Saturday, May 30, 2020, Brian E. Paquin

Themeless Saturday by Brian E. Paquin 

Our retired computer systems developer, and now crossword constructor from Kingston, Ontario returns today with a lovely little puzzle. The long fills greatly aided me although SEARCH HIGH AND LOW and ROUGH ESTIMATES soon knew the fury of my delete key.

Brian wrote to me and gave fabulous insight into his construction process that uses a program he wrote himself. It is so detailed I decided to post it at the bottom of write-up and I can't recommend it highly enough!

Let's see what Brian has for us on this penultimate day in May.

Across:

1. Cowboys, at times: ROPERS - Not the sitcom landlords

7. Can really bring it: HAS GAME - When playing golf with strangers, you can soon see who "HAS GAME"

14. Modern book case?: E-READER - My MacBook Pro fills in

16. Poirot portrayer in "Death on the Nile": USTINOV - Real Agatha Christie fans will pick him out in this lineup

17. Mondale's 1984 running mate: FERRARO - Her addition to the ticket did not keep him from a huge landslide loss 

18. Newborn: NEONATE - A baby four weeks old or younger

19. Fightin': AGIN - "If'n yer fer it, ahm AGIN it!"

20. Fenders, e.g.: GUITARS - Bryan Adams FENDER Stratocaster that is signed by 19 rock artists brought $2.7M at auction. 10 most expensive guitars

22. Mil. rank in Clue: COL - Mustard

23. Emergency: PINCH - The last word that finishes this old five-word adage

24. Flowering desert plant: YUCCA.

28. Go after: ENSUE.

30. Orator's stage: DAIS.

32. Sweetie pie: HON - Beats the heck out of BAE

33. What an inspiration may do: SPRING TO MIND - Dr. Percy Spencer felt a candy bar melt in his shirt pocket while standing next to this radar magnetron which emitted microwave radiation. He then put down popcorn kernels and watched them pop. Hmmm...

37. Makes big bucks: RAKES IN THE MONEY.

40. Standing up to criticism: HOLDING WATER - Does the defenses case HOLD WATER?

41. Compass dir.: ENE - The red runway below is designated 01/19. It is runway 01 when going ENE (10 degrees dropping the 0) and runway 19 (190 degrees dropping the 0) when going WSW

42. Campus leader: DEAN.

43. Tree houses: NESTS - People make them as well

47. Abounds: TEEMS.

50. Uber offerings: RIDES - It was a $20 UBER RIDE from our hotel to Arlington National Cemetery

52. Limit: CAP - Unlike cabs, that Uber rate has a CAP

53. Spook: STARTLE.

55. Ear part: LOBE.

56. Like the L.A. Times Building: ART DECO - July, 4, 1942

59. Early name in aviation: ORVILLE - The brothers 61. Reworked: DID OVER the flight surfaces on Dec. 17 until they got 852' which is the last marker in this picture

62. Brandished: WIELDED.

63. Enter into and control: POSSESS.

64. Is: EXISTS.


Down:

1. Spruce up, as a building front: REFACE - An HGTV "fixer upper" result

2. Home of Silicon Forest: OREGON - Analogous to California's Silicon Valley

3. Risks: PERILS.

4. Merit: EARN.

5. Old food label abbr.: RDA.


6. Two-time 1990s French Open champ __ Bruguera: SERGI - Before Nadal became unbeatable on the clay surface in Paris

7. Look everywhere: HUNT HIGH AND LOW.

8. Headed for Europe, maybe: ASEA - A voyage on the Queen Mary 2 is on my bucket list

9. Account: STORY - There's always two sides

10. Infomercial kitchen brand: GINSU - How often do you need to slice a tin can?

11. Santa __: ANA.

12. Wit bit: MOT.

13. Time of anticipation: EVE - I try to catch all my blogging errors on Friday night which is Saturday Puzzle EVE but... 

