Another good one
Yesterday, I finished the June 2002 Atlantic puzzle, "Layers" by Cox and Rathvon. It was one of the cleverest yet. The words are all entered conventionally into the diagram. The diagram, however, has two separate parts, an outside layer and a core, with one square in the middle. The clues are arranged so that some of the answers from the outside layer, when arranged according to the numbering scheme given, provide the clues for the core layer. Not only that, but the diagram entries from the core layer are entered in numbered squares. Then you enter each letter in a crostic-like row to give you one final clue, which tells you how to complete the final center box. So it is indeed "layered". Quite an achievement. The clues were challenging, although there was a good proportion of three and four-letter entries, which tend to be easier. This I find excusable, given the intricacy of the overall scheme. The cross-clues in the diagram were quite helpful, with the desirable balance pleasingly maintained.
As I went through this puzzle, I felt a keen sense of anticipation, thinking, "I wonder if they're really going to be able to carry it through?" They did not disappoint. This is a definite nine out of ten. That brings up an interesting point. How should puzzles be rated, for difficulty, cleverness, entertainment value? What should the standards be? I'll be pontificating on this in future posts and solicit any comments anyone may have.
Most entertaining clue: 12 Down. Yes, I know it's easy, but I found it fun anyway.
Wednesday, May 15, 2002
Maltby comes through
I've just finished Richard E. Maltby, Jr.'s effort, called "Heads or Tails, Revisited" from the June 2002 Harper's. It was much more enjoyable than I had feared. One entered the Across answers in standard fashion. Each Down column, however, had one 8-letter word and one 6-letter, plus a few threes thrown in as filler. All the fun was in the eights and sixes. The sixes were clued normally, but entering the solution in the diagram required you to find a group of three consecutive letters in the solution that matched a group of three in an eight letter word - any eight-letter Down word, not just the one in the same column. Each of the eight-letter clues gave you a word of the form "X is X", with each X representing a group of three letters. An example, not from the puzzle, would be "theistic". If a six letter word contained either of the same three letter groups (the or tic), for instance "rather", you would replace "the" with "tic" and enter the result - raticr - in the diagram. It sounds clumsy, but in practice works very well. At first glance it looks inelegant that so many of the eight-letter words project beyond the main body of the puzzle, leaving five letters in each apparently unchecked. This is not really so, however, as the matching of groups of three letters that may be unchecked directly to other groups of three in the six-letter words provides a perfectly adequate cross-checking mechanism. Good on yer, Maltby!
Star clue: 46 across, one of those that isn't too hard, but makes you feel clever when you get it. And that's the whole idea, isn't it, preening one's plumage?
I've just finished Richard E. Maltby, Jr.'s effort, called "Heads or Tails, Revisited" from the June 2002 Harper's. It was much more enjoyable than I had feared. One entered the Across answers in standard fashion. Each Down column, however, had one 8-letter word and one 6-letter, plus a few threes thrown in as filler. All the fun was in the eights and sixes. The sixes were clued normally, but entering the solution in the diagram required you to find a group of three consecutive letters in the solution that matched a group of three in an eight letter word - any eight-letter Down word, not just the one in the same column. Each of the eight-letter clues gave you a word of the form "X is X", with each X representing a group of three letters. An example, not from the puzzle, would be "theistic". If a six letter word contained either of the same three letter groups (the or tic), for instance "rather", you would replace "the" with "tic" and enter the result - raticr - in the diagram. It sounds clumsy, but in practice works very well. At first glance it looks inelegant that so many of the eight-letter words project beyond the main body of the puzzle, leaving five letters in each apparently unchecked. This is not really so, however, as the matching of groups of three letters that may be unchecked directly to other groups of three in the six-letter words provides a perfectly adequate cross-checking mechanism. Good on yer, Maltby!
Star clue: 46 across, one of those that isn't too hard, but makes you feel clever when you get it. And that's the whole idea, isn't it, preening one's plumage?
Tuesday, May 14, 2002
5/14/2002 6:42:16 AM | Robert Speirs]
Here's an email I sent to Unilateral.blogspot.com
Dear Mr. Seamans,
You say in your "Unilateral Commission" blog:
There are few indications of where the next counter-cultural movement will pop up, and that's a little frightening. So what's next? Any ideas?
