Self-Contained

Jul 12 2024 - reviews

My time suffered thanks to some crosswordese in the bottom half of the grid, where I plonked PRONOUNS only to erase it immediately afterwards due to the cross "Formerly known as". It has to be AKA, right? Nope, it's NEE. At this point in my crossword solving career I should recognize the telltale signs of a NEE, but somehow it always manages to sneak up on me.

It took me some 4 or 5 passes through the grid for me to finally fill BOTTLEEPISODE. I struggled on the right-hand side thanks to "Jazzercise or spin class, e.g." where I had ___BIKE because I misspelled ROC as ROK. I'm very salty that the crosswordese in this puzzle had me redoing not one, but two separate corners. Although, looking back on it now I'm not sure Jazzercise could ever be done on a bike. But hey, with a name like Jazzercise how can you expect me to take it seriously?

There are some weird takes in this grid. "Low sound?" for MOO is just bizarre, I don't care what the editor says about it being some Christmas carol reference. The clue for BOTTLEEPISODE also has me scratching my head, particularly the part that relates it to the shape of the grid. Isn't a crossword puzzle inherently a confined space? What am I missing? At least the tvtropes entry is a good read.

I love COLOSSUS for some inexplicable reason; it channels positive Shadow of the Colossus vibes. It also reminds me of a bit of trivia that I picked up about the Colossus of Rhodes, where medieval misinterpretation of the ruins had people believing that the statue stood with one leg on each side of the harbor so that ships would have to pass between the statue's legs. Being a Greek statue it's totally nude, so that's just a hilarious image.

You know I solve too many crosswords when I recognize a clue from earlier in the week. TROOP "Girl Scouts group" was clued as "Group of Girl Scouts" in Monday's puzzle. Why do I remember this?

Proof of Concept

Jul 11 2024 - reviews, partner-solve

Today's "Proof of Concept" might be the weirdly longitudinal grid that is gracing the solver with 6 corners instead of the usual 4. At least, that's what it felt like when solving on my phone and dealing with the teeny-tiny boxes.

The actual reason for the title is the apt pair: REDWINESUPERNOVA and CHAMPAGNEPROBLEMS. Both are kinds of alcohol (REDWINE/CHAMPAGNE) and both... appear in music, I guess? I really don't see how SUPERNOVA and PROBLEMS relate, I mean, unless the SUPERNOVA is the cause of the PROBLEMS, in which case I suppose that's understandable. The apt pair falls a bit flat for me.

After 7 minutes of solving my partner joined me to finish the grid and I was amazed at her mechanical precision in filling in all of the gaps that I had left. It probably would've taken me twice as long if I had finished by myself.

Once we finished the grid and started reading the post-solve blurb my partner let out a deep sigh, "Can we just stop talking about Taylor Swift?" Amen to that. Look, I'm sure the constructors were very excited to talk about their music interests together, but man my level of not-caring could not be any greater.

Anyway if my dislike of Taylor Swift and total ignorance of Chappell Roan make me feel old, fill like FEELD makes me feel ancient. First Bumble, then Tinder, now FEELD? What is it with crossword puzzles and expecting me to be up-to-date on the latest dating app sensation? There's some good fill in this grid but FEELD and ALOO are the odd ones out.

Speaking of me being old, DREAMCORE is a made up term, I'm telling you. I'm so over the trend of taking a noun, adding "core" to it and pretending like its a new thing. Cottagecore is bad enough. Next they'll be telling me Witchcore is a thing. Wait a minute...

I'm proud for flexing my Mahjong knowledge and plonking EAST for "Position assigned to the highest-rolling player at the start of a mah-jongg game". Mahjong is a great game, just sayin'. At least, once you get past memorizing the ten pages of scoring combinations.

I'm also surprised by the programming references in this grid. There's both README, "Instructions file in a GitHub repository" and TEST, "Bit of code written to catch bugs". Now, I'm a little offended at the clues: TESTs are written to prevent bugs, not catch them, and READMEs predate Github. But hey, still cool to see.

I'm still waiting for the day that someone uses STOIC in a crossword and doesn't have it clued as a synonym for emotionless. If you find one such puzzle, let me know.

Going in Different Directions

Jul 10 2024 - reviews

A tiny grid with an apt pair, where CLOSEDOWN and OPENUP provide the oppositions OPEN/CLOSE and UP/DOWN. I'm always a little disappointed when an apt pair doesn't match in length, the theme loses a bit of its punch. Not that the theme contributes that much in this case. The puzzle is easy enough to solve on its own.

