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.

Take-out (Sunday brunch: June 7, 2015)

Quick post to catch up.

Kevin Wald (I can’t spell Ucaoimhu) is back with a good medium difficulty variety cryptic he set for the Washington Post’s Post Hunt puzzle contest.  It’s called “Saturday? Unknown.”

We have a new Puns and Anagrams constructor in the New York Times today: Mark Diehl.  Deb Amlen interviews him at Wordplay (spoiler warning).  Deb also informs us that the P&A will now appear every 8 weeks, with Diehl and Mel Taub sharing construcing duties.  Meanwhile, Hex’s cryptics will appear in the NYT less frequently: every 8 weeks.

Speaking of new constructors, Tom Toce has a guest puzzling for him in Contingencies.  Jerry Levy didn’t crete a cryptic, but cryptic solvers will appreciate the kind of wordplay he uses.  Will Shortz would appreciate it too: maybe we’ll see Jerry’s byline in the Times.

The Wall Street Journal puzzle is a Rows Garden by Patrick Berry.  I found it easier than usual.  I’ll post hints for the WSJ and the NYT solution shortly.  If you enjoyed that, remember that Andrew Ries publishes a bi-weekly Rows Garden that’s every bit as good.  Subscribe at www.ariespuzzles.com.

Stickler is taking a winter break (remember he’s in Australia) for R&R.  Wish him well at www.australiancrosswords.com.au

Falcon reports that he weekly Hex cryptic in the National Post was on the stormy side.  I haven’t gotten to the Globe and Mail cryptic yet.

Wall Street Journal hint (June 6, 2015)

Below the fold are two sets of hints to today’s Wall Street Journal variety puzzle: a Rows Garden by Patrick Berry. It’s an easy one, so you probably won’t need much of a hint, but you can also use this to check your answers.

First is a list of enumerations for the answers in each row. Click and drag to see the number of letters in each one. Then there’s a table of the locations for each of the blooms. They’re identified by the row number for that color and then A/B/C/D in order. So the rightmost bloom straddling rows F and G (it’s a dark) would be 2D.

Finished? Like Rows Gardens? Subscribe to Andrew Ries’s bi-weekly series.

Care for a quickie? (Puzzle No. 3,365)

Will Shortz has persuaded the editors of the New York Times to give him the rest of the magazine section page that houses the variety puzzle.  Where there used to be a jump from one of the articles, every week there are now three more puzzles.  The first is a letter bank puzzle (Willz loves these) by Frank Longo, the second is a mini variety crossword by Patrick Berry, and the third is a logic puzzle by Wei-Hua Huang.

Patrick’s recent creations have included a miniature Rows Garden he called Hex Nuts and a version of his snowflake puzzles.  The logic puzzles will appeal to sudoku fans, and give them a different challenge just like variety crosswords do for straight crossword solvers.  If you remember the old Windows game Minesweeper, you’ll be interested in these.

It’s good to have puzzles that can be solved in a few minutes, while you’re waiting for the train or to take a break from some mindless task.  These little puzzles also can serve as an invitation to try out puzzles one doesn’t normally do.  How many cryptic solvers were born of the little 8 by 10s in the New Yorker?  And support for small formats can provide an entry point for new constructors; it’s a much less daunting task than filling a full-size grid.

Link to puzzle:  http://www.thenation.com/article/208233/puzzle-no-3365

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

Agility factor:  low

This week’s cluing challenge (share your clues in the comments): TAPAS

Back with the solution and annotation on Monday: join us this weekend as usual for Sunday brunch.

Trust the force, Luke (Sunday brunch: May 24, 2015

This weekend’s puzzles require a diverse set of solving skills, and a degree of confidence in your solving abilities.  Unlike straight crosswords, some of these make you figure out where some (or all) of the answers go.  If you hesitate at filling in a box because you aren’t sure about the answer, you’re going to run into a wall very quickly.  Get a pencil and an eraser, and trust your instincts.  They worked solving this week’s The Nation puzzle didn’t they?

