is a prize puzzle, this is the only tip you’ll get.

I don’t think I’ve linked Kevin Wald’s Oscar-watching puzzle yet: it’s called “16 Changes” because the alterations to the answers are somewhat themed to the Best Picture nominees.

The Wall Street Journal puzzle is a Labyrinth by Mike Shenk.  Right in the sweet spot of difficulty level.  I got a few of the acrosses, had a guess at the first winding, and then stalled a little.  I had some guesses, but I wasn’t trusting them enough to write them in.  So I got a pencil, filled in the guesses, and they were all right!  That got me around to the halfway point and then some, where I got stalled again.  I trusted my guess again, got a little further, and one more guess later got to the end.  Nice grid: the average answer in the winding is 8.4 letters long.  Even Patrick Berry would be proud of an grid like that.

If you’re still having difficulty, I’ve created a hint grid that shows where each of the boundaries between Winding words is.  Look below the fold.

The weekend’s New York Times puzzle (behind the paywall) is a diagramless by Fred Piscop.  Deb Amlen blogs it (spoiler warning) at Wordplay.  I’ll have the solution posted here (I’ll stick it below this Sunday brunch post) between games on Sunday.

Falcon is on vacation, but he’s posted the National Post cryptic for us, though the solution and annotation may be late.  The grid looks interesting: Hex have put six(!) fifteen-letter answers in it.

[update] Nathan Curtis’s weekly variety puzzle was also from the “puzzle potluck”: it’s something called a Nurikabe.  These are tesselation (tiling) exercises like the four-color map problem, only in black and white.  You are given a grid and a set of instructions: you must color (or not color) every polygon so the final result will meet all the restrictions set up in the instructions.

New York Times solution: October 13. 2013

Below the fold is the solution to this weekend’s New York Times variety puzzle: a diagramless by Fred Piscop.

Want more interesting puzzles to solve, along with commentary on puzzles, hockey, and other diverse topics?  Stop by every Thursday for new cryptic crosswords from The Nation (solved and explained for you Mondays), and come back on the weekend for Sunday brunch.

New York Times Puns and Anagrams solution: August 4, 2013

Below the fold is the solution to Fred Piscop's Puns and Anagrams puzzle published in the New York Times on Sunday, August 4.

Did you like that?  Why not try some of the cryptic crosswords by Joshua Kosman and Henri Picciotto in the Nation, linked here and solved each week.

Linesmen should be seen and not heard (Sunday brunch: August 4, 2013)

Temporary post: internet access is spotty, full post with links to follow.

My first games of the State Games of America went pretty well.  Since three of my assignments are as linesman and only the first was as referee, and all the games I worked last season were as referee, I was a little concerned about remembering the division of labor and my proper skating lanes.

The National Post cryptic by Hex has a linguistic theme.

The New York Times has a Fred Piscop Puns and Anagrams behind the paywall.  Look for a solution posted here tomorrow.

The Wall Street Journal has a Rows Garden by Patrick Berry which is one of the easiest Rows Gardens I’ve ever done.  I got a decent number of the acrosses on the first go through, some of the blooms snapped into place, and that resolved more acrosses.  I was down to one row before putting the puzzle down and got it the next time I picked it up. 

Nathan Curtis had a bit of a hiccup with his planned post, so he gives us a quick and deceivingly tricky variety crossword with a simple minimally-intersecting grid.  The puzzle is in fitting the answers into the grid.

Xanthippe has a new Sunday-size brit-cryptic, but no PDF yet.

I was remiss in not noticing some new Kevin Wald variety cryptics: not on his regular page but on the convention cryptics page.  The 2013 puzzles were unveiled in Austin.  They are definitely hard, but not the hardest I’ve seen from him.

“I'm going to put the puck on this side of the dot because the ice on that side is still wet.”

New York Times diagramless solution: July 21, 2013

Below the fold is the solution to this week's New York Times variety puzzle: a diagramless crossword by Fred Piscop.  Now that you've got this one, why not head over to the Sunday Brunch post for more cryptic and variety crosswords to do?

Training camp (Sunday brunch: July 21, 2013)

Wouldn't you like to be in a nice cool ice rink on a very hot weekend?

The State Games of America are just two weeks away now, so the Mitchell participants are working themselves into top form.  Sabers is at his training camp, doing fencing-related activities eight to twelve hours a day.  Bangle and The Other Doctor Mitchell are at the rink most of the day: two to three hours of skating each day and an off-ice class.

They all have some additional competition prior to State Games: a home fencing tournament and the Lehigh Valley Sportsfest this weekend and Skate Wilmington next weekend.  Me?  I get to write the checks and do the laundry.  I'll do two puzzles a day too.

This weekend's puzzles start with a Section Eight by Patrick Berry in the Wall Street Journal.  I posted some hints earlier in case you get stuck.  Don't resort to them too soon.  If you get some of the ring 1 sections completed and figure out a few of the middle ring words, you can get an approximate location and direction for those middle rings.  Then the rest of the ring 1 sector will give you a letter bank for the rest of the middle ring word.

