I actually would like to own an etui, even a plain one would do.\u00a0 I am constantly losing Ewer: a pitcher of water<\/em><\/p>\n A ewer seems to best describe the picture of water specificallyat the bedside (Vermeer), or perhaps that pitcher that is used for a sponge bath (Mary Cassat).\u00a0 Unfortunately, it does not seem to describe the water pitcher you might routinely use to fill your dinner guests\u2019 water glasses, in which case you could use this word routinely.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em>Aglet:\u00a0 those little plastic or metal thingies at the ends of shoelaces The aglet made a major contribution to footwear, and it would be nice to know that a Mr. Aglet came up with this clever solution to frayed shoelaces.\u00a0 I am glad I secretly know the name of this critical item, but in public I generally just refer to them as \u201cthose thingies.\u201d<\/p>\n I would also recommend that you bone up on quasi-famous people who have lots of \u00a0\u201ce\u2019s\u201d in their names. \u00a0Some of the regulars include:<\/p>\n R.E. Lee, i.e. the confederate general: <\/em><\/p>\n The clue to this one often involves an oblique reference to the Civil war, such as \u201cvisitor to Appomattox,\u201d or Davis general (referring to the more obscure Jefferson Davis).\u00a0 Erte: An art deco designer<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n I have come to know Erte well through crossword puzzles, but the first time I ever laid<\/a>\u00a0eyes on who or what he did was through the attached picture.\u00a0 He apparently designed all sorts of clothes, and if there is a 4 letter word for scarf designer, it is always Erte.<\/p>\n Eero: Architect and furniture designer<\/em><\/p>\n His last name is Saarinen, and he is most famous for designing the St. Louis arch.\u00a0 His father was also an architect whose first name was Eliel, but even though this name also has two \u201ce\u2019s\u201d in it, I have never seen him in a crossword. \u00a0\u00a0For many years I confused the pro golfer named Gene Sarazen with Eero Saarinen, due to the vauge similarity of their last names and the fact that their first names both have 4 letters with a second letter of “e”<\/p>\n Crosswords puzzles occasionally lapse into foreign languages, but my rudimentary high school French, Spanish have all been adequate – all I really have to remember are the numbers and maybe a few simple verbs.\u00a0 I occasionally come across the word “n\u00e9e,” which is a French word referring to a maiden name, or an ep\u00e9e, which is the sword used in fencing.\u00a0 Don\u2019t panic when the clue refers to Latin, because the answer is almost always amo, amas, or amat, referring to the verb \u201clove.\u201d\u00a0 Clues alluding to Caesar\u2019s last words are always ettu,\u00a0 i.e. referring to \u201cEt tu, Brute,\u201d but don\u2019t confuse ettu with Attu, the western most Aleutian island.\u00a0 The nifty piece of trivia here is that this rocky outpost hosted the only WWII land battle on US soil between Japan and the US.\u00a0<\/p>\n My German is nonexistent and I rely on Nick\u2019s high school German for anything other than eine or drei (forget zwei, that \u201cz\u201d makes it rare in\u00a0crosswords).\u00a0 He always yelps in protest when I ask for assistance, since his high school German was a token and dismal failure. \u00a0In fact his disdain for crosswords is so complete that his response to my lifelines would fall into the same category.\u00a0 However, he tends to be more helpful if I ask about cars or business, and sometimes I ask him what \u201cBig Blue\u201d is even though I am pretty sure that it is IBM.\u00a0 \u00a0A little bit of WWII history is also helpful, again focusing on words that contain \u201ce\u2019s.\u201d\u00a0 Essen often pops up as the German industrial center in the Ruhr valley.\u00a0 A more obscure clue refers to Krupp Works, the Nazi armament center located there.\u00a0 Hitler\u2019s architect just has to be Speer (again with the \u201ce\u2019s\u201d), who ended up organizing the slave labor in Essen.\u00a0<\/p>\n The corollary to obscure words are obscure clues.\u00a0 In fact, the degree of difficulty of a crossword puzzle is mostly related to the creativity of the clues.\u00a0 One of the most common tricks is the decoy \u2013 several times I have seen the clue \u201cFrench bread\u201d\u00a0 and the novice will take the clue literally and think along the lines of baguette, or the French word for bread, i.e \u201cpain.\u201d\u00a0 But the experienced solver will go one step further and realize that the word \u201cbread\u201d is actually referring to money, so the answer is either \u201ceuro,\u201d \u201cfranc,\u201d \u201csous\u201d or \u201cecu.\u201d\u00a0 Along a similar vein, the clue \u201cNice summer\u201d is actually referring to the town of Nice, and the answer is \u00e9t\u00e9, the French word for summer.