Winter Plantings

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A game of beer pong. Lauren Lancaster for The New York Times

THURSDAY PUZZLE — I finished Matt Ginsberg’s puzzle and had an unusual reaction to it: I thought I was losing my mind. Or that maybe there was some meta puzzle in here that I just wasn’t seeing. Because isn’t PESACH in the spring? Well, we’re not going to hold that against anybody; Happy Passover, everyone! Pass the matzo down this way, please.

I admired the visual aspect of the PARTING of the RED SEA in the center of the grid, which gives us a neat dividing line between MOSES and the ISRAELI who is apparently benefiting from said PARTING and PHARAOH in EGYPT. Since we’re celebrating early, it’s worth noting that the way Mr. Ginsberg reads the Old Testament, MOSES and his fellow Israelites celebrated by playing BEER PONG and PHARAOH gets his by coming down with a bad case of PTOMAINE poisoning. I had trouble finding backup for that in my copy of the Old Testament but, again, I’m not going to hold that against him. We’re all about artistic license here at Wordplay.

A theme like this needs careful grid design, and it tends to constrain the constructor when it comes to fill. That would explain some of the hairier stuff, like the bone prefix OSTE, the partial A MAN and awkward words like INAPT. But I did like SKI POLES (and the very clever clue “Winter plantings?”), OBI WAN, HEDONIST, ODD ONE, BEER PONG and PTOMAINE (some people feel that negative words like those that have to do with diseases shouldn’t be in crosswords, but I liked this one for the Scrabbly beginning).

I’m wondering if this puzzle was meant for spring publication, given the very devious clue “Belated observation of 4/14/12″ for BERG. That would be 1912, by the way, and the observation was the iceberg that took down the Titanic.

Let’s hear from our constructor:

Constructor’s Notes:

This is a relatively straightforward puzzle, but it reminds me how curious the whole process from construction to publication is. So, for example, this puzzle took 132 days from the time I submitted until it appeared, which seemed fast. Best ever for me is an incredibly quick 27 days; longest is 1,377 days — just over 3 3/4 years! I have no idea why some puzzles go quickly and others don’t; it just seems to be part of the process.

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Place For High Living

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Mount Cook on South Island, New Zealand. Fotopress/Jeremy Walker

WEDNESDAY PUZZLE – I don’t believe I have ever come right out and said that a theme was complete and utter gibberish, but today I get to do just that.

And believe it or not, today’s constructor, Gareth Bain, will probably applaud me for using the word gibberish. Because he put gibberish in his grid. To be completely accurate, they are songs whose names sound like gibberish [Stop saying gibberish. Gah, now we're saying it! --Ed.] The six songs are DO WAH DIDDY DIDDY, OBLA DI OBLA DA (making its debut as a complete song title, as opposed to a fill-in-the-blank clue), IKO IKO, SHBOOM, MMMMMMMMMMMM, and DOO DOO DOO DOO DOO.

The grid design means that we have a plethora of three-letter words, but I couldn’t hear myself grumbling over the sound of all that singing (what, your puzzle didn’t set off all the songs at once?) In fact, it’s so noisy in here right now that I’m going to hand it over to Will Shortz and Dr. Bain, except to say that I really enjoyed this one and that my Clue of the Day was “Small wonder?” for ATOM. Oh, and don’t think I didn’t notice that “Ginger” reference to the entry RED HAIR, Dr. Bain.

Will Shortz’s Notes:

How Gareth Bain, a South African, understands American crosswords — and culture — so well, I will never understand. This is his 12th puzzle published in The Times, with more in the pipeline.

Constructor’s Notes:

All crossword constructors are in it for the records right? I’m hoping this goes down as “earwormiest New York Times crossword.” It was conceived while watching a local advert for I think Standard Bank that uses SHBOOM as its theme. Like every good (and not so good) constructor, I rushed to see if that answer had been used. As far as I could tell it hadn’t. My next thought was that a whole puzzle of sound-effect songs could create a pleasing effect. It’s a lot simpler and “listier” than most New York Times puzzles, but I think it works. I regret this puzzle’s density, especially as, only the week before making it, I vowed never again to force too much theme into a puzzle! It was a bear to fill, especially all those accursed M’s! The result, inevitably, is a puzzle that has little to offer if you don’t enjoy the theme.

