22nd August 2021 NYT Crossword

 I completely failed to do both the Saturday and the Sunday crossword puzzles on their designated days this week, but thankfully due to the joys of living in the future, I was able to preserve my crossword solving streak on the NYT app, something that I have become suprisingly attached to. All things must end, and this number going up is surely something that will come to an end soon, but for the moment I'm enjoying keeping it going, even with puzzles like this one, which took an age for me to complete.

14th August 2021 NYT Crossword

The crossword streak continues, this time with this rather delightful Saturday puzzle by Nam Jin Yoon.

This whole puzzle was an absolute blast, tough but fair and just generally zippy all round. I am very happy after solving it, even if there were a couple of gimmes that I really should have gotten earlier that I did. Tell me, friends, was this one of those puzzles that had you screaming at your screen?

My audio quality continues to be a little dodgy, a product of the rather primitive setup that I'm stuck with at the moment, but I think my production value increased just a tiny bit as well after a bit of fiddling about in OBS last week. Next step is to try and boost the audio so that the audience doesn't have to boost their speakers to 300% to hear it, but we'll take this thing one step at a time.

(Jigsaw) Puzzle - 8th August 2021 NYT Crossword

I've been sorely missing the gang of miscreants that I've been faithfully signing onto discord with every day for the last 500 days or so to do the crossword with. 6pm is proving to be a pretty sad and empty part of the day with no-one to hang out with as I puzzle, so today I thought it might be fun to record the puzzle (like I used to occasionally back in 2019 before this little adventure began) so that we can do it together in spirit even if not in actuality. Curse you, timezones!

Anyway, here's the puzzle, which I thought was a lot of fun. I won't spoil it here, because I fear that would take some of the fun out of the discovered as we go along. I hope you enjoy playing along with me today, wherever you are in the world, whatever time it is where you are, dear friends.

USA Today Crossword - June 18th 2020

Island where Queen Lilioukalani was born / City name in Texas and Ukraine / Sound of rushing wind / Comedian Poundstone / Genre of the song "Duke of Earl" / Hughes who wrote "I, Too" / Blanket statement's lack

Constructor: Evan Kalish

Difficulty: A little on the easy side. It only took me two sweeps of the grid to solve in my morning semi-catatonic state. (7:46)

Theme: JUST MY TYPE - The first words of the three theme anwers give the name of a common typeface.

• TIME'S A-WASTING (20A: "Let's get moving!")
• NEW MANAGEMENT (36A: Different ownership)
• ROMAN NUMERALS (60A: Something popes and Super Bowls have in common)

I dunno how many folks are solving crosswords in serif fonts (even the New Yorker uses something simple and understated for the grid, though their clues are written in their distinctive typeface), but as a bit of a fan of a good embellishment myself, I'm all for the idea of this theme, even if I have small quibbles with each of the theme answers. And yes, this is a blog about the minuitae of crossword puzzles, so of course I'm going to share them.

Having TIMES as one word in the answer rather than cheating it over two words ala TIME SIGNATURE was a nice touch, but the answer having an apostrophe when the theme doesn't want one just makes me feel a little squicky. I can't think of a good replacement with TIMES TABLES and TIMES SQUARE both being a little short, though.

I'm also not convinced that different owners always mean NEW MANAGEMENT. Don't get me wrong, it was a gimme of an answer, but it lacks a certain degree of precision.

Last and almost certainly least, though I enjoyed the mental image of elderly pontiffs in crash helmets and body armour lining up on the gridiron, I feel compelled as a pope fanboy to mention that by my count 44 of the 266 Popes up to this point, including the incumbent, don't have Roman numerals in their names. 

That little rant out of the way, this was a pleasant grid without that much spoor. Sure, there's PSST and PFFT, the ever-present APP and BAA, but none of them are in places where they cause a problem. I continue to be uncomfortable with IDED (identificationed? Identity Documented?) but have to admit that as little as I like it I would like IDD even less. The larger down answers like DOOWOP, SMUDGE , NOODLE, NUANCE, LANGSTON are all good solid fill, very gettable but not the sort of thing you see every day, so overall the puzzle gave me fresh vibes, which is all one can really ask for. Did you know EARTHA Kitt was Batwoman for a while? I didn't.

Today I learned: Zakat (almsgiving) is one of the pillars of ISLAM. Easy enough clue given the context, Islam famously has pillars, but I certainly can't name any of them other than the always crossword-ready HAJJ.

There are five principles that should be followed when giving the zakāt:

• The giver must declare to God his intention to give the zakāt.
• The zakāt must be paid on the day that it is due.
• After the offering, the payer must not exaggerate on spending his money more than usual means.
• Payment must be in kind. This means if one is wealthy then he or she needs to pay a portion of their income. If a person does not have much money, then they should compensate for it in different ways, such as good deeds and good behavior toward others.
• The zakāt must be distributed in the community from which it was taken. (wikipedia)

Word of the Day: EMPORIUM (40D: Big store). I generally think of an Emporium as a small store with an intense sort of focus, Crazy Dave's Kitchen Lighting Emporium, or Marvels of Parquetry Emporium, or something like that, but I guess this is just another case of the dictionary in my head being out of step with the dictionary the rest of the world is using.

