Althouse: "I despair at obscenely specific proper names, groan at clues that make reference to other clues without a clever payoff, and (worst of all) sigh with abyssal disappointment..."

June 21, 2019

"I despair at obscenely specific proper names, groan at clues that make reference to other clues without a clever payoff, and (worst of all) sigh with abyssal disappointment..."

"... at grids that waste their longest words, those that fill the full fifteen-space span—effectively the puzzle’s pièce de résistance—on the inelegant or the uninteresting. Why would you ever devote that full row or column to phrases as pedestrian and beige as real-estate agent or express delivery when you could let your solvers luxuriate in the golden sunshine of hallucinogenics or no, i’m a frayed knot?"

From "The Art and Politics of Crosswords" by Helen Rosner (The New Yorker).

29 comments:

mccullough said...: Dick is an obscenely specific proper name; 6/21/19, 8:12 AM
MadisonMan said...: As I was reading the blog post title, I'm thinking it read like Camille Paglia.; 6/21/19, 8:16 AM
traditionalguy said...: Very puzzling.; 6/21/19, 8:16 AM
Fernandinande said...: Why would you ever devote that full row or column to phrases as pedestrian and beige as real-estate agent or express delivery when you could let your solvers luxuriate in the golden sunshine of hallucinogenics or no, i’m a frayed knot?

Why would you ever write a column or article about something as pedestrian as crossword puzzles when you could let your readers luxuriate in the golden sunshine of just about anything else?; 6/21/19, 8:19 AM
Infinite Monkeys said...: Wouldn't different people have different ideas of what is clever? She might like puns (no, i’m a frayed knot) and I might think that is dull and old while a reference to a current meme would be clever and fresh.; 6/21/19, 8:23 AM
Francisco D said...: Helen Rosner doesn't sound like someone who knows much about crosswords.

The only reason for the existence of the NYT is Will Shortz and the daily crossword puzzles. The key to getting the crossword is the clever theme in each puzzle. Some of the answers may be mundane, but it is the overall theme that makes them fun.; 6/21/19, 8:35 AM
tcrosse said...: The key to getting the crossword is the clever theme in each puzzle.

Here in the Outer Darkness the NYT puzzle appears a week or two later, but they leave off the puzzle title, which offers at least a hit of the theme, or the Thursday gimmick.
There's a nice, free cryptic every day in the Toronto Globe, but one must remember to use British spelling.; 6/21/19, 8:40 AM
Unknown said...: We ended our subscription to the NYT. Fortunately, the WSJ puzzle is good, and so is (surprise, surprise) the NY Post puzzle. The Post's puzzle is the same as the LA Times puzzle, I believe. The NYPost puzzle has no title by which to figure out the theme or puns, so you have to figure them out on your own. An extra level of challenge.; 6/21/19, 8:44 AM
Wince said...: I despair... groan... and (worst of all) sigh with abyssal disappointment...

Inadvertently, that reaction and the accompanying video "Crossword Puzzles with a Side of Millennial Socialism" provide a glimpse into the malaise of woke media types.; 6/21/19, 8:46 AM
rhhardin said...: Kliban simple maze
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b4/77/0b/b4770b3572f139159d27d582e0579753.jpg; 6/21/19, 8:58 AM
Mike Sylwester said...: Crossword puzzles?

How come you never post any articles about The Bachelorette?; 6/21/19, 9:04 AM
Bill Peschel said...: Reading the story, I was sidetracked parsing the new yorker's thinking when I saw this headline: "What are the Chances of Trump Being Reëlected?"

If they're umlatting the e in elected, why aren't they still hyphenating "to-day" and "to-morrow"? Are they still answering the phone "Ah-hoy-hoy?"; 6/21/19, 9:12 AM
Tom T. said...: "Dick is an obscenely specific proper name"

Dick Hertz? Who's Dick Hertz?; 6/21/19, 9:18 AM
Fernandinande said...: And it's "orange sunshine", not "golden sunshine".; 6/21/19, 9:26 AM
Wince said...: Tom T. said...
Dick Hertz? Who's Dick Hertz?

As they say around here, Dick Hertz from Holden.; 6/21/19, 9:29 AM
tcrosse said...: Dick Hertz? Who's Dick Hertz?

Friend of Miles Long and Welland Dowd.; 6/21/19, 9:31 AM
stever said...: Dick Hertz? Any relation to Mike Hunt?; 6/21/19, 10:19 AM
Yancey Ward said...: She should try constructing them- not as easy as it looks.; 6/21/19, 10:29 AM
gerry said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/21/19, 11:05 AM
effinayright said...: Unknown said...
We ended our subscription to the NYT.
**************

On abebooks.com you can buy an entire year of Saturday and/or Sunday NYT puzzles, going back at least ten years.

Just use Will Shortz in the Author field.

