ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ BLOCK PARTY]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ BLOCK PARTY]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
I’m going to be doing a little bit of self-analysis/follow through from beginning to end/etc. with this puzzle. So if you like your puzzles fresh, without any sorts of hints, consider this a Spoiler Space warning! I repeat, I will be talking about this puzzle. Consider yourselves, warned.
ROCK ME SEXY JESUS was obviously the starting point. Why? Becuase it’s 15 letters, it’s offensive, and it was really the only funny part of “Hamlet 2.” What a complete waste of Steve Coogan’s talent. Will somebody please get this guy a proper role in the U.S.? He’s only my third-favorite working British actor! (Since you asked: numbers one and two are Bill Nighy and Idris Elba respectively).
By the way, I’ll be interested to see how many people who didn’t want spoilers chime in all mad as Hell that they saw ROCK ME SEXY JESUS thinking that bogus answer was in there. Okay, enough phony spoiler space and onto the real post.
Nice to see “my boy” (say that like Tony Kornheiser, please) Natan Last in the Times this past Monday. This kid’s a talent, a freshman at Brown, the world’s his oyster. Natan, if you’re reading this, please forgive me for pronouncing your name with a phantom “H” in it. Keep up the good work.
Anyway, the center entry in Natan’s puzzle was RICKROLLING, which I’m guessing was also the starting point for the construction. Later on in the day I was talking to Joon Pahk about the puzzle. (Okay, that makes it three JP namechecks in a little over a week, what gives, Quigley? I’ll tell you: turns out Joon’s not only my neighbor but also one of my test-solvers). Anyway so we were talking about that idiotic prank. Conversation went back to my dumb rickroll puzzle (click the “THIS IS HOW WE ROLL” link under “Most Popular Puzzles”). My concern with that joke was that I was hoping that the phony grid was eye-popping enough.
Turns out it must have been. Joon set up his computer to try and autofill it. Some 48 hours later it still hadn’t achieved one fill. FWIW: the master and commander Frank Longo got a fill in 4 minutes, but rejected it as one of the 15s was IRRECONCILABLES. Four fucking minutes? Jesus. Who’s jealous?
So today’s grid was a based on the rickroll spoof grid. I didn’t get much further than Joon, but I knew enough to push the ejector seat button sooner. However, I liked the chunks, so I added a couple black squares to close off the areas. After a while and a couple two three revisions, I got the above grid. I think it stands for itself as at the very least a pretty design. SW came first, and normally, I’d immediately do the NE corner right away, but for some reason, I went to the NW next. Initially, I kept the cheater that was part of the rickroll puzzle (square number 8 in this puzzle) and I still had the block above square number 28 down in it’s cheater position. I had a couple fills I liked up there, but I couldn’t get anything worth a hill of spit in the SW department. An 8-letter partial SOONER OR kept rearing it’s ugly head. Why? Yuck. In order to get this corner to work, I adjusted the cheaters to the pattern we have now.
It’s been a pretty rough week. I nearly had a nervous breakdown yesterday as I was feeling overwhelmed with all this damnfool work I’ve taken on. (Work for a freelancer is always a good thing, just why on Earth is it never spread out over the course of a year? Why is it always right on top of each other?) We’ve already covered my on-going battle with crappy laptop. Oh, and have I mentioned we’re closing our condo today? It’s been a Hell week. So it’s no suprise that there was no way I was going to lose AM I LOSING MY MIND in this grid. Anyway, I’ve certainly been losing my mind lately, so much so that when I clued this, I must have taken it out on my test solvers. Some comments:
“Jesus Christ, this one was a bastard.”
“Seeing it up front didn’t spoil my solving, in fact thank God I remembered a few things, or it would’ve taken way longer!”
“Reminded me of a Saturday Stumper, and (in my opinion) that’s not a good thing.”