Shout-out to WHOOSH, though. It's just a fun word.

USA Today Crossword - June 17th 2020

When this appeared in my feed last week I was truly tempted to pick up my keyboard and go to work, but I figured that it was pretty likely that someone a little more qualified would leap to the challenge. Rex Parker (as well as being an old internet acquaintance via the spirital blogmother) is the king of angry crossword twitter and I figured his royal seal of approval would be all it would take to get a regular USA Today crossword blog up and running. As if I didn't spend enough time thinking a out crossword every day as it is.

Sadly, a week of enjoyable USA Today crosswords later and I haven't seen any evidence of a new blog appearing just yet, so in the meantime thought it might be fun to try imitating Rex's style for a little while here on the Leaflocker and share my enjoyment of the puzzle that has recently become a staple of my days in quarantine.

<--->

Yes, I'm hot in this" garment / Island whose capital is Oranjestad / Character often said to have been based on Bass Reeves / Tamal wrappers / Company with a duck mascot / "What was I thinking?"

Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel

Difficulty: I've only been doing this puzzle for a few weeks, so it's hard to say how difficult this one was compared to usual. I'd say it's in the mid-Tuesday NYT range, which is about right for the sort of thing I've come to expect from the USA Today most of the time, and the 8:44 I took is also pretty typical for me for a puzzle completed with my clumsy thumbs.

Theme: WOLF PACK - First word of each of the three theme entries start a phrase completed with the word 'wolf'. 

• LONE RANGER (16A: Character often said to have been based on Bass Reeves)
• TEEN CHOICE AWARD (36A: One of 28 won by One Direction)
• GRAY MATTER (60A: Brains)

Sure, three theme answers doesn't feel like a lot for a puzzle without a revealer, but I've gone over the puzzle twice, and unless false wolf and cheap wolf are phrases this is what we've got. They're all definitely wolves and as a nice bonus they triggered flashbacks to a certain Michael J Fox movie that seemed to be constantly being played on Australian TV during my childhood in the '90s, so...thanks I guess?

I didn't notice the theme at all during the solve, but I did notice that the keystone One Direction clue was accompanied by a LIAM at 46 down, so I was expecting to find the names of the rest of those early-teens heartthrobs as an easter egg, but was sadly disappointed that in a grid with a LOU and a LOIS there doesn't seem to be a LOUIS hiding anywhere. If this wasn't going to be five-year-late OneD tribute puzzle, then why not use someone more current, like Taylor Swift, who has almost as many wins, or BTS, who won some awards in 2019?

That minor quibble aside, the grid was full of the good stuff that we've come to expect from the Agard-edited USA Today puzzle: Easy fill that doesn't require two many second guesses (I had START instead of RESET for a while) but avoiding a lot of the usual crosswordese dross even if there was an OWIE or two along the way, with a decent chance of the solver learning something along the way. I'd never met Yes, I'm Hot in This or Oranjestad, but they both seem like things to know about.

Clunkers: I'm not a big fan of AH I SEE, but the crossings were all pretty straight forward, so that's all good. As a non-Usonian I tend to trip up a little on brandnames, too, but since EARLE seemed inevitable AFLAC came together nicely, and a few years of buying the grape juice for communion meant that WELCHS was a gimme. Some things just don't change even on the other side of the Atlantic, it seems.

Word of the Day: SCOOTED (25A: Slid while seated) Simple, elegant, and could never be anything other than SCOOTED. Just the word itself brings back happy memories of cafeterias and camps back in the days when we spent time in the same place as other people.

There should probably be a picture or video clip or something, but I'm not going to subject you all to the highlight of 80's cinema that was Teen Wolf and my reference library of music leaves a little to be desired. So uh....

Leaflocker Cryptic 003

Following just three months after the last Leaflocker Cryptic, here's the latest installment in the series. Pour yourself a cup of tea and give it a go, then let me know what you thought in the comments. 

Click on the image to enlarge, or download it in .puz format  or as a printable PDF.

Edit 19/4: Fixed error in clue for 1D. Thanks, M Cats for noticing it!

Clue Review: LC2 (Down)

"In the next couple of days months"

This post is part two of the clue review for my most recent crossword. You can read part one here.

DOWN CLUES

1 Male with vocal following gives the lesson (5) 
lesson = MORAL ~ M (for male) + ORAL (vocal)
I'm not really a big fan of the way that many crosswords tend to rely very heavily on the one-letter shortenings of seemingly any word, but I feel like male and female are shortened to M and F on forms or toilet doors and the like that they're probably fine. They're so common that they make for very easy to solve clues. I liked the 'following' here, which doesn't strictly do anything in the clue since oral was naturally going to follow the M anyway, but it just makes the surface reading of the clue so must nicer.