15. Inaccuracies usually considered acceptable: ROUNDING ERRORS - The basis for the movie Office Space

21. Cry of anticipatory excitement: I CAN'T WAIT - Husker FB and VB

23. Side in a decades-long war: PEPSI.

25. Gym exercise: CHIN - Brian clued it as "Dimple location"

26. Road repair sight: CONE.

27. Comedian Samberg: ANDY- His IMDB

29. Put in the lineup: USED - Rumor has it that the designated hitter will be USED in both leagues when MLB starts up again

31. Manuscript mark: STET - You know what? Leave it as it was.

34. Peeled-off item: RIND.

35. Eclipses and comets, to some: OMENS - We were right under the Moon's shadow when it passed over Eastern Nebraska in 2017

36. Added: MORE.

37. Orator's prowess: Abbr.: RHET - RHETORIC - My granddaughter's future husband was a National Champion debater for UNL

38. Top-drawer: A-ONE.

39. "Fish Magic" painter: KLEE - I wonder what that looks like

44. Tells off: SCOLDS.

45. Laptop alternative: TABLET 

46. Barrels or bolts: SPEEDS.

48. Windows forerunner: MS DOS - MS-DOS was replaced by GUI (Graphic User Interface) Window interface

MS-DOS                                                Windows OS

49. Jobs in the tech industry: STEVE - A fun clue, Brian! Also an alternative to Windows!

Steve Jobs

51. Macabre: EERIE - That's another Steve(n) King!

54. Breezes through: ACES.

55. Taylor of "Six Feet Under": LILI - If you know the show, you know who she is in this picture

56. Payroll service initials: ADP - Automatic Data Processing

57. Feeder of un lago: RIO - El RIO Detroit desemboca en el lago Erie

58. NFL stats: TDS.

60. Bug: VEX - It sounded like a Shakespearean word and so I searched and found this line that came at the death of the title character. Act 5, Scene 3 dialogue in modern English as well

Let's hear what you have to say about Brian's puzzle after you take a look behind his construction curtain below. Thanks again for being so generous, Brian!

Hi Gary,

For this puzzle, I used a type of grid which is one of my 'lazy' grids: it does take time to fill it, and there can be stretches of tedious trial and error, but it doesn't take a lot of  creative effort or hard work.   The laziness partly springs from the fact that there are three longish Across entries passing through the center, and three such Down entries doing the same.  That can actually simplify the process.

1.  To start things off, I highlight the 3 long Across entries and tell my program to produce (maybe) 200 fills of just those entries.   Then I do something else entirely, like take a nap.   Some time later, I scroll through the results, and save the half dozen or so results that I like the most.  'Liking' a grid not only involves liking the three entries that I see, but also liking the number of potential crossing entries that exist, and what they are.  (There will be at least one possibility for each crosser, otherwise my program won't keep that fill).

2.  Starting with my first choice of fills, I repeat the process with just the three central Down entries.   The choices are of course restricted by the three existing Across entries, and the program might not come up with a long list of possibilities.  (But I still might sleep again while it's producing that list).

3.  I now have one or more grids that have the six long entries filled in.  I again scroll through the list and save the grids where I decide that the three Down entries look appealing, and the four independent corners look like they can be filled.   At this point, I might well decide that I've hit a dead end, and I will try my next choice from the grids produced in Step 1.

4.  When I get this far, I have one or more grids where only four small and independent corners need to be filled.  (And much of the work might have been done while I was sawing off zeds, which are Canadian zees). Typically, one or maybe two of those corners will look (and be) hard to fill, and the others will look (and be) easy to fill in various ways.   Note that up to now, I have been working only with my own cleanest dictionaries, which I have built up brick by brick over time.   

In order to deal with the difficult corner/s, I might try moving a black square, or adding a cheater square, or turning a seven-letter entry into 2 three letter entries.  But I will probably start including word lists that have entries that I don't care for much.  (I don't really want the name of a darts champion in my grid, or the title of a dime novel.  On the other hand, I don't think that one or two stinker entries should spoil a puzzle, especially not a Saturday puzzle).  And sometime soon, I will be done.

