Thu., 10/22 David Poole

[magus]

THEME:   Famous last names sounding like birds replace first words of phrases with actual bird spellings
   
GOOD ONES:     
Tough spot for actor Walter?   PIDGEON HOLE   
Facial feature of actor Ethan?   HAWKE EYES   
Big club in Atlantic City?  ACE [playing card ace of clubs]   
"No, No, Nanette" foursome   ENS   
Enjoy Whistler {SKI} and Emulate Whistler {PAINT}   [the mountain and the artist in different parts of the grid]   
   
BTW:   
Perhaps David is French or took it in school, but Printemps, ETE, and NIEGE are not used in English.   
   
   
RATING:    [most clever theme]
Three grins = Loved it; Two grins = Enjoyed it; One grin = A bit bland for my taste; One teardrop = Not much fun   

[Thomps2525]

And Poole's crossword also included our old familiar friend OREO. National Biscuit Company (now Nabisco) introduced Oreo cookies in 1912. They were an imitation of Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company's Hydrox cookies. If Nabisco's cookies had been called Jixy-Zip, I daresay no crossword creator would ever have used the name in a puzzle.

The Universal crossword seldom has any clever theme. Sometimes the four long answers are rhymes and sometimes they each contain the same particular word. Today each of the four long answers ends with EAR: BRINGTOBEAR, READYTOWEAR, COLLEGEYEAR and LANDINGGEAR. Universal's puzzle makers need to take some classes in cleverness and creativity. Did Merl Reagle ever write a textbook?

[magus]

Why fill out puzzles that consistently disappoint, and why write about them?

[Thomps2525]

Mister magus, I took the liberty of creating the world's easiest crossword puzzle, just for you:

Across
1. An article of speech

Down
1. First letter of alphabet
_______
| 1         |
|            |
|______|

Let me know if you think it's too easy.

[magus]

If your simple crossword is relative to my comment, I'm guessing that the answer is "It's easy."  But even if so, the second part of my question remains unanswered. 

Or could it be your circumspection is an attempt to lead me off the track? 

[Thomps2525]

Yes, my creation of that crossword was a diversionary tactic. Obviously it didn't work. I wouldn't say the Universal crosswords "consistently disappoint" but they do usually lack any of the cleverness and creativity which informed Merl Reagle's puzzles. On a crossword puzzle forum, shouldn't we write about all puzzles and not just the best ones? After all, movie reviewers do not write about only the films they like while ignoring all the bad films. You and I are "crossword puzzle reviewers." And I notice you didn't post your solution to my puzzle so I have no way of knowing if your answers are correct.

[magus]

I'm hardly a reviewer of Xwords as I do only one puzzle a day and write about what struck me, positive, negative, and observational.  My ratings are subjective and describe only the degree to which I enjoyed filling the puzzles out.  (Complete reviews of the LAT can be found at www.CrosswordCorner.blogspot.com.)

As I rarely enjoyed Monday and Tuesday LAT offerings, I no longer look at them.  Embarrassingly, it took me some years to figure that out.

Sorry for not completing your puzzle, but there are just so many hours in a day.

[Thomps2525]

If you're trying to cajole me into giving you a hint to the answers in my crossword, you'll be disappointed. You'll just have to figure out the answers on your own.

On Monday and Tuesday, the newspaper Sudoku puzzles are of a "gentle" difficulty level. The next three days' puzzles progress from "moderate" to "tough" to "diabolical." Likewise, crossword puzzles seem to be easy to solve on Monday and Tuesday and get progressively more challenging as the week goes on. But why? Who started this trend? Why can't Monday's crossword be as challenging as the Friday crossword? I wants ta know!