My favorite part of this puzzle is JAZZ in the corner. Sneaking two Z's into a grid is no small feat, especially when one of the crosses is the playful OOZED. The fill in general is quite good in this grid; there are a few crossword staples (ICEE, INN, BCCS, SER) but overall I was pleased.

I also enjoyed some of the gentle misdirections provided by vague clues. "Squat" for NONE is clever, on my first pass I was stuck trying to think of another word for the fitness exercise. Likewise with "Just okay", which I had filled FINE. I finished both of these corners last.

Most of the other clues are forgettable, straight definitions that lean boring. There are a few exceptions, like the post-solve highlight "Powder that might be added to hot milk on a snow day". Verbose yet evocative.

I think I need to rethink my approach towards difficulty categorization. Puzzmo grids tend to be either easy or hard, where medium is somewhere in the 7-10 minute completion time range. Maybe a better idea is categorizing difficulty based on the amount of wordplay, where wordplay themes and wordplay clues are rated more difficult regardless of the time to complete the puzzle. What do you think?

Midday Teatime

Jul 9 2024 - reviews

I enjoyed this puzzle quite a bit, even if I have some reservations towards the theme. The clues have a good bit of personality to them without going overboard on the anecdotes and the difficulty curve of the solve is nice and satisfying.

The theme is tea, with MATCHA, ASSAM, and CHAI hidden in the three themers, UNMATCHABLE, BASSAMP, and TCHAIKOVSKY. I discovered the theme almost immediately when working through UNMATCHABLE; as soon as I had TCHA in place MATCHA was an easy guess. Knowledge of tea paid off dividends for the other two themers.

The problem I have with the theme is that the choice of tea references seem a bit all over the place. ASSAM is a kind of black tea, named after the region of its production. MATCHA almost fits, even though it's technically green tea that is finely ground (MATCHA tea is made from the same leaves as Gyokuro). CHAI is the weird one, where it either refers to tea generically (e.g. CHAI is just a word for tea) or refers to Masala chai, which isn't a kind of tea at all but really a blend of tea and spices. To fit ASSAM, shouldn't all three be tea varietals? Or to fit MATCHA and CHAI, shouldn't all three bit drinks ordered in a cafe? I'm thinking about this too hard.

I got hung up on BASSAMP crossing MARV, GRAIN, and ANGORA, easily the hardest part of the puzzle for me. "Bit of teff or truth" had me searching my memory banks for idioms with "truth" since I've never heard of a "teff", and "Fine, fluffy fiber" was giving me no hints towards ANGORA. I got out of this bind by looking at the TCHAI___SKY that I had slotted for the themer and extrapolating KOV since "that sounds Russian enough".

There are lots of great clues in this grid. "YouTube genre that'sss a real sssensssation?" is pretty fun, even if it sounds more like a channel about snakes than ASMR. "Muppet ironically never acknowledged by the Academy?" (OSCAR) had me chuckling. Did I mention I like wordplay clues?

I also lucked out with the few IT/programming references. "Client's counterpart, in computer networks" (SERVER) and "Coding language named after the mathematician who wrote the first computer program" (ADA) were both easy plonks.

Anyway, excellent debut. Till next time.

A run for your money

Jul 8 2024 - reviews

An apt pair with FASTCASH and QUICKCHANGE, money that moves rapidly. One could say it runs.

Decent fill with some very easy clues today. I can't say that I struggled with any corner in this grid. The two words that took me the longest to fill were AROFLUX and SASHA, which shouldn't really come as a surprise since I'm wholly unfamiliar with both aro sexuality and Beyoncé.

As for wordplay, well, there isn't any. Kind of expected for a first-time crossword, as this is the Puzzmo intern's crossword debut. It's a heck of a lot better than my first-ever crossword construction attempt, but I still would've appreciated a little wordplay in the mix.

I'm searching for clue highlights to write about here but I'm coming up short. Not that I think these clues are bad, they're simply plain. During the solve I was on full autopilot mode, swapping between crosses and downs, filling in the answers robotically. There weren't any bits in this crossword where I had to stop to think. There's your obligatory spinal tap reference with AMPS, a personal anecdote in BEG, a Beyoncé reference with SASHA. All the makings of a standard Puzzmo grid.