We’ll start with a diagramless, in the New York Times, by Paula Gamache, blogged (with spoilers as usual) by Deb Amlen.

The Wall Street Journal puzzle is a Patrick Berry box creation called Chatter Boxes.  Hints are posted elsewhere on the blog, and so is the solution.

If you’re needing more structure in your puzzling life, solve the regular weekly cryptics:

• Hex in the National Post (Officers Make No Progress, says Falcon)
• Stickler (no. 83)
• Syndicated in the Globe and Mail 

Wall Street Journal hints (May 23, 2015)

This weekend’s Wall Street Journal variety puzzle, Chatter Boxes by Patrick Berry, is one where you have to cross row words with words contained in boxes, but you aren’t told where any of the boxes go or even what shape they are.  These puzzles are pretty hard: first you have to get a couple of row answers in rows atop one another, then you have to use that partial to place a box word, and then that might give you enough to solve the next row word.

If you have one of the row words wrong, you’re in a lot of trouble, since the puzzle depends so much on working back and forth.  That’s when a hint might be pretty valuable.  So click and drag to see the enumeration of each row answer.  The enumerations can confirm or rule out your guesses, and they can also tell you where to place the answers for the middle of the row.  If you need even more of a hint, look below the fold for a hint grid showing you the boxes (but not telling you which answers go in them).

Enumerations: click and drag to see them

row	first	middle	last
1	4	5	6
2	6	5	4
3	4	4-1	6
4	5	4	6
5	4	6	5
6	6	4	5
7	6	4	5
8	4,2	4	5
9	5	5	5
10	4	6	2,3
11	4	5	6
12	5	6	4
13	2,3	5	5
14	5	5	5
15	5	4	6

Wall Street Journal solution (May 23, 2015)

Below the fold is the solution to this weekend’s Wall Street Journal variety puzzle: Chatter Boxes by Patrick Berry.  Some hints are also posted, and that post also explains how to solve this kind of puzzle.

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.

Wall Street Journal hint (May 9, 2015)

This week’s Wall Street Journal variety puzzle is a variety crossword by Patrick Berry caled “Curly Quote.”  All the answers have seven letters and you’re given the location, but you have to figure out the direction.  As with most these puzzles of this type, some solvers might have trouble getting the first word or two into the grid even though they may have a lot of the clue answers.

One way to get a toehold is to try and find two adjacent answers that have only one letter in common. That letter has to go in the shared space, and with luck, there’s only one way to make the words fit. Get those, and you’re off and running.  The up and down pairs have two letters in common (remember they might not always be consecutive letters).  That takes a bit more thinking to find, but increases your chances of nailing down words once you find that pair of letters.

If you’re still stuck, look below the fold.  There’s a table of answer directions.  Click and drag the appropriately numbered box to see whether the central letter of the “curlicue” contains the first or last letter of the answer, and whether the answer runs clockwise or counterclockwise.

Sunday Brunch (March 29, 2015)

We’ll try the streamlined format again, since The Other Doctor Mitchell was out of town all weekend working a skating competition, and I've been functioning as orchestra roadie, caterer, usher, cook, and more.

Cryptics 

National Post (Hex, blogged by Falcon): “Monkeys With a View”
   Peculiar in that the bottom right was a lot harder than the rest of the puzzle.

Stickler: #76 (congratulations, Australia!)

Maya: no new puzzle, but well played, Black Caps!

Harpers (Richard Maltby): “Search Warrant”
   Which means that the March puzzle (“Tetris”) is blogged by our friend Erica,
   who’s made a very big commitment: not to Vlad (yet) but to a dedicated domain.

Globe and Mail (syndicated): themeless, but hard.

Variety puzzles

Wall Street Journal: “Hunting Season” by Patrick Berry
   Great puzzle, hints and solution provided elsewhere on the blog

NY Times: Marching Bands by BEQ (blogged by Deb Amlen)
   And Deb provides ACPT commentary at Wordplay.
   Note also that BEQ is looking to kick off a subscription Marching Bands series
      like Aries’s Rows Gardens (which I highly endorse)

WSJ hint (March 28, 2015)

Below the fold is the enumeration for this weekend’s Wall Street Journal variety puzzle: “Hunting Season” by Patrick Berry.

