The theme answers in today's
New York Times crossword by Jennifer Nutt: VIDEOCLIP, CIRCULARFILE, TRAINBUFF, MOONSHINE and SOCIALPOLISH. "Appropriate exclamation upon solving this puzzle?" is INAILEDIT. Look at the last part of each theme answer: things we do to our nails.....although I would have also included a phrase that ends with BREAK.
Patti Varol's
Los Angeles Times crossword includes WINGEDVICTORY ("Statue of Nike at the Louvre"), PRINCEOFPEACE and KNEWATHINGORTWO. The central answer, "Hand gesture for the last word" of each of those answers, is VSIGN.
"Walk back and forth" is PACE. But why is the phrase always worded that way? It should be "Walk forth and back." We can not walk
back until we have first walked
forth. And while I'm on the subject, why do we say "One after another"? Shouldn't it be "Another after one"? The "another" can't come first. The "one" comes first and
then another. Okay, let's move on.
There were more of the usual over-used words in the 13x13 NEA crossword: ACHE, ASEA, ASP, END, ESS, ETNA, ILK, OAT, ODE, SRTA and USER. The Universal crossword was no better; it included APT, ARENA, ASH, EER, EMIT, LEI, NEE, OAF, OIL, PTA and TEE. This is not possible, of course, but if we could pass a law requiring that all words in crossword puzzles be of at least five letters, puzzle makers would have to be more creative. Unfortunately, such a law may have an unintended effect: We would no longer see the over-used three- and four-letter words but eventually we'd probably start seeing the same
five-letter words repeatedly. *Sigh*
