Patrick Merrell author page

What do you mean when you say ARE YOU KIDDING ME about the historic town in in Hungary? I am not kidding, sir. It's Pápa.

WHO THE HELL KNOWS that tributary in Russia? Everyone, of course. Mama!

I HAVEN'T GOT A CLUE about the village in Poland? I'll give you one: Pápa and Mama get together to make …

No, not sweet sweet love! I mean, yes, but ...

They make a NANA? What are you talking about? Oh, because it follows the consonant-duplication and A alternation pattern? That idea is pure kaka, and I say ta-ta to you.

There is GAGA, though. And the village in Poland is Baby! See what a helpful clue I gave you?

It did take me roughly eighty-nine hours to find the Pápa, Mama, Baby pattern (thanks a lot, Bing, or should I say Bing-a-ling), but it was totally not unworthy of the unfound negative antitime I didn't have. It would have been delightful to have PAPA, MAMA, BABY woven into the grid somewhere; an Easter egg for those of you so brilliant that it only took eighty-eight hours to find that pattern.

Just three themers is a bare minimum these days, so I expect a juicy grid chock full of sparklers, with zero dabs of glue to hold everything together. I loved Scotty and the ENGINE ROOM, and there's something so Merrellesque about BLOODSTAIN clued as a laundry problem for Dracula.

I did want more, though, as DUFFEL BAG and INTENTION aren't entries you'd write home about. And the amassment of AGIN, HOU, VSO, ETHNO GEIST ires me. Another round of revision would be appreciated. I would have asked for more optimal spacing of the long downs, alternating them up down up down, creating more space between BLOODSTAIN and INTENTION.

I love me some Mad Magazine, so I was delighted to learn about John's role. Hopefully, I don't make next month's cover.

All in all, a curious concept that grew on me after I learned of the Pápa, Mama, Baby connection.

CHINESE CHECKERS not actually Chinese, RHODE ISLAND not actually an island, etc. What with all the oddities of the English language, it's not hard to see why people believe it when someone yells FAKE NEWS!

Did you get the secret subversive message: CROSSWORDS ARE NOT ACTUALLY NOT CROSS WORDS? How many F-bombs have you seen the NYT xw drop lately, hmm? Not even one S-word!

Huh? The NYT xw does use IRE and IRK all the time, and those are cross (angry) words?

What? Crosswords are so named because words cross each other?

HA! TBA is NOT A WORD. NEITHER ARE SSTARS, NCO, ESTAB AND SO MANY OTHERS TODAY!

Did you know that the HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE was neither Roman nor holy? You can't even call it an empire. I mean, holy moly, it didn't even span a single continent. If the sun sets on your little fiefdom EVERY DAY, it ain't an empire.

All kidding aside, I enjoyed learning a few things from this puzzle.

But wait. REST ROOMS aren't places of rest? I beg to differ! Apparently Patrick has never been in a women's room. My wife Jill spent about an hour in a fancy one with both my kids the other day, where there are couches, loungers, toys for the kids, and so many secret amenities I'm not privy to.

Get it, privy?

Maybe I should stop there.

Maybe I should have stopped yesterday.

It's hard to swallow the glut of APLEA, ASLAP, ASON kicking off DST, ENDE, ERN, ESS, and so on and so on. But I did enjoy some of the bonuses, TAILSPIN and VIGNETTE the standouts. Just goes to show how difficult the 140-word 21x21 construction is, even for seasoned pros. One thing that could have helped: getting rid of PEANUT and CATGUT, which both got lost in the shuffle and created tough filling problems in their respective corners.

I'd heard most of these "false fact" VIGNETTES before, but perhaps they'll be of more interest to those hearing them the first time.

A shame that this one came so close behind another alphabetic string puzzle, one executed more elegantly. Patrick's concept works, but it doesn't have as tidy of a feel, since there are many options for each string. ABCDE, for example, can be found in ALBRECHT DURER, BAREBACK RIDER … and ALPHABETIC ORDER!