Last, I’m hoping to coerce Deb into putting a bonus South African theme answer on her blog…[Spoiler warning!]

You’ve got it, Dr. Bain. Here’s the South African band Freshly Ground singing [Spoiler alert]:

Your thoughts?

Stand-Up Routine

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Vicunas run in Pampa Galeras National Reserve in the Andean highlands of Ayacucho. Farmers round up the protected wild animals, a delicate relative of llamas and alpacas, to shear their highly prized wool. Pilar Olivares/Reuters

Administrivial Chance To Back Something Great Alert! Our friend Patrick Merrell — artist, author, former Wordplay blogger and general man-about-town — has launched a Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund his newest venture, a puzzle adventure story book called “Zep in the Curse of the Evil Dr. Sumac Who Lives Next Door”! This would make a great gift for young puzzlers, but, as Mr. Merrell says, it’s “An amusing book for young and old alike. It’s a kid’s book, but with a very sophisticated, multi-step puzzle hidden within its pages.” Let’s see what we can do to make this a reality. Click here for more information about the book and rewards for contributing to Patrick’s campaign.

TUESDAY PUZZLE – I do so love a story that’s fair and balanced.

When I was solving Joel Fagliano’s puzzle about reviews, I bounced around randomly and tended to land on the theme entries that were “negative reviews,” so at first I thought his puzzle was going to be a bit of a downer, themewise. Fortunately, I finally happened upon the “positive reviews” and a sense of balance was restored. Whew.

Will Shortz apparently got some feedback from his test solvers that this was hard for a Tuesday, but I didn’t think it was that bad. Maybe it’s a wheelhouse thing. I got a kick out of the theme, which consists of two-word phrases punnily clued as critical reviews. They’re all very clever, although I’m not sure that BIG STINKS worked that well for me. I’ve heard of people making a BIG STINK, but have this feeling that the plural is not in-the-language. On the other hand, LOVE BITES, MOON ROCKS and TIME SUCKS are all great, lively entries.

In nontheme news, I really liked the entries GROUP HUGS, IPHONES, PRITHEE, SNIVEL and the NOPE/YES crossing. I was also psyched to see OTTO, my alma mater’s mascot, in the puzzle. That could have been clued a number of ways, but it’s always a kick to see the Orangemen in the puzzle

Clue of the Day for me was “Small matter?” for ATOM, followed by “Stand-up routine?” for THE WAVE.

Will Shortz’s Notes:

Is this puzzle a little hard for a Tuesday? The test solvers thought so. But once you catch onto the clever theme, it goes faster. The clues are almost all Joel’s. He’s become a first-class clue-writer — precise, colorful, imaginative, sly on occasion, and modern without overdoing it. A real pleasure.

What is a crossword blog for, if not to help with solving, establish a community for like-minded puzzlers and provide a sense of fun? After all, this is a game, right? GROUP HUGS, everybody!

Your thoughts?

Numberplay

Daniel Finkel’s Circle-Toss Game

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Students at an elementary school in Amherst, N.Y. Derek Gee/The Buffalo News, via Associated Press
Numberplay Logo: NUM + BER = PLAY

Our puzzle this week was suggested by Daniel Finkel, a regular Numberplay contributor who also runs, along with Katherine Cook, Math for Love — the Seattle-based team committed to revitalizing math education. Let’s check out —

The Circle-Toss Game

Two parents met each other in the street after a birthday party the weekend before:

Ava: All the kids had so much fun at little Bart Jr.’s birthday party last weekend. How many kids showed up?

Bart: We always invite the neighborhood, so I never got a good count. Somewhere between 25 and 50, I’d say.

Ava: What was that fun game all the kids played with the ball?

Bart: Oh, Bart Jr. thought of that. Everyone stands in a circle, and he throws the ball one person to the left. Then that person throws the ball two spots to the left, and that person throws the ball three spots to the left, and you just keep going on like that forever. He likes it because he realized that if he starts with the ball, it always comes back to him eventually. Usually it doesn’t hit everyone though.

Ava: That’s strange. All the kids were in the circle at the party, and all of them touched the ball before it got back to Bart Jr.