Click and drag to see the enumeration (number of letters) for the answers in each row and column.

WSJ solution (March 28, 2015)

Below the fold is the solution to this weekend’s Wall Street Journal variety puzzle: “Hunting Season” by Patrick Berry.  I'll offer a hint grid elsewhere on the blog.

WSJ hint (January 17, 2015)

Below the fold is the enumeration of the answers in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal variety puzzle: Telescopes by Patrick Berry.  I found it was easy, but in case you didn’t or you want to check an answer you think is right, click and drag in the table below to find out how many letters each answer has.

Plastic skates (Sunday brunch: Dec. 20, 2014)

Not quite my old skates

When I was in high school and college, it was a time for a lot of new technology to find its way into sports.  I played in a pair of Daoust skates that had boots made of plastic instead of leather.

I can’t find a picture of the Daousts, but Lange (the ski boot maker) made a lot more of them, and they were pretty similar.  A hard outside shell hinged with a rivet at the ankle, and a soft inner liner that was very comfortable.  I think a lot of people bought the skates for their comfort, but were disappointed with their performance. So plastic skates are pretty much gone except for the learn-to-skate, little kids, and rental markets.

One practice from my plastic-skate days persists to this day though: the way I lace my skates.  With the plastic skates, I actually cut my laces in half and laced the tops and bottoms separately, so I could keep the laces tight over my instep and still have some flex in the skate.  Now my laces are one piece, but I put a half-turn in them between the lower and upper parts of the boot, for more control over where the laces are tightest.  I haven’t seen anyone else do it, but I think it helps.

A lot of puzzles to keep you occupied during the holidays.  Just what we needed.

We’ll start with the weekly straight cryptics for a change.  Falcon reports he was seeing double doing Hex’s cryptic in the National Post.  I had a good run through the Stickler earlier this week, but I haven’t had time to get to the Globe and Mail syndicated yet.  Maybe someone can share a comment on it.

Regular weekly non-cryptics: Patrick Berry offers a Candy Canes (his third) at the Wall Street Journal—it’s much harder than the average WSJ variety puzzle.  The New York Times has a Puns and Anagrams by Mel Taub (solution to follow).  Deb Amlen grumbles (note spoilers) at Wordplay, but notes that the PandA are a healthy “gateway drug” to cryptic crosswords, so they are to be encouraged.  I’m fairly satisfied with one of those every few months or so as is current NYT practice.
Speaking of the Times, Willz has a guest post at Wordplay that’s well worth reading.  In it he explains the process of editing a puzzle.  Solvers may be surprised at how many clues are changed in the process; constructors may not be surprised.

On the cryptic front, we have the Kevin Wald variety cryptic I commented on in my Thursday post: go solve it, it’s a nice moderate-difficulty opportunity to experience the depth of his work.   Māyā has another new straight cryptic, which she did as a 13 x 13 for a change.  Let he know what you think. There’s also a new Harper’s that was published last week (an easy one, in my opinion), which means it’s time for Erica to assess the tackiness of the December puzzle.

Automatics (Sunday brunch: Dec. 7, 2014)

In our last episode, we learned why refs shouldn’t have rabbit ears.  Today we find out that most refs have one thing or another that will instantly draw a penalty if said to them.  If you have one of the growing number of female referees working your game (Hi, Kate!), you’d better not say anything about her gender, or anything sexual in nature.  Every lady partner I’ve had makes that an automatic.

Me, it’s my glasses.  During my playing days and early in my refereeing career, I wore contact lenses.  But as I got older, I found they dried my eyes out uncomfortably.  More importantly, my astigmatism has grown significantly worse, and the contacts didn’t correct for that.  So I got a pair of Rec-Specs, which  are special glasses made with an elastic strap that fits under a helmet. They had the added bonus of protecting my eyes from stray sticks and pucks in the days before they made us all wear visors.

