Cryptical Envelopment (Sunday brunch: July 5, 2015)

Some of you will instantly recognize the title of this post: it’s one of the standards of a Grateful Dead concert, and as good a summation of their life and work as anything else.

The bus came by and I got on—that’s where it all began;

There was Cowboy Neal, at the wheel, of a bus to never-ever land.

The song, written in 1967, is the first part of a three-part piece called “That’s it for the Other One.” It refers to the events of that summer and two of the people who accompanied the Dead in their early travels: Owsley Stanley, who made and supplied much of the LSD that fueled the psychedelic events of the time; and Neal Cassady, one of the Merry Pranksters on Ken Kesey’s bus. 

The tune starts light, and then an ominous roaring drum riff kicks off the second movement, which gets fast and dark and trippy.  Then it turns into an extended improvisational jam.  Eventually, the jam winds up and comes back to the first theme.  Then sometimes they carry that theme around a while and other times they’d segue into a different song.  The “Cryptical” in the name doesn’t have any significance: they just needed to assign a name to the song for publishing reasons.

Puzzles: sometimes mind-bending, often addictive, but a lot healthier than LSD...

No weekend Wall Street Journal due to the holiday.  Other regular weekly cryptics are found in the National Post (easy this week, but Falcon needed a lot of time) and the Globe and Mail (harder than usual).  Richard Silvestri constructed the New York Times cryptic this weekend: did you like it more or less than the Hex puzzles that usually occupy that space?

Scenes from Oslo (Sunday brunch: June 14, 2015)

Rather than the usual diet of scenery and art, I'll share a few brief experiences from my Oslo trip:

How many motifs from classic albums
can you spot in the picture?

• I attended services at the cathedral (domkirke) this morning, doing my best to follow along (my ability to read music only slightly exceeds my ability to read Norwegian).  But I saw a familiar sight: the ribbons of the bookmark for the hymnal had been braided together.  Kids fidget in church wherever you happen to go.  
• The design museum has a special exhibition of record album cover art (how could they leave out the minimalist style of the ECM jazz albums of the 70s and 80s, many of which were recorded in Oslo).  In the foyer, they set up two stereos, with headphones and an eclectic collection of records for visitors to play.  There was a family there with a kid about 12 who was playing with the turntable.  So I picked out a record (which turned out to be Janis Joplin) and showed him how it worked.  Then gave him and his parents the headphones so they could listen.
• After the museums closed, I took a hike down from Frognereteren (the end of Metro line 1) down the mountain to the Holmenkollen ski jump.  In the stadium, there was a biathlete and her coach doing shooting practice.  So I made like the spectators at the Olympics and cheered when the shot hit the target and groaned when it missed.  Perhaps it gave her a more realistic practice experience.  

New variety cryptics this week:  Kevin Wald went off on a picnic, while we have a Sixes and Sevens from Richard Maltby (blogged by Erica).

Hex cryptics in the Wall Street Journal (variety) and National Post (straight) and a Hex acrostic in the New York Times (blogged [with spoilers] by Deb Amlen)

And the regular syndicated cryptic in the Globe and Mail (who’d like to blog that one?).

See you tomorrow!

Bach Sunday (Solution No. 3,362)

The solution and annotation to puzzle No. 3,362 is below the fold.  Happy birthday, Raydoc!

If you like to solve cryptics, you probably also like to listen to Bach’s music.  I had plenty of opportunity to do both yesterday.  In the morning, the church choir (with Sabers augmenting the tenor section and The Other Doctor Mitchell steadying the sopranos) sang portions of two Bach masses.  I particularly liked the Kyrie from the Missa brevis in A.  There’s a simplicity in it, and it’s in a key you don’t hear often.

Right after that we had to leave for Germantown, where Sabers performed with the Philadelphia Sinfonia Players, the intermediate ensemble of Philadelphia’s top youth orchestra program.  They take a very professional approach to rehearsing and performing, and they play a lot of standard repertoire, all of which which is good preparation for the next level.  The added challenge helped with the school orchestra too, where Sabers was promoted to principal bass (or as we put it: first bassman) this year.