The New York Times variety puzzle (behind the paywall) is a diagramless by Fred Piscop.  Deb Amlen calls it “sensible.”  I'll be back with a solution after I get my copy.  Update: the solution is posted.

Nathan Curtis has a Pathfinder up for us this week.  I like these puzzles a lot.  When they're constructed well, one answer leads to another and it's a challenging but smooth solve.

Falcon reports that the Hex cryptic at the National Post got him up on his feet.

Xanthippe has another new British cryptic: xii if you're counting.

Finally, we say "thank you" to Aries, who is laying down the pencil after creating 117 Rows Gardens.  That's enough for a couple of books: it would be great if he could find a publisher for them (maybe Puzazz?)

Danger!  Saber fencer!

A birthday bouquet of roses (Sunday brunch: June 9, 2013)

(updated with New York Times diagramless solution)

A fine time to find a bouquet of roses: my mother's birthday (it's one of the ones with a zero) is today.  Now it happens that the peonies are stealing the roses' thunder this week in the garden, but on the puzzle clipboard, Rows Gardens reign.

A Rows Garden consists of 38 six-letter hexagons called "blooms" intersected by 12 rows.  The top and bottom rows are a single nine-letter entry, while the rest are composed of two answers totaling 21 letters.  The rows are denoted with letters and their clues are given in order.  The blooms are divided into sets of white, gray (sometimes pink), and black: their clues are arranged randomly.  Furthermore, the bloom letters can be entered clockwise or counterclockwise, and they can start anywhere in the hexagon.

Rows Gardens are usually harder than most other variety crosswords, and they must be a bear to construct.  Every letter is checked, and you're really constrained in the fill you can use.  Got a wonderful clue for a seven-letter word?  You're out of luck unless you can use it in a row.

Trip Payne and Nathan Curtis give credit to Patrick Berry for creating the Rows Garden concept, and one of Berry's is the variety puzzle in this weekend's Wall Street Journal.  These puzzles really play to Berry's strengths in meshing words.

Berry is certainly the best-known constructor in this genre, but others have tried their hand too.  Aries is definitely the most prolific though.  He reached #156 last month (#1 is here), and he's done us the additional service of offering both hard and easy versions of each of his puzzles.  The grids and the clues are the same: the only difference is that the easy puzzles list the bloom clues in the order they appear in the grid.

Nathan also happens to offer a Rows Garden, though definitely out of the ordinary.  First of all, there's a meta you have to deal with: encoded in blooms letters that are not used in the intersecting row (the instructions in the puzzle make it clearer).  Second, he offers both versions with both straight and cryptic clues for the same answers.  He originally wrote the straight, and then was convinced to "cryptify" it.  Thank you for the effort, Nathan.

Allergic to roses?  There's a Fred Piscop diagramless behind the paywall at the New York Times.  I'll blog the solution here on Sunday, while Deb Amlen will post comments (spoiler warning) at Wordplay.

If all those blank grids leave you hungering for a crossword that looks like a crossword (i.e. with black squares), Hex have what you want at the National Post.  See Falcon's blog, though it may be late owing to Falcon being on vacation.  Fittingly, some of the clues in the Hex puzzle are overseas too.

My favorite rose garden?  The one at Cline Cellars in Sonoma: if you're ever in California wine country, you should visit.  It's on the road back to San Francisco, between the big left-hand bend in Route 121 and Sears Point, and they're open late.  It's a perfectly-placed stop for getting out of the car, tasting a few wines, walking around the garden, and bringing home a jar or three of their Mourvedre hot fudge sauce.

New York Times solution below the fold.

Oklahoma (Sunday brunch: June 2, 2013)

American Red Crosswords
Donate here and solve

I'm actually a Sooner by birth: I was born in Fort Sill while my father was serving his hitch in the Army.  Though I haven't been back since, the recent spate of tornados in Oklahoma brought that connection to mind, so let's dedicate this week to recovery and rebuilding there.

You can help by supporting Lutheran Disaster Response (the beneficiary of our local Oktoberfest) or the American Red Cross.  If you want a crossword connection, Rex Parker and Patrick Blindauer edited an all-star cast of constructors who contributed puzzles for their Sandy relief project called American Red Crosswords.  Donate and solve.

Regularly-scheduled puzzles for the weekend include a pair of acrostics: one is by Mike Shenk in the Wall Street Journal: it was fairly easy, especially if you picked up on some particularly apt word choices.  The other is by Hex in the New York Times (behind the paywall).  Deb Amlen of Wordplay says it's for procrastinators.  The June bonus puzzle for NY Times subscribers is also up: it is by Fred Piscop and is called "Candy Shop."

Hex's puzzle at the National Post is blogged as always by Falcon.