How many kids were at the party?

I asked Dr. Finkel how he came up with the game and about its general solution. Here’s his response:

I was thinking of a name game to play with kids, and I just sort of wondered what would happen if the number went up each time. You can actually change the numbers to between 10 and 30 (or 10 and 20), and you have a much easier problem; each variation of the problem has only one solution, it turns out.

The only problem is that it’s basically a trial and error problem. On the other hand, there are ways to make your guesses smarter, but it would take an inspired insight to see your way to the right answer without mucking around for a while. The answer to the general question of “for which n when will all n kids touch the ball” is pretty cool and surprising, though also not exactly trivial to prove.

Thank you, Dr. Finkel! That’s it for this week’s puzzle. As always, once you’re able to read comments for this post, use Gary Hewitt’s Enhancer to correctly view formulas and graphics. And send your favorite puzzles to gary.antonick@NYTimes.com.

Solution

Check reader comments on Friday for the solution and commentary by Dan Finkel.

Like One-Word Answers

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Willie Mays in 1967 with the San Francisco Giants. The New York Times

MONDAY PUZZLE — Janet R. Bender has been contributing puzzles to The New York Times since 1992, and if you look at her track record, she seems to have a real thing for themes where the beginning letters of multiple-word phrases are the same.

Today, for example, we have a theme where the two-word phrases all start with CO. I thought that sounded familiar, so I looked it up, and it turns out that Ms. Bender did a similar puzzle in 2010 (same theme, different entries). That can happen, especially if the puzzles are made by two different constructors. But after reviewing her puzzle history, it seems as though this is merely an efficient way for this constructor to crank out puzzles.

I don’t say this to be mean, but what other conclusions can one draw when so many of her themes are the same? I just wish that there had been some sort of reveal in today’s puzzle to make it sparkle a little more, perhaps tying in designer Coco Chanel, because I frankly expect more of New York Times constructors.

If we just look at this puzzle on its own merit, however, it’s not at all a bad crossword. I’m not entirely sure I get how DEBAR is “Prevent,” except perhaps in legal terms. Did I miss that? And I had to work out YOICKS, which I believe might be from the cartoon “Scooby Doo.” But it had DON’T ASK, OH YEAH and COLOR COPYING, which are nice. Hands up if you Kipled a bit when you wrote in the answer to 6 Down, our friend, the “one-L” LAMA.

And the Clue of the Day for me was the clever “Did sum work?” which is not misspelled; the answer is ADDED.

Will Shortz’s Notes:

Janet Bender, of Somerset, Pa., is one of the old guard of crossword constructors, starting at the Times during the end of the Maleska era (1992), and, if memory serves, appearing in Games magazine before that. I assume she constructs without computer assistance, because her submissions come with hand-printed grids. Until relatively recently, our correspondence was done entirely by U.S. mail; I don’t think she had an email address. Her puzzles have a quiet, unflashy solidness that’s comforting, especially on a Monday.

Let’s move on to the Tuesday puzzle with this brief bio of the fashion legend Coco Chanel:

Your thoughts?

BP Station

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An interior room in the Cloisters in Upper Manhattan. Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times
The Crossword
Sunday Puzzle »

By Brendan Emmett Quigley

Nov 2, 2014

Play

The New York Times Crossword is available through subscription only.

SUNDAY PUZZLE – You know what I like? I like a nice, relatively easy puzzle with a nice, relatively easy theme after a puzzle like yesterday’s Trip Payne tour de force. No math symbols. No tricks. No rebuses. Like today’s puzzle: a nice, well put-together letter-swap theme. And by Brendan Emmett Quigley, yet. That means lots of good pop culture. Just what the doctor ordered.

If you didn’t get it from the title, we’re taking out the Bs and substituting Ps for them, giving us soundalike phrases that are clued punnily. That means that when you take the base phrase “black art” and swap out the B for a P, you get PLAQUE ART, or “Engraving on an award.” Ah, I can feel my brain unclenching as I solve.

Of the theme entries, I really liked SECRET PALATE (instead of “secret ballot”), PLAQUE ART, THAT’S MY POI (instead of “That’s my boy”) and PLAYS OF GLORY (instead of “blaze of glory”).