Maybe I'm blinded by my objectivist ideology, but I think there's no "action" on the extreme flanks because we're going through a redefinition of the political
spectrum. Finally! This left and right bit that's been around since the French Revolution (?) is becoming more obviously inadequate every day. Putting Pim
Fortuyn and Jean Marie LePen on the same side of anything is clearly nutso.
My favorite spectrum is from individualist to collectivist, mostly because it puts the bad guys all on the same side! The Stalinists and Al Qaeda deserve each
other. The "Green" totalitarians should be classed with the Neo-Nazis. Let them fight it out. And the objectivists (or Objectivists) need to recognize that most
libertarians are pretty close to them, however "leftist" they may sound sometimes.
The effect of this realignment in thinking, I hope, will be to make it clear that a party that cannot be classed as Right or Left is not necessarily of the Center. The
only effect of cramping all political opinions into that old spectrum is to make big government seem inevitable. A lot of people don't think so.
So when a real party starts up which advocates cutting social - and corporate! - and farm! - welfare to the bone, which backs a strong, but efficient, military and
which opposes the drug war and tariffs with equal ferocity, you should see a real ferment among the hacks. It may be starting now!
Robert Speirs
Tallahassee, Florida
Here's an email I sent to Unilateral.blogspot.com
Dear Mr. Seamans,
You say in your "Unilateral Commission" blog:
There are few indications of where the next counter-cultural movement will pop up, and that's a little frightening. So what's next? Any ideas?
Maybe I'm blinded by my objectivist ideology, but I think there's no "action" on the extreme flanks because we're going through a redefinition of the political
spectrum. Finally! This left and right bit that's been around since the French Revolution (?) is becoming more obviously inadequate every day. Putting Pim
Fortuyn and Jean Marie LePen on the same side of anything is clearly nutso.
My favorite spectrum is from individualist to collectivist, mostly because it puts the bad guys all on the same side! The Stalinists and Al Qaeda deserve each
other. The "Green" totalitarians should be classed with the Neo-Nazis. Let them fight it out. And the objectivists (or Objectivists) need to recognize that most
libertarians are pretty close to them, however "leftist" they may sound sometimes.
The effect of this realignment in thinking, I hope, will be to make it clear that a party that cannot be classed as Right or Left is not necessarily of the Center. The
only effect of cramping all political opinions into that old spectrum is to make big government seem inevitable. A lot of people don't think so.
So when a real party starts up which advocates cutting social - and corporate! - and farm! - welfare to the bone, which backs a strong, but efficient, military and
which opposes the drug war and tariffs with equal ferocity, you should see a real ferment among the hacks. It may be starting now!
Robert Speirs
Tallahassee, Florida
Here's an email I sent to Unilateral.blogspot.com
Dear Mr. Seamans,
You say in your "Unilateral Commission" blog:
There are few indications of where the next counter-cultural movement will pop up, and that's a little frightening. So what's next? Any ideas?
Maybe I'm blinded by my objectivist ideology, but I think there's no "action" on the extreme flanks because we're going through a redefinition of the political spectrum. Finally! This left and right bit that's been around since the French Revolution (?) is becoming more obviously inadequate every day. Putting Pim Fortuyn and Jean Marie LePen on the same side of anything is clearly nutso.
My favorite spectrum is from individualist to collectivist, mostly because it puts the bad guys all on the same side! The Stalinists and Al Qaeda deserve each other. The "Green" totalitarians should be classed with the Neo-Nazis. Let them fight it out. And the objectivists (or Objectivists) need to recognize that most libertarians are pretty close to them, however "leftist" they may sound sometimes.
The effect of this realignment in thinking, I hope, will be to make it clear that a party that cannot be classed as Right or Left is not necessarily of the Center. The only effect of cramping all political opinions into that old spectrum is to make big government seem inevitable. A lot of people don't think so.
So when a real party starts up which advocates cutting social - and corporate! - and farm! - welfare to the bone, which backs a strong, but efficient, military and which opposes the drug war and tariffs with equal ferocity, you should see a real ferment among the hacks. It may be starting now!
Robert Speirs
Tallahassee, Florida
Dear Mr. Seamans,
You say in your "Unilateral Commission" blog:
There are few indications of where the next counter-cultural movement will pop up, and that's a little frightening. So what's next? Any ideas?
