The Friday Sun

SPOILER WARNING: Don't read any further until you've done today's New York Sun Crossword Puzzle. New York Sun puzzles are every bit as good as the more well-known New York Times, and they're indisputably better in one way -- they're free. You can download this puzzle and join in on the fun here.

Letterbox Version by Francis Heaney.

I was all set to dislike this puzzle as soon as I saw the constructor’s name. I have a beef with Francis Heaney. It’s nothing personal, I’ve hardly met him and he seems like a nice guy. But he turned my wife off crossword puzzles, maybe forever.

My wife is one of the many people I know who would like crossword puzzles but all they know is the crappy ones in our local paper. I don’t know where they get these puzzles, but they’re Maleskaesque exercises in obscurity – no themes, no wit, no fun. My wife constantly beats me at Scrabble and Upwords, and she’s a great punster. I know she’d like Times and Sun-style crosswords but she’s reluctant to give them a try because she thinks they’re like the ones she’s already seen.

So, anyway, she accompanied me to the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Stamford a month or so ago. She wasn’t participating in the tournament, just going for a weekend getaway with the man of her dreams – me, of course. Once there, I found out that there was going to be an extra crossword event hosted by Francis Heaney and it was going to be filmed for a Discovery Channel special on words. I talked her into doing this one because it was not part of the competition and it sounded like fun.
It turned out the puzzle was about archaic words and about new words that no one has heard of – and oh man, was it tough. (You can try it for yourself here.) It was the only puzzle that weekend that I did not finish in the allotted time. I don’t know how my beloved did on it since she wouldn’t show it to me and didn’t want to talk about it either.

Now, I know this is my fault. I should have done my homework and known what we were stepping in. But I’d rather blame Heaney. And as I said I was ready to. I was going to pounce on the weakest clue in there and say it made me feel igry, which was one of the neologisms in that puzzle; it means 'painfully embarrassed for or uncomfortable about someone else's incredibly poor social behavior.'

But I can't do it. This is a great puzzle. Tough but great.

The theme is spelled out in 1A and 66A: all-inclusive (FROM ATOZ) Heaney has managed to get all 26 letters of the alphabet into eleven boxes by putting two or three together in one square. You'll have to put up with my penmanship again because this doesn't really look as impressive in Across Lite:
I got off to a good start on this one by knowing 17A: "V for Vendetta" collaborator (ALANMOORE). No matter how strict your definition of genius is, Alan Moore qualifies, and he has done most of his work in the comic book field. Sometimes I feel like all the great stories have all been written, and then I read Alan Moore and it feels like we've barely scratched the surface, there are untold billions of stories waiting to be told. A lot of Alan Moore's works have been turned into movies -- V for Vendetta, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, From Hell -- but none of them did his work justice. (In fact, he took his name off all of them and wouldn't accept his share of the money.) Most people think his masterpiece is Watchmen, but I like Prometheus and Swamp Thing better. And he did the absolute hands-down greatest Superman story ever.

Anyway, I was able to get 11D: '90s cohost of "CBS This Morning" (ZAHN) off the first A in Alan and I was off to the races. Even though I don't know Zoroastrianism from Zen Buddhism, I was able to get 11A: Ancient Persian religious teacher (ZOROASTER). One of Zoroaster's other names was Zarathustra and "Also Sprach Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss was used in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" and as Elvis Presley's intro. There usually isn't more than two or three degrees of separation between man's highest aspirations and pop culture.

With the T in Zoroaster and an O from Alan Moore, I was pretty sure 12D: Where you might see a "Don't even think of parking here" sign was "Towaway zone", but of course it didn't fit. 30D was Superhero comic featuring Emma Frost and Cyclops and I knew they're X-Men, but Marvel publishes a lot of different X-Men comics -- "Uncanny X-Men" "Astonishing X-Men" "Ultimate X-Men" "X-Treme X-Men" and on and on. None of them fit either.

So I bounced around the board a bit, learned a little something about religious symbols: 45A: Religious symbol consisting of two combined letters (CHIRHO) (The two combined letters by the way are the first two letters in the Greek spelling of the word Christ and are meant to look like a cross.) I learned a little something about dairy products: 55A: Cheeses made from ewes milk (PECORINAS) (Pecora, by the way, is Italian for sheep) and about music 29A: He produced Bonnie Raitt's "Nick of Time" (DONWAS) (Remember, that's Was (not Was).

