The happiest dump in the world (Sunday brunch: August 17, 2014)

Take It Or Leave It

Back in ‘Sconset for another short vacation. One of the activities last time we were here was helping to clean out my parents’ garage and haul some scrap wood, cardboard, leftover paint and other things to the dump. Sabers went along to assist, and I promised him his choice of three books in return for his help.

He gave me a puzzled look, and we drove off. He didn’t know about an island tradition called Take It Or Leave It: a shack next to the main trash and recycling trailers where all kinds of people drop off unwanted stuff and collect wanted stuff.  The tradition of Yankee thrift is so ingrained that people from all walks of life come to the dump and pick up someone else’s unwanted items.  They brag about their finds to nobody in particular and go on about how tastes have changed.

There are enough books there to stock a small library, jigsaw puzzles for rainy days, old clothes and various linens, unmatched linens, and much more.  I brought a couple of pair of very old cross-country skis and some touch-up paint for a Toyota, which were gone by the time we came out from hunting for books.  We didn’t take anything besides a few books, since we already had a carload of stuff to take back home with us from my parents’.  Furthermore, we already had stuff like martini glasses from the church rummage sale, which is just like Take It Or Leave It, except that we make a donation to some very good causes in exchange for the stuff others brought.

No junk here: just fine new puzzles.

The Wall Street Journal puzzle is a Seven Sages by Patrick Berry.  Aside from one mistake which I quickly noticed (but didn’t rectify as quickly), I found it easier than the last one of these he set, but it’s still a challenge which requires logic and adjoining answers in order to get a toehold.  Some may find these more frustrating than other variety crosswords, since you can lose momentum quickly even after you get the first few answers in.  You might also like the Friday straight crossword, which is on a Woodstock theme for the 45th anniversary of that concert.

The New York Times variety puzzle (behind the paywall) is a Puns and Anagrams by Mel Taub.  Carrying on with the recycling theme, it re-uses the same grid from the April P&A.  Deb gives it the staredown (and spoilers) at Wordplay.

The new Harper’s is out, with a Richard Maltby variety cryptic called One Upmanship.

Kevin Wald’s latest variety cryptic is his Lollapuzzoola puzzle called “Fearful Symmetry.”  Since it was set for in-person tournament solving, it’s not as intricate as some of his other cryptics, and will take less time to solve. Still just as good.

The Hex cryptic in the National Post (blogged by Falcon) has an interesting (but not very connected) grid.  The syndicated cryptic in the Globe and Mail is pretty hard.

BEQ has a wrap-up of Lollapuzzoola, and reminds us you can still purchase the puzzles (six of them, by top-flight constructors) at bemoresmarter.com.  And while we’re on the subject of BEQ, he’s sounding out interest in a possible subscription series (bi-weekly) of Marching Bands.  See here for a sample.  Like good variety crosswords?  Send him an e-mail of encouragement.

Germany 2, Argentina 0 (Sunday brunch: July 13, 2014)

It’s a good thing Sabers doesn’t have school tomorrow: he and just about everyone else in Bad Reichenhall going to be up late celebrating a World Cup win for Germany.  No better time for a sports-minded kid to go on an exchange student trip than during the World Cup.

Argentina’s coach thinks his team will have to play a perfect game in order to win, and I agree with him.  The German defense is better than that of the Dutch who managed to figure out Messi and minimize (though not eliminate) his opportunities to create a goal.  The first half will look like the Brazil-Netherlands third-place game, minus the penalty that I thought should have been just outside the box.   Germany will have the majority of possession early on, and Klose will put one away.  Then another goal late as the Argentines press for the equalizer.

While you’re waiting for kickoff, you can solve these puzzles.  Still no World Cup themes in the cryptic realm though.

The Wall Street Journal has an easy variety cryptic by Hex called “Family Reunion.”  As usual, the solution is elsewhere on the blog.  Falcon reports that Hex’s weekly straight cryptic in the National Post is also easier than usual.

Want something harder?  Take on Fraser Simpson’s puzzle in the Globe and Mail.  Or (as we catch up with Kevin Wald) “Catching Four,” his contribution to the Post Hunt in Washington (knowing that fact might help you work out one of the themes).

The New York Times variety puzzle (behind the paywall) is a Hex acrostic.  Commentary (and spoilers) from Deb Amlen at Wordplay.

Before you go, don’t forget that Trip Payne’s 2014 Extravaganza is going to start August 1.  Sign up here.  Ten bucks for twelve puzzles plus a meta, and two solvers with correct answers win $100.

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.

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

Tripping (Old tIme hockey)

No puzzle from Hot and Trazom this week as The Nation published a double issue last week.

Need substitute puzzles?  Trip Payne has us covered.  He's collected some of his past works over at Triple Play Puzzles.  Trip is a versatile constructor: there are straight and themed crosswords there, variety crosswords, block cryptics, and variety cryptics.

This week we'll make note of the block cryptics, of which there are a dozen.  Most of them are basic 15 x 15s constructed in 2006 and 2007 (I guess for Cryptics Monthly).  They play it pretty straight, rule-wise, and their degree of difficulty is comparable to the Hex puzzles in the National Post.  They'll serve us well the weeks we don't get our regular puzzles, as well as when you just want an extra puzzle after finishing the week's new ones.  

Trip's "Megacryptic" is particularly notable.  With a 21 x 21 grid (and four-way symmetry), there's room for multiple 16-letter and 14-letter answers: a welcome bit of variety and an extra challenge.  

Throw Patrick some coin (Sunday brunch: February 10, 2013)

Two-acrostic brunch this weekend, but there's more for you to solve.  Once you've polished off those puzzles, come join me in Project Sondheim.

The Wall Street Journal has a timely acrostic celebrating the centennial of a great American landmark.

The weekend puzzle at the New York Times (behind the paywall) is also an acrostic.  Deb Amlen will have comments from Hex over at Wordplay.

Needing to get away from the wintry weather?  The National Post cryptic by Hex is a birdwatching visit to the seashore, and is blogged as usual by Falcon.

Elsewhere in the puzzling world, Patrick Berry has posted a new Rows Garden.  He's been busy with more than that though.  There's also a new app Patrick is offering called Eye Rollers (have you tried it? share your impressions in the comments), plus a virtual book of new puzzles called The Crypt.  He's using Kickstarter to raise money for this project.  This is a promising model for making it worth people's while to create cryptics: very few publications are willing to publish and pay for them (we should be grateful that The Nation is one of them).  New constructors can use the web to publish free puzzles and build a following, then use Kickstarter or a similar service to make some money from their work.

About the time you finish Patrick's project, Trip Payne will be readying his Extravaganza 2013.  It'll be a mix of word puzzles, but there's also a huge (25 x 25) cryptic among the bonus puzzles you can get along with your registration, plus a meta-puzzle which could win you $100.00.

I'm going to pitch in this weekend.  How about you?