#brooke husic

[oneefin]

ok can i just say, seeing a grid like this is extremely threatening

(solution + thoughts after solving below. spoilers, obviously)

it took me an hour (!), but i did really like it. i had that amazing moment solving 1d ("12/24 or 12/31, for two") where the only crossing answer i knew for sure was OS, and i had an idea for the clue that i thought would be stupid, but when i looked again i realized FRACTIONS would actually fit. getting that locked in allowed me to get the rest of the long answers going around the grid anti-clockwise

my only gripe with that clue is that 12/24 isn't simplified, i think it would have been nicer to do something like "10/31 or 12/25, for two"

overall i found the fill super clean with the exception of ATTILA. i definitely would have clued plenty of these differently given my own knowledge base (eg i don't associate the TVA with power, and i've never heard of the fontface OPTIMA)

[antonio-velardo]

Antonio Velardo shares: Little Bit of Make-Up by Deb Amlen

By Deb Amlen Hang on tight. Brooke Husic and Brendan Emmett Quigley take us on a roller-coaster ride. Published: December 21, 2023 at 10:00PM from NYT Gameplay https://ift.tt/TN0lWap via IFTTT

[biglisbonnews]

Puzzle Monday: Marvel, Extended Universe Crossword This week's Atlas Obscura puzzle comes to us from the students in Atlas Obscura's Creating Crossword Puzzles course in October 2022, along with their instructors, expert crossword creators Brooke Husic and Natan Last. If you’re interested in learning how to create a crossword puzzle like this one, the next Creating Crossword Puzzles course is scheduled to start on Tuesday, March 28 at 8 p.m. ET. Enroll here! You can solve this week's puzzle below, or download it in .pdf or .puz. Happy solving! Interested in learning how to create a crossword puzzle? You’re in luck! The next Creating Crossword Puzzles course is scheduled to start on Tuesday, March 28 at 8 p.m. ET. Join us as we dive into the history and construction of the American-style crossword puzzles. You can enroll in the course here! https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/puzzle-monday-atlas-obscura-course-crossword-2

[melbournenewsvine]

Ed Husic takes swipe at Cranbrook as he launches tech challenge

Widening the talent pipeline He paints a vivid picture of a demographic divide within the Australian tech sector. Data shows that funding and job opportunities are flowing unevenly across geography, class and gender, especially at the top of the industry. Recent research from the Tech Council of Australia revealed that of the top 10 regions for tech professionals, the top nine are in Sydney or Melbourne – the other is the ACT. Meanwhile, 74 per cent of workers are men. “We’ve got a lot of work to get done,” Mr Husic said. “We haven’t really called up the widest range of people possible to help get that work done. “We need to widen the talent pipeline.” Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the Jobs and Skills Summit in September. James Brickwood A veiled Cranbrook dig Mr Husic’s Cranbrook reference is neat political shorthand for Australia’s elite educational institutions. But it’s also an unmistakable nod towards Atlassian’s co-founders Mike Cannon-Brookes, an alumnus of Cranbrook, and Scott Farquhar, now a vocal parent at the exclusive school. The Atlassian billionaires recently unveiled a two-tier plan to pay workers who work remotely, with those in NSW in Victoria paid more than counterparts in other states. Mr Farquhar justified the controversial move by citing cost of living pressures in those states. But Mr Husic wouldn’t be drawn into whether Atlassian’s payment model would entrench the same divides he’s talking about. “To be fair Scott Farquhar came from Castle Hill and look at [Tesla chairwoman] Robyn Denholm, she was from Milperra. You’ve got people that have demonstrated how the right skills can help transform your career trajectory,” he said. “We’ve got some great work role models, but we need to do more of it.” The Albanese government has begun crafting policies to achieve Mr Husic’s goal. Last month, the government announced the first steps to creating “Start Up Year” – a program that would see 2000 HECS-style loans for final year graduates who want to launch their own businesses. Managing director of Google Australia Mel Silva. Louise Kennerley The minister has also been keen to support companies taking steps to achieve his mission. Last week, Mr Husic appeared alongside Google Australia boss Mel Silva to launch the company’s “career certificates” initiative. Google announced the company had partnered with Coursera to develop IT support, UX design and digital marketing training to people with non-university backgrounds. The company pledged 10,000 free courses to women and people with First Nations backgrounds. During remarks at that event, Mr Husic heaped praise on Ms Silva, who grew up in the same part of western Sydney as him. “When someone from the western suburbs like Mel who has an opportunity to invest in a program like this for people that were like us from the outer suburbs or from underrepresented groups and then they open the door … that is massive.” Source link Originally published at Melbourne News Vine

[puzzlenation]

A Cracking Collection of Crossword Clues

In today's blog post, we collect some of our favorite crossword clues from the last year!