2 Digital scanner hitch (5) 
THUMB ~ Double definition (Digital scanner / hitch)
Ha! Digital. I crack myself up.

3 British PM to shout out loud (5)
 British PM = BLAIR ~ blare (shout) homophone (out loud)
I toyed with a bunch of options to avoid using yet another homophone for this one, but in the end none of the things that I could come up with worked as well. With the combination of a very obvious straight clue and a simple homophone like this, I'd be surprised if this wasn't the very first entry in most solver's grids.

4 Degenerates fire ultimate projectiles (4)
Degenerates = EBBS ~ last letter (ultimate) of fir(E) + BBS (projectiles)
I feel like ebbs is one of those answers that you just see in crosswords a lot, but that could just be my overexposure to American-style crosswords, where that sweet E _ _ S shape is so very useful. I really enjoy when a definition has an utterly different alternative that you can meld with the wordplay so nicely to so effectively misdirect the solver. I wasn't completely confident that one spells the projectiles from a BB gun like this, half expecting beebees, which wouldn't have worked, but apparently this is fine.

5 Capital built out of parts of its predecessor (5)
TOKYO ~ Anagram of KYOTO.
Another not very cryptic clue, in that you have to effectively know the answer in order to reverse engineer it. It's a nice little piece of trivia, I suppose, but I'm not very happy with it in my crossword.

6 Cabin with energy load (5) 
load = CARGO ~ charade of CAR (cabin #for a ferris wheel, maybe?) + GO (energy)
Frankly a little disappointed that I couldn't come up with a classical reference to Jason and the Argonaut's here, but there'll be another opportunity some time. I also would have liked to have the surface hint towards load as a verb rather than the noun definition for an extra little bit of misdirection.

7 Abuse slandering take-out diner (5) 
abuse = SLANG ~ subtraction (take-out) of DINER from SLA(-nderi)NG
So you take out the letters of diner from slandering to get slang. Simple enough, but since there's not an indicator to say that you take out the constituent parts and not just some synonym for diner it just feels a little sloppy.

12 No news about known town brownnose (6) 
brownnose = KOWTOW ~ subtraction of Ns (abbr. of news) from K(-n)OW(-n) TOW(-n)
As soon as I'd written the words 'known town brown' on my page I knew that I had to make them work together somehow, and the joy of doing so was enough for me to get over my dislike of using words to clue single letters like I've used 'news' here.

14 Bar from exploring otherwise (5) 
Bar = INGOT ~ hidden in (from) explorING OTherwise
Gotta have a hidden clue or two in there, if only for how frustrating it is to stare at a clue for ages only to realise the answer has literally been staring you in the face the whole time. Never gets old.

15 Boredom regarding Nintendo console announcement (5) 
Boredom = ENNUI ~ homophone (announcement) of 'on' (regarding) and 'wii' (Nintendo console)
I will never get sick of using 'wii' in crossword clues. I think this is the third time that I've done it, but it's the first time that I've used it as a homephone and I'm really pleased at how this one turned out.

16 Orange, bumbling ass... (6) 
ass = ONAGER ~ ORANGE anagram (bumbling)
I was going to use the siege engine rather than the equine for this one, but when I realised the orange connection there was only ever one way this one was going to go.

18 ...moons First Lady unrepentantly, necessarily arousing ridicule (5) 
moons = LUNAR ~ Heads (first) of (L)ady (U)nrepentantly (N)ecessarily (A)rousing and (R)idicule
Another example of  a case where the surface reading of the clue drew an interesting enough picture that I was okay with the definition being a little unorthodox, especially given that it's an easy clue. One can't really have 'moons' for 'lunar', or 'first' instead of 'firsts', but I'm happy to give myself a pass here.

19 Now following up a German relative (5) 
relative = NIECE ~ EIN ('a' in German) vertically (up) + CE (now #abb. common era)
Always a bit wary of using things like ein/eine and le/de given that there's multiple options for them, but finding new ways to clue the exceeding common crossword clue of 'niece' is never easy. I wouldn't be surprised to find that multiple constructors have already used this exact clue.

24 Paperback skirting father's paroxysm (5) 
paroxym = SPASM ~ reversal of MS ('paper' back) containing (skirting) PA'S (father's)
Does anyone actually call their dad 'pa'? It's one of those crosswords things that we all pretty much accept, but it feels like a usage that you just don't hear these days. Papa, sure. Pa? Anyways, I liked using 'paperback' like this, even if it's yet another thing that makes the Ximineans frown at me. People who like cryptics like wordplay, what could be wrong about adding MORE wordplay?

25 Steal more work for automaton (5) 
automaton = ROBOT ~ Rob (steal) + OT (more work #OverTime)
I had some objections to using OT for overtime, and I have to admit it's a less common than I thought. Annoying, because I clue construction like this works a lot better than trying to shoehorn the old testament in there.

