Testing, 1, 2, 3 (Sunday brunch: July 12, 2015)

[Apologies for the late post: I got called for a fill-in referee job.]

The codes for each step of this ice dance
tell you what edge to be skating on:
LFO is left skate, forwards, outside edge

Congratulations to Bangle, who passed two figure skating tests yesterday.  When she resumed skating after her concussion last winter, she wasn’t cleared to do jumps and spins until well after she was fully recovered.  So instead, she worked on ice dance, which requires precise and strong skating skills more than the speed and power for jumps and spins.

Competition is one way of proving your skills, but skating also has a series of tests, where you aren’t competing against other skaters: you’re trying to skate well enough to earn a passing score from the judges.  The tests come in a series of levels: from pre-preliminary to senior for freestyle, and from pre-bronze to gold for ice dance (which for testing purposes does not have to be skated with a partner).  Each successive level has harder and harder required elements, and a higher standard of skating needed to pass.  In order to skate in competition at a particular level, you have to pass the corresponding test.

Since Bangle hadn’t done much dance before this season, she started with the beginning-level tests a couple of months ago, and has been racking up nice comments from the judges along the way.  On the right is the pattern for one of the bronze-level dances: the Fiesta Tango.  The lines show the pattern that should be traced on the ice, and numbered steps detail how each step should be skated.  Skate the pattern twice, and would be right back where you started: two times around and the dance is finished.  

Now test your mind against the weekend’s new puzzles.

Stickler is back from his winter R&R (it’s midwinter Down Under) and has two new puzzles: numbers 85 and 86.  Glad to see them!

Other weekly block cryptics are in the National Post and the Globe and Mail, as usual.  Falcon is getting his R&R (I think he’s in the lake country of Ontario, but he’s blogged the National Post for us.

Meanwhile, it’s time for a couple of periodic variety cryptics by Sondheim-inspired constructors: the Tom Toce puzzle in Contingencies and the Mark Halpin puzzle unveiled at a special event at the Arden Theater Company here in Philadelphia recognizing Sondheim.

The Wall Street Journal variety puzzle is Changing Directions by Patrick Berry.  Another one of those ones where getting a toehold is the hardest part, so I have a hint grid up for you as well as the solution.

The New York Times variety puzzle is a Hex acrostic, blogged (with spoilers) by Deb at Wordplay.

Lacrosse (Sunday brunch: May 10, 2015)

As the Stanley Cup playoffs go on, May is also the time for the NCAA lacrosse tournament.  And in honor of the 25th anniversary of their victory in Rutgers Stadium, ESPN is premiering “The Lost Trophy,” a film on the 1990 Syracuse University lacrosse team.  (hit the link there for the trailer)

That was the height of the razzle-dazzle era when the Orangemen and their up-tempo offense introduced behind-the-back passes, “Air Gait,” and other breathtaking moves to what was then a tradition-bound sport.  It also was when lacrosse really began to take hold outside its old homes in Baltimore, Long Island, and upstate New York.

Coach Roy Simmons Jr. lived down the road from where I grew up.  My mother (appropriate to bring her inot the story today) played tennis with Nancy Simmons, I played summer ball for him one year while I was in college, and we sold some of Roy’s art at the gallery my mother ran on Nantucket one summer.

Yes, art.  Besides winning six national championships as a Division I coach, Roy was also a full professor at the university.  To Roy, sculpture and coaching were one and the same.  He believed that seeing the field and the flow of the play was essential to playing one’s best, so the first rainy day each season he’d take the team to the Everson Museum to look at art.  It also encouraged creativity, which when mixed with the hard-nosed style of box lacrosse as played in the Iroquois community of Syracuse and its environs (Chief Oren Lyons was Roy’s teammate at Syracuse and a lifelong friend and alter ego), revolutionized the sport.

But the NCAA officially vacated the 1990 title after it was alleged that the Simmons family gave inappropriate benefits to Paul Gait.  The film takes us back for an in-depth look at the clash not just between the SU program and the NCAA, but also between the new vision Syracuse had and the staid, preppy expectations of the rest of the lacrosse world.  I’m looking forward to seeing this film.    

This week’s new puzzles:

The Wall Street Journal has a Patrick Berry variety crossword called “Curly Quote.”  Another nicely assembled and novel puzzle.  Hints are elsewhere on the blog in case you have trouble figuring out which direction to place your first few answers.

