Number 36 – Crossword Edition: Week 6

For those of you following along, you perhaps are wondering where the Week 5 entry went since my previous update was Week 4.

The short answer is “I forgot“.

The long answer would take 33,600 characters to type out, a few fonts I don’t have currently in Windows 7, would also assume you have a working knowledge of the Yoruba language, and involves a pun that is only funny if you have read Sun Tzu in the original.

So…let’s stick with the short answer and move on to see how much progress I have made in my quest to see how long it can take me to solve No.36 of The Post Puzzler, the harder of the two crossword puzzles that arrive in the Sunday edition of The Washington Post:

Week 6 - 40 Answers

19 Across – The clue was “Full glass phenomenon”. Since I already had “—I-CUS”, I had a suspicion I knew the word was “MINISCUS”, but a quick look at my dictionary (and yes, reference books are allowed to help me find answers…I just can’t use Google) corrected me that the word is spelled MENISCUS.

2 Down – The clue was “Began with gusto”. I had “—E-INTO”. Since the clue used a verb in the past tesne (began), the answer would also be in the past tense, so I added a D after the E. I took a chance and tried DIVEDINTO.

17 Across – The clue was “Call up”. I had “-V-KE” and I knew that as I was trying to call up the answers, I was also trying to EVOKE the answer.

5 Down – The clue was “Spanish root words?”. This one threw me for a while, but I only got back on track when I saw the question mark at the end of the clue. That punctuation symbol usually denotes that the answer is a pun or play on words. So instead of thinking of “root word” as relating to grammar (i.e., the root word of meniscus is Greek for crescent), I thought of the synonym of “root” as “cheer” and a cheering word in Spanish is OLES (like what they say at a bullfight).

1 Across – The clue was “Up”. With “-D-TO”, I am taking the chance that the answer is ADDTO as in to “up” the ante is to “add to” it.

15 Across – The clue was “Like some bugs”. A similar clue could have been “Like some videos” as the answer is VIRAL.

3 Down – The clue was “Lecturing ad nauseam”. The letters in front of me were “DRON-NGON”. Since the clue itself used a gerund (lecturing), the answer would also have a gerund so I only needed to add an “I” leaving DRONINGON.

22 Across – The clue was “Result of an ace on a duece”. Before I had all the other letters, I was misleading myself. The words “ace” and “duece” made me think of cards so I thought the answer would be “trey”, but with 2 Down, 3 Down, and 4 Down filled out, I was now faced with “-DIN”. ODIN didn’t make much sense, so I started going through the alphabet. I only needed the starting letter as the answer is ADIN – the tennis term for what the score would be if you scored an ace (a serve without a return shot) when the score was duece (40-40). So far, this is my favorite clue-answer pair for this puzzle.

1 Down – The clue was “Religious recitations”, but I received the answer, AVEMARIAS, by default as all the other Across clues had been filled in.

Look at that ! I have two quadrants out of 4 now complete. Onward to Week 7 and to glory !

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Number 36 – Crossword Edition: Week 4

The slow process continues as I move forward (slightly) in my quest to complete the Post Puzzler No.36 (put out by Fireball Crosswords), which was published in The Washington Post four weeks ago.

Here’s where we stand now…

Week 4 - 31 Answers

4 Down – The clue was “Recharging, so to speak”. As a quasi-professional snoozer, I took a guess that the answer was “TAKING A NAP”

26 Across – The clue was “Symbol of committment”. Every day, I see this symbol on my left hand – a RING

31 Across – The clue is “Last name of TV sisters Laura and Carrie”. This duo actually comes from one of my wife’s favorite TV shows, Little House On The Prairie, which is the chronicles of the ENGALLS family

UPDATE – I just realized that the family name should be “INGALLS”. I’ll change that later – just like I did with ROARKE (Hmmm..what is with me and incorrect television surnames?)

20 Down – The clue was “Certain railroad unit”. With the “A” from ALIBABA, and “L” from INGALLS, I made a guess that the last the three letters would be “CAR”, and that left me with “COALCAR”

32 Down – The clue was “Guiatrist Ford of the Runaways”. Ahh…those memories of staring at MTV and the “Kiss Me Deadly” video made this an easy answer of “LITA“.

42 Across – The clue was “Soldier protector”. With the starting trio of “PAR—-“, I assumed (and I hope correctly) the answer to PARAPET.

39 Across – The clue was “They have recapitulations”. I started with an answer of “—ATA-“. Since the word “they” was in the clue, I surmised the answer was plural (—ATAS). Also, luckily, my wife is into music and after I fed her this clue, she gave me the answer of SONATAS.

37 Across – The clue was “Unaccented, in phonetics”. A total guess – ATONIC. That answer may need to be revisted.

On to Week 5.

You can see that I’ve already sketched in some possible answer lightly, but that will have to wait.