In nontheme news, I liked TINY TOT, GIRL SHY, C.W. POST (complete with a nice factoid clue: “Breakfast cereal pioneer”), RED TEA (mmm, rooibos), AIRPOP, I CAN’T SEE, GEEZ and ACES UP.

With a Brendan Emmett Quigley puzzle, it’s tough to choose a Clue of the Day, but I’m going to go with “End of a shift?” for HEMLINE.

Constructor’s Notes

I keep a Google Keep list of ideas of puzzles I’d like to develop into puzzles. These ideas come at all sorts of times, out with my three-year old Tabitha, or shopping, or both. Sometimes they’re practically fully formed themes: here’s the gimmick, here’s most of the answers, boom. Othertimes, they’re a couple of seed entries for a themeless puzzle. And then there’s the one’s I like to call “theme answers in search of theme.” These are random turns of phrases that made me laugh for whatever reason but they’re not apparently obvious what to do with them. Today’s offering stemmed from that. A while back I’d written a note that read THE POISE ARE BACK IN TOWN.

I’ve heard the song “Bali Hai” way too many times (long story involving a school play and unexpected theater tickets) to post it here, so I’m going to go with this King Crimson song to end our solving week:

Your thoughts?

Variety: An Acrostic Discovery

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The New York Times Crossword
Variety »

Acrostic by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon

November 2, 2014

The Crossword is available through subscription only.

VARIETY PUZZLE — I don’t know about you, but I solved this more inside the grid than in the clues.

My toehold came late in the puzzle, after my gimmes: I dropped in SATURN, AWAKEN, BREAK DANCE (don’t judge me), LIBRA, SHOFAR and DUSTER. You’d think that that would have been enough to really get me going, yet I struggled with this one. I was unfamiliar with DIAPASON, and felt mad at myself that I didn’t just make an educated guess that an “aurifex” was a GOLDSMITH.

Ultimately, what dazzled me was the quote, and the idea that we, who are now so beholden to time and schedules, were once such non-standardized observers of time.

Let’s move on with a wonderful sonnet from our constructors:

Constructors’s Notes

Galileo

He came from Pisa where the tower listed.

Improved the telescope, surveyed the skies.
Expounded that the Milky Way consisted
Of distant stars and not, as thought the wise
Of his time, gas. He saw spots on the sun.

He found four moons of Jupiter and knew

Copernicus was right: Earth was the one
That circled round, Sol was the central screw.
For that view, Galileo brought the ire
Of Inquisition down upon his head.
He knelt to save his poor flesh from the fire,
Recanted, groveled — but in rising said,
Aside in sotto voce, as behooves
A heretic at risk, “And yet it moves.”

Your thoughts?

Times Insider

For Everything There Is a Season

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Thanksgiving is the first phase of the winter holidays. Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

TIMES INSIDER – November is a busy month. Nature prepares for its winter rest, going to sleep after one last blaze of glory. Elections are held, so we can start the new year with a fresh slate of public officials. It feels like we cook all month long for our Thanksgiving feasts. There’s the unbelievable amount of gift shopping to be done. And before you know it, the month is over and we are lighting candles and untangling strings of light bulbs in preparation for the winter holidays.

All of that might not leave much time for crossword puzzles, but surely you will need some downtime from your holiday hubbub. Grab a writing implement and a beverage of your choice and let’s get solving.

Roughly seven and a half score ago, President Lincoln delivered a very important speech that he felt would not stand the test of time. How interesting, then, that it has not only endured to be taught in history classes, but has also been commemorated in a New York Times crossword puzzle. On the 150th anniversary of that speech last year, Will Shortz ran David J. Kahn’s tribute to Lincoln’s address, which was discussed here.

Our next puzzle has to do with the difference between the language of political campaigning, which is lofty and full of hope and the language of actually holding office. This quote puzzle by Barry Boone from Nov. 3, 2009, highlights a quote on this subject from a former New York governor.

Bring your appetite to this next puzzle by Jules P. Markey from Nov. 27, 2013. Some say that the meal it highlights is the biggest of the year, but this puzzle is quite digestible.