Once you figured out what was going on in the center, it wasn't that hard to finish. Granted, some of the themed entries were tougher (34D: Letters on Roman coins (SPQR) 38D: Polynesian language (TUVALUAN) than others (37D: Author who has used the pseudonym Newt Scamander (JKROWLING) and the ever-popular 33D: Endangered ox of Sulawesi (ANOA)

Themeless Thursday 6-14

I'm sure he will lose a lot of sleep over this, maybe even hang himself with one of those hideous ties of his, but Francis Heaney is back on my bad side. He initially got on my S list at the ACPT when he turned my wife against crossword puzzles, perhaps forever, with that damned "Joy of Lex" puzzle. But he got back in my good graces with the very impressive "Letterbox Version" puzzle of May 3, 2007. But hoo boy, I'm really not happy with Francis and this Themeless Thursday puzzle right now.

And it's weird because I actually knew 1D: Sam Crawford hit the most of them (TRIPLES) which should have gotten me off to a good start, but then nothing else happened in the NW quadrant for so long, even after I had the rest of the puzzle solved, so I started doubting myself. I changed TRIPLES to DOUBLES, and of course having the wrong answer there didn't help me any. (And maybe it's just sour grapes, and at the risk of sounding pedantic, but I think this clue is poorly worded. Out of all the triples that have been hit since MLB started keeping records Sam Crawford has hit more of them than anybody else, but he didn't hit over 50 per cent of them like this clue makes it sound. I know, I know, the word "the" kinda clouds the issue here. Okay, I said it was sour grapes.)

I'll have more to say about Mr. Heaney right after the SPOILER WARNING: Don't read any further until you've done today's New York Sun Crossword Puzzle. New York Sun puzzles are every bit as fun and challenging as the more well-known New York Times and they're indisputably better in one way -- they're free. If you'd like to read about an unbiased head-to-head competition between the Sun and the Times check this out. Or if you'd rather decide for yourself you can download this puzzle and join in on the fun here.

So, because I knew that 1D was TRIPLES (or maybe DOUBLES) I didn't fall for the trap at 1A: Georgia's Capital. Whatever it was, I knew it wasn't ATLANTA. But knowing what it's not and having no idea what it actually is doesn't help you much. I didn't know 2D: Muslim woman's swimwear (BURQINI) and no wonder; when you do a Google Image search for something and only get 551 images -- and over 540 of them have nothing to do with swimwear or are pix of swimwear that would get you the death penalty in most Muslim countries, you're not dealing with a real bathing suit.

I didn't get 19A: OS interface (PQR) and I still don't. I didn't get 5D: It was added to a news agency's name in 1992 (ITAR) and I still don't. I've never heard of a SAPPER (24D: Plant-puncturing insect) before. And the fact that I had MCKAY at 28D: Iconic sportscaster instead of CARAY hurt me too. In fairness to the despicable Mr. Heaney, 15A: Defer payment, perhaps (RUN A TAB), 3D: Like something's that's going around (IN ORBIT) and 23A: Cons' foes (LIBS) are diabolical, but fair, clues that I should have gotten, but with all the wrong answers and insecurity and holes in my knowledge, I just didn't.

So I cheated. I looked up the country of Georgia and their form of currency (which is what I was sure was meant by "capital"), and confidently, albeit shamefacedly, wrote in THE LARI at One Across. That was wrong too -- how many traps can you set at One Across? Let's just say it took a lot more cheating before I got the NW section right.

And it's a shame because I enjoyed and did pretty well on the rest of the puzzle. In early-week puzzles when I have to play the alphabet game to get an answer I tend to mentally skip over the Scrabble letters, but later in the week I start with those letters, and that helped me to get 8A: "What About Bob?" director (FRANK OZ); 16A: Hit song from "Outlandos d'Amour" (ROXANNE); 36D: Split (VAMOOSED) and 12D: "I can say the Lord's Prayer in 10 seconds" speaker (KNIEVEL) (not Evel's main claim to fame) and (my favorite entry today) 37A: It's often followed by 99801 (JUNEAU AK) (because 99801 is the zip code for downtown Juneau, Alaska.)

I also liked:

14D: More seasoned (ZESTIER) 45A: Good name for a tech support worker (MEG)

38D: Mission of Hope? (USO tour)

33A: One using a pile driver (WRESTLER) I originally had HAMMERER.

