ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ HERO SANDWICH]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ HERO SANDWICH]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
A puzzlemaker’s biggest fear is that the puzzle will not be solved. Well, that might be up for debate when it comes to the brutal-yet-brilliant work Bob Klahn makes. Bob achieves such unheralded levels of freshness that any sort of gimme that other constructors might give to the solver as a starting point are rendered invisible with never-before-seen clues.
But for most of us, an unsolved puzzle is an unsuccessful one. It may not seem like it, but we really want you to get that last entry, even if it means scrambling, straining and reaching into the darkest recesses of your mind to pull out the finishing letters. This is entertainment we’re talking about here. And if you just say “screw it” in the middle, we didn’t get the job done. Now that, my friends, is a huge problem.
The classic example of the unsolvable crossword is when the obscure European river crosses the African bug genus. Only those who have memorized all 315,000 entries in Webster’s unabridged dictionary are expected to get that one letter. Patently unfair. Simply unentertaining. Puzzlemaker gets a big F-. Feel free to Photoshop a piece of cheese on the picture of the constructor’s face and make some asinine caption at I Can Has Cheezburger?, post that shit everywhere, as they deserve it.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, there’s the I-Get-It-But-I-Don’t-Get-It puzzle. In that one all the entries are legit, none of the crossings are hard, therefore the solver completes the whole grid. Yet… can’t make head or tail of the theme. Is this an unfair puzzle? The puzzle is solvable, so from that perspective it succeeds. Yet they would be solving it almost as if it were a themeless, so is it a failure, or simply just a flawed puzzle?
Or, could it be that the IGIBIDGI puzzle provides a delayed reaction? It’s not unlike a grenade. From a puzzlemaker’s standpoint, it’s been activated, lobbed in our enemy’s general direction, and now we’re just waiting for the thing to go “BANG.” Now you have to realize that the constructor really wants that “BANG” (“aha!” moment) to happen, otherwise: FAIL + LOLCAT picture + humiliation, etc. (FWIW: my test solvers took a while to get the whole gimmick here with this puzzle. No LOLCAT picture has to be made, necessarily.)
Well, having said all that, I’ve been waiting to make this theme for a while now. My timing might be a hair early, but I think the puzzle is worth it. Enjoy.
Just a quick note on the blog: I have decided to cancel the Diagramless as a Twitter Feed. I think it was a great idea conceptually, I wasn’t sold that it was the best use of the tweeting feature. A good on paper, bad in execution idea. So be it. However, I did like that people were tweeting back to me the answers as they were being typed, so I’m going to probably shift the tweeting focus thataway. Thanks.
okay, since i don’t know anything about the watchmen, this theme didn’t do much for me. there does seem to be a ton of theme material, though. i looked it up on wikipedia and found a list of characters. so… yeah. on the bright side, “ozymandias” is an excellent poem.
Early for the movie, but just in time for the out-of-court settlement, so there’s that. I think SILK + SPECTRE is my favorite.
As for 57A: and I always thought “HOERs” were furrow *users*, not furrow makers. Tehee.
JNR really ruined this one for me.
Your “Drop Menu” puzzle was IGIBIDGI for me, but I love those when the theme is as much fun, once you figure it out, as that one was. I finished without getting any help from the theme but took great delight in figuring it out. Like a little bonus puzzle at the end, and one of the most clever themes I’ve ever seen.
This one… not so much, since I don’t know the Watchmen other than as a name. But I definitely DO like encountering idiosyncratic puzzles like this one here. Part of the fun of visiting your blog, even if I don’t always get it.
I really enjoyed this even though I know NOTHING about the graphic novel.
I REALLY enjoyed the answers for 16A, 18A, 23A, 43A. Lots of nice big words that still didn’t make the puzzle too crazy hard.
Keep up the great work.
Count me among those who never read the book so I didn’t get a lot from the theme.
Still, I found it all gettable (I have at least heard of “The Watchmen”) and enjoyed it. OZYMANDIAS is a mystery to me, as is JOYCE, but when I had J__CE it seemed like a safe guess, and that cleared up the CZAR/tsar dilemma to give me COINfirmation. Tried menu for MELT, which held up SPECTRE too long, but the rest was pretty smooth going.