Along with the Bach Little Fugue, the PSP played Strauss’s Blue Danube and Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King.  That’s the piece with the famous theme that starts in the lowest registers of the orchestra.  The bassoonist did a great job with it, and Sabers and his standmate gave the bass line the ‘tiptoe’ feel of an approaching troll.

Between that and the high school concert Thursday (did I mention Sabers sang the entire school chorus concert tonight, too?--four performances in five days, plus a piano recital next Sunday), I was very impressed with the tone and solid projection of his instrument, which we bought last year and is now pretty well played-in.  So if you’re in the market for a new bass, give the folks at Gollihur’s a call.  If you’re looking for a half-size instrument for a junior high bassist, give me a call.

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.

Sacre du Printemps (Solution No. 3,273)

Look below the fold for the solution and annotation to this week's puzzle.

The weekend's entertainment included a Philadelphia Orchestra concert featuring works premiered in America under Leopold Stokowski.  The concert begin with one of Stokie's own works: the orchestration of Bach's Passacaglia and Fuge in C minor: a huge organ work Stokowski made even bigger.  Despite it being the introductory work on the program, the playing (and conducting) was excellent, with the kind of precision that makes Bach so attractive to those of us of a puzzling bent.  In the program notes, I learned that a passacaglia could be analogized to an anagram, for your obligatory crossword content.  Work two was Ravel's G major piano concerto, featuring Jean-Yves Thibaudet.  It's a jazzy work, freer and airier in feel than most concertos.  Together the two works foreshadow where American music would go in the middle of the 20th century: film scores and other bold yet accessible works.

Stravinsky might have been thinking the same way when he composed his third ballet, The Rite of Spring.  Definitely bold and avant-garde, it caused a good deal of controversy when it was premiered in Paris a century ago.  As I was listening (and watching, as the Ridge Theater Company performed a dance/film mashup with the orchestra's accompaniment), I pondered the question of whether the controversies over Super Bowl halftime shows are today's equivalent to the 1913 outrage over Nijinksy's staging and the earthy sentiments it was supposed to evoke.  I'd be more sympathetic to the Beyoncés of the world if they could articulate an artistic motivation other than just making making older people cringe.

The orchestra and its artists found a way to capture some of the atmosphere of that premiere without alienating three-fourths of the audience.  Act I, The Adoration of The Earth, was accompanied by circus artist Anna Kichtchenko (see picture above) performing on an "aerial tissu loop."  The performance required awesome physical strength and an equal amount of nerve, to hang from a fabric trapeze 20 feet above the stage.  More than a few in the audience including Inquirer critic David Patrick Stearns, were distracted by the seeming danger, but I saw pretty quickly how Kichtchenko secured herself with loops of the fabric and could appreciate the athleticism.  It took Daniel Matzukawa's bassoon solo to get our attention back on the music.  Act II, The Sacrifice (meaning human sacrifice), may have been the part that stirred things most in 1913, but here it was more conventional modern dance, accompanied by visual images of flowers and plants contrasting to the snowy scenes of Act I.

No controversy in this week's The Nation cryptic, unless you think inverted clues like 29a are unfair.  I got through the top of the puzzle very easily, and then ran into difficulty at the bottom.  But I eventually got it, so your solution and annotation is below the fold.

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...

The Daily Office (Sunday Brunch: January 27, 2013)

The daily office is a discipline of prayer and song that is part of many Christian traditions.  Largely associated with the monastic life, but also followed by many priests, the daily office is a prescribed routine of services, each contributing structure to the day with assigned readings, prayers, and antiphons.  The most common parts of the daily office are called matins, lauds, vespers, and compline.  There are also minor hours to the day in some disciplines like terce, sext, and none

Vespers, the service for the end of the day (distinguished from compline, which is evening prayer), is the part most familiar to laypeople, particularly if you’ve been to a jazz vespers, a tradition first established by and for the musicians who were sleeping Sunday morning after playing late Saturday night. It's a more personal form of worship.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5QV2x5PcL4

Jazz vespers in Ambler, with our friend Justin Sekelewski on bass.  