26 Endemic blatant insiders rise up (5) 
Endemic = NATAL ~ middle (insiders) of b(LATAN)t reversed (rise up)
Natal is a great word that I have always enjoyed wrapping my mouth around since I first met it in a Christmas carol. I generally have a bit of a weak spot for good reversals, so I was glad when I notied this one.

28 Font is in a cave to the north (5) 
font = ARIAL ~ A + LAIR (cave) reversed (to the North)
I know, I know, it's a typeface. You knew what I meant though, right?

29 Tool practice (5) 
DRILL ~ Double definition (Tool / practice)
I was a bit dubious about finishing the crossword with three double-definitions in a row, but hopefully most people don't solve puzzles by running through all the acrosses and then all the downs, so maybe it wasn't so obvious to people actually solving the puzzles. There were probably too many double definitions in this one, but when they work, they work.

30 A fraction of the last Tim Tam (5) 
NINTH ~ Double definition (A fraction / the last Tim Tam)
I was right chastised for this one, given that I'd forgotten that not ALL packets of Tim Tams have nine biscuits, as the plainer flavours still have eleven. I could have gotten away with it too, if I'd only added a 'fancy' into the clue. Gotta have some specific Aussie knowledge in their somewhere but in this case I was hoist on my own petard.

32 Get on the table and blend (4) 
MELD ~ Double definition (Get on the table / blend)
A reference to the game of canasta and similar games here that would have been tricky if you don't speak the specific language of those games. We could all do with a friendly game of cards at the moment, I think. I wonder if there's a decent online canasta server...

Thanks for dropping by. I'm hoping to spend a little more time here in the next few weeks instead of spending it all mindlessly scrolling social media, so hopefully the next post isn't months away again.

Clue Review: LC2 (Across)

Thanks to all the readers who've taken a swing at the cryptic crossword that I put up a couple of weeks ago, I've greatly appreciated the feedback and just getting your reactions to it has been a lot of fun. This post is (the first part of) a run-through of the various clues and their answers, which will hopefully include some explanations for anything that you weren't sure about and will also help me identify the puzzle's weak points so that I can improve in future. That obviously means that it will contain SPOILERS, so this is your last chance to go back and do the puzzle.

I'm not planning to go into a lot of depth here about how cryptics are supposed to work, but if you are interested in learning about that, I do recommend the 31 part series that Mother Owl put together back in Blaugust 2016.

ACROSS CLUES

1 It can be changed or possibly silenced (7) 
MUTABLE ~ Double definition (It can be changed / silenced[?] )
Double definition clues are always the first thing that I look for in a crossword, as words with two simple meanings like the answer to 29 down can be any easy way to get a foothold in the grid and the short clues are often easily indentifiable. Clues like this one, with one 'normal' definition and one slightly playful one (using mutable for 'able to be muted' isn't really proper English, after all), can be a bit trickier to notice, but hopefully the addition of the 'possibly' helps prepare the solver that I'm being a little sneaky here.

5 Folds away picked up evening wear (5) 
Folds away = TUCKS ~ 'Tux' (Evening wear) homophone (picked up)
This is the first of an unusually high number of homophone clues in this crossword, which caused me to dig deep in my limited supply of good indicator words (I am pretty rusty at this, after all). I think 'picked up' is a nice definition for 'received' to indicate a homophone, though at last one solver didn't like it. It could be a little bit naughty to have the indicator slap bang in the middle of the clue where it's not obvious if it affects the folding or the evening wear, but since 'tux' doesn't have five letters I think it's fair enough.

8 Briton gives odd introduction (3) 
Introduction = BIO ~ Regular letters (gives odd) from [B]R[I]T[O]N
It's always the short ones that get you. I found this one surprisingly difficult to clue without resorting to the usual double meaning clue. I'm not very happy with this one since 'gives odd' doesn't really imply multiple letters, it should have been something about 'gives odds' but I couldn't make it flow as nicely.


9 Method's missing from Mother Hubbard's  unconventional recipe for pie fruit (7) 
Pie fruit = RHUBARB ~ Anagram (unconventional) of MOTHER HUBBARD with the letters of METHOD subtracted (missing)
Pretty much everyone who solved this got into contact to remind me that rhubarb isn't actually a fruit, which is an excellent point. Let's just pretend I'd make the straight part of the clue 'pie filling' so that we can just sit back and enjoy the anagram, shall we?

10 Buddhist principle proclaimed greater peace (5)
Buddhist principle = KARMA ~ 'calmer' (greater peace) homophone (proclaimed)
I know that with many accent calmer and karma aren't pronounced the same, but with my Aussie drawl they're pretty close. I'm not completely content with using 'greater peace' to mean 'calmer' when something like 'more peaceful' would have worked better, but I couldn't get it to scan into the surface meaning properly. I feel like this one is a clue that I would have reworked if I'd given myself more time to work on the puzzle.

11 Ask yourself introspectively "What is up?" (3) 
What is up = SKY ~ Container (introspectively) for a[SK Y]ourself
The 'straight' definition for 'sky' here being "What is up?" is probably pushing it, too, but throwing a question mark in there hides a multitude of sins, and I can't imagine too many folks getting stuck on this three-letter word because of it.