Solid work, though, in coming up with a full set of themers that fit into crossword symmetry. Although each of the themers has other options, there's a nice FenG sHuI to how Patrick laid out the grid. There aren't dozens of options for each string, so there's undoubtedly a lot of juggling and sorting required to make symmetry work.

If your knee-JerK refLex was that it was too easy to come up with alternate themers, remember that a lot of the options would have been too long to work with. Seven shortish themers are hard enough.

Patrick did a nice job of building around his seven themers. Perfect to stack ABSCONDED and AFGHANI in adjacent rows, effectively making it like he only had to work around five themers.

I did notice a bit of NSF / CEN / MST stuff, but that was easily overlooked.

The only real blip in the craftsmanship is something I usually don't care about — added Ss. Some constructors say they hate plurals as inelegant, which mystifies me. If the words are in common usage, who cares if there are a bunch of plurals?

Well, I do, if they're the ilk of ILKS and USAGES — not commonly pluralized words. Toss in UKES (uke isn't as common as ukulele) and SKYS, and it felt like too much glue from one class of offender.

Big fan of two clues: MICE might "squeak by," indeed. And I sure hope my dentist "knows the drill"!

Difficult solve, which is what Will aims for on a Thursday — it took me forever to piece together the theme entries. I enjoy working hard for my a-ha moment, but only if the payoff is worth it. Knowing exactly what I should be doing from the start, but still having to struggle to complete the grid, wasn't that satisfying.

Midway through LAUGH AT MYSELF (LAM-poon) week! Petty Jeff (PJ) would have griped about only three themers when these days the norm is to have at least four. But today, I choose to focus on the smiles I got from these three amusing reinterpretations of NO phrases. No, NO, NO, I say to PJ!

NO, (you can only write) RHYME OR REASON is such a hilariously bizarre thing for a teacher to say. And I've heard the phrase NO MAN IS AN ISLAND thousands of times, but I'd never thought of it parsed as NO, MAN (the isle of MAN) IS AN ISLAND. Funny!

PJ would have complained that with just three themers, the grid ought to be packed with a ton of juicy fill, more than just EGG CRATE, AIR TAXI, BEAR HUG. Instead, I choose to focus on the great job in the cluing:

• As a kid, I used to love me the meat sticks that came in gift packages. As an "adult," I love me the playfulness of "meet stick" being a BATON.
• [Fiddler on the reef?], ha! So punny, playing on "Fiddler on the Roof" to describe a CRAB.
• Pick-up lines make me laugh (I never had the courage to use one, way back when). Making me laugh even more is a different type of pick-up line: CABs lined up at the airport.

I usually like more out of my Thursday solving experience — not just a harder solve, but one that has a bigger payoff than usual to make it worthwhile. But, the most important thing about crosswords is how much enjoyment they bring. There was a lot to love about the Merrellosity of this one.

There was another puzzle like this two years ago, two movies smashed together to create a description of a third movie. I helped Jerry develop that one, constantly reinforcing the idea that 1.) the movies had to be very well known, and 2.) that the descriptions had to be not just apt, but amusing.

Same criteria apply today, and I liked many of Patrick's themers. SUPERBAD HAIR was the standout — both movies were popular and did well at the box office, and that description of "Dumb and Dumber" is so funny!

(My poor son, Jake, has a "Dumb and Dumber" haircut. We try everything we can do to get him to sit still to fix it, but no dice. Superbad hair it is!)

NOTORIOUS PSYCHO was good, too. No doubt, a perfect description of "Silence of the Lambs." That movie creeped me out so bad, though — Superbad! — so I didn't personally like it as much as SUPERBAD HAIR.

I wasn't a fan of using movies like NETWORK, NEIGHBORS, or TOYS. Sure, you could make a case that NEIGHBORS did okay at the box office, but I'm not sure anyone would call it a classic. (Would they?) I'd much prefer to stick to movies that were in Oscar contention, huge box office smashes or cult classics.

Of course, one could easily make the case that SUPERBAD isn't as well-known as NEIGHBORS, since it's older and made less at the box office. No doubt, there's a lot of subjectivity involved here. And I'm wrong a lot!

