ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ ENTER THE 76-WORDER]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ ENTER THE 76-WORDER]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
Loads to get to today, but first: I have today’s LA Times crossword. Get to it here: [Across Lite] [PDF]
Also, huge congrats to my friend and editor at the Visual Thesaurus Ben Zimmer who, just yesterday, was announced as the new “On Language” columnist for the New York Times. Good to see some old media is still hiring.
But let’s get right down to business shall we? Today’s puzzle is a first for the BEQ.com blog: it’s our first honest-to-God collaboration. Sure, there’s been readers who’ve offered themes to me before, like Peter Abide from a few weeks back. But the above puzzle was the first to be co-authored, soup to nuts, with another puzzlemaker. Say hello to Manhattan’s own Caleb Madison (pictured above with a huge fan of his). Caleb’s a junior at Bard High School who’s concentrating on the Classics. And when he’s not making puzzles for the New York Times, he plays guitar and piano for the school’s jazz band. Did you hear that? Making puzzles plural for the New York Times. Jeez. To put things in perspective, I don’t think I could successfully solve a dot-to-dot let alone solve and/or make Times-quality puzzles when I was his age. I sure as hell wasn’t studying calc or reading “The Prince.” The kid’s future’s bright. If there’s any BEQ.com reader who works for an admissions department, you’d be foolish not to snap him right up. Make him a “Godfather”-esque offer.
Anyway, sometimes I think Caleb is really 40 years old. He boasts he’s seen 39 of the 46 Woody Allen movies. He’s another hardcore fan of “The Wire” (his IM avatar is The Bunk, BTW). And he listens to music by acts that were long gone before he was born (read the ’80s/’90s, look at the kid’s shirt, f’r crying out loud!). In short: my kinda pop culture junkie. So, when Caleb pitched this theme to me, and I saw the theme was well in my wheelhouse, I jumped at the chance to make it. So thank you, Caleb!
Share the puzzle. New one on Monday.
Of course you realize this could have been titled “Enter the 76-Worder (36 Blocks)”
Fun puzzle.
You are totally right. I’m adding that subtitle right now.
Protect Ya Neck!
Thanks for the puzzle BEQ and Caleb. Now the real question…does this make me want to listen to Enter the Wu-Tang or Liquid Swordz. Or Cuban Linx. Or Cuban Linx II. Ah, choices…
This puzzle makes me want to go back and re-listen to all of 30D …
Nice work. Have you heard the album BlackRok with the Black Keys? Amazing stuff.
Damn, this puzzle was just far out of my realm. Good stuff, but I may have for the first time experienced a fall into a generational abyss. The sudden stop at the bottom hurts, people.
That group just wasn’t that big in my area for whatever reason, and I didn’t discover them until much later. So the theme and title just whizzed by me unnoticed. (Clever, by the way). I got some listening to do.
I think every other initial guess I made was completely off the mark. Got me good today, guys. Great pic, too!
The theme sounds interesting but I am clueless. I assume that the puzzle has 76 words and 36 black squares but what does that have to do with wu tang clan?
Shame on a Quigley who try to run game on a Quigley…Q buck wild wit da trigger!!!!
Awesome puzzle, thank you…only criticism is the title gave away the 58-Across answer (@salo its a parody of their biggest album, “Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)”
Best. Puzzle. Ever.
I liked this one too, and your LAT puzzle tickled my funnybone in just the right way today. And I think I’m not going to submit times anymore to your ‘leaderboard’. I invariably do the puzzle in little chunks of time during a conference call or while trying to eat lunch which makes any time estimate inaccurate. That’s an engineer for you – if I can’t give you an accurate estimate, I’m not giving you crap.
Howard, I benefited somewhat from a generational cycle in that my son was playing some Wu-Tang Clan in the car just yesterday!
Since Anna G. hasn’t checked in yet, I’ll mention that she beat you guys to this theme:
http://www.crosswordfiend.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=392
I realize it would have been difficult to get him into the puzzle, but with multiple (commercially and critically successful) solo albums, Ghostface Killah has to be considered one of the “more famous” members, I think.
It’s because of BlakRoc that I could divine what was going on here! The Black Keys are from Akron, where I live, and I’ve become familiar with RZA and ODB – and Wu-Tang Clan – through that rap project of theirs, which is outstanding, I agree. Great puzzle, guys!
this is stinkin’ bizarre! I feel like I just put my puzzle up.
And, of course, to make things weirder, I just sent Brendan a note mentioning I made my puzzle based off of what he’d said in the 10 Bullshit Themes post, and then I come here and see this…
Great minds think alike, and so do we, i guess
Consider me another one who was generation gapped by this puzzle, although I did finally gut through it.
One quibble. The clue to 6A is inaccurate. It should read, e.g., “Some Eur. Union members, formerly.” While they were members of the USSR, that was a Eurasian Union. It would be a BIG stretch to think the Eur. is an abbreviation for Eurasian.
Love stuff like that, Al. Had a similar thing happen once where my wife and I were listening to a Marley CD on a car trip, and within the next day or two ‘ONE LOVE’ appeared as an answer in the weekend puzzle. Felt alright.
In retrospect I realize I’ve heard a little bit more of Wu-Tang than I first realized, but had a bout of total collective amensia on the members’ names.
Generation Gap? More like the big trench at the bottom of the biggest ocean. Most of the posts seem not even to be written in English! Here’s the bad part– I did the puzzle! I’ll have to go look (because I did six puzzles; there is very little to do in a hospital room if one is not the patient.)
I hope this does not make you guys think, “Pearls before swine,” or some such, though I guess the puzzle was wasted on the likes of moi.