Forum > Today's Puzzles
LAT Wed. 6/3 Peter A. Collins
(1/1)
magus:
GOOD ONES!
"Place to crash" PAD
"Took another plunge?" REWED
"Ran through" SPENT
I carped Monday about calling Gene Krupa an "old-time drummer," but "Old-time actress Bara" seems right for THEDA, who was a silent film star. The difference between the stars may have been only ten years.
Law, silence, honor, and ethics are related to cryptographers, but just how is cryptic to me. I wonder for how many cruciverbalists it is plain. I suspect it's some code to which cryptologists suscribe. :)
Mamselle:
Thanks for revealing what the circled letters were. (I did the puzzle online and therefore couldn't see the circles.)
I'm thinking that the theme refers to the phrases: code of silence, code of honor, and code of ethics.
I've heard of the civil code, the criminal code, and Hammurabi's code, so I guess "code of law" makes sense too.
Doorbell:
Yes, like 60A in the puzzle says: BROKENCODES. The letters of the codes are "broken" by the other intervening letters in the theme entries.
magus:
But words like silence and ethics are not codes, so breaking them up doesn't break a code. And as MAMSELLE points out, there's the problem of law. :)
Doorbell:
I really don't see the problem. Since the puzzle gives a hint to the theme as BROKENCODES, I think it's very crosswordpuzzle-ish to assume that you can read the theme words as "Code of ...". And certainly "code of silence", "code of ethics", and "code of honor", are familiar phrases. A "code of law" is the same as a civil code, a codified body of statutes. And "code of law" gets over 150,000 hits on Google, so it's not just me who thinks it's a familiar phrase.
I don't think the BROKENCODES type of theme would ever be used in a commuter puzzle, or in USA Today, or in a tabloid newspaper. But the LA Times provides us with high-quality themed puzzles, thank goodness!
Navigation
[0] Message Index
Go to full version