Maybe I'm blinded by my objectivist ideology, but I think there's no "action" on the extreme flanks because we're going through a redefinition of the political spectrum. Finally! This left and right bit that's been around since the French Revolution (?) is becoming more obviously inadequate every day. Putting Pim Fortuyn and Jean Marie LePen on the same side of anything is clearly nutso.
My favorite spectrum is from individualist to collectivist, mostly because it puts the bad guys all on the same side! The Stalinists and Al Qaeda deserve each other. The "Green" totalitarians should be classed with the Neo-Nazis. Let them fight it out. And the objectivists (or Objectivists) need to recognize that most libertarians are pretty close to them, however "leftist" they may sound sometimes.
The effect of this realignment in thinking, I hope, will be to make it clear that a party that cannot be classed as Right or Left is not necessarily of the Center. The only effect of cramping all political opinions into that old spectrum is to make big government seem inevitable. A lot of people don't think so.
So when a real party starts up which advocates cutting social - and corporate! - and farm! - welfare to the bone, which backs a strong, but efficient, military and which opposes the drug war and tariffs with equal ferocity, you should see a real ferment among the hacks. It may be starting now!
Robert Speirs
Tallahassee, Florida
Monday, May 13, 2002
June 2002 puzzles
Just got the June puzzles from the Atlantic and Harper's. Once again, Richard Maltby's effort from Harper's appears dishearteningly difficult, but it is certainly possible it will break down. I am having difficulty even understanding how it works yet, which doesn't give me a lot of hope about my chances of getting it done in a reasonable time. My initial reaction to Cox and Rathvon's latest is about the same, unfortunately. I'll sit down after work tonight with some Bass Ale - on special at Publix - and see if I get a brain wave that allows me to surf right in to the beach of comprehensibility. Since I've had a bit too much gout medicine today, my insights tonight may not be any more comprehensible than that metaphor, or, more likely, I'll fall asleep at seven o'clock. But at least I will be challenginig my word skills. The actual articles in the magazines from which the puzzles come seem to be getting more and more obnoxious. Or am I just getting more and more curmudgeonly anti-collectivist? Yep, that must be it. And a darn good thing, too.
Just got the June puzzles from the Atlantic and Harper's. Once again, Richard Maltby's effort from Harper's appears dishearteningly difficult, but it is certainly possible it will break down. I am having difficulty even understanding how it works yet, which doesn't give me a lot of hope about my chances of getting it done in a reasonable time. My initial reaction to Cox and Rathvon's latest is about the same, unfortunately. I'll sit down after work tonight with some Bass Ale - on special at Publix - and see if I get a brain wave that allows me to surf right in to the beach of comprehensibility. Since I've had a bit too much gout medicine today, my insights tonight may not be any more comprehensible than that metaphor, or, more likely, I'll fall asleep at seven o'clock. But at least I will be challenginig my word skills. The actual articles in the magazines from which the puzzles come seem to be getting more and more obnoxious. Or am I just getting more and more curmudgeonly anti-collectivist? Yep, that must be it. And a darn good thing, too.
Sunday, May 12, 2002
An email I sent to the Jane Galt blogger (live from the WTC) follows. She's at janegalt.blogspot.com. It sums up my analysis of the Second Amendment pretty well. Comments are welcome.
Dear Jane Galt,
About the wording of the Second Amendment: The possible dependency of the second clause "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall
not be infringed" on the existence or necessity of a "well-regulated militia" seems irrelevant to what, if any, powers the Amendment is reserving to
the Federal government. That's of course one of the major stumbling blocks for interpretation. The Bill of Rights does not create or even define
rights. It, like the rest of the Constitution, only defines the legitimate powers of the Federal government. The Amendment makes it clear that the
right to keep and bear arms resides with the people, and that no state or Federal government has the power to infringe that right.
The Second Amendment grants no powers whatever to the Federal government, especially and particularly not the power to infringe the people's
right to keep and bear arms. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments nail that down. The only reason for the addition of this amendment can have been to
clarify that the Federal government did not have this power. The Founding Fathers must have feared that some other section of the Constitution
might have been interpreted to give this power to the Federal government.
