I will have more to say later, but for now I’ll just point you to the MAD Puzzles page for the latest and greatest—new crossword puzzles called Gram Crackers.  Enjoy!

UPDATE (Tues.):

An étude is an instrumental composition, usually of short duration, usually of considerable complexity, often used for teaching or practicing musical technique.  From the French for “study,” the word is well-known to anyone who does crosswords.  It seems to me a fair term to describe the idea behind Gram Crackers (though don’t expect the virtuosity of a Chopin or Lizst, okay?).

Gram Crackers are intended to be lighter fare.  They’re smaller puzzles, ones you should be able to polish off more quickly than your average end-of-week themeless.  That’s not to say they are easy.  The cluing will tend to be on the tough side, and I’ve tossed in a twist or two to add to the challenge.  No puzzle, no matter how small, should be too easy, right?

For a constructor, working on a smaller scale presents certain constraints.  Except for the size and shape of the grid, I’ll stay with the usual conventions—rotational symmetry, no two-letter words, etc.  The challenge, as always, will be to fill the grid as interestingly as possible, and keep the crud to a minimum.  I’ll also aim to add variety to grid designs, and see what the limits are.

Till now, I’ve posted puzzles here without a schedule, but beginning with Gram Crackers I’ll publish on a more regular basis.  Look for new ones on the MAD Puzzles page the first Monday of every month.  That will be my schedule for the rest of this year and through next year.  At that point I’ll see if the idea still has legs, or if it’s time to try something new.

Gram Crackers, by the way, come in a pack of two.  Here’s hoping you can’t have just one.

Étude, Op. 10, No. 1
Frédéric Chopin
Vladimir Ashkenazy

The nation is once again transfixed by “Mad Men”…

Indeed, the season four premiere of “Mad Mad” had record ratings:

The episode received 2.92 million viewers, a healthy amount. It’s still nowhere near the circa seven million viewers that shows like USA’s Royal Pains and TNT’s Rizzoli & Isles get…

I just checked the stats for the site, and July set new records for number of visits and unique visitors.  The numbers may not compare with something like Rizzoli & Isles, but I think it’s safe to say:

The nation is once again transfixed by “MAD About Movies.”

Did you know that just five days ago the 3rd greatest film of all time was released?

The news gave me a jolt at first.  Then I realized there was a simple explanation.  The IMDb site has been hacked.

Right?

I sat next to a couple, both probably in their young twenties.  Apparently he’d seen the film before, and she had not.  Early on I heard him say, “See that?  They just cut from a dream to reality.”  A minute or two later he was nearly out of seat, pointing to the screen.  “No, that’s reality.  The other one was a dream too.”  He slumped back in his seat.  “It’s so confusing.”

He was right about the last part.  It would take repeated viewings, probably more than two, to sort out the levels of dreams in Christopher Nolan’s Inception.  Nolan has a talent for visuals, a thirst for action, and a taste for puzzles, but he seems to lack the knack for putting together a story in a coherent narrative.  It may be the Nolan has it all worked out, the thousand pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fit without a single hole in the picture, and after watching the whole thing twenty-four times, anyone can see it.  Though I doubt it.  After one time through, I’m left with a bunch of fragments and I’m not sure why I should care to watch again to find out if the fragments fit or not.  I don’t mind storytellers playing with structure—I’m a puzzle guy who likes that kind of stuff—but I like character too, and I need to feel some emotional resonance with who’s in the story especially if you’re asking me to do mental gymnastics to make sense of the narrative.

Inception appears to be a big hit with critics and at the box office.  It will probably be the summer’s biggest hit not a sequel.  I may be in the minority, and despite some brilliant effects and other imaginative touches, I’m not sure what all the fuss is about.

Movies are dreamlike, dreams don’t always make sense, and I’ve seen enough Lynch and Kubrick to let a filmmaker take me to places where I’ll accept what I don’t fully comprehend.  But Nolan is operating on a different level.  He’s not offering anything profound.  He’s playing a trick called stump the audience.  You watch a scene, you think it’s reality, but it’s just a dream, or a dream within a dream.  It’s dreams all the way down.  And when he takes us back to reality in the end, all you can do is shrug.  Whatever you say, Christopher.

You may have heard reports of a crossword sighting, and we can now confirm.  MAD Puzzle No. 8 is in building.  If you want it, I’d recommend looking in the Puzzles room.

That one is new, this one is not.

Notice anything odd?

Of course not.  Congratulations on a job well done!

Are you stumped?  I’ll explain, after the jump.

That second grid is from a puzzle of mine that ran in the New York Times last Thursday.   If you’re a regular solver, it’s probably old news, but if you’re a Times subscriber and you haven’t done it yet, you may want to before reading on.  (Puzzle is here; comments from Wordplay’s Jim Horne et al.—and me—here.)

The “nothing odd with this” puzzle has no answers with an odd number of letters.  All answers are 4, 6, 8, or 10 letters in length.  A puzzle with all even-length answers is unusual—and it’s all right with me if you want to say that’s odd.

The reaction to the puzzle was odd too, with a few grenades tossed my way that I have to admit I didn’t see coming.  I usually fare pretty well, but fair to say, the appeal of this one didn’t exactly appeal to everyone.  On the other hand, some people liked it a lot.  I received emails from a couple of well-known names in the crossword community that were very complimentary.  That was a nice surprise, and I’ll take that trade.

I was traveling at the time and didn’t get to say anything real-time, and I don’t have anything to add now, but I did come accross the first all-even grid that I designed.  It’s an ugly beast—73 black squares—but it confirmed for me that a grid with all even-length answers was possible.