Justin was one of Sabers' predecessors in the various school orchestras in Glenside. 

Other faiths also have their equivalent to the daily office: the Muslim call to prayer five times daily, the Jewish sacrifice of praise, et cetera.   The kind of routine is something universal: I suspect Buddhist monks have their daily office too.

Almost three years ago, I saw a puzzle called samurai sudoku, published in the Washington Post.  I tried one, got through it, and did a few more while on vacation that summer.  Maybe a year later, with solving regular sudokus no longer feeling like a mental break because they were too short, I got into the habit, a daily office so to speak, of working on a samurai sudoku at the end of the day.  It was a good way to let my brain unwind, and it may have helped me sleep better. 

Well to make sure I wasn’t solving the same puzzle twice, I started printing out each day’s puzzle, and soon made a resolution to solve every one of them, though not necessarily the day they were published.  The puzzles went on a clipboard, and when I finished one, I started the next, sometimes putting one aside to solve against the clock. 

Working the puzzles daily sure improved my sudoku skills, and I started recognizing patterns that would hint at the best strategy for breaking through and “reducing” (a term I borrowed from the matrix algebra I learned in quatum mechanics and since have forgotten) the puzzle into five individual grids with all the overlapping squares filled in. 

This weekend, I closed out the last 2012 samurai sudoku (which actually happens to be the December 23 puzzle), and with it will close out the self-imposed obligation to do every day’s puzzle.  I ended up only doing nine against the clock, with the best being 13:34 on June 6: just 8 ticks off my all-time best.

By October, the samurai sudokus were enough of a routine that I started looking for ways to make them an extra challenge, such as working them without making any notes in the squares.  So that told me it was time for a new daily (or somewhat daily) office, which I’ve already started and will invite you to join me on next week.

Now on to this weekend’s brunch menu:

Fannee Doolee does not like Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon, and she didn’t like their Wall Street Journal variety cryptic named “Surprise.”  I’m sorry to say she doesn’t like wordplay or anagrams or containers or charades or puns or double definitions either.  But at least she does like difficult and challenging crosswords.  She is not particularly enamored of Richard Maltby or Kevin Wald: she’s more into Patrick Berry.  She’s certainly opinionated about the constructors at the Nation: she does not care for Joshua Kosman, but she loves Henri Picciotto.  To each her own, and maybe Hex can try and win her heart with a special puzzle next month. 
[update: the solution to that puzzle has been added to the blog]

Hex also have their regular weekly block cryptic at the National Post.  There's a pretty obvious dinosaur theme.  Falcon has the solution (with pictures) and explanations for you. 

The New York Times variety puzzle this weekend (behind the paywall) is an acrostic. Hex comment on it at Wordplay.

Yannick! (Solution No. 3,268)

TODM and I went to hear the Philadelphia Orchestra Saturday, with new music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting.  Anthony Tomassini of the Times raved about the performance at Carnegie Hall and the enthusiasm that the players had for their new leader.

They did a splendid job, especially with Shostakovich's Symphony #5, written after Stalin and the Soviet régime denounced his previous works and the composer feared he and his family would be sent to the gulag or worse: the piece epitomizes the tension between the artistic and political imperatives Shostakovich faced.  While Philadelphia is legendary for its string sound, I think their winds are a murderers' row: Woodhams, Khaner, Morales, and Matzukawa go from strength to strength.  Jennifer Montone and the horns were fabulous as well, and the celesta (which I presume was Kiyoko Takeuti) slowed just enough in her solo to build more emotional tension.   Important small bits for all the different instruments through this piece, and every single player connected perfectly with Yannick and his overall statement.

During the ovation, you could see concertmaster David Kim silently cheering so hard that he broke a visible sweat.  We were seated in the front row, right next to the basses' feet, and afterwards had a chat with Joe Conyers and Mary Javian, the youngest performers in that section, who were still revved up five minutes after the finish.

On to the puzzle.  As Hot and Trazom mentioned, this puzzle featured homonyms, in several different forms.