Strive to Survive

Jul 7 2024 - reviews

Pro tip: don't go anywhere near Fresno in a record-breaking heat wave. Driving through the city on my way to the Sierras, my car's thermometer was cycling between 115 and 120 degrees. The inside of the windshield was hot enough to burn my fingers. Yow.

Hope you enjoyed the last two non-Puzzmo puzzles, today we're bringing back the standard. Since I missed the last two crosswords my streak is broken at 90 consecutive days. At least it's a nice round number.

Today we have an incredibly vertical long boy (as you can probably tell since the crossword image is longer than the actual text content of this post). HIDDENIMMUNITYIDOL spans the entire vertical length (18!) and is hinted at by the left-hand pockets (EYE + DEE + OHH + ELL = IDOL, sound it out). Not my favorite theme, but it's totally worth it for the long grid. It's unfortunate that ELL is bordered by VEE, which distracts from the IDOL letters. It's conspicuously placed and unintentionally steals the show.

That said, HIDDENIMMUNITYIDOL is a great themer. Each component (HIDDEN, IMMUNITY, and IDOL) is perfectly hinted by surface-level knowledge of Survivor. I was able to puzzle it together because I knew the show is elimination-based and themed like a kitschy tiki bar.

The middle section was hardest for me, with DEE crossing DEEM, PENN, and ENDUPAT. The clue for PENN is some crosswordese-ass crosswordese with "Keystone State Ivy, familiarly", a combination of words that holds zero meaning. DEEM clued as "Regard" is also tough. I might've stumbled into it quicker if it had been "Regard (as)", but as written the D was the last letter I filled into the grid.

I also had to work hard for OHH, which is last on my list of three-letter sounds of epiphany. AHA! It's not AAH or AHH, it's OOH, wait, OHH! The double H always gets me.

Shout-out to GILA, one of the best singles off of the latest King Gizzard album. GILA! GILA! GILA!

Fortress Sudoku

Jul 6 2024 - reviews

For vacation puzzle 2 I have another Generally Approachable Sudoku (GAS) from Cracking the Cryptic. The mechanic this time around feels a little less fantastical than some of the thermo or arrow puzzles, but I liked it just the same because it doesn't involve any math. My journey to solution required a restart because I soft-locked myself with an incorrect deduction somewhere in my original solve, but that restart actually made me appreciate the puzzle on a whole new level.

I found the first two fortress deductions easily enough, slotting a 5 and 9 in squares 2 and 8, where a single grey cell is surrounded by 4 orthogonals and the corners are already filled. Easy peasy. The later deductions took a bit more thinking, but also made me feel awful clever when I noticed them.

Here are some of ones I uncovered:

• A grey cell can never be a 1.

• 9s can never border a grey cell at the orthogonal. They're either in the grey cell or somewhere that's not orthogonal.

• A grey cell must be at minimum 1 + the number of orthogonal cells.

The coolest moment in this puzzle was actually restarting it because I made a mistake. Sure, I was frustrated. But when I started working through the grid again from scratch, I noticed that all of my newfound deduction powers meant solving the puzzle in a completely different way. On my second playthrough, I finished out the middle row in almost 5 minutes, where previously I was futzing around with no real direction. Now that's a great feeling.

In my second playthrough, I ended up filling the grey cells relatively quickly. I started to get pretty good at applying the deductions; "this square must be at minimum one of these values. By sudoku, these higher values can't be in the grey. That means they also can't be orthogonal to the grey, since the grey would have to be larger. Aha!" Most of my time was actually spent doing normal sudoku.

I've noticed with these GAS puzzles that when I'm blocked during normal sudoku I need to pay more attention to the rows and columns. When I stop tunnel-visioning on the boxes, I often notice that there are only two or three possible digits in a row/column, and that's all I need to slot the proper digit. I don't think I'm very good at regular sudoku.

The Mini: Thursday

Jul 5 2024 - reviews

Today's puzzle is the first of a couple of vacation puzzles, or more accurately, puzzles from the past that I'm writing about now because I'm vacationing. Today's puzzle was published on 6/20. Hello, future readers.

The New Yorker calls this a mini but its 9x9 so it's a midi in my book. I think this is the first time that I've seen a puzzle this size with two Z's in it, an impressive feat that carries over to an awesomely fun solve.

I'll just dive straight into it because it's the star of the show, but ZUGZWANG is some wicked fill. I had the benefit of recognizing the Chess concept, though I didn't slot it until I had a few letters at the crosses because I couldn't quite remember the name.

