Solutions and comments on the weekly cryptic crossword puzzles set by Joshua Kosman (Trazom) and Henri Picciotto (Hot), published in The Nation magazine.
Also weekly links to other cryptic and variety crosswords including solutions to New York Times cryptic, diagramless, and puns & anagrams puzzles.
Summer is nearing, and The Nation is into its bi-weekly
publication schedule. This summer,
we’ll use the off-weeks to go back to some Frank W. Lewis originals.
We’ll start with the last puzzle he constructed for The Nation,
No. 1,634, which was first published in May 1976. It’s very typical of the Lewis style: more British, with
frequent cross-referencing within the puzzle and answers split across multiple
lights.
The solvers who complain about Hot and Trazom’s cluing will
have even more to get upset about.
There are unindicated anagrams, word associations, and other things you
might find in a Puns and Anagrams but break the strict Ximenean rules typical
of North American cryptics. Be aware of that as you work on the puzzle, and you’ll have a better chance of solving it.
Add to that the sometimes-obscure words in the grid
(remember these were all constructed without the aid of computers and the
internet), and these are truly hard puzzles. I struggled with them when I was first solving cryptics, and
I still get stuck often today.
Maybe you can do better; maybe not.But we’ll try and use a summer’s worth
of these puzzles to build up some new solving skills together.
Too much of a good thing? I suspect some solvers would think so. As I parse that clue, I get three definitions, not two:
Secretly carry off
Scotch
tenor
By the Ximenean book, that’s not cricket. A definition, wordplay (in this case a second definition), and nothing else. Another definition qualifies as “something else.” But having both “Scotch” and “tenor” in it makes the clue read better—a little more mysteriously too.
Then Hot and Trazom did something similar in this week’s The Nation puzzle: see 18d (in red) below. The second definition in the clue was more like a definition and a half. Was that intended? Did the constructors accidentally leave in part of their original clue while editing it? Maybe Hot will shed some light on this one for us.
Scroll down below the video for the weekend’s new puzzles. [update: Link to NYT solution added]
I think I’ve mentioned it before, but the hockey rulebook and related publications have a rather peculiar language. We wear trousers rather than pants, players get into altercations rather than fights, and the “third man in” rule actually penalizes the “first to intervene.”
Third man in rightly is one of the most serious offenses in the book. One of the others is physically abusing or interfering with an official. It so happens that the latter most happens in the process of preventing the former, and that was the case in the Stanley Cup game this week between the Canadiens and the Rangers. There was a fight between two other players during the first period, and Carcillo appeared to be looking for a chance to join in. Scott Driscoll, who’s one of the top linesmen in the league, saw the situation developing, and smartly placed himself in between Carcillo and the fight.
Carcillo then threw an elbow at Driscoll to try and get free and get into the fight. That earned him a ten-game suspension. That’s a long suspension, in line with what the league hands out for a high hit that injures an opponent. Kerry Fraser explains the story behind that rule over at his blog “C’mon Ref.”
Some of the TSN viewers who responded to Fraser’s explanation didn’t buy it, but if you’ve ever refereed men’s league, you know exactly why the penalty is so stiff. Fights happen occasionally, and scuffles happen a lot more. But there are a few players who go absolutely bonkers when one of their teammates gets into a scrap. We had a couple of them in the Penn league a few years ago. If you don’t stop them, they can turn a routine pushing and shoving incident into a full-blown brawl involving all the players on the ice. So league commissioners usually issue long suspensions for these incidents. The ones that don’t? That’s a story for another day.
How about doing battle in a much less violent way with these puzzles?
The Sunday New York Times (behind the paywall) features a cryptic by Richard Silvestri. The solution is posted below. Deb Amlen blogs it (spoiler alert) at Wordplay.
There’s a Hex cryptic in the National Post, but Falcon is on vacation and you’ll have to wait to see it. I’ve already solved it, and it was hard. You can get the Globe and Mail puzzle by Fraser Simpson right now.
