New Thing #239: An Anagram Word Puzzle

This is a little more than a week old. In last Sunday's New York Times Magazine (we're talking August 18 here), the non-crossword puzzle (I think they call it a "Variety" puzzle) dealt with anagrams.

(I always love when there's a puzzle like this in the magazine. I do the crossword every week and that never gets old, but usually the Variety puzzle is their 'Diagramless' or their 'Acrostic' and I just don't enjoy those.)

I didn't do great with the anagrams- but I did give it a shot.

First of all, this type of puzzle is right up my alley. I love playing around with words and unscrambling anagrams.

Turns out, though, I'm not as good at it as I figured I'd be.

The puzzle is called 'Set Pieces', by Mike Shenk. It calles for you to unscramble an anagram to come up with a category and then another word that falls into that category. Their example was PATSY CLINE can be unscrambled to give you CITY and then NAPLES. (I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have gotten that one.)

They helped out by putting the yet-to-be-unscrambled categories in alphabetical order, which was pretty much my saving grace. (Well, so was the fact that they told you how many letters were in each answer.) At the National Puzzlers' League convention in July, the winner completed the puzzle in 10 minutes, 16 seconds. The average score of the 160 puzzlers at that convention was 19 answers in the 30 minute time slot.

I timed myself. In 30 minutes I was able to answer 10. (And I may or may not have gotten a couple wrong. [May.])

I bet, though, I could create 19 of these in 30 minutes. I think my brain works better that way.

I'll tell you what, though: I can't wait until the next one of these pops up.

New Thing #99: What's A Stevedore Again?

As you can tell by looking at the picture below, the top left (northwest, in crossword-speak) corner of my New York Times Sunday crossword is kind of a mess. I'm still not convinced the words I have in there are 100% correct.

One of the keys to that corner was 23-across: "Stevedore, at times."

And here's a common problem of mine when it comes to crosswords: sometimes, with the obscure words that pop up in the puzzles every so often, I forget what they mean shortly after completing the puzzle.

So today's New Thing - committing the word 'stevedore' to memory.

If you look at the picture of my attempt at the northwest corner, I have the structure of the correct answer for 23-across: L - - D - R. If I was guessing, which I didn't on this particular puzzle (and since I've now looked up an answer I've officially waved the white flag on this week's crossword. It's one of my quirks - no external help or you forfeit the crossword.), I would have guessed "Leader". But I would have guessed wrong.

Perhaps you knew this: Stevedore is a term for the loading or unloading of a ship. (Or the noun: the individual or firm responsible for same.) So, obviously, we're looking for "Loader" at 23-across.

This is one of those learning style things - I'm hoping that by writing about stevedore, I'll never again forget what it means...on the crossword-specific occasions I may ever come across the word again.

It worked when I wrote about the Scottish word "Tartle". (Which has yet to come into play as anything useful worth knowing.) And I'm sure this won't be the last new word I address with more than 260 New Things left to write about.

Maybe the next time it'll be a word that I can actually use in conversation.

New Thing #9: The Scottish Word 'Tartle'

One of my favorite times of the week is Sunday late morning/early afternoon, when I sit down to do my crossword. Crosswords, actually.

I love doing the New York Times one, so I save that for last, and I start with the Boston Globe crossword.

But I hate when the puzzle's theme is a quote.

I feel like, if I don't know what the quote is, I have no shot at 4 or 5 of the long "across" answers. And then I'm relying heavily on getting many of the "downs", and that just doesn't go well with my crossword strategy.

Anyway, this past Sunday's Globe crossword was similar to the quote ones, though it wasn't a quote - it involved 5 across lines leading up to the big clue: "The Scottish Word 'Tartle'":

And this was the rare instance when I was able to figure out the definition (i.e. the "quote") and solve most of the puzzle, rather than giving up halfway through.

Turns out, the definition of 'tartle' is "to hesitate while you are introducing someone because you have forgotten their name."

I was not only pleased that I figured out the puzzle, but also so intrigued by this word that I looked it up, and indeed it was true. I just think "Pardon my tartle" is such a charming expression.

So this was a new crossword experience for me.

Consider yourself warned, though - there's an Irish definition of the same word from the north of Ireland that carries a significantly different meaning.