\u00a0 Another unexpected use of a word is the clue \u201cHardy girl,\u201d which does not<\/em> refer to female pluck or vigor.\u00a0 The answer is always \u201cTess,\u201d the heroine in Thomas Hardy<\/em>\u2019s novel, \u201cTess of the d\u2019Ubervilles.\u00a0 How about the clue \u201cvan trailer?\u201d\u00a0 The first instinct is to think of some sort of vehicle, but what \u201ctrailer\u201d really refers to is a suffix to the word \u201cvan.\u201d\u00a0 The answer is \u201cessa,\u201d which\u00a0forms the woman\u2019s name Van<\/em>essa.\u00a0 In the last week\u2019s crossword I struggled with the clue \u201cgarage opener,\u201d which had me thinking along the lines of a clicker.\u00a0 However, the word definitely had to end in \u201cdg,\u201d which\u00a0seemed impossible.\u00a0 Finally, I realized the answer was \u201chard g,\u201d referring to the phonetics of the first letter of garage.\u00a0 \u00a0Then there is the bad pun as a clue; recently the answer to \u201cegg drop\u201d was not Chinese soup, but \u201covulation.\u201d<\/p>\n Nick finds these contrivances unbearable, but creative clues are a necessity to fill the otherwise boring words surrounding the main theme of the puzzle, often suggested by the title of the puzzle.\u00a0 These themes are always clever, and there is a very satisfying \u201caha\u201d moment when you crack it.\u00a0 A recent puzzle was titled, \u201cYou Are Here,\u201d and it turned out the letters \u201cU\u201d and \u201cR\u201d were added to common expressions.\u00a0 The clue \u201cProtection in the City\u201d, after much effort, became \u201cur<\/em>ban deodorant,\u201d which involved adding a \u201cur\u201d in front of the personal hygiene product \u201cBan Deodorant.\u201d\u00a0 Once I got the trick, the rest of the puzzle fell into place.\u00a0 The clue \u201ctraditional brain doctor\u201d added UR to neoconservative to make \u201cneur<\/em>oconservative\u201d and the clue \u201cSchedule at a Vegas chapel\u201d turned \u201choly matrimony\u201d into \u201chour<\/em>ly matrimony.\u201d<\/p>\n Someday I would like to create a crossword puzzle, and I have my theme all ready.\u00a0 It would be titled \u201cR.I.P,\u201d perhaps published on Memorial Day, and would contain various idioms for death, clued as follows:<\/p>\n Clue: Answer\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Florist style:\u00a0 Pushing\u00a0up daisies\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Gangster style:\u00a0 Wear a cement overcoat<\/p>\n Agrarian style:\u00a0\u00a0 Bought the farm<\/p>\n Ichthyologist \u00a0style:\u00a0 Sleeps with the fishes<\/p>\n Narcoleptic style:\u00a0 Take a dirt nap<\/p>\n Reptilian style:\u00a0 Assume room temperature<\/p>\n Ma Bell style:\u00a0 In the horizontal phone booth<\/p>\n Don\u2019t ever assume that crossword puzzle clues are referring to something * * * * * * *<\/p>\n When French bread refers to money, \u00a0it\u2019s time to retrain your brain.<\/p>\n A former Giant is not some\u00a0* * * * * * * \u00a0ogre, but a baseball player called Mel Ott,<\/p>\n And clues in French, Spanish, Latin and German test your skills as a polyglot.<\/p>\n \u00a0Remember that \u201cIn his altogether in Eden\u201d means he\u2019s wearing his birthday suit<\/p>\n So the answer is Adam, that crazy\u00a0\u00a0* * * *\u00a0\u00a0 * * * who dared eat forbidden fruit.\u00a0<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n Answers:\u00a0 mundane, unnamed, nude man<\/p>\nFollow Liza Blue on: April 1978 was a watershed momemt\u00a0when I first time that I completed an entire Sunday NY Times.\u00a0 Finally I felt that I could legitimately call myself a cruciverbalist.\u00a0 Since then, the Sunday NYT crossword has become a weekly ritual, supplemented … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.fanagrams.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/crossword-etui.jpg\" "\\"crossword")
<\/a> darning needles, which I need to sew in the loose ends of knitting projects. \u00a0Because darning needles are dull, the more readily available pin cushion will not work. \u00a0Any store selling such a necessity has long since closed locally, requiring an annoying trip to a big box craft store at the mall to buy a needle.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/a>xxxxxxxxxx<\/a><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nThe missing words in the following puzzle are a set of anagrams (e.g. like post, stop, spot) and the number of\u00a0asterisks indicates the number of letters.\u00a0 One of the missing words will rhyme with either the previous or following line.\u00a0 Your job is to solve the missing words based on the above rules and the context of the poem.\u00a0 This is a hard one so good luck! Scroll down for answers.<\/em><\/h6>\n
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