The term describes a situation where a player would benefit by skipping their turn, since every possible move is a bad one. Unfortunately, they can't. One must always play a move in Chess, otherwise the game ends in stalemate. In a way, a ZUGZWANG mate is the ultimate flex, since the opponent is forced to move into the position that has them lose the game. "Stop hitting yourself." ^[1]

Incorporating ZUGZWANG into this grid is no small feat, building into the two z-crosses of ZEROES and ORZO. ZEROES is accompanied by the clever, "Six in a million?", a wordplay figure that's easily, well, figured. ORZO I've seen pop up a few times in the sparse number of grids that have Z's in them, so I'm familiar enough with the word even though I've never tasted the rice.

AUTOMATA threw me for a loop since I originally slotted ANDROIDS, a mistake that you'll likely only fall into if you're working acrosses and downs at the same time. Is AUTOMATA pronounced "aw-toh-mah-ta" or "ah-tah-mah-tah"? I know which side I'm on.

She's So Hot Right Now

Jul 4 2024 - reviews

Hot as in insanely hot, as this weather is turning out. Record-breaking heat waves abounds this Fourth of July. Stay hydrated, folks.

Today's crossword is a breezy long boy, coming in at 14x6. Puzzles with wacky grid shapes are some of my favorites in the Puzzmo collection, it adds a little spark of surprise to the daily routine.

The longitudinal shape of this grid makes it feel more like solving a series of minis than a complete crossword, each segment is so separated from the others. I don't think the theme necessarily justifies the length, with DONNA (Summers), and SUMMER MCINTOSH forming a trio of self-referencing answers. DONNA really feels like the odd one out. But hey, long grids are cool so what does it matter?

I struggled a bit on LAMA crossing SUMMER and MCINTOSH, a little tricky with both of the latter themers clued plainly as a proper noun. Without LAMA it was a total toss-up, "what's a girl's name that could fit SU__ER?" Luckily the C in MCINTOSH is a dead giveaway that it's some Mc-variant.

I feel like a bit of an idiot, filling VEGAS for "Gambling mecca with many daily ferries to Hong Kong". It fits "Gambling mecca", for sure, but "ferries to Hong Kong"? In my defense I was thinking it was a cheeky reference to some Casino attraction that I don't recognize, like implying Gondolas in The Venetian. So maybe there could've been a Hong Kong ferry in, I don't know, Mandalay Bay or something? Look, it was late and I might've been a little tired.

"Front porches for brownstones" was totally out of my league, I just guessed at STOOPS when enough crosses were filled. Maybe a NYC-minded reader can fill me in here, but by the looks of things Brownstone is referring to a building material common in East Coast townhouses?

Bug Rate

Jul 3 2024 - reviews

Whew, Puzzmo finally gave me a break. My last 5-ish crosswords have all been over 15 minutes so it's nice to have one that's sitting at an easy 6 minutes, 50 seconds.

Today's crossword is the ideal medium-difficulty puzzle. On my first past I managed to fill about 75% of the grid, helped by some very generous clues like "Great Salt Lake's state". The spots leftover were still a lot of fun to puzzle through, nothing completely blocking my progress but just enough friction to lead to some good aha moments. DVD crossing VENUE comes to mind as an example.

The theme is an apt pair with THEDAILYMOTH and FLYBYNIGHT, pairing both FLY v. MOTH and THEDAILY v. BYNIGHT. I think the grid also resembles a moth? Or a fan. Either way, THEDAILYMOTH is a great themer. It's one of those rare ones that is fun to fill (daily + moth = good) and fascinating to research afterwards.

FLYBYNIGHT I don't feel as strongly about, partly because I don't recognize the idiom, partly because LPN and HILT were both really tough for me. At this point in the solve I had pieced together the "Bug" connection, but not the "Rate" connection, so I felt pretty desparate on my last two crosses. SIGHT? DIGIT? LIGHT? In retrospect, "Someone who studied the blade (while you were partying) might have a solid grasp on this" is some good stuff.

Some other clue highlights. "'Traffic' circle?" (DVD) is a good idea but falls a bit flat because the band Traffic is way better than the movie Traffic. Just throwin' that one out there. "Word that can replace each yadda in 'yadda yadda yadda'" (BLAH) wins on uniqueness. I also liked "Dua Lipa single with an accompanying workout video" (PHYSICAL), because it hints at the answer via "workout video" without requiring any knowledge of the artist.