13 Progressive loses final 2-0 to volleyballer (6) 
Volleyballer = LIBERO ~ subtraction (loses) of AL (final 2) from LIBER(-AL) (progressive) + O (0)
I was a bit worried that this one was a little on the hard side, given that libero is a pretty obscure sports word from a relatively obscure sport, but it seems like people enjoyed it. I like the way that the clue is able to extremely specific about taking 2 letters away and adding an O all in one neat little package.

17 Love all and desire tea (6) 
Tea = OOLONG ~ Charade O-O (love all #in tennis) + LONG (desire)
This was lots of people's favourite clue of the crossword, which I have to put down to the Leaflocker audience's love of tea generally, as I personally thought that the surface of the clue was pretty weak. It was fun to get people to translate love all to the tennis score 0-0 for the double-O on the start, and I think it helps that I was able to use 2-0 in the clue before to warm people up to the idea.

20 Won out this time (3) 
This time = NOW ~ WON anagram (out)
Pretty common anagram-type clue. I'd be very surprised if this exact form hadn't appeared in other puzzles multiple times before.

21 Masterplan for gag order after a period (6)
Masterplan = AGENDA ~ NDA (non-disclosure agreement) after AGE (period)
How common is usage of NDA? I feel like it's on the border of common parlance, but probably seen in the wild often enough that it can be used in a simple charade clue like this. I wouldn't want to try and clue it as indirectly as 'gag order' if I were doing anything weird with it, but for these purposes I feel like it worked.

22 Coalition without a mandate is rudderless (6) 
Coalition = TANDEM ~ Anag. (rudderless) of M(-a)NDATE missing (without) A mandate.
Not completely confident that this one is fair, as not only is tandem a bit of a weird definition for coalition (something that you do 'in tandem' could also be done 'in coaliation' but they don't really mean the same thing standing alone), but the wordplay is a bit sloppy, as it requires you to read 'without a mandate' as 'mandate without an a', which I suppose you could, if you squint. I'm also not completely sold on rudderless as an anagram indicator, but in the end I decided to let this one slip through just because the surface reading seemed like fun. Would 'coalition is rudderless without a mandate' have been fairer? Or should I have gone with something else entirely? What do you guys think?

23 Slime is just part of baby talk (3) 
GOO ~ Double definition (slime/part of baby talk)
Babies say googoo gaagaa, right?

24 Insert gobbledegook and let's call it a dialect (6) 
Let's call it a dialect = STRINE ~ Anag. (Gobbledegook) of INSERT
Is Strine a dialect? Sort of? I tried to convey that almost-kinda vibe with the clue and I think it worked out relatively well, although I feel like there should have been a good way to really punch this one up a bit.

27 Officer study subsequent to conflict (6) 
Officer = WARDEN ~ DEN (Study) after WAR (Conflict)
Another pretty straightforward charade clue where I ended up cluing the last part first and then working my way back in order to try and have the surface reading be a little more interesting. I think it more or less worked, but having a word like 'subsequently' in there really telegraphs the wordplay too much and makes for an easy clue.

31 A handy place to fortify (3) 
ARM ~ Double definition (A handy place / to fortify)
Another double definition with one punny meaning, handy places bringing back shades of groanworthy jokes about Napoleon. This one got an ! in the copy of the filled in crossword that my parents sent me, but I hope that was a 'ha ha' ! and not a 'see me' !

33 He has priors! (5) 
ABBOT ~ Cryptic Definition
One of the things that got me writing this crossword in the first place was the over-reliance of my local paper on punny single-definition clues. This is the sort of clue that isn't really properly cryptic, as it doesn't have any wordplay element, the sort of thing that I'd expect to see in an American style crossword, or in one from before cryptics evolved into their current form, but I feel like they're fine in moderation, especially if the surface meaning really pops. I like this one a lot.

34 Release auditor's reckoning (7) 
Release = EDITION ~ homophone (auditor's) of 'addition' (reckoning)
I couldn't resist the idea of an auditor as one who both plays with numbers and listens. Another clue with the indicator just dropped in between the elements, but since 'addition' is one letter too long I feel like most folk will stumble across this one pretty quickly.

35 Tallest test cut out everything (3)
Everything = ALL ~ TALLEST with TEST subtracted (cut out) (-t)ALL(-est)
Have I said yet that I hate cluing short words? Subtractions are a good way to do them but I feel like they can be hard to pitch at the right difficulty level. This grid originally had another big open space to the left of the first letter of this one, but in the end I cut it because it didn't reduce the number of three letter words I had to clue and was very constraining.

36 Iron Maiden and others (5) 
Iron = METAL ~ M (abbr. of maiden in cricket) + ET AL.
I am in two minds about this one. You can't really get away with cluing a class of objects (metal) by one of it's parts (iron) in the way that can the other way around. In the end I decided to keep it just because I could sort of justify is as almost an &lit.clue, since 'Iron Maiden and others' are indeed fully metal and the clue is just a popper, but I don't feel good about it.

