Gavotte in 225 squares (Puzzle No. 3,342)

When I checked out Peter Schickele’s page for definitive information on P.D.Q. Bach, what should I find there but crossword puzzles?  Thinking a little more about it, I wasn’t surprised. An academic and entertainer, one who puns for a living?  Of course he’ll have an interest in crosswords.  And so Professor Schickele has taken the leap and constructed some puzzles of his own.

I solved one of the later ones in the collection: it’s not to the standard of a Times puzzle, but it’s better than many amateur compositions.  As is often the case with novice constructors, parts of the fill leave something to be desired, with a lot of threes and fours and some clues designed to legitimize non-words as grid entries.  The cluing is better, with plenty of musical references (not obscure, but definitely not common), as one might expect, but several groaners as well.

And the theme entries and clues were excellent (you’ll have to solve for yourself to see them).  The kind of wordplay in the themes hints that Schickele might have a knack for cryptics. Maybe some constructor could invite him for a collaboration.

Link to puzzle: http://www.thenation.com/article/184129/puzzle-no-3342

Degree of difficulty (by standards of this weekly puzzle): moderate to hard.  Not exceptionally difficult, but at least to me it wasn’t as smooth a solve as some other recent puzzles.

Hozom’s comment: “Between the Cracks” in which Hot and Trazom try and categorize a few of their less common clue types.  Like me, they often resort to “pun” as a means of explaining wordplay. Generally, these are the ones with emphasis on the “play” part of “wordplay” and the I think the puzzles are much richer for them.  The best of them I’ll share with The Other Doctor Mitchell at cocktail hour, and she’ll alternately cheer and groan.

Cluing challenge: CATEGORY

Back with the solution on Monday.  Join us this weekend and every weekend for Sunday brunch.

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.

Hybrid icing (Sunday brunch: October 6, 2013)

The NHL season began this week, and as always there are rule changes intended to make the game better and safer.  The most significant is the adoption of “hybrid icing.”  Icing is when a defending player shoots the puck from his half of the ice all the way down to the other end: it often happens when a player is under pressure from a forechecker and doesn’t want to turn the puck over and give up a scoring chance.  Icing is not a penalty, but the puck is brought back down to the defensive zone for a face-off, so the offending team loses any positional advantage.

For many years, the rules provided for icing to be negated if a player from the team that shot the puck down the ice could hustle there and get to the puck first.  This leads to some exciting plays: races between a forward and a defenseman to get to the puck and either get or wash out the icing.  (It’s a big moment for the linesmen too, since they have to hustle down with the players to be in position to see who touches first.)

But touch icing is exciting in another way: the player making the touch-up often ends up in a vulnerable position, and “pays” for the play with a crunching body check.  So for safety reasons, USA Hockey has a “no-touch” icing rule where the play is blown dead as soon as the puck crosses the goal line, even if an attacking player could have gotten to it first.  I like the rule because it discourages players from just dumping the puck and makes them pass it up-ice instead.

But the NHL wants to cut down on injury-potential situations while maintaining the speed of the game, so their rule now gives the front linesman discretion to blow the whistle as soon as the puck crosses the line if it’s evident that one player will win the race to the puck.  If the race is even, it continues all the way to the puck, and hopefully both players are focused on the puck instead of on the hit.  So it’s a hybrid of touch- and no-touch icing.  The NCAA has used it successfully for several years, and I think it will be good for the NHL.

The puzzle lineup for the weekend includes “High Frequency,” a mostly-easy variety cryptic by Hex, with an unusual way to get to the final theme answer (groaner warning).  Despite all the stuff going on in the grid, all the entries are solved and entered normally, so I don’t see much of an opportunity for or need for any hints.  If you’re having problems with any of the clues, the solvers on the comments tab of the WSJ puzzle blog will be very glad to help you.

If you got through the Hex as fast as I did, let’s catch up with Ucaoimhu and his MIT Mystery Hunt puzzle from earlier this year: “If At First You Succeed.”  That ought to be enough of a challenge for anyone.

No new Harper’s puzzle this week (probably next week), but I’m happy to report Erica is back, and she has the September puzzle annotated for you at Tacky Harper’s Cryptic Clues.

The regular Hex cryptic is published in the National Post, getting political but ecumenical.  Falcon solves and blogs it for you.

Nathan Curtis tried something new for a “puzzle potluck” (what a great idea) he attended: a conventional crossword, Sunday size, themed.   It’s called “Rule 34: Crossover Slash.”  Try it out and let him know what you think.  The grid is on the simple side: not as many long entries as a Times puzzle, but the cluing is excellent, especially for some of the words that are often found in crosswords.  And we learn that Nathan is also a Cliff Johnson fan!

The New York Times puzzle (behind the paywall) is a Hex acrostic.  The monthly bonus for subscribers is “Italian Heritage Month” by Fred Piscop.

All-in

Double issue of The Nation last week, so no new puzzle this week.  Also no new posts at Word Salad.

