I have a confession to make. I suffer from a terrible addiction. I do the NYT crossword puzzle every day. It seems benign, but it’s a sick, twisted obsession.
The associated high is a good one, though. In the best puzzles, you read all the clues before you get a single answer. Then some synaptic connection clicks deep in your cranium, you make a first guess, and that leads to another and another and another. It’s very satisfying in the same way that a great play or novel lets you uncover underlying truths before the characters involved do.
Some of the clues are poetry themselves. A recent four-letter answer was clued "Land of Opportunity". It ends with an S. It starts with a M. Ok, the answer is MARS. Did you notice the last word of the clue was capitalized? Dastardly clever. Will Shortz claims his favorite clue is "It turns into another story." The fifteen-letter answer is SPIRAL STAIRCASE.
One of the other joys of crosswords is, of course, that you learn new words. The clue for 7 Across in today’s puzzle is "Ecdysiast’s accouterment" (six letters). Huh? What would an ecdysiast wear anyway? I’ll put the answer in a comment to this post in case you’re still working on the puzzle, but just say that out loud -- Ecdysiast’s accouterment. What a great clue.
The answer is TASSEL. So what's an ecdysiast? http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=ecdysiast for the answer.
Posted by: JimH | November 18, 2004 at 02:51 PM
Anyone who's ever seen Gypsy knows the answer to that one immediately.
And I'd have said a Horn, but it's not 6 letters.
Posted by: Larry Osterman | November 18, 2004 at 03:13 PM
Oh, and the obligitory link: http://music.msn.com/album/?album=10511714#
Posted by: Larry Osterman | November 18, 2004 at 03:16 PM
It's good you're getting your addiction out into the open. Admitting is the first step to recovery. Now please excuse me as I commence a productive session of Halo 2.
Posted by: Charlie Martz | November 18, 2004 at 10:25 PM
it is thursday the 29 dec.04 and the same clue came back again, yes i rember the clue but I worked around it.
Posted by: a ozote | December 30, 2004 at 03:25 PM
Thanks for the help with ecdysiast. I was able to finish my NYT crossword. I too have this addiction and on Thursday and Friday I need a little help.
Posted by: Diana | December 30, 2004 at 08:34 PM
That's odd -- I'm a crossword constructor, and I recently had a Friday puzzle in the Times with the answer SPIRAL STAIRCASE... but that wasn't the clue. (Although it's a very nice clue.) The clue I submitted, which I thought was pretty nifty, was "One way to curl up?" Will changed it to "One way to get up and around," which was also good. Do you know where/when the "Turns into another story" clue appeared? Maybe it was back at Games magazine.
Posted by: Eric Berlin | January 03, 2005 at 10:11 AM