Theme entries: 16a, 21a, 5d, 14d

Degree of difficulty (by standards of this weekly puzzle): mostly easy, I went from bottom to top this time

Musical reference: 15d

solution and explanations below the fold

Sweet Georgia Brown (Solution No. 3,267)

I was glad to see 26a/7d: it gives me a reason to link to one of the best jazz performances I've ever listened to.  I first heard it when I had a jazz show on the campus radio station and we got the whole set of Montreux '77 recordings from Pablo Records.  Oscar Peterson must have been the fastest of all the great piano players, and Ray Brown, one of the few people who could keep up with him, was his regular bassist.  Festival producer Norman Granz brought in Europe's fastest bassist, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, for this very unusual set with no drummer.

I remember the whole piece, and some of the other tunes from this series, almost 35 years after I first heard them.  A few years ago, I looked online for it so Sabers could hear what the giants can do with a bass, and was delighted to find out that not only was an mp3 available, there was video too! Unfortunately, the audio balance of the videos is muddier than the original LPs and loses some of the basses: seek the latter out if you want the best sound.

Click "play" for the pyrotechnics: these guys utterly destroy the piece.  Oscar takes it out of the starting blocks with each of the bassists accompanying in turn, then hands it off to Brown with a nod.  Even at that breakneck pace, Brown nails the rhythm precisely.  NHØP takes over and plays even faster in his solo, Oscar showing his accompanist's sense throughout, like Basie with eight times the notes.  Oscar then vamps a little to let the audience catch its breath, and then he finds another gear.  The visuals during that chorus are great: Niels is standing there astounded, Ray's grinning, and you see the strain on Oscar's face as he takes it to the absolute limit.

The last choruses are a call and response where Oscar gives each of the bassists the same accompaniment to work from, though by this point the cutting contest is over, with the only knockouts being on the piece.  Ray looks at Niels, Niels looks at Ray, and they must be saying to each other that Oscar is still the champion.  

Hey Trazom, you have a classical answer to this?  

Oscar Peterson (p), Ray Brown (b), Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen (b): "Sweet Georgia Brown," recorded at the Montreux Jazz Festival, Switzerland, 1977.   

More videos from Montreux '77

• Count Basie: Trio Blues (with Ray Brown and Jimmie Smith: listen to Benny Carter remarking at the end: "We can't follow that, Bill [Basie]!") 
• Oscar Peterson Jam: Ali and Frazier (so named after Basie likened the cutting by all the players in that piece to the blows landed in legendary boxing trilogy)

On to this week's puzzle and solution, which I didn't get quite as fast.  

Degree of difficulty (by standards of this weekly puzzle):  average. Looks hard at first, but steady work and an open mind will see you through.

Political content: 7d

Musical content: 1a, 4d (clue), 26a/7d

solution and explanations below the fold

Why cryptic puzzles were invented (Puzzle No. 3,267)

Well, that title ought to get your attention (though it won't get hits like the words "New York Times solution" will).  Go read this week's Word Salad for Richard Maltby's answer, and much more.

Link to puzzle:  http://www.thenation.com/article/172069/puzzle-no-3267

Degree of difficulty (by standards of this weekly puzzle): average.  Looks hard at first, but steady work and an open mind will see you through.

Hozom's comment: "A Talk with Richard Maltby," in which we learn that Maltby served as Stephen Sondheim's understudy, going out onto the big stage at New York magazine when Sondheim had to devote full time to the production of "Company" (which opened on Broadway in 1970).  Sondheim's puzzles were collected in a book, which is sadly out of print.

Maltby finds the English language uniquely suitable for cryptic wordplay, and vice versa.   
"No other language has the opportunities for puns and linguistic misdirection. In fact, that is probably why cryptic puzzles were invented: to make a game out of the mysteries and anomalies of our language."

It took a bit of searching, but in Maltby's honor, here's a show he introduced and participated in, in honor of Sondheim's 75th birthday, featuring my school classmate Michael Cerveris.  "Wall to Wall Sondheim" (part I, part II).  I don't see Mike appearing in any numbers that Maltby himself wrote though.

Epiphany Vespers (Sunday brunch: January 6, 2013)

Today is Epiphany on the calendar of most Christians: commemorating the revelation of Christ to the nations, who were first represented by the Three Kings (Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar: who also would make a nice set of theme puzzle entries).