One of my favorite rituals of the season is watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on television as my family has breakfast together. It’s said that the Christmas season has started in New York City after Santa Claus pulls up in front of Macy’s in his sleigh, but for me, the real start is the occasion highlighted — literally — in this puzzle by Jeremy Newton from Nov. 28, 2010.

Your thoughts?

Not at All Creaky

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A yacare caiman floating in Brazil's Pantanal. Seth Kugel for The New York Times
The Crossword
Saturday Puzzle »

By Trip Payne

Nov 1, 2014

Play

The New York Times Crossword is available through subscription only.

SATURDAY PUZZLE – It was the mathematical symbols that got me. They got me good.

There is a notepad in today’s puzzle that says “With daylight saving time ending tonight, you have an extra hour to work on this extra-hard, oversize puzzle.” Thank goodness.

If I had to describe this puzzle to someone — wait, I do — I would probably say that this was an easy puzzle except, of course, for the parts that were very, very hard. That would be the theme entries, mostly. Hands up if you, like me, stared at this one for a long time before you got it. And the devious cluing. That was tough (but fun), too.

Trip Payne is back, and he offers us quite a bit of bang for our buck: a 17 x 17 Saturday puzzle that is ramped up in difficulty level to “insane.” This puzzle was meant to be the dreaded Puzzle #5 in the 2014 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, and I can tell you that I have seen grown people walk out of the Marriott ballroom after Puzzle #5 dazed and confused. This is the puzzle that shakes out the pretenders to the top cruciverbal throne and leaves the serious contenders. Will Shortz explains more about the puzzle in his notes below.

If you’re still wondering what just happened to you, allow me to explain: You can’t overthink this one. When I see math symbols, my brain endures SAT flashbacks and then shuts down. That, in a nutshell, is why I don’t write Numberplay. But in today’s puzzle, you don’t have to do any actual math. What you have to do is take the clues literally.

It helps to solve a good portion of the nontheme part of the puzzle before you attempt to tackle the theme, which also happens to make completing the grid quite a bear. You’re going to be going back and forth quite a bit, so make yourself comfortable. Pour yourself a nice beverage. We’ll go through the theme one entry at a time.

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A SIGN OF THE TIMES Contest Report and List of Winners

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SPECIAL POST – In introducing this crossword contest by Patrick Blindauer two weeks ago, I said I’d be “astonished” if anyone figured out the answer to the meta-challenge before the Saturday puzzle was published.

Well, color my face a deep red. Not only did about two dozen readers do so, one person, Craig Harman, solved it after just two puzzles!

First, as he explained, he noted the time theme connecting the Monday and Tuesday puzzles with the contest title. He also noted the prominently placed X’s, in numbered squares, near the top of the grids (one on Monday, two on Tuesday). The fact that “X” could stand for “times” was suggestive.

Converting the numbers of the “X” squares to their alphanumerical equivalents gave him T-E-M, which itself suggested that a final, time-related answer might be TEMPUS FUGIT, or “Time flies” (as Deb Amlen explained on Monday). Voilà!

Altogether, by the contest deadline on Sunday evening, about 3,500 readers had submitted answers, of which about 88% were correct.

The names of the 20 winners, chosen at random, appear below. Each will receive a one-year subscription to the online New York Times crossword (or a year’s extension of their current subscription). We’re also extending Craig Harman’s subscription by a year for his mind-bogglingly fast solution.

In case you’re interested, here are some of the incorrect answers received:

100 [the most common wrong answer]
THE SPOT
TIME FLIES
STAR-CROSSED
101 DALMATIANS
A TEN O’CLOCK SCHOLAR
A SUNDIAL
TIMEX WATCHES
CINDERELLA
KING KONG CLIMBING THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING
TIME IS UP

Also, we heartily applaud the following answers, which, while incorrect, display amazing if sometimes convoluted ingenuity:

• I believe the answer is “3110,” the European way of writing October 31st. I derived it by taking all the earlier grids, in order, and finding what letter each of the “x’s” on those grids corresponded to in the Saturday puzzle. I ended up with a string that read XMAMLAMLXX. Using the clue of “alphanumerics,” and assuming that the “A” meant “and,” as in addition, I added together XM+ML+MLXX, as Roman numerals, which yielded 990+1050+1070 = 3110.

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