The New York Times has a straight cryptic by Hex, which Deb Amlen of Wordplay (spoiler warning) enjoyed immensely.

Mark Halpin has his quarterly Sondheim Review puzzle up.  It’s called “A Deadly Game” and refers to the movie “The Last of Sheila,” which Sondheim co-wrote.

Regular straight cryptics:
Hex in the National Post: Woman in Red (blogged by Falcon).  A quick solve.
Stickler: (taking a week off)
Syndicated in the Globe and Mail: The syndicate does not identify its constructors, and I’d really like to know who set this one.  If you expect Ximenean cluing, you will have a very hard time with it.

Fifteen squared (Puzzle No. 3,362)

I spent my lunchtime last Friday on the New York Times straight crossword.  Typical Friday construction, showing off a stack of three fifteens at the top and bottom.  But wait—there’s something unexpected in the top right corner: a “16.”  This puzzle is 16 by 15 instead of 15 by 15. Besides giving David Steinberg a chance to use a half dozen answers that haven’t been seen in the puzzle before, it got me thinking about how convention has given us 15 by 15 weekday crosswords and block cryptics, along with 21 by 21 Sunday puzzles.  The consistent size might have been something newspaper publishers called for: once they laid out the diversions page (puzzles often appeared on the same page as the comics), it would be the same every day with no additional work necessary on their part.  And with an odd number of squares on each side, it’s easier for constructors to apply the conventional rotation symmetry, or even 90° symmetry.  15 by 15 has the same kind of natural “fit” as 90 feet between bases on a baseball diamond.

There’s a little less convention in bar cryptics, though 12 by 12 is the most common (it works out to be pretty close to the 15 by 15 block in number of letters to fill in).  They don’t even have to be square.  Mark Halpin might be the constructor who’s dispensed with convention most often, but plenty of other constructors have felt free to make unusual grids.

Link to puzzle: http://www.thenation.com/article/206345/puzzle-no-3362

Degree of difficulty (by standards of this weekly puzzle): easy, even easier than last week

Agility factor: mild

This week’s cluing challenge: FIFTEEN

Garden (Sunday brunch: August 10, 2014)

It’s been a mild summer: the garden has done more relaxing than working, but we finally have some cukes and green peppers this week, along with a big batch of tomatoes.

Great weekend for cryptic solvers: if you’re about to go on vacation there’ll be lots of puzzles for your relaxation.  There are the regular straight cryptics from the National Post and the Globe and Mail.  I managed to complete the entire Globe and Mail puzzle this time (though needing a lookup of one answer), which is a rare feat.  LizR has a new one for us too (I haven’t started it so someone can tell us in the comments if it’s themed or not and how hard it is).

Variety cryptics start with “Target Range” by Hex in the Wall Street Journal.  Some of the regular solvers who comment at the WSJ site took one look and shied away because the grid doesn’t have any bars and the clues were in random order, but Hex are fair to their solvers and they made sure to leave a good starting point.  I have a hint post up to talk you through it, with increasing levels of help if you need it.

If you get through that, try Kevin Wald’s cryptic for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament: Supreme Cohort.  It’s an impressive 12 x 13 size with 58 clues, which will keep you busy for a while.

And it’s time for the quarterly Mark Halpin puzzle, titled “On the Steps of the Palace.”  A Cinderella theme—has Mark finally run out of Sondheim-related cryptic ideas?  No!  It’s a song from “Into the Woods,” a fairy tale mashup that was written before anyone had the idea of a mashup.  Meanwhile, Mark will be launching his Labor Day Extravaganza later this month: watch for details.

The Times has a Hex acrostic that Deb Amlen describes as “unpredictable.”  Deb gives honorable mention to Elizabeth Gorski’s Sunday straight crossword, which is on a doggie theme.  The puzzles themselves are behind the NYT paywall.

The NHL draw (Sunday brunch: May 18, 2014)

Typical men's league faceoff.

Last Sunday I had a spring league double-header.  Off-season hockey ought to be more about building skills than being competitive. There was a summer league I worked in Maryland twenty years ago that had the right idea.  Body checking was not allowed, and the organizers told the players they were expected to play defense by outskating the puck carrier instead of hitting him or going for his stick.