They’re very effective, but they’re also quite obvious (and ugly, I’ll admit).  So inevitably, some wag who thinks he’s being original makes a remark about my glasses being fogged up or something like that when a call goes against his team.  That’s my automatic: two minutes for unsportsmanlike conduct.  I don’t care what the score is or whether you’ve been a perfect angel the rest of the game. Then once you’re in the penalty box, I’ll explain: “a referee who wears glasses is a referee who gets his eyes checked every season.”

Put on your solving glasses and have a go at this great variety of puzzles.  The New York Times has a diagramless by Paula Gamache (blogged by Deb Amlen–spoiler warning), while the Wall Street Journal has Patrick Berry’s Cigar Boxes.  Hints for both have been posted elsewhere on the blog.

Variety cryptics?  Two of those, and believe it or not, the one by Kevin Wald is easier.  Tom Toce created another of his three-dimensional puzzles.

Straight cryptics?  A pair of them too.  Hex in the National Post (as blogged by Falcon) and the regular syndicated puzzle from the Globe and Mail.

And variety solvers might enjoy Thursday's New York Times straight crossword (Wordplay link)–it’s not so straight after all.  

So with all that puzzling going on, it’s a good week for Stickler to take a week off and celebrate his daughter’s wedding.  We wish them many blissful years together.  

Wall Street Journal hints: December 6, 2014

Having trouble getting a toehold in the Wall Street Journal puzzle (Cigar Boxes by Patrick Berry)? Look below the fold for some hints.  First I’ll give you enumerations of the row answers, so you can check to see if the answer you’re considering has the right number of letters.  The enumerations can also tell you where to put the middle answer in a row.  I‘ll also post a hint grid with colored boxes (you still have to figure out which answer goes in which box.

Wall Street Journal solution: December 6, 2014

Below the fold is the solution to this weekend’s Wall Street Journal variety puzzle: Cigar Boxes by Patrick Berry.  Before you go for the solution, see if a hint is all you need.

Lake effect (Sunday brunch: Nov. 23, 2014)

With SPIRO GYRA turning up in one of the puzzles a coupla weeks ago, I had planned to make this post about the band with the similar name and about how several other performers of “smooth jazz” (cue Chuck Mangione) got started in upstate New York.  But the region made bigger news this week with the gigantic snowstorm that close to paralyzed Buffalo.

Normally, upstaters take snow in stride.  I’m a Syracuse native: the city gets 10 to 11 feet of snow per year on average, the snowiest major city in America.  Buffalo actually gets less snow (8 feet or so) but it gets more publicity.  Part of the reason may be that Buffalo can get more of it all at once.  This was definitely one of those instances. Like Sandy’s storm surge coming on top of an particularly high tide: there were a combination of circumstances that made for a huge snowfall.

To understand them, let me first explain the Lake Effect.  Lake snow happens when prevailing winds blow across the Great Lakes, picking up moisture from the lake and dropping it as frozen precipitation when it comes across dry land.   This week, two factors combined to amplify the snowfall.  First, we had an unusual cold snap for mid-November.  The air and the ground were unusually cold compared to the surface of the lakes, which were warmer because lake temperatures change more slowly.  Second, the winds blew very steadily and from the east-southeast instead of the east-northeast.  They blew right up the long axis of Lake Erie, giving them ample opportunity to store up moisture, which funneled right into Buffalo and Niagara Falls at the end of the lake.  By contrast, Syracuse only got a few inches of snow, because the winds off the lake were all off to the north this time.  

Snowed in?  Here are some puzzles to keep you occupied.

The Wall Street Journal variety puzzle is a tough one: a Belt Line by Patrick Berry.  Bring an eraser: you’ll probably need to make some guesses.   The New York Times has one of Willz’s non-crosswords: a letterbank puzzle with a twist: you must double one of the letters in each of the words you come up with.

I hadn’t noticed these before, but Todd McClary has constructed a cryptic and a variety crossword called Hopscotch as well as a bunch of straight crosswords.  Give them a try.