48A: Brand of gumdrops (DOTS)

and the vaguely pornographic combo 21D: Gets aroused again (REAWAKENS) with 61A: X-rated (OBSCENE)

So until tomorrow (or later if the New York Sun doesn't fix the Friday puzzle, which right now is showing up as "not a puzzle file") I leave you with these words -- Francis Heaney can sit on it!

A coupla cool links

This coming Friday’s (May 4th) New York Sun crossword puzzle is by Francis Heaney and I’ll tell you right now it’s a tough nut to crack (a poser, as they like to say in crosswords) but really an elegant and unique piece of work (a oner, if you will). Anyway, I’ll have more to say about that on Friday, but in the meantime here is a link to Mr. Heaney’s blog, specifically yesterday’s entry wherein he categorizes all the different types of annoying pedestrians preventing you from getting to your destination.

Also, there are several sites that will e-mail you a word of the day. I’ve tried ‘em all and wordsmith.org is the best. This week’s theme is words about words, and the word of the day is haplography (hap-LOG-ruh-fee) noun Accidental omission of a letter or letter group that should be repeated in writing, for example, "mispell" for "misspell". What a cool word, I can't wait to use it in conversation.

Doubling up

The title of today's puzzle was a lot more help than yesterday's title. It's "Two Against One" and I figured that had to mean more than just Francis Heaney and Patrick Blindauer against me in the crossword ring.

First our SPOILER WARNING: Don't read any further until you've done today's New York Sun Crossword Puzzle. New York Sun puzzles are every bit as fun and challenging as the more well-known New York Times -- No, you know what, they're better. That's right, I said it, the New York Sun's puzzles are better than the New York Times's puzzles, and I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to be Peter Gordon and to keep putting out this superior product and have everybody just blog, blog, blogging and yak, yak, yakking about the Times, Times, Times. Look, if you don't have time for two great puzzles a day, do the better one, do the SUN -- (we now return you to your regularly scheduled spoiler warning) -- and they're indisputably better in one way -- they're free. If you'd like to read about an unbiased head-to-head competition between the Sun and the Times puzzles check this out. Or if you're ready to decide for yourself you can download this puzzle and join in on the fun here.

Like I said, I had an inkling of where this one might be going and the fact that the themed entries all say something like 1A: "With 1-Across. . . " or 72A: "With 72-Across. . . " Two-part answers are nothing new but if it's paired up with itself it must be a case of two letters sharing one box. I knew 4D: Author of "The Call of Cthulhu" could only be HP LOVECRAFT and I put an H and a P in that first box even before I got HOCUS POCUS at4A: With 4-Across, spelling phrase. JET SET at 9A: With 9-Across, frequent fliers was the next to fall, and after that I skipped down to 72A: With 72-Across, Toro product and confidently filled in POWER MOWER. BIG DIG at 1A: With 1-Across, Boston public works project (BIG DIG) took a little bit longer cuz I'm just not as informed about Beantown building boondoggles as I should be and because I was unfamiliar with BD WONG (1D: "M. Butterfly" Tony winner). But I got 27D: FedEx doesn't deliver to them (PO BOXES) and that helped me to get PUT OUT at 27A: With 27-Across, retire.
It also messed me up a little bit because by now I was sure all the themed entries had the doubled up letters in the first box of the answer and it actually occurred in the last box at 56A: With 56-Across, eat (BREAK BREAD) and in the middle at 48A: With 48-Across, rap (HIP HOP) but all in all I finished this in about the same amount of time I normally finish a Friday Sun puzzle, which I felt pretty good about, considering who I was going up against. (The fact that there are 5 entries with doubled up letters in the first box and 2 elsewhere does lose the puzzle a few elegance points.)

Other entries of interest:


57D: Knight costar on '70s TV. I figured they were probably talking about Ted Knight on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but man he had a lot of five-letter co-stars on that show. Besides MOORE herself, there was Ed ASNER, GAVIN MacLeod, BETTY WHITE, and of course ultra-ditzy Georgia ENGEL.

23A: Thou (G NOTE) Earlier in the week, the Sun thought it could always substitute the word "spot" for "note" in this slang terms for big bills, and ended up with something more lascivious than legal tender when they had C-SPOT for an answer. I'm glad they didn't do it with this one or I'd know for sure they were trying to corrupt America's morals.