Much better to avoid the discussion at all by using movies like TITANIC and JAWS — hard to argue with those.

As for fill, I liked the insider's nod with OSCAR NOD. I would have liked more color like that since GESTALT was the only other entry that stood out. But the grid already has a slew of NTEST ACTSO AGHA ATEN SWA AGS kind of stuff, and I wouldn't have been okay with much else. Tough call. Probably best to pare back on one of the themers if you can't get enough color without introducing too much crossword glue.

Just goes to show how tough a 140-word Sunday puzzle is to make. Heck, even a master like Patrick had to go up to 142 words to get it completed!

Funny "modern-day remake" theme, classic movies updated using current businesses. It took me forever to figure out what was going on, but then UBER DRIVER (from TAXI DRIVER) gave me a smile.

I wasn't sure what THE ___ DICK was (I really hope they use that as a "Family Feud" survey), but apparently there's a movie called "The Bank Dick"? And Bing Crosby was in … "Holiday Inn"? Huh. Funny, that movie was just in 1979, so I feel like I should know it. Ah well.

ADDED NOTE: Ah, that Bing Crosby movie was in 1942! Now I don't feel quite like I ought to know it ...

I spent a lot of time ruminating on the revealer, GMO POPCORN. Was that supposed to be a remake of some sort of ___ POPCORN phrase? Would have been a clever ending to the puzzle, but alas, I think it's more a "what could we do with POPCORN that sounds modern-day?".

I like in these celeb collaborations when the grid reflects the celeb's life. Love getting SLAY, as Elayne Boosler cracks me up. It would have been neat to turn YAKS into YUKS. But that stupid terminal U would have made 57-Down much less flexible. Drat!

Along the humor line, I smiled at the FIREPLUG clue. If you don't get it, think not about the golf dogleg, but an actual dog's leg … up to the left or right … above a fire hydrant … (sorry, I'm in the habit of having to explain jokes in excruciating detail to my two-year-old).

Pretty good grid, as I'd expect from Patrick, except for one little problematic crossing — UNIVAC / PIMA. Oof. Even for a Wednesday puzzle, I wonder if that's going to give solvers fits. I'm personally interested in tech, so UNIVAC and ENIAC are fascinating to me. PIMA … not so much. Hopefully, solvers will fall into at least one area of interest or the other.

Love the celeb collaboration series, but this theme didn't quite hit home for me. If GMO POPCORN had been replaced with a fourth themer, maybe something involving GOOGLE or AMAZON or something, that would have worked better for me.

(EGBDF = every good boy does fine, a mnemonic for the notes on the lines on a treble clef score.)

★ Easy-breezy, smooth puzzle with a fun theme — creatures with a monster in their names — everything I think a Monday should be. At first I didn't get why GIANT of GIANT SQUID fit into the concept, but a quick headslap came after recalling the GIANTs in fairy tales, Harry Potter, etc.

Did you notice Patrick's elegant touch, two airborne animals in the top half of the grid, and two undersea ones in the bottom half? Love that! And I can imagine an ordered sequence, with a VAMPIRE BAT flying high, a DRAGONFLY closer to the ground, a DEVILFISH swimming not too deep, and a GIANT SQUID lurking in the depths. Absolutely perfect.

Nice bonus entries, too. Patrick uses the "long downs" approach with RUTABAGA (I'm not sure why, but it's such a funny-sounding word) and OFF NIGHT, a typical way to incorporate longer fill. Working long bonus fill into the across direction can be trickier, since those answers tend to have a lot of overlap with themers. Some very good choices in STALLION and BEATNIKS, and both are integrated so smoothly. Throw in a little NOONDAY, ITS TIME, and BAROQUE, and this solver got a lot more than he expected out of a Monday puzzle.

Such a smooth solve. I didn't care for ORONO, since it's a pretty small town and constructors tend to lean on it due to its vowel / consonant alternation, but all the crossings are fair. I debated whether ARIEL should be known by NYT solvers, but what else could that R be?