It is absurd, therefore, to say that the amendment's restriction of the Federal government's power to control individual keeping and bearing of arms
was conditional on the need for a militia. The Federal government had and has no such power. The contention that it does, and that with the
withering away of the need for a militia the inherent power springs into existence full-grown, reflects the mistaken view that the Federal
government has every conceivable power unless the Bill of rights tells us it doesn't have that power. It's just the other way around. In order to give
the Federal government the power to infringe the people's right to keep and bear arms, the Second Amendment would have to be repealed by
another amendment which specifically gives the Federal government that power. That ain't gonna happen.
Robert Speirs
Tallahassee, Florida
PS You might be interested to know that in a speech to the Constitutional Convention on June 8, 1789, James Madison suggested the Second
Amendment, among others, but in this speech the "militia" clause came after the "shall not infringe" clause. Here's the URL:
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/jm4/speeches/amend.htm
It's my personal opinion that the "militia" clause was thrown in as one possible justification for not meddling with the right of each individual to
keep arms. That makes it at most an explanation, not a condition. RS
Joy
Back to cryptic puzzles. I finished "Compact Disc" from the May 2002 Atlantic Monthly yesterday. What a joy! The clues made sense, yet weren't too easy. The scheme for entering solutions was comprehensible, yet tricky enough to be challenging. The diagram was round, with one set of radial clues and one set of concentric clues. Of course, it wasn't like, just solve the clue and enter the word in the diagram. The radial clues were totally scrambled. The concentric clues were grouped in five rings, with three or four words in each ring. Luckily, the solutions in each ring were entered consecutively and ordered from a set point. Cox and Rathvon played one more trick, though. The disc consisted of twenty sectors. The word lengths in each concentric group, though, added up to twenty-one letters. So one space of each ring had to contain two consecutive letters. Each radial solution also had to contain one square with two letters in it. Interestingly, the two-letter boxes were also consecutive for the radial solutions, even though they were otherwise scrambled. When put together in order, the two-letter boxes from each ring spelled out a cleverly appropriate musical instrument.
This puzzle revealed the balance between tough clues and tricky ways of entering solutions in the diagram that marks the best puzzles. Of course, I did get this one, so I would say that! Perhaps the fact that I could figure out all the letters of at least some of the solutions from cross-checking before I had even solved the clues convinced me that the diagram was an integral part of the puzzle-solving process. That's what I like, maybe because I did a lot of crostics (acrostics, whatever) on my progress to cryptics.
Full marks to Cox and Rathvon for both constructing an intriguing and challenging puzzle and for making the instructions clear and "fair" for those of us who often struggle putting words in diagrams. One of the solutions was indeed - as advertised - uncommon. Once I fully figured it out, though, I had to admit the information needed was contained in the clue. Most entertaining clue? B1(concentric).
Back to cryptic puzzles. I finished "Compact Disc" from the May 2002 Atlantic Monthly yesterday. What a joy! The clues made sense, yet weren't too easy. The scheme for entering solutions was comprehensible, yet tricky enough to be challenging. The diagram was round, with one set of radial clues and one set of concentric clues. Of course, it wasn't like, just solve the clue and enter the word in the diagram. The radial clues were totally scrambled. The concentric clues were grouped in five rings, with three or four words in each ring. Luckily, the solutions in each ring were entered consecutively and ordered from a set point. Cox and Rathvon played one more trick, though. The disc consisted of twenty sectors. The word lengths in each concentric group, though, added up to twenty-one letters. So one space of each ring had to contain two consecutive letters. Each radial solution also had to contain one square with two letters in it. Interestingly, the two-letter boxes were also consecutive for the radial solutions, even though they were otherwise scrambled. When put together in order, the two-letter boxes from each ring spelled out a cleverly appropriate musical instrument.
This puzzle revealed the balance between tough clues and tricky ways of entering solutions in the diagram that marks the best puzzles. Of course, I did get this one, so I would say that! Perhaps the fact that I could figure out all the letters of at least some of the solutions from cross-checking before I had even solved the clues convinced me that the diagram was an integral part of the puzzle-solving process. That's what I like, maybe because I did a lot of crostics (acrostics, whatever) on my progress to cryptics.
Full marks to Cox and Rathvon for both constructing an intriguing and challenging puzzle and for making the instructions clear and "fair" for those of us who often struggle putting words in diagrams. One of the solutions was indeed - as advertised - uncommon. Once I fully figured it out, though, I had to admit the information needed was contained in the clue. Most entertaining clue? B1(concentric).
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