Monday, April 7, 2025, Jeffrey Lease and Jeff Chen

It is a cool construction feat to find three long entries that contain both "ten" and "one," and then to be able to set the puzzle so that those words begin in squares that have odd numbers in them. It's cool and it's impressive, but it is art? 

Best clue: "Treat with the right Stuf?" (OREO). There have been hundreds of clues for OREO over the years, but this one is new. Nice.

Oddest clue: "Some broadcasts updating current events" (NPRNEWS). Is the number off here? Are we to take "news" as plural? Strange.

I was a little surprised by the long downs today: TRANSLATING (Interpreter's job) and UNEARNEDRUN (Baseball score due to the defensive team's error). Not sure exactly why, but do we normally have 11-letter Downs on Monday? 

So, a couple things. One, it looks like this blog is back on again. I know that will be of moderate interest to those few interested souls who have checked in every once in a while over the past decade-plus. Two, the A.C.P.T. is over and Paolo Pasco won for the second year in a row. He beat his two competitors on the stage by almost a full minute, finishing the championship puzzle in 3:43. Under four minutes. The final puzzle.

In distantly related news, I had my best tournament ever, finishing all seven puzzles within the time limits and making no errors. My time bonus (the time left on the clock when I finished each puzzle, totalled for all seven puzzles) was an hour and twenty-eight minutes. So not bad, most would say, but what did that get me? 241st place. Still, I'm happy with my performance, and I was also happy to see the best solvers out there doing what they do. It's a beautiful thing. 

Thank you, Will Shortz, for making all this happen.

- Horace 

p.s. I want to also give a big shout out to co-blogger Philbo, who broke into the top 100 this year! Congrats!

Sunday, April 6, 2025, Kareem Ayas

Sunday spinners today: six roundhouse blocks where three squares filled in for one clue have to be mentally rotated to work with the other direction. Fairly straightforward, if you allow for the turns. Heh. 

The first two answers "revealed" by the spinning letters are nice and bleak: WHYD[OIB]OTHER (*"Oh, what's the point?"); and EMPT[YSP]ACES (*Voids). The rest are more neutral. 

In fill, let's see, I like TREACLE (Cloying sentimentality) (I can relate...), UTTERROT (Tripe) (I like all parts of this one), TUNATACO (mmmm....), TRASHY (Like some mindless entertainment), THORNY (Like some stems and situations), and ACORNS (Stereotypical squirrel's stash). Heh... squirrels...

OK, is that enough talking about the puzzle? What I really want to say is that I finished puzzle five! No mistakes! I apologize for the self-aggrandizing, but I'm pretty happy about it. Of course, I think it was easier than the usual puzzle five... but I'm still going to take the win.

Today is the last puzzle, then the finals. I may write in later with a little recap.

- Horace

Saturday, April 5, 2025, Rafael Musa

Well, I'm down here at the A.C.P.T. having a grand old time. There's a fun & games night on Friday, and the pressure isn't as great as in the real tournament, but there are still some prizes to be won. So at one point, they hand out three puzzles and you can choose whichever one you want, and the first person to finish in each category gets a prize. There was a Spiral, a Cryptic, and a Split Decisions, so I chose the easiest one for me, the Spiral. And on this particular night, it went very well and I think I finished it in three or four minutes. 

Well, Dear Reader, I didn't win. I heard from none other than Philbo (who finished second in the Cryptic solve!), that last year's winner Paolo Pasco finished the Spiral in ONE MINUTE (!), and then finished the cryptic in TWO (!!), winning both categories. 

You know, I tell people that I do Monday puzzles in under five and most Saturdays in, say, fifteen minutes or less (today's was 10:52), and then I tell them that I'm going to the tournament and they say "Are you going to win?" And I just laugh and laugh. Seriously. If I finish in the top half of all solvers I'm pretty satisfied. Sigh.

So anyway, another thing about the tournament is that they have a list of all the competitors, and everyone gets to say what they do: "Technical Writer," "Student," "Attorney," etc. For the past few years I've entered "bonvivant." I did so again this year, but it was changed (and I have a guess as to who might have done it!) to "Blogger." Hah! Sounds like somebody misses ol' HAFDTNYTCPFCA! 

So on to the blogging then. 

Best clue: "Old story coming straight from the horse's mouth? (TROJANWAR). So good. "Gag order?" (TMI) wasn't bad. Nor was "Time to give up?" (LENT). 