Even at this point in my career, I too still look for opportunities to work on new skills, and last weekend was one of them.  The first game was 9- and 10-year-olds, and many of them look to have just moved up from mite-level.  So I decided this would be a great time to try an NHL-style draw: down way low with your arm out to present the puck.  Colorado wants us to use that type of draw, but most of us value our safety more than pleasing the USA Hockey administration, so we drop the puck the way they used to instruct us to do.

An NHL face-off.  See where the players are?

But a spring league game, with players who probably couldn’t hurt me if they tried?  Perfect time to work on a new technique.  The photo at left shows what it should look like: get your rear end down and form a diamond with your rear end, your shoulders, your puck hand, and your skates.

But I bounced the puck through the whole first period.  Once I was comfortable with the position and still bouncing pucks, I shifted my hand and put two fingers on top of the puck.  The pucks started landing flat.  Mission accomplished.

Work on your pencil-holding grip for these puzzles.

It’s an excellent weekend for variety cryptic fans like me.  The Wall Street Journal puzzle is a Hex cryptic called “Rebuses.”  There are fifteen unconventional clues: you should be able to figure out how they work.  If you can’t, try these hints.

Next we’ve got the new Harper’s, which is called “Full Circle.”  A dozen answers are unclued.  How do you take on a puzzle like this?  Get as many of the regularly-clued answers as you can and hope they give you enough intersecting letters for you to get some of the unclued answers.  Then those might help with the rest of the regular ones.  I couldn’t figure out the theme connecting the unclued answers until I was nearly through with the entire grid.

And on top of that Mark Halpin has a Sondheim-themed puzzle called “There’s Always a Woman.” These are good puzzles, not impossibly difficult, but hard enough that getting all the themework done gives you a real sense of accomplishment.

Straight cryptics?  Hex have you covered in the National Post (blogged quickly by Falcon, who is going off on vacation), while Fraser Simpson’s weekly puzzle is in the Globe and Mail.

This week’s New York Times variety puzzle (behind the paywall) is a Hex acrostic.   Deb Amlen felt like getting a drink when she was through with it.  That sounds like a good idea.

Broadcast Network (Puzzle No. 3,317)

A little while ago, we learned that Nathan Curtis and some of our other favorite constructors were involved in a new project, which turned out to be a quarterly puzzle magazine edited by Will Shortz.  Now the first issue of Will Shortz’s Wordplay is now out. What’s it like?  Find out after the break.

Link to puzzle: http://www.thenation.com/article/178790/puzzle-no-3317

Degree of difficulty (by standards of this weekly puzzle): easy to moderate, and very consistent.

Hozom’s comment: “Chez Henri,” in which Hot realizes his dream of opening a Bay Area cryptic restaurant.  Reviewer’s note: the groaning you hear isn’t just from the large portions!

I think the best way to describe the new Wordplay puzzle magazine from Penny Press is to compare it to a television channel.  In the 1960s, TV for most people was the three major networks.  Cable TV was mainly for people who wanted better reception or not to have to fuss with an antenna.  The networks showed a little bit of everything: Laugh-in, a college football game on Saturday afternoon, soap operas mid-day, and the evening news.  Then we started seeing new and more focused channels: ESPN, HBO, MTV.  Today there are channels for everything from home remodeling to Tejano music to game show reruns.

So it is with puzzles.  Thirty years ago, we had the newspaper crossword plus some syndicated variety puzzle like Jumble or a cryptogram.  If you wanted variety, there were print magazines at the supermarket checkout lane.  For harder puzzles, there were magazines and books at bookstores. 

Then came the internet, which has been fabulous for us solvers.  We can congregate at sites for our favorite types of puzzles, and constructors have a place to go to seek out an audience.  Now we’re getting into app world and push content; we don’t ever have to go without our preferred puzzles. 

Penny Press is the broadcast company that’s trying to thrive in the 500 channel age.  Checkout lane magazines of easy crosswords and word searches are their bread and butter, and they’re the dominant player in that market.  But they also do specialty puzzles: The Other Doctor Mitchell is an avid consumer of their logic puzzles. 

