Crosswords of the Day, 8/17/2009

Back after a hiatus, and I get hit with two pretty lame puzzles and one pretty fun one. Believe it or not, the BEQ was one of the lame ones today!

The NYT theme was just full names of actors that played The Joker in Batman movies. Yup, that's it. The only really clever thing about this was that the names of the actors were clued by the year the movie that they were in came out, such as "2008" for HEATH LEDGER. Not only was this a totally blah theme, but they didn't even have my second favorite Joker, Mark Hamill, from the cartoon (although admittedly, that wasn't a movie). Oh, wait a second, CESAR ROMERO was the TV show, so they could have done the cartoon. Sigh. The fill was also very lackluster. ** bordering on *1/2.

The LAT was by far the most enjoyable puzzle, although kind of odd. The theme was basically phrases that have two words in them that end in -OOK. For example, BY HOOK OR BY CROOK. The theme wasn't utterly consistent, since two of the three of them had the -OOK words begin and end the phrase and the one mentioned above doesn't. But it wasn't nearly as annoying as that kind of thing can be. Pleasant theme, decent fill, and an interesting little bonus; there were no three letter words! Only four letters and above. This isn't as impressive as a puzzle I did once where there were actually no abbreviations at all, but still, a nice touch. ***1/2.

The BEQ, which is always a very difficult themeless on Monday, was remarkably bad by BEQ standards. BEQ's puzzle also had no three letter words in it, but unlike the LAT, this created answers like ALIEN TO, SVELTEST, and even TONE ARM, which are all really lame for BEQ. Now, because this is BEQ, there was some fantastic stuff thrown in there, like ROID RAGE, LADY GAGA, and, believe it or not, ARANXTA as in Sanchez Vicario the tennis player. But in general, it was a really unpleasant and awkward puzzle. **.

Best puzzle: The LAT. Lackluster NYT and atypically bad BEQ make a decent but unspectacular LAT the clear winner.

Best clue: Oddly enough, even though it was my least favorite puzzle, both my favorite clue and my least favorite clue come from the BEQ today. "Spinal Tap classic with the lines 'Getting out my pitchfork/Poking your hay'" for SEX FARM is inspired fill.

Worst clue: There are several I could choose from BEQ's. I think my least favorite is "Guide step by step" for INSTILL. Ick, ick, ick. This is what I mean by this puzzle being atypically bad for BEQ; the cluing is like this throughout. Oh well.