The theme's nothing special, really, but the fill is fantastic. Yes, I enjoyed that crossword, but I loved Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy puzzle. I never knew who Chicago's Petrillo Bandshell (site of the Chicago Blues Festival) was named after, but it's "1940s-1950s American Federation of Musicians president James" PETRILLO. I enjoyed the LA Times -ILLO puzzle (by Rich Norris's alter ego "Lila Cherry"). POP ART, NIKITA, PARODY, HUBBA, PEZ, SPIKED-plenty of P's popping up peppily in Pat's puzzle. (Don't gloat, Ellen-I'll check the crossings at Stamford.) Anyway, I did like Pat's double-bird theme, but I liked the overall fill even better. Great fill (OFF DAYS, TORA BORA, FARM TEAMS, MUG SHOT, QUEEN BEE) and clues ("cause of some head-scratching" = LICE, "Arresting image?" = MUG SHOT), as we expect when we see Lynn's byline.ĭrat! I could've shaved off about 20 seconds from Patrick Merrell's NYT if I'd actually checked the Across clue and entered I WON instead of I WIN. Nice to see expressionist painter EMIL Nolde (click this link to see some of his work). This puzzle also made me sneeze within a minute of filling in ACHOO. It didn't help matters that one of the theme entries played on a term I wasn't familiar with: RIGHT BOWER is, apparently, the jack of the trump suit in euchre. The theme doesn't take up that many squares, but there's some great fill criss-crossing the grid-such as BBQ SAUCE, FAT ALBERT, and CRAFT FAIR (I like finely crafted objects made of glass or wood, but most of the stuff I've seen at those fairs makes me call them "crap fairs").Įarly-week favorite Lynn Lempel has put out another good puzzle in the Sun ("You Can Say That Again!"), but it didn't feel very early-weekish to me. In Kelsey Blakley's "Double Back" puzzle in the Sun, three two-word theme entries have an extra letter plunked down after each word e.g., "mach speed" becomes MACHO SPEEDO. Three 6 Mafia, who won an Oscar for the pimp-themed song they performed on the Academy Awards telecast, helped pioneer crunk. (Was that the theme's seed?)īen Tausig's Chicago Reader puzzle this week just might be the first to include CRUNK, "stoned and inebriated, slangily." The word appears to combine the "c" from "chronic" with the "runk" from "drunk." Crunk isn't just a slang word, though-it's also a genre of Dirty South rap. But your theme was so much fun-academic degrees as initials-I had to forgive you. And then the puzzle turned out to be mighty easy for a midweek puzzle, which should also be disappointing. Damn you, Trip Payne! I was all set to be disappointed that your skills were being frittered away on a Wednesday puzzle instead of used to craft a challenging themeless puzzle later in the week.
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