Speaking of sexy stuff, I know it's an old-fashioned slang term, but AARP is not the first thing that I think of when I hear the phrase PUT OUT.


45A: Exercise done on a bench (ETUDE) That one stumped me for a while. I wasn't thinking of a piano bench.

In Genesis Chapter 29 Lia tricks Jacob into marrying her after he had slaved for seven years to marry her younger sister Rachel. I was kinda hoping LIA might show up in this puzzle to go with 67A: Scala of "Ride a Crooked Trail" (GIA) and 39D: Lunes, e.g. (DIA), but we had to settle for 22D: '80s rocker Ford (LITA)

That's all for today and for this week. Monday's a holiday, so there won't be a new crossword puzzle until Tuesday. We'll have new content this weekend so come on by unless all you care about is crosswords -- if that's the case, I'll see you Tuesday.

Wednesday, 6-27-07

SPOILER WARNING: Don't read any further until you've done today's New York Sun Crossword Puzzle. New York Sun puzzles are every bit as fun and challenging as the more well-known New York Times and they're indisputably better in one way -- they're free. If you'd like to read about an unbiased head-to-head competition between the Sun and the Times check this out. Or if you're ready to decide for yourself you can download this puzzle and join in on the fun here.

"On the Other Hand" is by Francis Heaney, he of the nauseating neckwear. In this puzzle's themed entries every time the right hand (represented by the letter R) pops up it is replaced by the left (represented by the letter L), so that at 18A: Pour on the drinks DON LIQUORS is the other hand version of Don Rickles. You see how it works? Yeah, you have to change the spelling in each entry to get it to work, but that takes away from the wit and the elegance not one whit as far as I'm concerned.

Tony Blair becomes TONY BRAILLE at 23A: What posh books for the blind are written in?

Big Leaguer goes from the baseball diamond to the crossword grid at 32A: Popular crossword constructor Merl? BIG REAGLE. Is Merl Reagle enough of a household name that he can stand with Tony Blair and Don Rickles and be universally recognized? By casual crossword solvers?

The first three themed entries as you can see are about famous people. The next three are not, which takes away from the elegance just a whit perhaps.

41A: When babies are brought to the stadium? (RATTLE DAY)

49A: Blow a hole in the hull (CRIPPLE SHIP)

59A: Resting place for a woodsman? LUMBER SEAT. A rumble seat, for those who may not know, was a feature of automobiles many years ago, an uncovered, fold-out seat in the rear of the car. It was also known as a mother-in-law seat, presumably because you could neither see nor hear the person sitting there.

Other entries of interest:


48D: Breathtaking part of a sentence? (COMMA.) Should probably be "breath-taking" with a hyphen, but I won't quibble.

62A: Places to find jack in a box? (ATMS)
45A: It has jets that cause turbulence (SPA) Clever ways to clue a couple of crossword perennials.

56A: Deadly sin that doesn't require much effort (SLOTH) Good point. I wonder why it's not more popular than lust or gluttony that really do require much more effort on the part of a would-be sinner.

5A: Scrabble players' "hands" (RACKS). In Scrabble your rack is the seven letter tiles you have to work with. When I play with my wife I always compliment her on her nice rack, cuz I'm not only corny I'm also consistent. Speaking of Scrabble, if you didn't see the Boston Globe article on one of my favorite constructors Brendan Emmett Quigley, check it out here and learn why he hates the game.

1D: Brad's beloved in "Rocky Horror" (JANET) Might be too trivial for all but the staunchest of Rocky Horror aficionados if the song "Dammit, Janet!" wasn't so catchy.

17A: Sud's opposite (NERD). I have to assume this is a misprint and should read "Stud's opposite." I'm not sure what a sud's opposite would be, but I guess it would be a beverage that was non-alcoholic and flat.
Come to think of it, I'm not even sure you can have you have just one sud.
(0700 update: It has been pointed out to me that the correct entry here is NORD not NERD and as such is the French word for North, exactly opposite of the French South -- SUD. A thousand pardons for this egregious error.)

57D: Shortening often used in cookie recipes (TBSP) This one looks like something's missing too. A tablespoon is not shortening by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe it's supposed to be "Shortening amt. often used. . . "

That's all for today. See you on Thursday.