The answers are published in the back. But my rule is, "if you look, you've lost."; 6/21/19, 11:08 AM
Jim Gust said...: Let me also put in a good word for the Wall Street Journal crosswords, which I believe are not behind a paywall (I subscribe). They have a comments section which comes in useful when I'm too dense to understand the theme. Some have been quite clever, always entertaining.; 6/21/19, 11:13 AM
RobinGoodfellow said...: Blogger Bill Peschel said...
Reading the story, I was sidetracked parsing the new yorker's thinking when I saw this headline: "What are the Chances of Trump Being Reëlected?"

If they're umlatting the e in elected, why aren't they still hyphenating "to-day" and "to-morrow"? Are they still answering the phone "Ah-hoy-hoy?"

I think it is called a diairesis in English.; 6/21/19, 12:02 PM
NFPA GROUP said...: Everyone has different ideas of what is fun and what isn't, personally I enjoy puzzles and puns ( https://www.nfpagroup.com ); 6/21/19, 12:54 PM
narciso said...: abyssal, I remember that in hunt for red October, the laurentian abyssal that ramius had to traverse; 6/21/19, 1:08 PM
SDaly said...: This is a minor step up from a complaint that Candy Crush doesn't use images of Cavendish & Harvey mixed fruit drops.

The author should spend some time in a children's cancer ward.; 6/21/19, 1:34 PM
narciso said...: even their cartoonist, peter steiner, turned in a bush deranged spy novelist,; 6/21/19, 4:29 PM
stephen cooper said...: I once spent a couple hours looking for a good book explaining the technique of putting together a jigsaw puzzle quickly.
I did not find any such book.

There were books that discussed jigsaw puzzles. But no books that got right to the point: HERE IS HOW YOU PUT JIGSAW PUZZLES TOGETHER WITH PANACHE (and yes I would have liked to impress more than one lady with my jigsaw puzzle skills on more than one weekend afternoon in New England - just kidding, not in New England, somewhere else)

I feel sorry for people who were born to be great chess players, I mean, one day you realize you are going to be great at something, and then you realize it is just chess. Can you imagine the disappointment?

Just chess, and nobody cares except a very few people, and they are not the sort of people who make you feel like this world was built for you, unless you think this world was built to house chess players and everything else is secondary (such people are rumored to exist).

That being said, there is a really good book about the weird allusive London Times crossword.
Fans of USA type crosswords are the sort of people who do not write books,
I get that ----- so I appreciate these comments from Ann Althouse on USA crosswords, I like the insider perspective ....

But when it comes to the Newspapers and my memory of them before they were bought up by propagandizers with no sense of moderation ....
I know I will never read a really good book on which cartoonist, writing for which paper (now long faded but I used to deliver a paper (Newsday) and they are all fresh on the morning they are delivered) ---- I will never ever ever read a good book describing at any level of interesting detail this: which day, in which year, on any given day in my youth, which of the cartoonists who wrote for the syndicates that the papers were hooked up were, on that day, at the zenith of their inspiration (think about the ups and downs of poor Schulz who never let the kid kick the ball that Lucy was holding through the uprights (Sad! one would have expected better from a brave and decorated veteran of the Normandy campaign, God bless him) (or maybe think about that guy who really understood a lot about life who wrote the Lockhorns of Levittown - by the way, Levitt - the actual developer, was a friend of a friend of my uncle, just saying - anyway, YOU WILL NEVER FIND A BOOK that will tell you on which 2 or three days the patron saint of Leroy and Loretta actually achieved a perfect 4 panel comic) (or those glorious years when the Dilbert Guy and the Far Side Guy and the stuffed Tiger guy, all contemporaries, and none of whom knew how to draw very well, were all making us laugh because they Understood what it is to be Dilbert or on the Far Side or some kid with no friends except for a stuffed tiger)

God loves us all, though, and even comic strip characters almost have souls that God wants to save

think about the fireflies you saw tonight, if you live in the firefly zone of North America -----

you might think that when firefly season is over they will all be gone, having left beautiful memories, but without a future

but I, who have read tens of thousands of second-rate comic strips in thousands of long-vanished newspapers, can say that I confidently guess this .....

God is very very aware that we live in a finite world with a lot of suffering, and God probably would not mind if I say this ----

there are many many more angels than any of us will ever meet, and there are so many angels that every creature, no matter how small, no matter how un-respected in this world, is likely to be a creature who has met several angels ---- and if you meet, even once, an angel, you have met a creature that is not afraid of time, and there will never be a time when said good angel cannot once again encounter you, heart to heart, soul to soul

there may be confusion and sorrow in the night but there will be Joy in the Morning; 6/21/19, 8:19 PM
stephen cooper said...: John 3:16; 6/21/19, 8:22 PM
tim in vermont said...: OMG, I come to read a thread about crosswords and wordplay and I get a drooling street preacher buttonholing me.; 6/22/19, 5:39 AM