Abuse of officials (Sunday brunch: June 8, 2014)

The last two hockey posts were about abuse of officials, which is an unfortunate but inevitable part of the referee’s job.  Aside from the garden-variety four-letter outbursts, I’ve only had two such incidents in my career: both of them were in the 90s.

One was a men’s league game.  I was the deep official, down in the corner as the puck was cleared out of the zone.  I started skating up-ice to follow the play when one of the defensemen who’d been there in the corner reached over as he passed and gave me a two-handed shove, but not quite a cross-check.

While he used the typical four-letter words as he was shoving me, I decided that the action was not intended to be abusive: the player was just upset that I was in his way.  But we can’t really tolerate that kind of physical abuse.  I was skating in my normal lane, and I was skating at my normal speed, letting the players get ahead so I could watch everyone from the trailing position.

So rather than giving the player a gross misconduct, the kind of penalty Dan Carcillo got for elbowing a linesman, I gave him a ten-minute misconduct for interference with an official (what you’d get for shooting the puck away when the referee is coming to pick it up).  He wasn’t happy with it, but I pointed out that all the other options would be a lot worse: he’d be back in the game later and his team wouldn’t have to kill off a power play. Not purely by the book, but I felt that justice was served.

How about letting some great puzzle constructors hit you with their best shots?

Patrick Berry is back in the The Wall Street Journal.  His puzzle is called Magic Cabinet.  Do it in pencil because it requires you to alter answers for entry in the grid and you’ll probably need to do some erasing on the way.  Do this and the The Nation puzzle, and you’ll be prepared to tackle a variety cryptic like the ones in Cryptic All-Stars.  I’ve got hints if you need them, and the solution elsewhere on the blog.

The New York Times has a vowelless crossword this weekend (behind the paywall).  It’s by Arthur Schulman.  Definitely a different test of your crossword skills.

Want to try some of Matt Gaffney’s metas as discussed over at Word Salad?  Click here for the Vulture.
Regular cryptic service resumes at the National Post Cryptic Crossword Forum after Falcon’s vacation, and the Fraser Simpson cryptic is its reliable self at the Globe and Mail.

One at a time? (Puzzle No. 3,328)

In the last couple of posts at Word Salad, Hot and Trazom talked about critics, and their sometimes-unrealistic expectations.  This week they bring up the concept of the “meta,” which is a big deal among the most dedicated solvers, the type who frequent the NPL.  In previous episodes, they lamented the pans they got from critics and commenters who were offended when a clue failed to meet the strict Ximenean guidelines espoused in the solvers’ guide.  Finally, we embarked here last week on a voyage through Frank Lewis’s work, with the observation that most if not all of his puzzles break those guidelines into smitheroons.

Let me try and fit all those pieces together.  What would you solvers think about a puzzle where instead of a set of theme answers you might have to solve with assistance from the other words in the puzzle, you have one or two answers that are the sheer play with words that is the hallmark of Lewis and the best of the British constructors.

Perhaps if they were limited in number (one or two per puzzle), set off either by a prominent location (edges, center, the longest answers in the grid) or with an asterisk or some other kind of notation in the clues, and able to be reasonably guessed at from intersecting letters, the more fastidious among us might smile on such innovation.

There are some tremendously creative and amusing bits of wordplay out there, but they’re closed off from most solvers because they don’t think the reward of seeing the answer is worth the struggle through the rest of the puzzle.  Why not make them more accessible?

Like the idea?  Hate it?  Have your say in the comments: Hot and Trazom stop by regularly.

Link to puzzle: http://www.thenation.com/article/180105/puzzle-no-3328

Degree of difficulty (by standards of this weekly puzzle): easy

Hozom’s comment: Meta-Physician, in which Hot and Trazom introduce us to Matt Gaffney and to the meta: a final puzzle within the solved puzzle.

Back with the solution and annotation on Monday.  
Join us this weekend for Sunday brunch, won’t you?