Someone recently asked me about my favorite crossword clue, and after mentioning four or five off the top of my head, I cut myself off and tried to explain that it’s impossible for me to pick one. So many clues are out there that surprised me, or outwitted me, or made me laugh, or made me think in an unexpected way. I could never narrow it down.. Regular readers who have seen my reviews of…

[acommonrose]

What in your estimation makes a crossword puzzle good or bad? I just don't know enough about them to be able to tell at all.

So there's a lot of ways puzzles can be good or bad, and it mostly comes down to how much fun solvers have, but here's a few things I think about when solving. Wall of text incoming--I'm sorry.

Theme

So from what I can tell, NYT editors care a lot about how clever/novel/interesting your theme is, which in some ways is fair--they see a lot of puzzles, and when I started out, I cared a lot more about themes. Personally, I love a good themeless (of any difficulty level, not just the NYT Friday/Saturday level), as well as a well-made puzzle with a boring/overused theme type (like most USA Today puzzles, my own included), so themes are not the be all and end all, but they do matter.

What makes most (though not all) good themes is really just a set of a few fun words or phrases that either all have something interesting in common or have all had the same wordplay gimmick applied to them. The theme suffers if the gimmick/commonality is inconsistently applied or if one of the theme entries just is a mediocre entry to begin with. So, for example, I thought the Thursday puzzle this week had a theme that was bad for a Thursday (since Thursday puzzles usually use complicated wordplay or rebuses) but good overall--it added ING to the end of movie titles to get things like JURASSIC PARKING and LA LA LANDING, which was fun. On the other hand, the Wednesday puzzle had a revealer of IT'S A WRAP, and had entries that were bookended by the letters I, T, S, and A in some combination, which is fine (though not a super exciting gimmick or revealer), but was really brought down by two of the three entries being TSAR NICHOLAS I and SARGENT PORTRAIT, both of which I think are pretty uninspiring.

Beyond that, there's also some constructors that do really interesting and creative themes, which are outside of the scope of this (already long) post--I'll just link Will Nediger's recent puzzle with two themes, as well as Cracking the Cryptic's solve of Brooke Husic's Lollapuzzoola puzzle. (If you're an experienced solver, do try the Brooke puzzle on your own--it's beautiful but extremely hard.)

Fill

Okay, after all that, this is usually what actually makes a bad puzzle bad. Good puzzles have fun and interesting entries--modern phrases/phenomena, interesting people, or just fun turns of phrase, particularly (but not exclusively) in longer slots. Some I've used or tried to use recently (not all of which would fly in a newspaper, probably) include URSULA K LE GUIN, HADESTOWN, BRIDGERS, SPOOKY SEASON, HUMBLEBRAG, and EXTREMELY ONLINE. Along with "fun" words and phrases, you want to fill the rest of grid as much as possible with things that are real, reasonably well-known words, phrases, or names, ideally things that can be clued in a variety of interesting ways and that are real standalone phrases. (There's lots of things that are in puzzles that are not "real standalone phrases", and I can get into which ones bug me most, but that's a separate post.)

Constructors who are new or just trying to fill a constrained grid, may fall into the trap of putting random words and especially random short abbreviations into a puzzle because they see them in a wordlist or see that they've been in other puzzles. Unless they're extremely bad entries, one of these won't kill a puzzle, but they pile up fast, and once you get more than one or two, it will make the puzzle a slog for a solver. This applies particularly to crossing entries. The rule of thumb I've heard is that proper names shouldn't cross, but I don't think that's actually be best rule. What really matters is that there should be no uninferrable squares--so if I had ELIZABETH crossing some name I'd never heard of, I could probably figure out the last letter even if the Elizabeth in the clue was someone I'd never heard of. On the other hand, obscure abbreviations/vocab crossing can also be deadly. For example, yesterday's puzzle had ANA (clued as a Japanese airline I'd never heard of) crossing ACC (clued as a sports league whose first letter could have been literally anything), so I just had to guess random letters. Today's puzzle had LOTHAR (a comic strip character I'd never heard of) and MALAR (a word I didn't know), so again, I just had to guess letters.

Clues

Unlike with themes or especially fill, it's hard to have actively bad clues if you follow cluing conventions (e.g. having clues agree with entries in terms of parts of speech), unless you're trying so hard to be clever that your clues don't actually make sense. However, it's easy to have lackluster clues if you're just giving short definitions for most clues, which is fine in an easy puzzle with a good theme but boring in something like a themeless.