The upper right took me the longest. I spent too much time thinking of language when reading "House in Milan" (ARMANI), I was not familiar with the term RANDOMWALK (Mathematical process used to model unpredictable phenomena), and I didn't know that the Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy was awarded in the NBAFINALS. I don't think I've watched a full game of basketball since Bird and McHale were on the court together.

Finally, I love the clue for AYCARAMBA (Expression of surprise ... or dismay). It was Apt!

- Horace

Friday, April 4, 2025, Karen Steinberg

It's one of these puzzles with several 15-word pins through it. I prefer these to quad-stacks, for example, because the crosses tend to be less strained. That said, I did learn OMBRE (Hair color blending technique) and LAR (Roman guardian spirit). I've had something like ten years of Latin and I have never come across LAR. But the crosses were fair, so no foul.

My favorite of the fifteens was ICALLEMASISEEEM ("Lemme be straight with you") because I got the end first, and I was worried about that ...EEEM. Yikes.

Loved 1A today - ALSO (It may lead to a second opinion). Really nice clue there. It's too bad that the next two were so close and so ... blah. (BLOBS (Shapeless stuff) and MUSH (Shapeless stuff)). They tried with the repeated clue to make it interesting, but when the words are so mid it just doesn't really sing.

Other fun clues were "Messy things to eat in a car" (TACOS), "Ottomans, e.g." (LEGRESTS), and "Every bad situation is a blues SONG waiting to happen": Amy Winehouse." 

Decent Friday. 

- Horace

Thursday, April 3, 2025, Hanh Huynh

This is a lovely Thursday puzzle. And it looks to me like the stars in the grid echo the placement of the stars in the referenced painting, where they are grouped largely on the left side, with one bright one in the upper right corner. Very nicely done.

I caught on quickly with CO* (One sharing the credits?), but didn't really know what to do with *NSYNC (Band with the 2000 11x platinum album "No Strings Attached") because I didn't remember that the name began with an asterisk. See also: Q*BERT and E*TRADE. I knew both answers immediately, but had forgotten about the asterisks. It wasn't until M*A*S*H (Show with the most-watched episode in scripted TV history) rezzed in that I finally caught on. 

Fave clues:

Corner piece - CASTLE
Places for prongs - OUTLETS
Get on - AGE

Overall, a nice way to turn a STARCROSSED thing into something beautiful.

"AVEC beaucoup d'amour,"

TOMCAT

Wednesday, April 2, 2025, Daniel Bodily

Almost seventy squares of fill in today's puzzle. That seems like an awful lot, but judicious use of black squares make it so no Down word has to pass through more than two of the theme answers, and that keeps the fill reasonably decent. I was introduced to the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC (New Deal program in which workers planted more than 3.5 billion trees, in brief)) (sigh...), I learned the word DEMISED (Transferred at death), and I question PANIN (Get a closer shot) as a valid term. But those are small things, and there were plenty of good Down answers too.

WARLOCK (Dark wizard), BUFFOON (Goofball), and EPISTLE (Romans, e.g.) are all STRONG. ORACLE (Clairvoyant), SCOURS (Cleans vigorously), and ASIAGO (Parmesan shelfmate) are all strong in the non-fill Acrosses. And who doesn't like HEARTS? Might be my favorite card game of all.

The heavy theme was well done. Solid Wednesday.

- Horace

Tuesday, April 1, 2025, Sande Milton

It's April Fools Day today, so we could expect something a little different in the puzzle today. And lo, we find that someone has started it! I don't know about you, but when I pick up a puzzle that has been started by someone else, I ignore what has been entered. I did the same thing today and got pretty much the same result - some previous answers were right, some were wrong. 

If we set aside the penciled-in answers, we see a theme of INFLIGHTMAGAZINE, SEATBACKPOCKET, PRIORPASSENGER, and the unsatisfyingly incomplete RETURNTRAYTABLES. Plus the word GUESS (What you might do if you don't know an answer. And maybe even ENDRESULTS (Final outcomes)?

My brother really hates the idea of an INFLUENCER (Big shot on the internet), so that brought a smile. (I think he's just jealous of me being a crossword influencer. :P) HIPS (Body parts that swivel) brought to mind the lyric "The world moves on a woman's hips. The world moves and it swivels and bops." And come to think of it, that same brother also hates David Byrne, for some reason. 

An interesting Tuesday.

- Horace