Pigeons From Hell is a delightful little graphic novel by Joe R. Lansdale, Nathan Fox and Dave Stewart. Take the Louisiana bayou, abandoned derelict houses, old slave-era folklore and combine them into a compact horror story, you might end up with something like Pigeons from Hell. The trio of authors take on this classic by [...]

Continue reading...

Today’s crossword was good. The theme was phrases that started with the letter S, except that the initial S was replaced with a P. This gave us “Paving Grace”, “Plum Landlord”, “Pounded the Alarm” and “Pub Committee”. All awful puns, Blake and Shortz, are you listening? Proper nouns are always the toughest, since the name [...]

Continue reading...

Today’s crossword was definitely more challenging. We were stymied on a few clues and it took us a while to get going. Or maybe my sandwiches were just so delicious that I forsook cruciverbalism for sheer gustatory delight. On to the solution. “Condition in outer space” gave us “no air”. How lame, but in retrospect, [...]

Continue reading...

Today’s crossword was a bit more challenging than yesterday’s. Compound word answers are always the devil, but luckily “Every So Often”, “Good Old Days”, “Does Wonders” and “Fine and Dandy” weren’t too hard to come up with. Once those were in place, the rest fell in. We had “Eire” instead of “Erin” for Ireland, but [...]

Continue reading...

Today’s crossword was pretty easy again. What’s going on? The law of averages dictates that a super-tough one is coming up, so maybe I should buckle up. With the aid of my trusty crossword buddy Paul, we knocked this one down in around 20 minutes. At this rate, I’ll have to start printing two crosswords [...]

Continue reading...

Alright, let’s start off the week with this end-of-the-year cruciverbal puzzle. This one was easier than most, perhaps Messrs. Wescott and Shortz were in a hurry to get to the NY Times New year party, as my friend noted. Let’s see, what was actually tough about this puzzle? The Gillette razor named “Atra”? We thought [...]

Continue reading...

Today’s chosen crossword had its moments. First up, the unknowns: Iola, for the “neighbour on Mama’s Family”. Damned if I knew, but luckily there were enough across clues to hazard a guess. Also “TV Guide” as a weekly by Walter Annennberg. In the end, guessable, since it was a weekly and enough across clues appeared. [...]

Continue reading...

“I am Lobby Lud and I claim the fucking reward” aptly summarizes the relief we feel when Fitz corners serial killer Hennessy in a narrow train carriage, swinging him around to save his wife and child from them. If ever a novel can be said to climax at a particular point, that was it for [...]

Continue reading...

Today’s crossword was good, I learned a new word: aviso. It’s a dispatch boat roughly equivalent to the English sloop. I’m not too ken about answers like “derat” for “Rid of vermin”, but I guess they had to make something fit. The theme is this puzzle is the long clues at 20, 32, 41 and [...]

Continue reading...

I solve the Wednesday version of the New York Times crossword every day during lunch. I am a pretty decent cruciverbalist, but I do have some weaknesses: a notable lack of knowledge about sports and pop culture. I can usually get all the wordplay clues, including words in German/French/Latin/Greek. But ask me what the football [...]

Continue reading...