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Number 36 – Crossword Edition: Week 3

I didn’t do too well this week in solving The Post Puzzler No. 36:

Week 3 - 23 Answers

9 Down – The clue was “Goes the other way, in a way”. With “Z – G S” already filled in, it was either “zigs” or “zags”. I went with the “A” because of the next clue…

16 Across – The clue was “City on the northwestern edge of Puerto Rico”. Since Spanish is spoken in Puerto Rico, I surmised that the first four letters of that city would spell a Spanish word and “AGUA…” made more sense than “AGUI…”

12 Down – The clue was “Like diatomaceous earth”. A quick look through my dictionary shows that the word “diatoms” are single-celled algae, so therfore the adjective form is “ALGAL”, which means that…

The full answer for 16 Across is “AGUADILLA” (Yeah me!)

30 Down – The clue was “Look”. With the first two letters of “AP…” helping me out, I took a guess that the answer was “APPEARANCE”.

62 Across – The clue was “Swimmer Krayzelburg with four Olympic gold medals”. Now while I won’t use Google to assist me with my answers, I have no problem with using other reference books so that is why I used my 2011 Almanac and found out that Krayzelburg’s first name is “LENNY”. The “E” also helped me confirm the answer to 30 Down.

Sheesh ! Let’s hope the next week brings more answers (or at least more free time to work on this puzzle).

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Number 36 – Crossword Edition: Week 2

Continuing on my quest to complete The Post Puzzler No.36, the Sunday crossword puzzle from The Washington Post (which is much harder than the puzzle found in the Post’s Sunday magazine), here is where I stand after week 2:

Week 2 - 18 Answers

So how did I get here…

14 Down – The clue was “Surgical glove material”. Most are made from latex

25 Across – The clue was “Unlike a taskmaster”. Since the opposite of a taskmaster is someone who is easy, I needed a synonym for easy ending with “x” from latex, which is lax.

13 Down – The clue was “Sometime spitter”. I know my Discovery Channel documentaries (or at least epsiodes of Dirty Jobs) and know that it is the llama that spits.

21 Across – The clue was “Oil source”. With the “e” from Odie, the “m” from llama, and the “e” from latex, I was able to surmise sesame.

I decided to move on to another portion of the puzzle.

48 Across – The clue was “Hawaiian harvest”. This is a staple of crossword puzzles as any four-letter answer dealing with Hawaii is taro.

40 Down – The clue was “Rode the bench”. The “Rode” in the clue means that the verb that is the answer is also in the past tense. To “ride the bench” in an athletic contest is to “sit” and the past tense is sat.

I went back to the upper-right corner.

7 Down – The clue was “Graf’s other half”. The Graf here is tennis player Stefanie Graf, who is married to Andre Agassi.

18 Across – The clue was “Really getting to”. With the “a” from Agassi, the “i” from Odie, the “a” from llama, and the “t” from latex – and plus the fact that I have been married for over fifteen years – the answer of “nagging at” was easy.

27 Across – The clue was “Utterer of famous opening words”. This one tricked me at first because I was trying to come up with names of characters who said famous opening words (e.g., Ishmael from Moby-Dick), but then I turned the clue around to wonder about words that actually opened up items. Famous words that open include “Open Sesame” as said by Ali Baba.

6 Down – The clue was “Appliance accompaniers”. I work with computers. They come with manuals. I used to work at a help desk and more than once wanted to shout “RTFM“.

8 Down – The clue was “Carrier puller”. In only had the “g” in nagging at to work with, but I figured that Carrier meant an aircraft carrier and a boat worthy of pulling such a craft would be a tugboat, or tug for short.

11 Down – The clue was “Trash collectors”. I put out my bins every Sunday and Wednesday nights.

6 Across – The clue was “Knaidel”. I had no idea what this words means. Now, I could have gone to Google for assistance, but I am adamant not to use the Internet to help me with this puzzle. However, with the “m” from manuals, “a” from Agassi, “t” from tug, “o” from Odie, “b” from bins, “l” from llama, and “l” from latex, I was brought back to my friend regaling me with tales from his Passover seder and drooling over his grandmother’s matzo ball soup.

Man…this is going to take a while.

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Number 36 – Crossword Edition: Week 1

Once again, allow me to dive into my randomly generated favorite number, 36, and see where it takes us.

I enjoy crossword puzzles and one of my favorite weekly activities is to tackle the puzzle in The Washington Post. The Post, a few months ago, started publishing a new puzzle, The Post Puzzler, and I find it much more challenging than the puzzle placed in the paper’s Sunday magazine.

So, when Puzzle No.36 came out last week, I though it would be an interesting idea to see how quickly I could finish it.

Well, after two weeks, I wish I could have found an easier number to try and tackle.

Week 1 - 5 Answers

Wow – only five clues solved.

10 Down clue was “Pet of Doc Boy‘s brother”. Doc Boy’s brother is John Arbuckle, who owns two pets – one of which is Odie

24 Down clue was “Conan airer”. Conan refers to Conan O’Brien whose new show airs on TBS.

29 Down clue was “Google co-founder Sergey”. His last name is Brin.

33 Across clue was “Top”. With the “S” in TBS and the “R” in Brin, I was able to surmise that the answer was surpass. It’s a guess, but I’m going with it.

50 Across clue was “Fantasy Island’s owner”. Played expertly by Ricardo Montalban, that character’s last name was Roarke.

(Although I just realized I spelled his name wrong on my crossword puzzle….I’ll change that.)

Let’s see how long it takes me to solve this one.

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