David Distenfeld author page

Jim here, sitting in for Jeff Chen, who is participating in Zener card experiments.

My impression is that Rudyard Kipling isn't taught so much in school anymore, at least in America. You'll know he wrote The Jungle Book and the Just So Stories, but he was also an influential poet. DANNY Deever is about soldiers watching the execution by hanging of one of their own. It sticks with you.

On the other hand, lots of people die in ROGUE ONE at 50-Across, and it's not sad at all. The only good Storm Trooper is a dead Storm Trooper.

The clue of the day is "Lead-in to hickey," which, as luck would have it, crosses DIRTY MINDED.

And now I'm going to kill your joy. DOO has been clued similarly before by the great Merl Reagle, who called it a "Prelude to a hickey." That brings me to a complaint I sometimes hear: XWord Info is bad for crosswords because it makes it too easy to surface prior art that nobody would otherwise remember. Pointing out repeated themes or clues is pointlessly pedantic.

There's another big complaint people have about this site which I'll share in a future post. Perhaps you can guess.

I leave you with this cringy Blast from the Past courtesy of 18-Across.

Jim here. sitting in for Jeff who's getting his mustache waxed.

CATFISHES is already a decent answer, but it's an interesting editorial choice to clue it as a verb since the slang sense it points to is creepy. It doesn't mean pretending to be a Nigerian prince to get your SSN, it means preying on the vulnerable lovelorn by faking romance, with the ultimate goal of, well, let's leave it at just financial gain. It's an evocative term. It's new. It's an important concept in modern digital life. It's today's 1-Across.

Lots to love today. My themeless endorphin levels vary with the clue cleverness, and there are some good ones here: "Follower of many state names" for EDU, and "Modern-day scroll" for TWITTER FEED stand out.

OPEN MATTE is obscure enough that it gets a dictionary clue, but it's sandwiched between two good answers with outstanding clues: "Where to find 55 and over" for RADIO DIAL, and "Parents obsessed with play dates" for STAGE MOMS.

SALOME would have to be considered a tragedy, at least for John the Baptist whose head gets served on a platter to the spoiled title character after she strips to the famous Dance of the Seven Veils. That's how it goes in Strauss's opera version anyway, and also in the play, and I'm guessing also in that old book from which the Herod v John story derives. Sex and violence. Two staples of both opera and the Bible.

Crosswords are full of conventions you just have to learn. One is that clues like "They're used during film production and promotion" can be puns. Those are different kinds of TRAILERS but having the same name is good enough for crosswords. Too much logic will spoil your fun.

Another convention you need to internalize is the occasional focus on spelling rather than meaning, like "What makes Dr. Dre?" for ANE, or "Aisle's head" for SILENT A. Today we have "Myanmar has two" for EMS. As you solve more crosswords, your reaction to these will go from "So unfair!" to "Damn, I got fooled again!" to "Yeah, totally saw that coming. Next."

Oh, and Mr. Distenfeld, your resplendent constructor notes are amazeballs.