At Sunday brunch last weekend, I mentioned that Nathan Curtis’s latest deserved its own post.  Called “A Curtain Call for Borbonicus and Bodley,” Nathan composed it as a warm-up for this year’s MIT Mystery Hunt.  Hunts are gaining popularity, and have been put on in several different cities.  Teams of solvers have to get through a variety of different puzzles (word puzzles and non-word puzzles, many absolutely unique) and travel around the campus or city to get clues and eventually find the finish line.  From what some have said about the experience, you'd better be prepared for an all-nighter or two.  

What I find about the “hunt” puzzles I’ve tried is that they need your undivided attention.  Some of them have no rules, but knowing the theme and some of the previous answers will point you towards a solution.  It’s not the kind of pastime I can put on the clipboard and devote a few minutes to before bedtime.  Not all of us have the time or inclination for such intense events, but Nathan’s warm-up will give you an idea of whether this is a kind of recreation you’ll find enjoyable.  

So go over and meet Borbonicus and Bodley.  Even if you don’t go all-in and attempt to solve the whole thing, there are a few puzzles that work well on a stand-alone basis, including the cryptic “What Do You Do With a B.A. in English?” which Nathan posted a few months ago and a very clever variety crossword in the labyrinth style (Anyone know who originated it?  Most of what I’ve seen are from Mike Shenk.) Blinky, that Inky, Pinky, and Clyde will help you with.  There are also puns to groan at.

Anyone have an A string? (Sunday Brunch: May 19, 2013)

Yeah, I realize it’s Monday brunch.  I'm catching up.  Sometimes I even have a breakfast burrito for dinner (though that's not necessarily because I didn't have breakfast).

Here are the week’s new puzzles.

The Wall Street Journal have a moderately difficult variety cryptic by Hex called Pyramid Scheme.  Groaner warning for the solution phrase at the bottom of the puzzle, and props to Hex for the pyramid reference in the first clue. If time permits, I might post a hint.

For some reason, I didn’t really like the grid of that puzzle.  The concept was fine: acrosses are normal but downs either go diagonally left or diagonally right, in straight lines where some puzzles of this shape might veer back and forth.  But some of the acrosses were unchecked, so while the first row had six letters, there were only four downs starting in the row. Also, diagonals that didn’t spell out words didn’t have heavy bars.  I can see why, since adding the bars would have made the puzzle much easier as well as spoiling the symmetry of the blank grid.

It’s also the time of the month for a new Harpers (subscriber page): this one referencing (at least in the title) Rogers and Hammerstein instead of Stephen Sondheim).  It’s called “June is Busting Out All Over.”  The clues were not too difficult, but I’m still grappling with the unclued central letter.  For what it’s worth, Erica doesn’t have her commentary on the May Maltby posted yet at Tacky Harpers Cryptic Clues.  Post here or at her blog in in the meantime and I'll explain the solution.

The Hex straight cryptic in the National Post is themed on some of the longer place names in Canada.  I can rattle off names like Swift Current (Saskatchewan) and Chicoutimi (Quebec) since they’re home to teams in the major junior leagues of hockey.  Some of the nicknames are pretty good too, like the Brandon (Manitoba) Wheat Kings, the Windsor Spitfires, and the Shawninigan Cataractes.  The best hockey players in Canada (and increasingly from the USA) don’t play college hockey: they go to the Ontario League, the Quebec League, and the Western League, while the second-tier players go to the NCAA.   Players can be drafted by NHL teams once they turn 18, and some of them go to training camp and possibly play a few games for the NHL team before being returned to their junior team for the rest of the season.

The Times has an acrostic this week (behind the paywall).  Deb Amlen has some comments on the puzzle from Hex over at Wordplay. 

Nathan Curtis's weekly variety crossword is a Snake Charmer.

Puzzazz (Puzzle No. 3,275)

Apologies for the late posting: your host was a little preoccupied today.

Well, I've installed and used Puzzazz for a week.  Done a The Nation cryptic, done some other cryptics, straight crosswords, and miscellaneous puzzles, and purchased a book of puzzles for it.  My review will follow soon.

This week's The Nation puzzle

Link to puzzle:  http://www.thenation.com/article/173305/puzzle-no-3275

Hozom's comment:  A New Frontier in Artificial Intelligence in which we meet Dr. Fill (groan),  who finished the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament ranked in the top 100, but couldn't go out for a beer with his fellow solvers: not because he was underage, but because he's a computer program.  Hot and Trazom would love for someone to start teaching Dr. Fill how to solve cryptics.

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

Pun-filled afternoon (groaners)

I spent a little time today working on the WSJ straight crossword from a coupla Fridays ago: "Element of Surprise" by Myles Callum and Michael Blake.  Thought the theme would be fun, and it was.  (theme answers are below the fold if you want to see them).  I'll bet they started with 43d and looked for some others to go with it.

Besides the groaners in the theme answers, there were a lot of puns and other twisted clues like 56d–"it might make a lot": MACADAM (as in paving a parking lot).  So if you like the puns and anagrams style, try this one.