Wordplay fits the Penny Press model to a T.  They understand solvers, and that they derive satisfaction from finishing puzzles and feeling they’re smarter because they’re able to get the right answers.  So they tend to stay away from difficult puzzles or ones that are intimidating at the beginning, just like the other editors who have to publish for a broader market, like Mike Shenk with the WSJ weekend puzzles. 

What that means is that the variety and cryptic crosswords in Wordplay are interspersed among other quick word games of the type Willz is good at coming up with.  Those are good for a quick two or three-minute break from whatever else you’re doing, or to pick up and solve while you’re waiting in line for something.  Nathan’s Pathfinder is probably the hardest puzzle in the magazine.  

Another benchmark: the Fraser Simpson cryptic is easier than his Globe and Mail puzzles, and is in pure US cluing form rather than the part-British approach of his weekly puzzles.  (The other cryptic in the magazine is by Jeffrey Harris.) 

Other names you’ll recognize (most but not all the puzzles are credited) include Patrick Berry, Brendan Emmett Quigley, Foggy Brume, and Mark Halpin.  There are also some new constructors working in forms you’ll recognize, like a Rows Garden by Joon Pahk.  Anthologies like this one are valuable for giving these people some cash and a wider audience for their puzzles.  Kudos to Will Shortz for convincing the big names to join the cast and for recognizing some emerging talent. 

The presentation is like other Penny Press magazines: comfortably-sized grids on good quality newsprint paper.  Since it’s newsprint, you will have to choose pen or pencil carefully, and it won’t take too much erasing. Games Magazine is better in this department.  There are about 60 puzzles in a 64-page magazine for $3.99 ($18.97 for an annual subscription: 6 issues per year).  For the whole thing, that’s a good value, but if you see the word games and logic art pages as filler, less so.

So like the people who watch military history 24/7, solvers who want just variety crosswords will change the channel.  Those whose idea of variety extends more broadly will be satisfied but not thrilled with this magazine.  But that’s OK since those are fairly small slivers of the population.  Like the big TV networks, Penny Press is trying to build an audience out of people who are just tuning in to whatever is on now plus those who are looking for a particular show to meet their interest. 

For the typical reader of this blog, it’s worth having a copy of Wordplay.  It’ll be ideal for airplane trips or on the nightstand for when you want a light and fairly easy diversion.  If you discover some new favorites, and constructors get a breakout from it, even better. 

Penny Press says the best place to find Wordplay will be at larger bookstores, but to make sure you get your copy, subscribe.

Sprained whistle (Sunday brunch: November 17, 2013)

Hockey can be as rough on whistles as it is on the players and officials.  I had a really good AA pee wee game Sunday morning, and in the third period we had a scrum for the puck right on the blue line, so I had to get up on the boards to get clear of the play while keeping a good view of the puck and the line.  Moments later, the puck got shot on goal, and when I put the whistle in my mouth for the stoppage, I felt cold brass instead of the rubber mouthguard.  The mouthguard got knocked off in the fray and was lying on the ice back at the blue line. One reason some guys prefer tape.

There was similar situation in a men’s league game once, when a couple of players took advantage of the jam-up to crunch me and my whistle into the boards.  I came out of it OK, but one of the welds of the fingerclamp got loose and made the whistle wobbly.  Not a fatal injury, but career-ending (for the whistle, not me...).

Then there was the time last season I had a routine offside, and when I blew the whistle all it went was ‘tithhh.’  The pea had gotten jammed in the chamber.  I shook it, blew again, and got the right sound.  “Sprained whistle,” I explained with a smile to the coach.

Do your stretches, prevent injury.  Stretch your brain now?

Cryptics first.  There’s a new Harper’s out this week, and the Richard Maltby puzzle in it is called “Hex Signs.”  Some of the same strategies for getting a toehold on the puzzle apply here as with the Seven Sages last week.  No further hints, since it’s a prize puzzle.  With the new puzzle up, Erica ought to have her annotation of the November puzzle up soon, but it wasn’t posted, last I checked.

Meanwhile, Hex have their regular straight cryptic in the National Post.  I thought it was a little more difficult than usual.  Both Falcon and I were groping to find a theme in the puzzle: Falcon with more success than me.

And it’s time for the quarterly Mark Halpin opus.  The title: “Here’s to the Ladies Who Lunch” is a reference to a song from Sondheim’s musical Company.  It’s not too hard, and there’s a fun ending.