To answer your implied question, I say go for those obscure themes. Not everyone will get it, but those who do will appreciate it more. I never even did the rickrolling puzzle, but I like it on a theoretical level. Besides, others clearly enjoyed it a lot. Who am I to complain? I’m pretty sure I’d be less magnanimous if they somehow used that trick at the NYT.
Thanks again for the fun.
There were enough ‘gimmies’ to figure the theme out well enough. And I know my Seinfeld, so that always helps. But CSPAN got me for about 10 minutes. I was reading that as some sort of bathing thing for the ears… Silly heteronyms!
I was a big comic book reader and WATCHMEN is still my favorite ever. Great puzzle.
Enjoyed the puzzle…never heard of the graphic novel or the movie. Able to finish with only a brief tussle ove menu instead of melt.
I don’t consider it a failure if I finish the puzzle without “getting” the theme. It just gave me something to investigate when I was done which enabled a greater appreciation of the construtor’s aim.
here’s another way of looking at it:
An easy puzzle with no apparent theme = like a Mon. or Tues. NYT level; i.e., hardly worth solving.
Characters from some comic book is the theme? Meh. I’ll wait for the movie.
Never heard of Watchmen but I enjoyed the puzzle. Except for JNR.
CZAR always rubs me the wrong way, although I know it’s perfectly acceptable. The TSAR spelling is the correct transliteration. The ‘ts’ is pronounced as in ‘cats’, which I just don’t get out of ‘cz’. Sorry for picking nits. It’s just one of those silly things.
I just recently discovered your blog after having happily worked your puzzles for years (and years, and years). I, not being a graphic novel fan, had to rely on other clues for a solve on this one. Not that I minded.
In principle, as a comics fan, I should be waving my fist at “get off my lawn” and raving about TIME Magazine’s 100 novels of the century, but I’m laughing too hard. “Some comic book? MEH.”
This puzzle was almost custom-made for me, since I’ve been a WATCHMEN fan for fifteen years, and I still took forever to figure out the theme when I solved it as a diagramless last Friday. I think I have a “don’t assume they’re talking about comics” instruction in my head somewhere to keep me from ruining conversations with normal, non-comics-obsessed people. That probably kicked in with this puz.
The clues provided here (the title, the still) would probably have made me get it much faster.
Even when the themes are not tailored for me, though (Mehmet WHO?), I’ve always felt like they’ve played fair. I mean, if you need a list of the Watchmen, Google is RIGHT THERE.
I think CZARS has to be treated as mainstream when the Bush Administration was just recently talking about “war czars” and the like. In fact, it’s probably MORE mainstream than TSARS, transliteration or no… but we all know which one fits more easily into a grid.
I got JNR immediately, but since it seems to be giving people problems, maybe it could be changed to RNR, with ROYCE (as in Rolls)? Hate to lose the only J and that “Buffy” clue, but if two fans are calling that answer a dealbreaker, it might be for the best…
I do see JNR was accepted in the NYT twice, for what that’s worth…
Astonished at how widespread ignorance of “Watchmen” is. It’s the “Paradise Lost” of the 20th century, and I say that as someone who is teaching both works this semester. Great Puzzle.
rp
JNR is valid, although probably archaic. I’ve seen it on historic documents.
Re: Diagramless.
It could work if you gave the clues in numerical order instead of all the across clues first, then the downs.
I know you wrote that you got the idea after someone told you to make a Newsday puzzle more challenging by doing it as a diagramless and by doing the acrosses first.
But your puzzles ain’t Newsdays and that’s a good thing.
My boycott of your comments section (begun about two weeks ago when you deleted a comment of mine) is hereby over.
But I still avidly dislike Steely Dan, so there. 😛
LOL, I just was e-mailed another puzzle (surely many of you have seen it already) that includes JNR. (To tell you where I got it would be a spoiler.)
Peter Parker House Roll: you can’t say something like that and then not tell us!
Turning Spork: Glad to have you back, though I still swear on a stack of Bibles I have never deleted a post of yours.
Rex: Paradise Lost and Watchmen? Tell us more about the class.
Everyone else: thanks for the comments!
Yes, that other puzzle clues JNR with an “in the U.K.” tag. Go to Google.co.uk and search for “jnr” in U.K. webpages only and guess what? You get a zillion hits, all making it evident that in the U.K., they use Jnr rather than our Jr.9 (I never knew that before today.) Brendan is married to a Brit, so I think that gives him carte blanche to use JNR in every puzzle.
hiii