While looking at the list of American Red Crosswords constructors, I discovered that Andrew Ries has a puzzle site, with a monthly Rows Garden.  I'll tackle the latest and let you know how it went.

Also new this week is a shop at Patrick Berry's site.  There you can purchase The Crypt, Patrick's big collection of cryptic and variety puzzles.  I've had an enjoyable time working through those the last coupla months.

Nathan Curtis has a Snake Charmer for us.  The first solver to comment said it was fairly easy.

(posting early since Sabers has a tournament: check back for updated links)
(OK, links are updated.  Sabers finished 13th in a decent field of 25 at the prestigious Mr. Ma Open: came from behind to win his first elimination bout and then lost to the third-place finisher)

Salt potatoes (Sunday brunch: May 26, 2013)

Most Memorial Day weekends will find me watching the Syracuse University lacrosse team in the NCAA final four, and this year is no exception.  Their former coach, Roy Simmons, is a friend of our family.  I was nowhere near good enough to play for SU, but I did have the honor of playing a little summer ball for him and I have one of his artworks in my home.  

I'll say I'm surprised that this year's team not only made it this far, but they're the number one seed.  When I saw them play at Villanova earlier this season, they were destroyed at the X, losing 23 of 25 face-offs.  Very few teams are able to survive giving their opponents twenty extra possessions, and sure enough, the Wildcats pulled off an 11-10 win.

The 'Cuse got their revenge in the Big East tournament, coming close to even in the face-off department and winning the game 13-9, but their Achilles heel is exposed.  In the first round of the NCAA tournament, they ran into the best face-off man in the nation, and Kevin Massa won 22 of 23 to allow a below-.500 team to hold a lead over the #1 team for most of the first half.  But SU played a ball control game the rest of the way, forced turnovers, tied it by halftime, and won 12-7.  Orange vs. Denver, today at 5:00, after the Cornell-Duke semifinal.

So in honor of the team, I made a batch of salt potatoes to go with dinner last night.  Syracuse is known as the Salt City for one of its early industries, and legend has it that workers who harvested salt from the briny springs surrounding the city used the salty water to cook potatoes for a cheap meal.  They eventually became a clambake and barbecue staple in Central New York, and a popular snack at the New York State Fair.  My adaptation of the recipe has the potatoes finished in the oven for a few minutes to highlight  the salty crust.

3 pounds small new potatoes, about 1 1/2 inches in diameter
1/2 pound salt
4 tbsp butter

Add salt to 2 quarts of water and bring to a rolling boil.  Scrub the potatoes and gently pierce the skin of each one with a fork.  Boil the potatoes for about 30 minutes.  Fish them out of the water and place them in a shallow baking dish.  Bake for 5 minutes in a 350° oven.  Serve with little dishes of melted butter and plenty of cans of beer.  Serves 6 to 8.

I've got a connection to the other traditional Memorial Day sporting event: the Indianapolis 500.  My mother is from Terre Haute, and went to school with Mari Hulman, matriarch of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  I've been to the Speedway, but never watched a race there (nor have I played golf there: Brickyard Crossing is reputed to be an excellent course).  While I'll cook up a Syracuse-themed meal in honor of the lacrosse team this weekend, I don't really know what would qualify as Hoosier cooking.

Long weekend: after pausing to recognize fallen heroes, you'll still have time for some extra puzzles.

Trip Payne posted a 1995 variety cryptic of his called Indeed!, originally published in the magazine "Tough Cryptics."

The Wall Street Journal has a Boom Boxes by Patrick Berry this week.  If you have trouble with the issu content, go to blogs.wsj.com/puzzle and download the PDF.  If you have trouble with the puzzle, you can request a hint on the comment side of the wsj.com post or you can look at the hint file below the fold, which gives you the enumerations in each row.

Nathan Curtis has given us a Some Assembly Required.  In other news, his blog now has a feature where users can rate the difficulty of his puzzles, so if you want to bang your head against a wall, you can pick out one of the difficult ones.  [update: this one is easier than most Some Assembly Required, so if you haven't tried one before, this is the one to start with]

Puzzazz users: update your app: version 2.4 has some of the promised improvements, including a new virtual shelving system that labels the shelves and includes a separate shelf for your purchased puzzle books.  If you have purchased The Year of Puzzles ($19.99), they have added a Rows Garden by Patrick Berry.  It is appropriately dedicated to the Rose City: Portland.  

Falcon said the National Post puzzle this week was the easiest he's seen in a while.  Props to Hex for even putting their theme answers in order--just the kind of attention to detail you expect them to show.

The Times has a Split Decisions by Fred Piscop behind the paywall.  Deb Amlen reports that this is the first one Piscop has written since the death of his mentor, George Bredehorn, and shares some of Piscop's comments on picking up Bredehorn's pencil.  That said, Bredehorn's work will live on for a while, as he left behind a database of word pairs he liked and wanted to use sometime.

hints for Wall Street Journal puzzle below the fold