The Kevin Wald puzzle I did this week was called Multiples of Pie.  Another great medium-sized theme cryptic.  I’ve figured out half the meta, but not the last bit.  

Two acrostics this weekend: the Wall Street Journal puzzle by Mike Shenk has a seasonal theme, and some interesting bits of information in the clues as well as in the quotation.  The New York Times puzzle (Java puzzles at both links) is by Hex as usual.  Thomas Gaffney fills in for Deb Amlen blogging at Wordplay this week.

No new puzzle yet from LizR, but her fans are waiting in eager anticipation for a puzzle to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who: which premiered November 23, 1963.

Come back for an update when the Nathan Curtis variety puzzle is posted.

The dog whistle (Sunday brunch: November 10, 2013)

The oddball in my whistle collection is my original no-pea Fox 40.  This was designed by a Canadian basketball referee whose whistle jammed at an inopportune moment, so he vowed to make a whistle that didn’t need a ball inside it to generate a distinctive and strong tone.

It has three air chambers to blend three frequencies (like a train whistle), and since you don’t have to blow hard in order to make the pea swirl around the chamber, it’s a very easy-blowing whistle.  So I got it for those times when you have a chest cold or when you’re on an open rink on an icy-cold morning, and it hurts to take a deep breath.

Well one evening I got stuck in traffic on my way to a summer-league bantam game.  While sitting and waiting, I decided it would be a fine time to re-tape my regular whistle.  But when I got to the rink and went inside to dress, I left the whistle in my car.  Fortunately, I had the Fox 40 as a spare, so I went out with it.  Not long after the game started, I heard some funny sounds coming from one of the benches.  At a stoppage I went over, and one of them explained that they’d heard my “dog whistle” and were responding to it.  We had a good laugh over it, and ever since then, I’ve called it the dog whistle.

The reason is it’s a much higher and thinner sound than an Acme, and though it’s a Canadian product, the original Fox 40 never caught on with hockey officials, and some of the old-timers despise it.  Basketball refs love it though, and I’ve seen (and heard) it used in the NFL and professional soccer too.  Nowadays I only use mine for cross-ice mite games where we have two games going on at the same time on the two halves of the rink.  Then the players and coaches won’t be as confused by the whistles coming from the other side.

Definitely a weekend for variety.  The Wall Street Journal weekend puzzle is a Seven Sages by Patrick Berry.  These can be tough until you get a solid toehold in an area.  I find the best way to do that is to find where you have two consecutive answers figured out, then determine which letters those answers share.  If there’s only two letters shared, they have to go in the spaces joining those two words.  Use the directional information with the clues to figure out which way those two letters go, and then complete the words.  From there, you can build on one word at a time.  Don’t forget that you can use the outside quote to guess at some more letters and confirm a suspicion you might have about some of the answers.

Nathan Curtis did get a puzzle posted last week: it’s a type called a Belt Line introduced by Patrick Berry.  Never a bad idea to pick up on one of Patrick’s ideas.  Then he was early with this week’s puzzle: another Pathfinder.  I think this is going to be Nathan’s forte.

Meanwhile the New York Times puzzle (behind the paywall) is a Split Decisions.  Debate below: should we call this a crossword or a non-crossword?

This is supposed to be a cryptic blog, so fortunately we have cryptics this weekend too.  Hex can always be counted on; so can my blogging ally Falcon, who solves and annotates the National Post cryptic.  Go to him for Qs and As.

Go to Xanthippe for a new British-style cryptic called “Bottoms Up” and another lovely picture.  Anyone recognize that lady?  Hit the comments there and tell our friends across the pond where you’ve found her.  That puzzle reminded me of a fairly easy Mark Halpin variety cryptic I solved this week called “Here’s to the Ladies that Lunch.”  For those not up on their Sondheim, that’s the title from a song in Company.

More puzzles from the NPL convention are finding their way online.  Mark Halpin collaborated on a Texas-sized Extravaganza called “A Matter of Con Science.”  Solving that ought to provide a graduate-level education in puzzling.

Don’t overthink the test (Sunday brunch: September 29, 2013)

It was a few weeks ago now, but I’m still steamed at myself over how I did on my closed-book rules exam this year.  I haven’t gotten my score yet (I’m sure I passed), but I blew three questions because I broke my cardinal rule of rules exams: “don’t overthink the test.”