In defense of my laziness, I wrote my own grid-filling software, and I have put a fair bit of work and (I hope) creativity into improving it.   I wrote the first version in Oct 1998.

As well, I have put a lot of effort into creating clean word lists.   I only use entries like AREA, ARENA, EEK, ELS, ONO, etc.  when there doesn't appear to be another choice.

I have left out quite a bit of detail, but that's all for now!

Saturday, April 4, 2020, Brian E Paquin

Themeless Saturday by Brian E. Paquin

Brian E. Paquin is the author of today's puzzle. He is our retired computer systems developer, and now crossword constructor from Kingston, Ontario. He and I were of very like mind today as I polished this puzzle off very quickly (I have sworn off  saying my solving times here).

On Brian's last themeless Saturday he included actress Anna Paquin as fill and said she might be some distant relative as she was born in Winnipeg, Ontario.

Here was Brian's gracious reply to my inquiry about this puzzle:

Hi Gary,

Not a lot to say about it...I liked the way it turned out, except maybe for the S/E corner.   41A ESSE, 41D EKEOUT and 54D SST are all tiresome entries to me.  But if there is to be a weak area, then the S/E is my choice.  Solvers will have enjoyed the better parts by the time they get there.

Brian

Let's see what Brian has developed for us today from north of the border:

Across:

1. One of the partying elite: A-LISTER.

8. Dessert option: A LA MODE 

15. Emphasize strongly: RAM HOME - Every government agency is trying to RAM HOME wha we must do be safe(r)

16. Online group study: WEBINAR - When I think of all those trips to The University of Nebraska at Omaha I made to get my Masters...

17. Visiting the Louvre, say: IN PARIS - What Rick and Isla will always have

18. Namesake of brunch sauce: HOLLAND - HOLLANDAISE sauce originated in Normandy, France in 1651 as Sauce Isigny not HOLLAND. [Side note - French fries are said to have originated in Belgium and Crab Rangoon in San Francisco] 

19. Sweet after-dinner drink: PORT WINE - On the subject of name derivations, PORT WINE came from the Portuguese city of Oporto

21. Cpl., for one: NCO - Non Commissioned Officer

22. Some street performers: MIMES - Wait a minute... 

25. __ learning: ROTE 

26. Conks out: DIES.

27. "The Cookie Never Crumbles" co-author Wally: AMOS - Famous AMOS

28. Stick: MIRE.

29. Apollo unit, briefly: LEM - Here's the ascent stage of the Lunar Excursion Module taking off from the Moon to reunite with the Command Module that was still orbiting the Moon so the three astronauts could return to Earth. 

30. Flour bag abbr.: LBS.

31. Enthusiastic well-wisher: BACKSLAPPER - Gone with hand shaking for now

35. Retire: PUT OUT TO PASTURE - Subbing keeps at least one foot out of the pasture

37. Took over in a supervisor's absence: HELD THE FORT - After President Reagan was shot, Alexander Haig strode into the West Wing and said he was in charge, i.e. HOLDING (DOWN) THE FORT. Some thought, "Well, 38. __-di-dah: LAH"

40. __ web: DARK - Here 'ya go

41. To be, in Latin: ESSE - "ESSE aut non ESSE illud est quaestio" - Hamlet's musing

42. Hardy title teenager: TESS - TESS of the d"Ubervilles 

44. Small store: MART.

45. 12-time NBA All-Star Olajuwon, as originally spelled: AKEEM - Alt. spelling on this card

46. Big bird: EMU - If commercials are supposed to be annoying to stick in your mind, the poor EMU and his witless handler are successful

47. Dessert made with Oreos: DIRTCAKE - How 'bout adding some (Gummy) worms?

49. Fell behind: RAN LATE.


51. Baseball's Browns, since 1954: ORIOLES - They started as Milwaukee Brewers in 1881 but moved to St. Louis in 1901 as the Browns where they played for 52 years and then became the Baltimore Orioles in 1954 which they still are 39. So far: YET.