Normally I don't care for fill that's related to the theme, but it was fun to get a little STINE in the grid. For those in the know, he's been called the "Stephen King of children's literature." Perfect for this puzzle!

Although I'm a total wuss when it comes to anything remotely scary, I really enjoyed this puzzle.

★ Patrick is one of my favorite people in the puzzle business. His cartoon art is right up my alley, and there's something to his humor that reminds me of my days of reading MAD Magazine (those days being yesterday, today, and tomorrow). Perhaps that's because he's contributed to MAD!

Today's puzzle has that flavor, with "what they said" followed by "what they really meant." I smiled at pols saying "No new taxes!" but thinking JUST MORE OF THE OLD ONES. My favorite was "I'll slow this country's spread of drugs!" really meaning EXPECT CUTS IN MEDICARE.

I did find the last one to be not like the others, though. As much as I'd love to see a politician with the humility to say IVE GOT A LOT TO LEARN, that sensibility doesn't fit with the other five themers, nor does it carry a humorous bent. Still, 5/6 ain't bad.

Sunday 140-words puzzles are incredibly tough to build smoothly. Even for an uber-pro like Patrick, finishing with some gluey bits like A DRAG (partial), RNAS (not really pluralized in real life), SETHS (plural names aren't very elegant), LST (tough acronym, especially for younger solvers), A BAN (partial) is par for the course.

What helped me brush those aside was some really fun cluing:

• Who knew that Winnie the Pooh was introduced by AA MILNE as Edward Bear?
• Ian Fleming was a fan of James BOND, the ornithologist? Another great piece of trivia.
• I love me some bridge, so a [Bridge table foursome] being LEGS was fun.
• STRAYS may be measured by the pound. The dog pound, that is.
• SANDERS are used in the evening — the evening of boards.
• [Put on a nonpolitical button, say] was perfect for this puzzle, misdirecting away from SEW.

A really fun solving experience for me, the humor in the theme and the clever cluing far outweighing the small dabs of glue here and there.

★ Neat idea, requiring two steps to figure out what was going on. After uncovering the IV in the central themer, I had a feeling Roman numerals were somehow involved, but it was a neat a-ha to discover that IV was interpreted as FOUR, which is part of FLAGS O(F OUR) FATHERS. Sort of a multiple-square rebus in a way, but also sticking to the usual one-letter-per-square criterion. I can't remember seeing something quite like this since Francis Heaney's incredible FLAG DAY puzzle, so I really enjoyed the novelty.

I've fixed up the database entries below, so you can see exactly what the themers are, post-decoding.

Because the idea was so interesting, I liked getting five themers, each one a treat to figure out. It was nice that Patrick managed to work in a little bonus fill too, TRUE GRIT being an incredible movie (and book — highly recommended!) and PELICANS pretty colorful too.

I would have liked more order in the themers, though. While having a random set of numbers (not in sequence) does make the puzzle even more challenging, the idea of going from I to II to III to IV to V (in order) is so appealing. I suppose THREE is a pretty tough string to incorporate into a phrase, as is FIVE. Even having random numbers but going in ascending order would be nice.

I also would have liked the four corners to be less cut off from the rest of the puzzle. The NW and SE are better, since two answers flow into each, but the top right and the bottom left have only one entry in. Although I love AZIZ Ansari ("Master of None" was a surprisingly moving series), I can see how that corner, especially the crossing with ZZZ, might cause some solvers to get really stuck and frustrated. Interesting fact that [Last entry in the Random House Unabridged Dictionary] is ZZZ — "a representation of the sound made by somebody sleeping or snoring, often used in cartoons." Curious that it's actually recognized as a word!

Loved the concept here, and as with most all of Patrick's puzzle, strong execution. Very enjoyable trick to uncover.

ADDED NOTE: Patrick mentioned that he had a different "order" in mind — one "trick" square in the first themer, followed by one, two, two, and then three. Clever idea; lulling the solver into thinking that maybe there was just a normal rebus going on.