What do I mean by that?  Here’s an example.  There was a question that asked whether the teams switch ends before overtime.  In almost every league or tournament, overtime (or lack thereof) rules are set by the organizing authorities, and very rarely coincide with what is in the rulebook (which explicitly grants local governing bodies the authority to set overtime rules).  It’s a habit of mine that whenever I work a tournament, or in a league I haven’t worked before, I check what the OT procedures are, because they’re all different.  While they’re all different about how long OT is or how many players are on ice or what do do if the game is still tied after OT, nobody changes ends.  And if you put me at center ice after three periods of a tied game, I’d always put teams on the same sides they were in the third period.

But the exam question included the words “game to be played to completion.”  Ignoring lessons learned from past exams and all the OT games I’ve ever worked, I let those particular words take over my brain.  I thought about multiple OT (which I’ve never had a league do even in playoffs), thought about the epic Stanley Cup games I’ve watched, and answered “change ends.”  Idiot.  In USA rules, nobody changes ends even for multiple OT.

I was so sure I [fouled] up that question that as soon as I turned in the exam I opened my rulebook to confirm I was wrong.  Of course I should have simply corrected my answer before turning in the exam but I stubbornly clung to my brilliant piece of logic instead.  Idiotic.  Brilliant, but idiotic.  Rest assured I will never change ends for OT in a real game though.

Want to see the rest of a typical rules exam?  Click here (Georgia Ice Hockey Officials Association).
Want some puzzlers not related to hockey, plus some fun videos?  Read on.

There’s some really fun fill in the weekend’s Wall Street Journal puzzle: a Patrick Berry Rows Garden. I guessed 2B right but turned out to be wrong with the reference to a hit song: the song I was thinking about was recorded in 1966, not 1961, but the folks I mentioned it to all had pleasant memories of the wrong song, so I’ll embed a video of it anyway.  The other answer I really liked is at the end.

The New York Times variety puzzle (behind the paywall) is another Ring Toss by Mark Halpern.  Deb Amlen (spoiler alert) was glad to see it, and I like all of Halpern’s work.  We saw one of these about a year ago.  I’ve posted some hints below the fold, and the solution will be up shortly.

The National Post cryptic by Hex was a little harder than usual, but still not more than a “moderate.”  Much anagramming and a nice pair of complimentary 14s in the middle.  Falcon has the solution and annotation for you.

Nathan Curtis apologizes for a late post of his Spiral, as well as for two easy puzzles in a row, but I don’t think he needs to apologize for offering us interesting stuff to solve even if it is late in the weekend instead of early.

Back to the WSJ after the fold, since a spoiler is below.  The New York Times hint is there too.

New York Times solution: September 29, 2013

Below the fold is the solution to today’s New York Times variety puzzle: “Ring Toss” by Mark Halpin.  If you’re looking for a hint instead of the entire solution, or if you’re looking for something else to solve after finishing this puzzle, why not stop over for Sunday brunch?

Linked without comment (Sunday brunch: August 11, 2013)

Have an orgasm instead of doing a crossword, it's better for your brain, says scientist (Telegraph)

The sexual climax gives the whole brain a good workout, rather than just one area of it, Professor Barry Komisaruk [Rutgers] said. ... “Mental exercises (such as crosswords and Sudoku) increase brain activity but only in relatively localised regions. Orgasm activates the whole.”

Well, maybe one comment: a crossword in bed after more physical pursuits would be a lot healthier than the traditional cigarette, and pose less of a fire risk too.

So cuddle up with your special someone and solve puzzles together this weekend.

The Wall Street Journal has a variety cryptic by Hex called “Jigsaw.”  It’s not difficult, and as usual with Hex, the payoff when you complete the puzzle is lovely.  Bring colored pencils.  If you get stuck (and I don’t think you will), there is a hint grid posted, as well as the solution.

The rest of the weekend WSJ is worth your time too.  They have quietly bulked up the lifestyle sections of their Friday and Saturday editions (called Arena, Off Duty, and Review, respectively), assembled a solid collection of writers, and given them space to write on interesting topics like the back story behind “Midnight Train to Georgia,” things to see in Kraków, and classic desk toys.