37 Hide 35 devastated by notorious stylist (7)
Notorious stylist = DELILAH ~ Anag. of HIDE and ALL (answer to 35 across)
The other clue that got an ! from my parents, but I think 'notorious stylist' works for the biblical character of Delilah, and has the nice extra bonus of including a red herring word like 'stylist' which just screams anagram indicator.

That's it for the across clues. This post is already getting pretty long, so I think I'm going to cut it off here for now and come back some time in the next few days to talk about the down clues. Please let me know in the comments if there's anywhere that I haven't explained things well or where you disagree with my assessments, as I really do want to make crosswords more often and I'm sure you all have some good advice to impart.

Leaflocker Cryptic 002

I'm a little rusty, but in the last couple of days I wrote a crossword. I am filled with admiration for people who somehow manage to pump one of these things out every day. Enjoy, and let me know how you get on.

This crossword is also available in AcrossLite and printable PDF.

NYTC: E-lapse

This post is about today's New York Times Crossword. It contains spoilers for the puzzle. 

This time around on the crossword corner, I tackled today's Wednesday puzzle from the New York Times. Wednesdays tend to be theme puzzles that are a little trickier and have slightly more obscure clues than Tuesdays but don't try to mess with you with tricky double meanings like Thursdays do.

Perhaps I'm just a little out of practice with crosswords, but I struggled to get this one to work for me, which combined with the app refusing the behave for me resulted in an unusually slow time compared to my average: but as is usual for Wednesdays I could at least be pretty sure that when I put in an answer it was more or less right.

The theme itself was pretty easy to pick, but due to the loose category nature, actually getting the theme answers was a pretty tough asks, especially since some of them -I'm looking at you, TERM SHEET- were pretty rubbish. That's forgivable if some of the answers are real groaners, but honestly they mostly just...were. The clues themselves were neat, but unfortunately the payoff just wasn't there for the answers.

Time: 29:40 (about 5 minutes slow)

Best Clue: Bounces of the wall, say (ECHOES)

What we learned: OCHS feels like the sort of crosswordese I should probably just devote to memory.

NYTC: Friday on my mind

Through a combination of poor memory and poor planning, I left myself without a whole lot of time or inclination to blog tonight. The schedule over on my trello has this little queue of titles for the next few days, but somehow none of them were ever going to work out this time around.

 I have the 'Week in Gaming' post that I was planning to do on Tuesday, but after a big board gaming afternoon following by an intense badminton evening I'm finding myself too gamed out to think about games in any meaningful way, and I'd really like to get that series rolling on a positive note.

I have a somewhat nostalgic and emotional post about saying goodbye to Oxford in the works, but it's not finished, and besides, while trying to write it keeps making me cry, the post itself just doesn't have a lot of soul. I'll take another swing at it soon, but for now I think it might be condemned to sit in the unfinished drafts box until I can make it pack a little bit more of a punch. No point making a post about emotional goodbye's if it's not emotion-inducing, after all.

There's the World Diplomacy Championships after-action report that I meant to do last Blaugust but never quite got around to. I hope that can still be salvaged, but if it's going to be any good it's going to be the sort of post that takes all day to put together, so it's no good for tonight either. The fact that it's a big post is one of the reasons that I keep putting it off, but I really would like to get around to it, which is why it's sat in the ideas pile for so long.

Then there's the black and pick tags that are helpfully marked 'Blaugust' and '?'. When I was putting together my schedule, the Blaugust posts were supposed to be riffing off of someone else's post from the last week and the ? ones were inserted into the schedule to give me a little bit of creative freedom to just do something a little bit out of left-field. Sadly, these are the sorts of posts that need a serious dose of inspiration just to get started on, and after a bit of mindless scrolling through the social media and the blogroll I realised that I just don't feel like I've got anything to add tonight.

I guess the moral of the story is that having a schedule is all well and good, it can be a great prompt to get you rolling with the whole blogging thing and a little structure can go a long way, but sometimes the best laid plans just don't survive contact with the enemy that is your own lack of focus and motivation.

I was going to just leave the Leaflocker fallow and turn in early, but I have a bit of a bad habit of biting off more than I can't chew to start off with and then giving up on Blaugusts just after the first week is done that I'm determined to break. Which is why I pointed a webcam at my face and sat down to relax by doing the crossword. Grab a cup of tea and join me if that seems like your sort of thing.

NYTC: Carlton Football Club Tribute Edition

I've already made a Blaugust post today, but it can't hurt to have a spare in the bank, and I realised that I hadn't left enough room in the schedule for the surprise hit from last year's Blaugust: filming myself flailing about trying to do the New York Times Crossword for your entertainment. So I'm bringing it back due to popular demand, so pour yourself a cuppa and sit down and enjoy half an hour of me in all my pixellated glory.