Dash it all

Francis Heaney, the co-creator (with Patrick Blindauer) of this crossword, strongly suggests that you get this puzzle from here rather than the usual New York Sun crossword page. I think this is good advice. I just wish he had given it before I finished the puzzle because I had a rough go with this one, folks.

It seems to me that this blogs' readership is higher on Monday and falls off all week as the puzzles get harder. If that's the case and I have fewer readers the harder the puzzles get, then I am probably talking to myself right now. And if that's the case, then I'm just going to put up illustrations that have nothing to do with the puzzle but which amuse me for one reason or another.

Not an easy puzzle is what I'm trying to say. I don't think it's going to be easy to just explain it, but here goes:

Three of the across clues are a series of numbers separated at seemingly-random intervals by a /. The Across Lite version that I solved had this explanation on the notepad: For 17-, 36-, and 54-Across, those numbers are supposed to look like in an acrostic puzzle, with blanks on top of them, but there's no way to do that in AcrossLite, so you have to add the blanks yourself. Slashes indicate breaks between words. Solving this puzzle without printing it out is not advised, which was not but so helpful to me, so I just dove in and started solving the puzzle without worrying about 17-,36-, and 54-Across. Even after I finished the puzzle I wasn't sure what to with the numbers or how I was supposed to turn this crossword into an acrostic. At first I thought each letter in the themed entries might have a number that could be entered into the clue-numbers. (I knew this was going to be awkward to explain.) So that in 17-Across, which turned out to be ON THE DOTTED LINE, the O in On would make #1 an O and #2 an N, et cetera. It became obvious pretty quickly that this wasn't going to work. For one thing there were 63 total numbers in the three clues, and only 45 letters (3 15-letter entries).

So that was no help. Neither was scratching my head and muttering mild blasphemies under my breath. What finally set me on the right track to solving this puzzle was good old serendipity. I happened to notice (after counting the 63 numbers) that the highest number on the grid (i.e. the first block in the final across entry) was 63, and Aha! maybe all you have to do is fill in the letters in the numbered squares. For example 1 Across was Singer with the #1 hit "To Sir With Love" All the boxes in the answer have numbers so that means #1 is an L, #2 is a U, #3 is an L, et cetera. And this turned out to be the right way to, Jeopardy-like, get the question after I already had the answer.
And that was the problem. There was a lot of work yet to be done after I had already solved the puzzle. There's a lot of grunt work involved in acrostics anyway, which is why I prefer to do them online where a lot of that is taken care of automatically, even though I refuse to solve crosswords that way. And the grunt work is especially annoying after you've reached your reward, i.e. solved the puzzle. Still, it's a pretty amazing piece of work and I can only imagine how many hours it took to put it together.

Other entries of interest:

5A: "____ Gold" (ULEE'S) What did crossword constructors do before this Peter Fonda movie? I know there were a lot more boats headed out of the wind, for one thing. (Now, that's a crossword joke, folks.)

10A: Happy workplace (MINE) also a Sneezy, Dopey and Doc workplace.

24A: Pen, e.g. (SWAN) More proof that it pays to read clues carefully. I thought it said Penn, e.g. and I had SEAN for the longest.

12D: Turned six? (NINE) Love those upside-down number clues.

52D: Losses that aren't counted (TKOS) Because a technical knockout does not require a fighter to be down for a 10-count.

Like obscure coaches? then this is your kind of puzzle: 14A: Ukranian soccer coach Blokhin (OLEG) 42A: Islanders head coach Nolan (TED)

58A: Creatures from Oz (ROOS) I've read all the OZ books, and I know all about the Winkies and the Quadlings and the Munchkins and the Gillikins. But I don't know anybody within shouting distance of the Emerald City with only three letters, so I knew it had to be the other Oz.

60A: They end an engagement (I DOS)

11D: J. Paul Getty used one (INIT) The initial J. to be precise. Great clue.

27D: Use assembly language? (ORATE) I love crosswords with lots of question mark clues. This one had nine, plus a few more that probably should have had a question mark, so I loved it.

And I hope you love your weekend.

If you're looking for commentary on Tuesday's Sun puzzle

It's after Lois and the lion. Ordinarily I would wrestle with Blogger to get the posts in the order I want, but I just found out Wednesday's puzzle is by Francis Heaney, so I have to mentally gear up.

G'day Mate!

