Clever Clue Nominees

Please vote for the best clue from February (either by email or comments below). The Clever Clue of the Month will be announced on Thursday.

Defensive line?.........................IMJUSTSAYING

Secret behind the shed?.................DIETPILL

Carrier for bum wraps...................DIAPERBAG

School in which ideally there are no

classes?................................MARXISM

Activity in which love means nothing....TENNIS

They're drunk at socials................TEAS

What 74 Years of Crossword History Says About the Language We Use

Article by CHARLES KURZMAN

EDUCATED Americans consider themselves a cosmopolitan bunch. We follow the conflict in Ukraine between Donetsk and Kiev, and can probably point to them on a map. We enjoy bibimbap and paella, which we try to pronounce with an appropriate accent. Some of us can identify the work of Igor Stravinsky, Youssou N’Dour and Ai Weiwei. The rest of us are going to go look them up on Wikipedia now.

But we are more parochial than our grandparents’ generation, according to one indicator: the New York Times crossword puzzle.

With the permission of Will Shortz, the Times’s crossword puzzle editor, I recently downloaded all of the newspaper’s crosswords from February 1942, when the puzzle began, through the end of 2015...

More of NYT article

Clever Clue of the Month

January 2016
Clue: Mating situation..........................CHESSTOURNAMENT
Constructors: Doug Peterson & Patti Varol, Editor: Rich Norris
LA Times, Saturday, January 30, 2016

Clever Clue Nominees

Please vote for the best clue from January (either by email or comments below). The Clever Clue of the Month will be announced on Wednesday.

Wraps around the subcontinent?..........SARIS

Market not to be bullish in?............CHINASHOP

Encryption sites?.......................TOMBS

Worry, about how a slow-cooked dish of 

meat and vegetables will turn out, 

perhaps.................................STEW

Mating situation........................CHESSTOURNAMENT

It comes after 49.......................ERS

Spelling Bee

Try your hand at the actual 2015 Preliminaries Test and see if you could have qualified for the Semifinals at the 2015 Scripps National Spelling Bee. (I didn't qualify.)

Why everyone over 40 forgets their PIN number but oldies are better at crosswords than their children

Losing your keys, popping upstairs to get something, then forgetting what it was - we all have memory lapses, but are our 'senior moments' really due to advancing age? Here Tanith Carey reveals the fascinating truth about how your memory changes through life...

Clever Clue of the Month

December 2015
Clue: Canniest, for instance...........................ANAGRAM
Constructor/Editor: Matt Jones
Jonesin' Crossword, Tuesday, December 15, 2015