1891 Milwaukee Brewers

55. Camera maker that merged with Konica: MINOLTA.

56. What financial projections are compared with: ACTUALS - Everybody's 2020 financial projections are pretty much trash now

57. Guile: SLYNESS.

58. "We're done": THAT'S IT - Going to Husker games?


Down:

1. Bush press secretary Fleischer: ARI.

2. PC linkup: LAN - Local Area Network

3. Little rascal: IMP.

4. Pentagon and others: SHAPES - Those pentagonal home plates are still in storage

5. Corrida chargers: TOROS - Corrida is a word meaning bullfight

6. Muslim noble: EMIR 23. Permeate: IMBUE - IMBUE used in The Call an EMIR might say

7. They're not for everyone: RESTRICTED AREAS - It'd be about a 20 hr drive for me to get to this famous RESTRICTED AREA

8. 1957 Marty Robbins hit: A WHITE SPORT COAT to wear to the 13. Prom, say: DANCE. - This avid Marty Robbins fan first put his less famous song A BIG IRON ON HIS HIP which fit but the title is only BIG IRON and, uh, wrong!

9. Spaghetti Western director Sergio: LEONE - The Danish National Symphony performs the haunting theme from the spaghetti western The Good, The Bad and The Ugly with plenty of voices but not one discernible word. [A Danish orchestra directed by a Japanese-American woman that is the theme for an American-Style western directed by an non-English speaking Italian man shot mostly in Spain]

10. Up to it: ABLE.

11. Wire measure: MIL - 1 MIL wire is .001" thick

12. Without thinking: ON AN IMPULSE - Last week I showed my prized Superman shirt of my misspent yute. ON AN IMPULSE I thought I could fly and took a leap. I told mom and the doctor I was pushed.

14. Hungarian mathematician Paul: ERDOS - The one unknown for me but if you're interested

20. Museum piece: WORK OF ART.

22. "Happy Days" character Ralph: MALPH - If you really care, you'll know which one he is in this picture

24. Promising forecast: MOSTLY SUNNY - Is the same as partly cloudy?

26. Commerce, e.g.: Abbr.: DEPT 

28. "Do the __!": MATH - Can I afford this Ferrari on a retired teacher's income? 

29. Stand the test of time: LAST.

31. Target: BUTT - Being the BUTT of the joke is misery for some and a 32. Playful prank: LARK to others


33. Scrub away: ERASE - 44 sec. video of amazing 3D art and ERASING it

34. Alter, as a skirt: REHEM - This dress has had some significant REHEMMING

36. Poems of honor: ODES.

41. Just manage: EKE OUT.

42. Contract listing: TERMS - Selling my MIL's house contained TERMS where she had to pay for a new roof

43. Text alternative: E-MAIL 

44. Catchers' catchers: MITTS - The first catcher to use one was thought of as a sissy

45. Curly-tailed dog: AKITA - Can't we all use a cute picture today?

47. Valley: DALE.

48. Bridge structure: ARCH - For some reason, the General W.K. Wilson Bridge is called the Dolly Parton Bridge. 

50. Actor Chaney: LON.

52. Scale notes: LAS - A note to follow SO(L)

53. Skull and Bones member: ELI - These three members of this secret society at Yale later became presidents. The Video Daily Double Jeopardy question for the far left man is, "Who is the only president to later become Chief Justice Of The Supreme Court?"

54. Old boomer: SST.

I add for no apparent reason: If Brian drove from his home in Kingston, Ontario to Buffalo, N.Y. he would travel from  the east end of Lake Ontario to the east end of Lake Erie. 

Note from C.C.:

Constructor Todd Gross created a series of YouTube videos on themed crosswords. Click here for his latest "For the Birds". I would not have seen the extra layers without his explanations.