Hex are on a healthy diet for the summer, heavy on fruit and vegetables (though there’s a little ham and shellfish and a drink as well).  They hid their shopping list in the acrosses (all of them!) of their weekly cryptic in the National Post.  Falcon will be a little late with the solution.

The third Hex of the weekend is an acrostic, behind the paywall of the New York Times as usual.

The quarterly variety cryptic by Mark Halpin, “Factions,” is out.  I enjoyed this one, especially after I figured out the identity of one of the competing factions (acrosses versus downs) and I got the connection.    

Nathan Curtis’s weekly variety crossword is an Around the Bend that is a little harder than his previous one.

Xanthippe created a Sunday-size British puzzle, but alas no PDF.  It has minimal Dr. Who content, though the title might suggest otherwise.  

Bach Sunday (Sunday brunch: May 12, 2013)

This weekend, TODM and the church choir sing Bach's Cantata #37: Wer da gläubet und getauft wird (He that believeth and is baptized...shall become blessed).  It's an Ascension Day cantata.  To get the full effect of Bach, I think one should be open to the spiritual as well as the architectural constructions. Much of his work was composed to illumine the church year or riff on the hymn of the day, and if you're aware of that influence, things make even more sense.  Kind of like recognizing the nods Hot and Trazom make to the political preferences of most The Nation readers.

From the sacred to the profane?  Not quite.  Patrick Berry has another of his Seven Sages puzzles: this one with a quote from George Carlin.  I tried the obvious quote, but it fell (appropriately) four letters short.  Next time they publish one of these, I do it in pencil.  By the time I finished, my grid was about as messy as Bangle's room, thanks to the two or three times I put answers in the wrong locations.  Just sloppy solving: when I had the common letters for 21 and 22, I would put them in the 20/21 spaces.

Nathan Curtis offers a Snake Charmer this week.  I thought it was a breeze.  The first few letters of most of the answers were enough to clear up anything I was unsure about.

Behind the NYT paywall is a Mel Taub Puns and Anagrams puzzle.  I might have said this before, but Puns and Anagrams is good batting practice for cryptic solvers.  The key difference is that indicators are left out of many clues.  If at first you can't parse the clue, assume it's an anagram.  Anyone want to solve it for time?  Post your times in the comments.

UPDATE: The solution is below the fold.  Once you're done with that one, why not browse the rest of our Sunday brunch and pick out a few more puzzles to solve?  The Hex puzzle immediately below is a good intermediate-level cryptic that Puns and Anagrams solvers should be able to get through, while the Tom Toce variety puzzles I featured in a couple of recent posts are an easy introduction to variety cryptics.   

And of course there's the Hex cryptic in the National Post.  Of course it's themed.  Solve it and then call your mother.

Mark Halpin's Sondheim-inspired puzzle is a really polished work.  I don't know if he edits his own work or has someone else do it, but the grids are tight and symmetric, and the clues are well-written.  Halpin also manages to find the "difficult but not impossible" sweet spot a lot of constructors try for.  You think you'll never get the meta, but soon there's a toehold, and a couple more pieces, and then the "aha" moment where the whole theme comes together.  Like a Bach fugue.

And speaking of music, happy birthday to Raydoc, who's not a musician himself but has a good ear and particularly enjoys the work of Soviet era and post-Communist composers like Arvo Pärt and Henryk Górecki.

JS Bach: Cantata #37

New York Times Puns and Anagrams solution for May 12, 2013 is below the fold: keep scrolling!

Project Sondheim (Sunday brunch: February 3, 2013)

Well, as promised last week, I'll tell you about my next big solving exercise.  The Stephen Sondheim references in Word Salad, along with the bit I learned about Sondheim mentoring Richard Maltby and the sample Sondheim cryptics from New York magazine that I solved piqued enough interest that I'm going to work my way through the entire Sondheim catalog (at least the New York magazine part of it).

Fortunately, I have access to the University of Pennsylvania library, and they have the early run of New York on microfilm.  So I went over last week, found the reel, and fired up their new microfilm viewer.   Yes, I said "new," not "old."  This one lets you print the film pages to a PDF instead of paper, so it's cheaper and I can print a fresh copy if I foul up the first one.  The copy quality is not great, but it's enough to read and solve the clues.