Falcon found himself disturbing a Medusa while solving Hex’s weekly cryptic.  Sounds dangerous. No snakes found in the Globe and Mail cryptic, but it was pretty challenging.  This week’s Stickler was a nice smooth solve.  

In (mostly) straight crossword news, Patrick Blindauer has announced his latest Puzzlefest, scheduled to go live next month.  And Cross Nerd (Peter Broda) and his team are inviting a guest constructor to provide a puzzle for the Indie 500 crossword tournament.

Chuck Mangione: Land of Make Believe (Esther Satterfield, v.)

Spyro Gyra: Morning Dance

Pits (Sunday brunch: Oct. 26, 2014)

Monday, I groused about the ice at one of my home rinks and the management’s ongoing problems. It’s been like that as long as I’ve been skating there, and I’ve been skating there since Ian Walsh was working Pee Wees.   But there were some years I didn’t skate there.  Around 2000, they fully enclosed the rink (it used to be partly open-air) and reconfigured the boards, moving the benches from one side to the other.

Not surprisingly, they cheaped out on the job.  Instead of buying new glass or at least some replacement panes for the relocated bench doors, they transferred the glass from one spot to another, cutting where the panes were too big.  That left two spots with gaps in the glass about six inches to a foot wide: just enough to catch an arm.  And when the put up protective nets behind the end glass, the eye bolts they bought were too long, and stuck out into the playing area.  If I put up my hand for a penalty in one of those spots, I could cut it on the bolt.  And then the bottom of the Zam door was worn, and if it wasn’t shut tight enough, a puck could slip under.  

All accidents waiting to happen.  If a player got hurt on one of those danger spots during a game I was refereeing, the family would probably sue everyone in sight.  We refs get liability insurance from USA Hockey, but even if it didn’t hit me in the bank account, a lawsuit would be a real pain in the tail.  So I reported the situation to the Risk Management department at USA Hockey, and when the rink didn’t do anything about the problems.  I told my assigner not to give me any more games there. About five years later they finally replaced the boards and glass, and I resumed skating there.  But the place is still a pit.

Much better quality in the puzzles, as always.  First off, don’t forget the annual NYT crossword contest.  You need the solutions to all six of the week’s puzzles to get some kind of meta.  Answers are due at 6:00 tonight, New York time.

The new Harpers is out, and this month’s Richard Maltby cryptic is too.  That means it’s also time for Erica to take apart last month’s Playfair Square.   Even though she and her Sweet Vladimir were winners (again: good for you!), her blog brings the smack from the get-go.  “This was some real bulls***” she says.  But Erica and Vlad were smart enough to pull out a bag of Scrabble tiles to solve the cipher.    I got partway through the cipher (the puzzle wasn’t unduly hard) but never got around to finishing.  I’ll try Erica’s trick.  Bonus in her post: her mom makes an appearance.

The Wall Street Journal variety puzzle is a Rows Garden by Patrick Berry.  It was the easiest Rows Garden I’ve ever solved.  But there are hints elsewhere on the blog if you need them.

Likewise, the Fred Piscop diagramless (Wordplay link: spoilers!) in today’s New York Times posed little difficulty as well. I’ve posted a solution in case you’re stuck on anything.

For your straight cryptic pleasure, there are three weekly puzzles by Hex, Stickler, and the syndicate for the Globe and Mail.  These will be harder than the WSJ and NYT puzzles.

Wall Street Journal hint: Oct: 25, 2014

Below the fold are two sets of hints to today’s Wall Street Journal variety puzzle: a Rows Garden by Patrick Berry.  It’s an easy one, so you probably won’t need much of a hint, but you can also use this to check your answers.

First is a list of enumerations for the answers in each row.  Click and drag to see the number of letters in each one.  Then there’s a table of the locations for each of the blooms.  They’re identified by the row number for that color and then A/B/C/D in order.  So the rightmost bloom straddling rows F and G (it’s a dark) would be 2D.

Finished?  Like Rows Gardens?  Subscribe to Andrew Ries’s bi-weekly series.