For those of you of a more literary than liturgical bent, this is where Twelfth Night came from.  In Shakespeare's time, Epiphany was more of a feast of revelry than a holy day.

Epiphany is also the setting for one of the most interesting pieces of music I've ever heard: Kile Smith's Vespers (iTunes link).  Originally titled Epiphany Vespers, Kile started with seasonal psalms and chorales that wouldn't be out of place in a 16th century Lutheran worship service, and then added sections to showcase the talents of Piffaro, Philadelphia's Renaissance band, and The Crossing, a small virtuoso choir specializing in new music.  Talking with Kile after the premiere, I made note of the sixteen(!)-part harmonization in "Herr Christ, der einig Gotts Sohn," and he said that if he'd known the choir had twenty voices, he would have written it in twenty parts!  Take a listen while you solve.  Another video about the recording is at the bottom of the post, below the fold.

"Herr Christ, der einig Gotts Sohn," performed by the Virginia Chorale

"Epiphany" is an apt word for us solvers to use, especially when we discover the gimmick in a variety cryptic or work out a particularly challenging wordplay.  There should be several of them for you in this weekend's cryptics.

The New York Times (behind the paywall) has a Puns and Anagrams this week.  I'll post the solution here Sunday.

Wall Street Journal puzzle editor Mike Shenk takes up the pencil himself this week to offer us another of his Spell Weaving crosswords.  Clue 1 is quite fitting.  I find these puzzles pretty easy: would anyone like to try it on a grid with the numbers blanked out?  Look below the fold for a blank grid

Ucaoimhu (Kevin Wald) is overdue for a mention in this blog: he creates variety cryptics that are hard enough for the National Puzzlers' League.  His latest creation is called The Little Marathon Thing.  It's got altered clues, a clue that you need to solve the rest of the puzzle to complete, and a reward for you at the end.  Use the comments below if you want any hints.

The weekly cryptic by Hex is in the National Post.  Falcon has the puzzle and solution for you at his blog: natpostcryptic.blogspot.com.

Below the fold: 

• Interview with Donald Nally about Kile Smith's Vespers
• Numberless grid for Spell Weaving crossword!
• Comments and hint requests

Christmas Eve (Sunday brunch: December 23, 2012)

(Welcome New York Times diagramless solvers: scroll down for your solution, then come back each week for cryptics and brunch, with sides of hockey and music.)

Last week, Hex shared some Christmas Eve traditions with us: we all have our holiday routines.  Our church has its services Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day.  There is considerable singing involved: Bangle now one of the senior members of the children’s choir performing at the family service, Sabers with the youth singers on Sunday, and The Other Doctor Mitchell with the adult choir at the late service.  Me, I bellow heartily from the pews.

After we get home from services, there are usually some last-minute preparations.  I always put on a recording of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College in Cambridge (check local listings for the streamcast in your area) while I assemble and wrap.  Then when all is ready, a dram of Glenmorangie with one ice cube.  Maybe I’ll have enough time to solve one of this week’s puzzles while I sip that malt.

Hex are like most of us in that they keep on singing, but garble some of their carols.  But they’ve been nice enough to put them in cryptic form so all the intersecting words can keep us in tune.  Falcon conducts the chorus over at his blog.

When Patrick Berry makes a list, he always checks it twice: every single item.  His gift to solvers is published in the Wall Street Journal (*).  He’s fit two dozen candy canes in his grid.  TODM thought it was exceptionally cute. Nothing in the puzzle is too hard or obscure: you just need to get the first answer or two placed and you’ll roll right along from there.

None of the clues are assigned to a specific space.  If you’re not sure where to begin, look first at the “canes” down the middle.  They’ll each have a string of five letters that will be checked by one or two of the across answers.  If you find an uncommon string in the cane, look for it in an across (remember it could be backwards).  Once you have the first of a pair of canes, you know where to put the second.  If you can get that one, and find the acrosses it checks, then you’ll be on your way to filling in the vertical canes.