I'll say it was a trip going back through the pages of a 1968 magazine.  Some big names like Jimmy Breslin were writing for the magazine, politics and culture were of a very different era, and the ads were a hoot.  My mother subscribed to the magazine, and I remember reading it in the 70s.  After the Sondheim cryptic had run its course, they started a competition where readers were asked to make up humorous movie titles or typos on a weekly theme.  It subsequently inspired the Washington Post's Style Invitational, which continues to this day.

And the ads...!  I'll have to wait for another weekend to share a few of my favorites, but suffice it to say it was a less PC (which is to say much less stutifying) world.

So as of now, I've solved the first six puzzles.  Some were easy, some were very hard.  I've tried to solve them as a 1968 reader would have: no Google, no anagram server.  It gives you a lot of respect for the solvers and constructors of that era.  I'll post comments on some of the puzzles as we go along.

And with perfect timing, we have a new addition to the Sunday brunch menu: the cryptics by Zebraboy for The Sondheim Review.  His latest is called "I Never Do Anything Twice." (Lara Bruckmann sings it below).  It was a nice solve.

I Never Do Anything Twice (by Stephen Sondheim, from "The Seven Percent Solution)

Elsewhere in the puzzling world, the Wall Street Journal has a Patrick Berry variety crossword called Mailboxes.  It's a slight variation on some of his previous work, but familiar to Berry's fans.  It's another fully-checked puzzle (a Berry specialty) where a jigsaw puzzle of rectangles is placed with the help of across-words.  I found it pretty hard, but some of the other folks commenting had an easier time.

The New York Times has a diagramless behind the paywall, plus the monthly Fred Piscop bonus puzzle, which I now understand is not another diagramless, though Piscop does many of their diagramless.  This month's is by Paula Gamache (must repeat her headshot).  I'll bet it's themed.  Look for the solution posted to the blog as soon as I get the puzzle and get it done.  [update: solution is posted, and Deb Amlen's post at Wordplay has the starting square if you want a hint.]

Want something a little more straightforward?  Hex have their regular weekly cryptic in the National Post, and Falcon will blog it for you as always, over at natpostcryptic.blogspot.com.  

That's a pretty full menu.  Something for everyone, unless you're Fannee Doolee...

10 10 10 (Puzzle No. 3,270)

It's not a themed puzzle, but 3,270 is built around an interesting three-word combination spread across 1a, 13a, and 23a.  I won't say anything more about it so as not to give anything away.  Good luck!

Link to puzzle:  http://www.thenation.com/article/172511/puzzle-no-3270

Hozom's comment: In Gratitude, in which we meet Hot and Trazom's test solvers, who include Zebraboy and Alice, radio quiz writers John Chaneski and Greg Pliska, and a bunch of other NPL members (but they're identified by their non-puzzling names).  Be sure to click the "Show more" button, so you can see some of the clues Hozom stole from the test solvers (good artists borrow, great artists steal...).

Degree of difficulty (by standards of this weekly puzzle): easy once you get 1, 13, 23.

Solution and annotation will be posted Monday.

Clue writing contest! (Sunday brunch: October 28, 2012)

Harper's has a new website, and Richard Maltby's November puzzle is posted, still missing the clue for 12d (answer: ALAS).  Are you one of those who wonders if he or she could ever construct a puzzle like that?  Now's your chance.  Create a clue for that missing one and post it in the comments for everyone's enjoyment.

Want variety crosswords?  There are two good ones this weekend.  First is Seven Sages by Patrick Berry in the weekend Wall Street Journal.  This is one of the ones with two rings of seven-letter words interlocking with each other, leading to a thematic quotation around the outside.  The editors have made the puzzle a little easier by telling you whether each word is entered clockwise or counterclockwise, but you still have to figure out the starting point from intersecting words.  You'll need at least three adjoining words to start filling in

The New York Times puzzle this weekend is Ring Toss, by Mark Halpin, to whom we were just introduced last week.  It's a format I haven't seen before, with a 12 by 12 grid of acrosses intersecting eight-letter rings, and the letters enclosed by the rings spelling out a theme answer.  Deb Amlen has comments at Wordplay.

And as usual, Hex will have their cryptic in the National Post and Falcon will have his solution and comments over at natpostcryptic.blogspot.com.

Start submitting your clues: I look forward to seeing what you come up with!