A Farewell to Blaugs

As another Blaugust finishes up, the staff here at the Leaflocker bid it a fond farewell. It hasn't been the most successful incarnation of our annual blogging festival by any measure, but as I said at the start of the month, there were a number of reasons why this August was unlikely to be a great blogging month, so I don't feel like I've let myself down given the hand that I was dealt this time around.

As I write, I am surrounded by overstuffed cardboard boxes and plastic bags, as we're halfway through moving our accumulated junk from our home of three years into a student flat for the next little while. The coming two days will likely be spent scrubbing the old place to try and remove the thin layer of grime that has formed there due to our long-maintained lackadaisical cleaning routine, but I'm not sure I'm really looking forward to living somewhere where someone else empties the bins again.

I might not have hit my goal of regular posting throughout the month or of in-depth engagement with many other bloggers that I'd hoped for, but all in all I'm pleased with what I was able to produce, the connections that I've forged and the discussions that I've been part of over the month, and for once at the completion of the month I feel able to continue posting two or three times a week: a feeling which, if justified, will undoubtedly make this one of my most successful Blaugusts after all.

I might not have gotten very good at this blogging thing, but much like the New York Times Crossword, I'm keen to keep giving it the old college try until I finally work out what I'm doing. I hope that along the way I can help to give you something interesting to think about now and then if you'll do me the favour of sticking around for a while.

Talk to you next time,
Owl.

Now You Turn Corners

Hello friends, grab yourselves a cup of something delicious, and let's sit down together to do the crossword, shall we? 

Today's NYT was a bit of a challenge and I got a little bit stuck in the middle, but once I finally worked out what was going on everything fell into place.

I Only Know Catch-22

What better way to climb up onto the blogging bandwagon than with yet another crossword video. If you enjoy writhing in pain as other people fail miserably to do the crossword, then you're going to love the next fifty minutes. If that doesn't describe you, I hope that this little effort will get the creative juices flowing again and that this little post will have some new friends soon.

This video contains eventual spoilers for the Friday 17th August NYT Crossword.

Friday and my Mind

Post 10 of ? for Blaugust 2018.
Well, that happened. In my slightly feverish state yesterday I completely forgot to press the 'Publish' button so this one's coming to you late.

It's Friday again, and around here apparently Friday means recording myself attempting to finish the New York Times Crossword, so if that's your jam, grab yourself a cup of tea and have a good time laughing at my flailing. Obviously this contains spoilers for the Thursday crossword.

PS. ICE-T. I get it, I get it. In my head, Tracey is a girl's name.

Friday? Thursday!

Post 3 of ? for Blaugust 2018.

My planning document, such as it is, says that Fridays are for puzzles. I'm pretty sure that at the time that I was writing it I somehow fostered fond ambitions of composing some kind of puzzle for today, but somewhat unsurprisingly, that hasn't happened.

Instead, I thought it might be fun to sit down and do the crossword live to video to fulfil my puzzle quotient for the week. It's not quite as interactive as I'd hoped, but hey, at least it's a proof of concept that OBS is more or less functioning on my laptop again, which is good news for future video plans, at least.

For me, crosswords are normally a social thing. I take pleasure out of sitting down with a cup of tea and a cryptic, but I'd prefer to be surrounded by people and spend my time shouting clues across the room. It's a great way to watch how people's minds work and where their thoughts go when you present them with ever-changing puzzles.

Crosswords always summon up the people that I've done them with over the years. The gang crowded around the big sticky table in the back corner of the Mayo Cafe, where every five-letter word had to be B-I-B-L-E, whether it fit or not. My little sister in a hot car on the way to a geocache to a backing track by Silverchair. My parents around the kitchen table, with our own individual copies and strict rules about not getting ahead of each other. Mrs. Owl's family in the lounge with the waft of roast beef in the air, where answers were very definitely put in with pencil so they can be changed over and over again. And more recently, my college family in the common room, with a limitless supply of Jaffa Cakes and a kettle constantly on the boil, some of whom have now left and who I doubt I'll ever get to face a blank grid with again.

I should warn you that this is just me doing a crossword with somewhat grainy video quality and awful audio (I recommend putting some easy-listening music on in the background if you're going to watch, to cover the underwater noises). Nothing fancy, nothing special, no big pay-off or punchline. But I had fun doing it, so I hope you enjoy cursing at my stupidity when I can't see the answers that are right in front of me. 

I should also warn you that in this video I (almost) solve the New York Times Crossword for Thursday 2nd August. If you'd prefer to do it yourself instead, you should probably do that. You can take out a subscription at https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords.

PS. Don't get too distracted by Blauging this month to pay attention to the people you love. Spend some time with good folks talking about things that matter sometimes too!

Crossword Time: More Anagrams

Enthusiastic and inspired by your successful navigation of that first anagram, you go searching the grid for others, but identifying an anagram indicator, it turns out, is not as easy as you might think. Thankfully, the setter is hovering over your shoulder and points out two more anagram clues, just to stop you having to think too much. This is supposed to be fun, after all. First up, the erstwhile setter points to 15 down...