Once Christmas is over, it’s time to prepare for the new year.  Richard Maltby will help us out that way with his Harpers’ cryptic.  I found this one something of a chore to solve: the theme answers weren’t obvious, and they required some Googling or checks with The Other Doctor Mitchell to verify that they really did fit the theme. 

The New York Times variety puzzle this week (behind the paywall) is a Fred Piscop diagramless.  I’ll update this post with the solution after I get my copy, since I love the traffic-building effect.  Deb Amlen has comments (and spoilers) at Wordplay.

*--if you have trouble viewing or printing the Wall Street Journal puzzle, go to http://blogs.wsj.com/puzzle/ and click the PDF link.

New York Times variety puzzle solution (diagramless 12/23/12) is posted below the fold. 

More music to solve by (Solution No. 3,264)

I had to travel to New York last night for a conference that started early this morning.  As soon as I put the trip on the calendar, I looked up what was going on culturally, and of course that started by seeing if my friend Priscilla Smith was playing.  We've known Priscilla since she was a child: her father is Kile Smith, my favorite contemporary composer; and her mother, Jackie Smith, has been The Other Doctor Mitchell's voice teacher for many years.  TODM babysat Priscilla and her sisters when they were little, and Priscilla returned the favor for our children.

But now Priscilla is tearing up the Big Apple with her baroque oboe, recorder, and other period instruments.  I got to hear Priscilla and her Julliard friends last night with the New York Baroque, in a concert that was "creative" in more ways than one.  Titled "The Big Bang," it juxtaposed pieces by Telemann, Handel, Carlo Farina, and others to tell a creation story: starting with the elements, progressing through chickens, cats, and dogs, to mankind.

There's no video of last night's concert, but here's Priscilla and the NYBI playing Vivaldi's "La Follia" or click here to hear Priscilla play a Handel sonata while you read the rest of the post.

On the subway down to the concert, I came across this gem in FT 14,176, set by Cincinnus.
3d  Bass-baritone making soprano blue.   PAUL ROBESON.

Solution and annotation to The Nation cryptic crossword No. 3,264

Difficulty (by standards of this weekly puzzle): hard

Hozom's comment: "Clearing the bar," in which Hot and Trazom share some comments they received about last week's bar-style cryptic.  Not surprisingly, some people didn't like the change.  Others did.  Hot and Trazom note that most of the cryptics they've created for the National Puzzlers' League are bar-style, since they open the opportunity for more twists in the grid or the entries.  And "twisted" doesn't begin to describe some of those NPL specials.

Musical content: 13a, 7d

Working blue: 24a—mild by standards of The Onion

Solution and annotation below the fold.

Music to solve by (Puzzle No. 3,264)

Last weekend, Sabers and I sat in on a master class given by Timothy Eddy, cellist with the Orion Quartet.   The first students that he was working with were Alexandra and Brittany Conrad, sisters who are concertmistress and principal bass respectively of the Trowbridge Chamber Orchestra at Settlement Music School (Sabers is principal bass of the intermediate orchestra at Settlement).  The orchestras have their next concert at 3:00 on Saturday, January 27 at the SMS Mary Louise Curtis branch in Philadelphia.

Alexandra and Brittany had prepared a pair of tangos by the Argentine composer Ástor Piazzolla.  Though his family was Italian and he studied in Paris, Piazzola's best compositions are Argentine at heart, but influenced by the jazz musicians he heard in Europe, particularly Gerry Mulligan (who of course was best known for his work with Dave Brubeck).

So while Sabers watched Timothy coach Brittany on the bowing and rhythm of her part, I enjoyed the music and finished solving last week's Patchwork from the WSJ.   Now you can listen to an earlier performance of the same pieces while you do this week's puzzle.

After a one-week sampling of a bar-style puzzle, Hot and Trazom are back with their regular block-style.  Of course there are still a few twists in the clues, so if you need hints, post a comment below.

Link to puzzle: http://www.thenation.com/article/171589/puzzle-no-3264

Degree of difficulty (by standards of this weekly puzzle): moderate to difficult, particularly if you are expecting all clues to be straightforward and self-contained.

Hozom's comment: not published yet: watch this space for an update.