There's a lot of ways to write good clues--which is not to say that they're easy to write. The most famous type are puns or clever misdirects--for example, I recently clued HAND SIGNALS as [Digital means of communication?]. Beyond that, I'm also quite fond of clues that show off the constructor's voice and personality, as well as those that have fun trivia (though the line between cool fun trivia and annoying obscure trivia that no one should be expected to know can be thin). Overall, it's more an art than a science (and it's hard to save a lackluster grid with good clues--though it can be done), so I don't have too much to say, but Kate Schmate is a great constructor to look at if you want to read some good clues.

[newstrendingzone]

Author: BY HELEN T. VERONGOS - Publish Date: May 7, 2021 at 09:00AM

Brooke Husic takes us in a different direction. Did you notice?

[wazafam]

By BY HELEN T. VERONGOS from Crosswords & Games in the New York Times-https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/06/crosswords/daily-puzzle-2021-05-07.html?partner=IFTTT Brooke Husic takes us in a different direction. Did you notice? Sarcastic Punch Line to an Insincere Remark New York Times

[breakingbuzz]

Lollapalooza

By BY CAITLIN LOVINGER Brooke Husic and Sid Sivakumar warm us up for a tournament with a hot Saturday puzzle. Published: August 8, 2020 at 02:40AM from NYT Crosswords & Games https://ift.tt/3a45KCD via

[antonio-velardo]

Antonio Velardo shares: This, That or Whichever by Sam Corbin

By Sam Corbin Brooke Husic and Brian Thomas help us pass the time. Published: July 11, 2023 at 10:00PM from NYT Gameplay https://ift.tt/xceyPEp via IFTTT

[puzzlenation]

Delving into the Lollapuzzoola 14 Puzzles!

In today's blog post, we delve into the puzzles from this year's Lollapuzzoola virtual crossword tournament!

The fourteenth edition of Lollapuzzoola, as is tradition, arrived on a Saturday in August, but for the second year in a row, it was hosted online to allow tournament solving from home. I was not in virtual attendance, but I did sign up for the Next Day Division puzzle packet. Last weekend, I finally had a chance to sit down and try my hands at this year’s tournament puzzles, and I was not…

[puzzlenation]

PuzzleNation is Sponsoring This Year's Lollapuzzoola!

In today's blog post, we discuss our participation in this year's Lollapuzzoola and have a free Crosswords Club Digital puzzle sample to share!

The summer is always a marvelous time for puzzly events. We just had the Boswords tournament, and next weekend, there’s another online crossword tournament awaiting solvers! Lollapuzzoola returns on Saturday, August 21st, and this year, we’re proud to announce that PuzzleNation is one of the tournament’s sponsors! That’s right, we are providing free subscriptions to The Crosswords Club Digital to…

[puzzlenation]

Upcoming Puzzle Events! The Spring Themeless League, Plus ACPT Going Virtual!

In today's blog post, we spread the word about upcoming puzzle events like the Boswords Spring Themeless League and ACPT going virtual!

Most years, the puzzle event season starts with the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in late March/early April, but 2021 is different. We already had the Boswords Winter Wondersolve event last month, and there are plenty of exciting puzzle events on the horizon! Did you know that there’s still time to sign up for the Boswords 2021 Spring Themeless League? It starts Monday night, and you…

[puzzlenation]

Delving into the Lollapuzzoola 13 puzzles!

In today's blog post, we delve into the puzzles from the recent Lollapuzzoola 13 crossword tournament!

The thirteenth edition of Lollapuzzoola, as is tradition, arrived on a Saturday in August, but for the first time ever, it was hosted online to allow tournament solving from home. As one of the highlights of the puzzly calendar, I was glad to see it make the virtual jump, as Boswords did before it.

I was not in virtual attendance, but I did sign up for the Next Day Division puzzle packet. Last…

[puzzlenation]

Lollapuzzoola 13 Lands This Weekend! (Virtually!)

In today's blog post, we discuss tomorrow's Lollapuzzoola 13 virtual crossword tournament!

Yes, “the best tournament held in New York on a Saturday in August” is bringing a New York Saturday in August to you, as Lollapuzzoola 13 goes virtual.

Whether you’ll be solving on that Saturday or as part of the Next Day Division, you’re sure to encounter some top-notch puzzles worthy of the Lollapuzzoola name.

Just look at the constructors involved in this year’s tournament! Stella Zawistowski…

[newstrendingzone]

Author: BY CAITLIN LOVINGER - Publish Date: August 8, 2020 at 08:40AM

Brooke Husic and Sid Sivakumar warm us up for a tournament with a hot Saturday puzzle.