Lately when you get a Patrick Blindauer puzzle, you get more than your money's worth. You not only get a crossword puzzle, but when you're done it transforms into another game you can play. Last Thursday he and Francis Heaney turned that day's puzzle into an acrostic. Today Blindauer brings us a chess problem to solve. And you get 16X14 symmetry, which I don't think I've ever seen before.

SPOILER WARNING: Don't read any further until you've done today's New York Sun Crossword Puzzle. New York Sun puzzles are every bit as fun and challenging as the more well-known New York Times and they're indisputably better in one way -- they're free. If you'd like to read about an unbiased head-to-head competition between the Sun and the Times puzzles check this out. Or if you're ready to decide for yourself you can download this puzzle and join in on the fun here.

The name of this puzzle is "Board Members" referring to the chess board that will take shape shortly. There is a message to See Notepad! -- and I'm trying to remember if these messages always come with an exclamation point or if that's just for today. One thing's for sure, this puzzle's not going to make much sense if you don't read the notepad. Here's what it says:

Mark the center 8x8 squares with a heavy border. This border will start between the third and fourth letters of 21-Across, proceed across to right side of the box with a 23 in it, proceed down to the right side of the box with a 54 in it, then proceed to the left between boxes 54 and 61, over to the bottom of box 51. Finally it will proceed up back to where you started. If done correctly, the center 64 squares of the puzzle will have a border around it. That 8x8 area marked by the border is a chessboard. After you solve the puzzle, put chessmen on the circled squares (all the chessmen are black except the ones in box 26, box 54, and the crossing of 47-Across and 40-Down) and solve the problem given in the puzzle.

As you can see, I follow directions to the letter:

The instructions by the way are at 3D (WHITE TO MOVE) and 27D (MATE IN THREE).
If you follow the directions in the notepad, this is what your chess problem looks like.

This is not that hard of a chess problem and I know because I'm not that great a chess player, but mate in three is very simple. Remember the only way to force mate in a limited number of moves is to limit your opponents options. The best way to do that is usually by putting him in check.
So A2-A8 in algebraic notation, or Q-Rook8, if you prefer the old-fashioned notation.
Black is in check and there's only one way out of it. He has to sacrifice his queen.
F4-B8 (Q-Bishop8)

But we're not after the queen -- which would lead to a trade anyway -- we're going for the kill.
A8 X C6 (Queen takes pawn)
Once again, black has no choice. He has to get out of check and there's only one way to do that:
B8-C7 (Q-Knight7)
After which, C6XC7 (Q takes Q) Checkmate.
The black king cannot move out of check, and he can't capture the queen because she's protected by the rook.

You know what I love about crossword blogging -- you never know what you're going to be writing about. It could be anything. I know that, but I still didn't expect to be writing about chess.

Just like with the acrostic puzzle, I can only imagine how much work this took. For one thing, getting two K's and two Q's into a square in the middle of the diagram. And setting up a chess problem in the middle of a crossword -- wow.

Other entries of interest:

17A: Athlete's foot sufferer's purchase (TINACTIN) Made famous in a series of commercials starring John Madden, who said, "Boom! Tough actin' Tinactin." So, we've got a guy famous for saying "Boom!" and another guy (Emeril Lagasse) famous for saying "Bam!" Isn't America a great country?

20A: The NHL's Senators, on scoreboards (OTT) I'm glad to see this clued as a city and not a person. I have nothing against Mel Ott the baseball player, but I can't helping thinking when I see those three letters of Vance Ott, the worst boss I ever had.

21A: "Joyeux ___"? (French holiday card sentiment) (NOEL) Why does this clue have a question mark?

26A: Skirts and shirts et al. (RHYMES) I made this one more complicated than it actually was by trying to come up with some apparelly term for these two items.

35A: Deal breaker (NARC) Dope deal, that is.

39A: Tomb raider played by Jolie (CROFT) Because it gives me a chance to post this from artist Adam Hughes:

62A: "Marriage is too interesting an experiment to be tried only once" quipper (EVA GABOR) Eva was married 5 times -- she made four fewer trips down the aisle than her sister Zsa Zsa, who evidently really enjoyed the marriage experiment.

60A: Weddings rings? (HORAS) It sounds like somebody picked a bride with an interesting past, but it refers to a circular dance done at Jewish (and some European) weddings.

6D: Fairy tale ender (AFTER) as in "happily ever. . . "

33D: ____ Xtra (soda brand) (PIBB) What Xtra? More rip-off Dr. Pepper flavor than ever before? (Yes, I'm a soda snob.)