Flourished to rivet HD tuner (7)

I'll admit it, it's an ugly clue, because the surface meaning if just a bit too much of a stretch. If I wanted to grammatically correct, it would probably be more like "Flourished to rivet a HD tuner" or something (still ugly, but better), so the odd sounding sentence structure is your first clue that something fishy is going on. Combine this with the fact that 'rivet HD' has 7 letters and 'tuner' has some vibes of static and change associated with it, and you can be pretty confident that here you have another 7 letter anagram that means 'flourished', and you can understand why I've let my prized grammatical correctness slip for a little while.

Also on our little list of anagram clues is 6 down:

Philosopher is all about tea hour (7)

Tea time, yes, tea break, even, but tea hour? No-one takes a whole hour to drink a cuppa. Again "all about" is looking an awful lot like an anagram indicator, so we're on the lookout with a philosopher who shares his letters with 'teahour'. This is not to say that anagrams are always able to be found by looking for gramatical weridness, but it certainly gives us a nudge in the right direction.

In this case, the philosopher in question is Mr. THOREAU, whose theories have THRIVED greatly since his death. Not being a philosopher myself, I can't say I've read any of Mr. Thoreau's work, but if the letters fit the letters fit, and I couldn't really resist chucking him in, philosophers are classy and erudite, after all.

Crossword Time: Anagrams

For the benefit of Mr. 5000, there will be a show tonight on crossword theory. Though the gentleman (and others) insist that they understand how the game works, I like messing about with crosswords and pretending that I know more that people about things, so it's time for a lecture on cryptics.

Returning to our grid from last week, let's start with the basic explanation that I'm sure none of you need. A cryptic crossword clue is a little puzzle, and each little puzzle fits with the others to form the grid. Each puzzle is one of only a few different types of puzzle, the idea behing each is easily learned even by mere humans like you and me, and once we work out what kind of puzzle it is, the answer is just a short jump away. In (almost) all these types of puzzles, the clue has two parts, a 'straight' section that is the word's definition just as in a regular crossword, and a wordplay section where things get a little bit crazy. The best way to understand this is to jump right in, so what are you waiting for?



First up is 20 down, the clue that Alethea says that she's solved (and indeed those of us familiar with her formidable intellect and puzzling bent have no reason to doubt her). Which reads:

"Resets Doom's infamous city... (5)"

Being the computer game fan that you are, you naturally are aware that Doom takes place on the moons of Mars rather than in any particular city, infamous or not, so instantly your spider-demon senses are tingling. This crossword can't possibly be asking for a city that's not named, so what is it asking for? Which part of this clue is the 'straight' part, and which is the wordplay? This clue is looking for a synonym of 'resets', or for a city that may or not be infamous (we know that the 'straight' part of this clue has to be at the beginning or end, because them's the rules, and no self-respecting cruciverbalist would break the rules, right?), though it's hard to say which.

But...the word 'resets' is enough to have any cryptic crossword fan swinging from building to building, as it is an anagram indicator, a word which transmits enough muddling, transforming morphic energy to power a teleport gate to hell itself. After all, at wouldn't be fair of the setter to just throw in a clue like:

Dog deity (3)

...and expect you to realise that you need to shuffle some letters around, so we drop little hints that someone needs to re-deal the letters. A more reasonable clue for the same might be:

Rabid dog deity (3)

...where 'rabid', with its connotations of madness and befuddlement, is the anagram indicator which, when applied to a canine, leads us naturally to a devine conclusion. In the same vein, 'resets' is an anagram indicator, probably re-setting the letters of "Doom's" to give us an infamous city. There are plenty of different words that could be anagram indicators, shaken, stirred, fried... anything that gives a feeling of disorder, but since "Doom's" has 5 letters and so does the infamous city we're looking for, we're beginning to see the light at the end of this particularly mad little tunnel.

A quick dip into the back-end of Genesis (actually it disappears in chapter 18, but why let biblical accuracy ruin a terrible pun?), reveals SODOM, a city that along with her sister Gomorrah, according to Biblical tradition, pretty much set the mould for infamy (and happens to share the same letter as the pluralised form of a popular first-person shooter).

Whoolah! We've done it, cracked the first part of the puzzle and all it took was a little re-arranging of some letters and a bit of general knowledge. Inspired by our early success, we knuckle down again, looking for some more of those tell-tale anagram indicators...but which clue do we tackle next?

Come Back Again

This is, without a doubt, the best crossword I've ever written, which isn't really saying much, but there you go. It contains some dud entries, but for the most part writing it made me happy, and left me with plenty of ideas for next time, too.



As faithful readers of my uneventful blog you guys can be its first victims/beta testers, before I decide whether or not to submit it to a local magazine or something, just for the fun of collecting rejection slips. If you'd like an across lite version of the puzzle, drop me an email.

The idea came to me last night and before the sun rose it was complete. Have fun, and don't be worried if you can't get anywhere, it's pretty tricksy, if I say so myself.