The Wall Street Journal weekend puzzle is a Labyrinth by Mike Shenk. It’s definitely hard. Lots of solvers are having trouble with the top four rows, so they’re not finding a toehold. Try and get the rows below that, and see if that gives you enough of a hint at a “winding” answer that you can get some letters extending into the top rows. If not, I have a hint grid posted elsewhere on the blog, and the solution is up if you want to check your answers.
Good news if you own Puzzazz (and if you liked that Labyrinth, the new e-book of variety puzzles: “Mike Shenk’s Variety Show” is a pretty good reason to download the app). Version 3.3 was just released this week. I was glad to see that the app now allows you to delete puzzles from your download folder once you’re through with them. Next I’d like to see a way to create different download folders so cryptics can go in one “book” and Puns and Anagrams can go in another.
Puzzazz has also finished the e-book version of “Cryptic All-Stars.” I’ve been working my way through the book over the last couple of months, and while the standard isn’t as uniformly high as we get from the top constructors like Hot and Trazom, the variety of variety puzzles and constructing styles has been entertaining.
[back-posted to keep the current The Nation post at the top]
Below the fold is the solution to this weekend’s New York Times variety puzzle: a straight cryptic by Richard Silvestri.
After you look at that, why not look around the rest of the blog? We have links to new cryptics from The Nation most Thursdays, solutions on the subsequent Mondays, and Sunday brunch every weekend, featuring a smorgasbord of cryptic and variety crosswords, interspersed with hockey, music, fencing, and other such topics.
Below the fold is a hint grid for this weekend’s Wall Street Journal puzzle: a Labyrinth by Mike Shenk. It shows you where the winding words start and end.
Once you’re through with this one, try some Sunday brunch: with info on a new Puzzazz release that you can solve more of Mike’s variety puzzles on, plus cryptic crosswords on the menu.
Below the fold is the solution to this weekend’s Wall Street Journal puzzle: a Labyrinth by Mike Shenk. Did you know there’s also a hint grid available? It shows the starting and ending squares for each of the “winding” answers. Try it if you don’t want quite as much help.
Once you’re through with this one, try some Sunday brunch: with info on a new Puzzazz release that you can solve more of Mike’s variety puzzles on, plus cryptic crosswords on the menu.
The solution to puzzle no. 3,326 is below the fold.
I’ve continued to mull on the “meet the constructor halfway” point I made last week, not just on the world at large, but on crosswords too (much more important subject, don’t you think).
We have to particularly apply that principle to the words and definitions a constructor chooses. American constructors have an incredibly broad and deep culture to work from: so much so it’s multidimensional. High culture or popular? Old or new? Common or obscure? And then there are so many subcultures one can dip into. Macpherson struts, Liszt, platelets, so many words and phrases lending themselves to wordplay.
The Andrew Ries subscription Rows Garden I did last week started off with two answers that I figure might inspire some solvers to demand those inane “trigger warnings.”
1 Ursine fad of the 1980s CARE BEARS
2 Site whose members list hobbies and favorite Bible verses CHRISTIAN MINGLE
Now I have been happily married nearly 25 years, and I cringe at treacly sentimentality, but I still smiled at both of those answers. They reached into deep and dust-covered recesses of my brain. CARE BEARS came to mind instantly, while CHRISTIAN MINGLE was one of those answers that made me wonder “how did I ever remember that?”
What I can’t abide is solvers who complain about the source of an answer: that we’re too good to be glorifying a silly pop fad or acknowledging that Christians are a significant part of our population. Respecting diversity has to include things that might not be our particular cup of tea, but might be someone else’s.
It’s fitting that a The Nation puzzle name-checks liberals and teases conservatives. But in the end, the main point of a good cryptic should be to celebrate the language that unites us. As with commencement addresses, if you’re demanding that every message validate your worldview, you’re losing out on a lot of what makes us grow.
