Report:
This week’s highest-profile puzzle was Tuesday’s New York Times crossword (spoiler here), a highly timely tribute to Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity, which invades Washington, D.C. tomorrow. Colbert took notice of the puzzle, and demanded recompense:

The puzzle was authored by Chris Handman — though you wouldn’t know it from the clip, as Handman’s credit line was bafflingly covered up by a Post-it note. (Crossword puzzle makers, rally against having your names covered by Post-its!) Times newcomer Handman and fellow Seattle puzzle blogger Jim Horne write about the construction process on the Times’ Wordplay blog. The puzzle went from conception on September 28 to publication on October 25, which required a monumental amount of scrambling and approvals. Editor Will Shortz told me this week:

“I began to have misgivings about the puzzle two weeks ago, because the rally/march was starting to take on a partisan tone, and I don’t want NYT solvers to think the crossword shows a political bias. Just before I left New York for the WPC [see below], I emailed the Times’ standards editor, laying out the facts and asking his opinion. He gave the puzzle his blessing. (Whew!) The bottom line is how elegant the theme is, with the two events on Saturday each having titles of 5 + 15 letters, with the 15-letter parts starting with infinitives and stretching cleanly across the grid. Wow. That STEWART and COLBERT are seven letters each, thus balancing themselves symmetrically, is a terrific bonus. Crossword constructors kill for coincidences like this. Despite the ephemeralness of the theme and the potential for some solvers to object on political grounds, I thought it was just too amazing not to run. I’m really pleased with the result. The blog comments have been overwhelmingly positive. And to get a personal shout-out on Colbert’s show Tuesday night — very cool!”

Things that rallied my sanity this week:

• There may never have been a less aptly named vessel than the British submarine H.M.S. Astute, which last week was so astute it could not locate the country of Scotland.
• Speaking of methods of transport that crash into things, my television is ablaze with commercials for Unstoppable, the new Tony Scott film about a runaway train loaded with dangerous chemicals. Okay, that could never happen. But wait, it did! The film is “inspired by true events,” specifically the staggering story of CSX 8888, which rumbled uncontrolled through northeast Ohio carrying two cars of molten phenol — something you do not want crashing into your town. It’s amazing that no one saw this coming, because if a train is going to go insane, it’s the one whose number leads people to call it “Crazy Eights.” (Bonus bit of pointless fun: Unstoppable stars Chris Pine. In downtown Seattle, two neighboring streets are Pine Street and Pike Street. Both, as it turns out, have the names of captains named Chris from the recent Star Trek film: Chris Pine played Kirk, and fictional character Christopher Pike was Kirk’s superior officer. What? I told you it was pointless.)
• Could this weekend spell the death knell of Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre’s awe-inspiring consecutive-games-started streak? Favre’s at 291 regular season games, which is one game behind Manning — that is, Peyton and Eli Manning combined, who, as the active QBs with the second and third longest streaks, have 198 and 94 starts respectively. Combined, The Brothers Manning caught Favre in that category last week, and they seem unlikely to stop at 292. Favre has an avulsion fracture in his ankle — though given the sordid photographs he allegedly sent to former Jets hostess Jenn Sterger, maybe a revulsion fracture will end Favre’s streak first. (Then again, given the rather private nature of the photos in question, maybe “streak” isn’t the word Favre wants to hear.)

This week’s Noodler:
Last week, reader Adam Rofer joined the Decoder Ring of Honor by being being the first of many to drop the knowledge that “Dash Point Road” translates to a Morse code “N” (that is, “dash, dot”). This week, inspired by reader Cory Calhoun’s suggestion, I want to know what this series of words anagrams to: APROPOS, BALKIER, DEMONOLOGER, DESIST, DODGER, FORESTS, KEYNOTES, and LAMEST. If you’re the first to send all eight related anagrams to Cette adresse email est protégée contre les robots des spammeurs, vous devez activer Javascript pour la voir. , you’ll be a Ringer too.

Where the geeks are this week:
About thirty miles from Warsaw, knocking noggins in the World Puzzle Championship, the hardest puzzle competition in the world. National teams from all over the world battle head to head over language-neutral puzzles which are not at all kind. The USA won the team challenge, and Taro Arimatsu of Japan won the individual title. I had the honor to co-write the team event when it was last held in the United States; you can read my writeup of that Mr. Potato Head-inspired throwdown if you like. We’ll have more coverage upcoming in Decode.

Mike Selinker is a game and puzzle designer who heads the Seattle-area studio Lone Shark Games. He also writes a blog about non-puzzly stuff called The Most Beautiful Things.

Authors: Mike Selinker

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