It’s not gonna happen, but it would be fun to see that grid for a puzzle in the paper someday.  If people wigged out on last week’s, I can’t imagine the conniption they’d have on this one.  I’d have to make some popcorn before reading the comments that day.

Heads-up:  my next puzzle in the NY Times is a week from today, Friday, the 23rd.

My picks aren’t meant to be representative, but each reflects an aspect of the country worth noting.  One takes its name from a George M. Cohan song, and its story is about a man whose ideas of patriotism are challenged until finally he must redefine what the country means to him.  The next takes its title from “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and tells a story about people living through one of the most difficult times in our country’s history.  The third film’s opening sequence is set to one of the greatest pieces of American music, and celebrates one of my favorite corners of the country.  When I think about fireworks in movies, this is the one that jumps to mind.

He’s my little yankee doodle boy.

That was fast.  Seems we got here in a hurry this year. 

Holidays are meant for remembering and when I do I think about growing up in the east with parades and Little League games and barbeques and days at the beach and a party somewhere and, of course, some fireworks.  Maybe those things haven’t changed but when I think back they seem a little more special because holidays—like a lot in life—just feel that way when you’re young.

Wherever I was there’s a good chance some rock ‘n’ roll was playing on the radio and when this holiday comes around there are a couple of songs in particular I can’t not think about.  Which means I listen to them again, and now through this thing called the internet, you can too.  Enjoy the holiday, folks, wherever you are.

First things first, the new crossword puzzle is here.  It’s a 19×19 themeless, and as always, you can find it at the MAD Puzzles page.  Scroll down for MAD Puzzle 7.

In other puzzle news, I had the Thursday (6/24) crossword in last week’s New York Times.  It had a tricky theme and turned out to be a difficult puzzle for lots of people.  If you’re a regular Times puzzle subscriber, you’ve either done it or know where to get it.  It’s available at the Times site here (subscription required); or use the direct link for the Across Lite version here.  I was happy with most of the feedback.  You can read Jim Horne’s commentary here (at Wordplay) and Sam Donaldson’s take here (at the Fiend).  My favorite comment may have been this one (at Rex Parker’s site):  “I am extremely satisfied that I finished this puzzle correctly, however, I think Mr. Farmer was showing off.” 

My next puzzle at the Times is due to run a week from tomorrow, next Thursday, July 8.

This is from John Wayne’s filmography at IMDb.  Twenty consecutive movies from the mid-1930s.  Notice a pattern?

1 Chris
1 Rod
1 Randy
17 Johns

You got a problem with that, partner?

“We didn’t need dialogue.  We had faces!”

That’s Norma Desmond, of course, the aging and forgotten star of the silent era reflecting back on her glory days and complaining about the wretched state of the movies.  From our vantage, it’s not so easy to imagine that summer of 60 years ago, when Sunset Boulevard was released, as a time of Hollywood’s demise.  We’d say that’s part of the golden age (hey, Norma, you should see some of this summer’s movies). 

It was a very good year, 1950, with several notable films and a couple of classics that rank among my favorites.  Billy Wilder’s film noir was a scathing look at Hollywood.  With All About Eve, Broadway got the treatment.

Both films feature stories about actresses who are aging.  They are old for their profession.  Norma Desmond is all of 50, and Margo Channing is in her 40s.  Not so old, really, we’d like to think.  Age hasn’t slowed down the career of Meryl Streep, for example.  But someone like Streep is an exception, and for too many in the acting profession, age still matters.

Age is just part of the conversation at Slant Magazine, where Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard have a fascinating discussion about those two classic films of 1950.  Bellamy:

That actually segues nicely into another of Sunset Boulevard’s famous moments: when Norma responds to Joe’s assessment that she “used to be big” by demanding, “I am big! It’s the picturesthat got small!” It’s a magnificent line—truly one of the best in cinema history—and, like the film’s equally famous final shot, it’s tempting to think of that line as nothing more than a sharp dagger to the heart of a misguided Hollywood. I mean, just think of the countless essays you’ve read that use Norma’s quote en route to a proclamation that Hollywood’s best years are behind it. Sure, there are lots of movie lines that are more celebrated or better recognized, but I’d be hard pressed to come up with one that cinephiles, on the whole, find more personally resonant. Because we’ve all been there: staring up at the closing credits of a lackluster movie with that empty feeling that Hollywood used to make ‘em better. Whether that’s true or not is beside the point. When Norma sneers that the pictures have gotten small, cinephiles reflexively nod their heads in agreement. We love her in that moment.

I think it can be fun to compare the two movies, though I’m not sure it’s useful to rank them.  In my world, each is about as good at what it does as can be imagined.  Mankiewicz deserves a little more credit than I think he gets at the Slant conversation.  The All About Eve screenplay is one of the very best in all of cinema, not just because of the wonderful dialogue, but for the intricate and perfectly executed story structure, weaving in points of view and voice-overs from multiple characters.  Yet the voice-over in Sunset Boulevard is a stroke of genius too.  As we learn, it’s from a man floating face-down in a swimming pool.  Neither film is strictly realistic.  All About Eve has an exaggerated theatricality to it, and Sunset Boulevard tends toward the gothic.  I’m partial to the latter, probably because I’m more fascinated by old Hollywood than old Broadway, not because it’s necessarily a better film.  Wilder, I should add, has a slant that is not only a good match for mine, but was influential in forming my own take on things.  Maybe that’s a chicken and egg thing, but he’s always been a favorite.