It's been a while since I can remember having very dramatic reactions to Monday puzzles from the LAT and the NYT, but I sure did today. One was wonderful, the other was horrible. Oh yeah, there was also a really weird BEQ today. Let's get to it.
The NYT was the horrible one. Fred Piscop, the constructor, usually does harder puzzles than what is expected for a Monday puzzle (and in general very good ones too, I should add), and man, did it show today. The theme was completely uninspired (it was just three phrases that started with homophones of the word "for"), and the entries themselves were mostly convoluted. For example, one of them, I'm not kidding here, was FORE AND AFT SAILS. Also, the surrounding fill was a combination of boring AND stuffy. When you have words like LAMINA, MOIRES, and WHIST on a Monday, your puzzles has major issues. This was just icky to do, and had absolutely no payoff of any kind. *.
The LAT, by comparison, was terrific today. Constructing easy puzzles that are also smooth to fill in and have original answers is considered to be one of the hardest things to do for a puzzle constructor, and this puzzle by Norma Steinberg pulls it off as well as any Monday I've ever seen. The theme was very simple but cute (the clues were all "Magician's deception" and the answers were nice answers like SMOKE AND MIRRORS and SLEIGHT OF HAND), and the surrounding fill was great. When you have fill like THONGS, EMOTICON, GRITS, and LONE STAR in your puzzle, AND it's a Monday, you know you're golden. I was honestly surprised to discover I solved this in under 3:30, since it felt longer because I was enjoying it so much, but that only makes it better, because it was perfectly clued to a normal Monday level. ****1/2.
The BEQ was decent, but a very personal puzzle. It was BEQ's wedding anniversary today, so he constructed a tribute puzzle to his wife Liz. I say to and not for because she doesn't really do crossword puzzles. So this was a bizarre hodgepodge of a puzzle, with three random rebus squares that contained the letters LIZ in them, and there were lots of little personal references to her lost on everyone but BEQ and one of his friends who posted on the forums about them. The puzzle itself wasn't great; there was a lot of crosswordese, oddly enough, and not a lot of good fill. The best things were the entries with the LIZ rebus squares, which contained things as diverse as HORSE TRANQUILIZER and LOUNGE LIZARD. **1/2.
Winner: The LAT, by a long shot. One of the best Monday puzzles I've ever done.
Best clue: The second I read this clue, I both instantly knew what the answer was and had a strong feeling it would be the best clue of the day. "Brief briefs?" for THONGS is hysterical and yet a perfectly easy clue. The LAT actually has a bunch of great cluing in it, along with ILE and LIE being directly next to each other in the grid and a bonus theme entry. Again, terrific puzzle.
Worst clue: Lots of candidates from the NYT today. "Mensa-eligible" for SMART might be the worst though, only because it seems really really off. I've never thought of people in Mensa as inherently smart, just really good at logic puzzles and standardized tests. :)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment