Joseph Knecht

Children's Games Georges Bizet's Jeux D'Enfants   Jeff Stillman is a frequent contributor to the LA Times Crossword and today he plays with some favorite phrases for children's games.  Each themer consists of a pun on games we all played when we were kids. No reveal is needed.  Bill here to lead you through some childhood memories: 18A. Tanner's favorite kids' game?: HIDE AND SEEK .   Some parents occasionally "tan their children's hides", the traditional method of behavior control. As confirmed believers in the power of positive re-enforcement, we never found the need for it. 28A. Ornithologist's favorite kids' game?: DUCK DUCK GOOSE 45A. Window retailer's favorite kids' game?: BLIND MANS BUFF .   A bit of misdirection here, as  BUFF in this case is apparently an alternate word for the more common BLUFF ...

Our constructor for today is Alex Bajcz (pronounced like "badges") who last appeared here March 19th, 2018, reviewed by Lemonade .  As we will see, Alex has his fingers in a lot of pies having published in the NYT, WSJ, as well as here on the Corner.  Here is a more complete list of his constructions on his website .  But you will also notice that he has a day job - that of a Plant Ecologist at the Drew University P.R.U.N.E Research Lab ( P lant R eproduction in ( U n) N atural E nvironments).  Here is a picture of Alex giving a “lesson” on blueberry reproductive ecology to blueberry growers at Blueberry Hill Farm:   Among his other interests Alex, is an expert in a programming language called R .  I'm familiar with scores of programming languages, but as my cockney relatives would say, "I never 'eard of it!".  I gather that it has a lot of powerful tools for processing statistical data. Today he will give us a lesso...

Twilight Zones Today's puzzle leads us into other dimensions of reality.  Our captain for this journey will be Michael Paleos, an LA Times veteran who last published here on Thursday March 12th 2020 .  He has also been published at least twice by the NY Times.  This is what Will Shortz had to say about him for his Sunday puzzle debut on October 27, 2019:   Michael Paleos, of Oyster Bay, N.Y., is chief of staff at a major investment bank. He started solving crosswords at a young age, but only got hooked on them after discovering the archive of puzzles in the New York Times app. "After doing enough of them, I started wondering what it would take to make one, and down the rabbit hole I went." [my emphasis] In this puzzle Michael leads us to close encounters with holes you don't go down , but go through, and come out the another side ! I'll start by highlighting a key piece of information by showing a blank gr...