That's all for today. See you Thursday.

So, Patrick, what's your next puzzle gonna morph into? Is it gonna origami out into a badminton court?

Thursday 8-30-07

Man, maybe I shouldn't take a day off. This puzzle kicked my keister -- well, not the puzzle itself, which I solved without much problem, but figuring out what was going on with the theme took forever.

SPOILER WARNING: Don't read any further until you've done today's New York Sun Crossword Puzzle. New York Sun puzzles are every bit as fun and challenging as the more well-known New York Times -- No, you know what, they're better. That's right, I said it, the New York Sun's puzzles are better than the New York Times's puzzles, and I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to be Peter Gordon and to keep putting out this superior product and have everybody just blog, blog, blogging and yak, yak, yakking about the Times, Times, Times. Look, if you don't have time for two great puzzles a day, do the better one, do the SUN -- (we now return you to your regularly scheduled spoiler warning) -- and they're indisputably better in one way -- they're free. If you'd like to read about an unbiased head-to-head competition between the Sun and the Times puzzles check this out. Or if you're ready to decide for yourself you can download this puzzle and join in on the fun here.

"Self-Reflective" is by Steven Ginzburg and at the puzzle's theme is described -- well, hinted at -- at 54A: Florida lake in which you could view the unchanged vertical reflections of 18-,28-,35-45-, and 54-Across (OKEECHOBEE)

The four other entries referenced by this clue are:

18: Natalie Maines, for one (DIXIE CHICK)

28A: Put one's foot in someone else's mouth (KICK BOXED)

35A: Twice nueve (DIECIOCHO)

45A: It can be balanced (CHECKBOOK)

I looked at those for a long time and other than noticing that they had more than their share of C's and K's I got nowhere. CHECKBOOK was almost an anagram of OKEECHOBEE but not quite. The "vertical reflection" thing just made my head swim. How do you have a vertical reflection of a horizontal entry?

After way too long something niggled at the back of my brain. I wrote down all the unique letters in these entries. In alphabetical order they were: B C D E H I K O X, and something about that looked familiar. I remembered some riddle or something somewhere about flipping letters vertically and having them remain the same. All of these letters will do that -- in upper case at any rate -- and they are the only ones that will do that. So that's it, the themed entries are all composed of letters that are vertical reflections of themselves.

Pretty cool, huh? I mean, a major mental workout but still cool.

Other entries of interest:

1A: Carrier letters (USS) Got off on the wrong foot right off the bat here -- I had UPS, thinking package carrier not aircraft carrier.

9A: Starship chart topper (SARA) Oh my god, I am such a Star Trek: The Next Generation geek I couldn't figure this one out. I knew it had something to do with the USS Enterprise not the mediocre followup to the Jefferson Airplane.

16A: Start of many Ocean Spray juice flavors (CRAN) Yep, and I think I tried them all when I thought my messed-up back was actually messed-up kidneys. Although it doesn't start with cran- my favorite way to consume cranberries is in Craisins, Ocean Spray's sweetened dried cranberries. Now that's good stuff there.

There were some gimmes in this puzzles like 33A: One side in a famous family feud (MCCOYS) and 37D: Muesli's cousin (GRANOLA) which was balanced out by some toughies 48A: Pole vault metal? (GROSZ) I don't really get. Is "grosz" Polish for "gold"? 36D: Court call (OYEZ) I don't get either.

62A: Works on a kakuro puzzle (ADDS) Kakuro is supposed to be the next Sudoku. It actually requires some basic math skills unlike Sudoku where are you need is logic. One thing they both have in common is that I suck at them.

52A: Voicer of Sylvester (MEL) Obviously that's Sylvester the cat, Tweety-Bird's bane and Mel Blanc. I'm just curious as to why they clued it as "Voicer of. . ." and not just "Voice. . ."

10D: Second word of "Mr. Roboto" (ARIGATO) "Domo Arigato" which is Japanese for "Thank you very much." So that's Spanish, Polish, 30A: It's divided into comtes (ETAT) is French, whatever the heck OYEZ is, and now Japanese. You have to be multilingual to solve this one -- either that or or have spent a large portion of your youth listening to bands like Styx.

That's all for today. Let's do it again on Friday. Friday's by the way is by Francis Heaney and Patrick Blindauer, so it ought to be a good one.