★ What a great start to this "breaking the mold" theme week! I'm a sucker for puzzles with visual elements, and I love Patrick's unique style of art, so this one worked very well for me. The theme — spoonerizing A POCKET FULL OF RYE into "a rocket full of pie" — is simple enough for a Monday and it made me laugh. Plus, Patrick's drawings are just nice to look at.

I liked how NURSERY RHYME and SPACE STATION apply to the two drawings, too — great to get some bonus theme material to flesh out the puzzle.

What with effectively five theme answers (including the big spaces for the two drawings), it's great that Patrick works in some colorful fill. There's not a lot of long stuff, just LIME TREE and STARGATE, but a dose of geography in BOGOTA, WARSAW, and LIBYA zest things up. Even the six-letter entries like EUREKA! and YES YOU serve their purpose well.

I personally dislike partials more than any other sort of glue (except random Roman numerals), so I didn't care for IF AT or AS BIG, but otherwise the puzzle is so smooth. Very well executed.

It stinks to be an Across Lite solver today (which I usually am). The puzzle makes absolutely no sense what with giant chunks of 3x3 black squares; no way to display those comic strip panels. Might have been better to just do away with the .puz file completely. Get into the 21st century already, crossword software!

Great idea to work cartoon panels into a crossword grid, something I can't remember seeing before. BTW, there's another puzzle this week that I also loved, so there'll be two POWs! this week.

★ So many strong puzzles this week, but this one stood out for me. How do I decide these things? No doubt, it is subjective (Jim and I often differ on which puzzle we like the best for any given week). I really liked the previous two puzzles and also think there are a couple more humdingers coming up this week. So I relied on gut instinct, giving great weight to the feeling of immense pleasure I got as I solved this puzzle.

I had the pleasure of meeting Patrick two American Crossword Tournament Puzzles ago, where he had authored a devious construction that tripped up many solvers. Today's is much more straightforward, three grid-spanning entries containing "LESS" and re-interpreted with funny results. Sense of humor is hit and miss (just ask my poor wife) but these three all made me laugh. Each one of them is a strong base phrase, and I thought each of the re-interpretations was clever.

People might complain that there are only three theme answers. This was certainly the norm ten years ago, so it did seem like a throwback at first. But when it comes to "wacky" puzzles (themers designed to generate a laugh) I'd much rather have three strong line-drives than two homers, a base on balls, and a batter hit by pitch. I'm not sure what that last one really means in terms of crossword answers, but I can think of a few "wacky" themers I've winced at in the past.

And look what freedom the fewer than normal number of themers opens up. Patrick, the consummate professional constructor, takes full advantage of it, giving us three pairs of long downs, all great: GREEK MYTH / SLAPSTICK, LEGOLAND / BUS ROUTE, THE DUDE / OBSCENE. And if that wasn't enough, he grabs hold of two six-letter entries to give us MRS WHO and NO SALT. Along with CT SCAN and OH BOY worked into the grid, that's the way to jazz up a puzzle.

Like any puzzle, it's not perfect, at least in this ultra-picky constructor's eyes. Those west and east sections get highly constrained considering the SLAPSTICK / CT SCAN borders on the east, for example. I'm not a big fan of ENGS, as I've preferred to call myself an ENGR. So perhaps I would have preferred SKI instead of ABE and ASEA instead of ADDS, turning ENGS into INGA. But that's a matter of personal taste. In the west, seeing OST bugged me. I like some foreign words if they're relatively common, but OST and ANGE and ESEL (a Germanl donkey) strike me as quite inelegant. There are other options there, why not use them? Of course, this is also subjective — I'm sure there are German scholars who will be writing in.

Finally, as if I didn't already admire the puzzle enough, two clues that sparkled. [Round one] had to be some sort of boxing-related answer? Nope — FATSO! Hopefully that word itself won't offend people, but it's a perfect misdirectional clue for one exhibiting an ovoidal nature. And to start a puzzle with [Breather] which just had to be REST was devious. I loved figuring out that I was totally wrong, LUNG indeed being a type of "breather."

Wednesdays can be hard, straddling the line between being relatively accessible and relatively clever. This puzzle does it really well.