Oof. Hey, but that’s why I have test solvers in the first place. Gotta shoot holes into this little fantasy of mine. Anyway, I didn’t get a chance to run the (hopefully) eased-up revisions by them. (FWIW: I didn’t rewrite all the hard clues, just added a few no-brainers, so hopefully that’s enough to make it easy.) So here’s where y’all come in. I need feedback as to how difficult this baby really was. I panic when I ocassionally see Dan “Usain Bolt” Feyer chime that the puzzle takes him nearly 5 minutes. On those days I can’t imagine how frigging tough that must be for every body else. Tough puzzles are fine, now and again, but I’m hoping to have a decent variety of easy ones now and then.
This one isn’t easy, I know that. And I apologize for taking it out on you. So, enjoy this one, you have all weekend, new easy puzzle on Monday.
18:25 is a personal best for me, actually. Helped that I got AM I LOSING MY MIND as a guess very quickly. I… don’t know what that says about me.
Yo, this puzzle wasn’t any harder than today’s NYT, which was not a hard themeless. Maybe medium. I would’ve been faster if I hadn’t filled in the 28D answer at 29D and wasted time wondering why you had that St. Louis bridge in two answers on opposite sides of the grid, and is there a hidden bridge theme spanning the puzzle that relates to 5D? (Answer: No, doof. You gotta read the clues that go with the spaces.)
Never, ever heard of the [Mexican cathartic] or [Tactical position that literally means “bridgehead”], and found the 30D and 31D clues tough/good. Elsewhere, the clues and crossings all seemed reasonable and fair.
amy, this puzzle took me more than twice as long as today’s NYT, and the version i solved was only slightly harder than the final one.
btw, i finally killed that autofill after 96 hours. my poor mac needed a break! i don’t think it ever got close to finding a fill.
I found it challenging, but fair. Amy’s right Ya gotta read the clues! SOYABEAN was CLEVVVER! Soybeans fouled up that corner wAAAAAy too long!
I didn’t find this too hard either, but it helped that there were a few gimmes in different areas (RIIS, SKYWALKING, DORSEYS, SOYABEAN). Even if, as Joon said, the original was only slightly harder, a few tweaked clues can make solving a whole lot smoother.
I really liked this one. Not much 3-letter fill, which is good. All the crosses were indeed fair. I’m just grateful I speak French because I would have had no clue for 5D.
Thanks Brendan, as ever
If this was a Friday NYT it’d have been my fastest ever, by a fair margin, and was right in the middle of my BEQ times. (If you can count the times what with my wrong JALA_ guess.) The whole right side was done pretty quickly.
This one took me about 15 min…blew through the NW and then worked counterclockwise to end in the NE. I would place this more or less as a Friday NYT. Favorite clue was 18A. Have finally committed to memory that stupid bridge in STL, so that was a gimme. Also never heard of 5D or 29A.
BTW, is that Ben Tausig in the above pic?
You said you loved me… Or were you just being kind?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_G4JNMURj4 …or if you prefer a beat, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR_mjkxc7Ys …
Agreed, not too hard, more Friday than Saturday. btw, it’s been a while since I posted a time over 4 minutes. :p
I love Behind The Puzzle episodes, but I’m missing something – there aren’t any cheater squares in today’s grid, right?
I finished today’s puzzle in about 1/2 the time it took me to do todays NYT. A challenge, yes, but very doable. enjoyed it!
I got stuck trying to cram TACO BELL BURRITO into 29-across, since they certainly have a “cathartic” effect on me.
I really like this one. The 4-way symmetry of the big corner blocks is really nice to look at. Your commentary is great, too. You’ve won me over to themelessness. I think it was something I had never really noticed before, more or less used to most puzzles having some sort of at least half-baked theme content, but I like the idea of the purity of it all.
For me this was almost in the center of your Bell Curve, 25th fastest out of 56 puzzles. It was about 3 minutes faster than today’s NYT puzzle which I found relatively easy. I’m more on your wavelength than when I first started solving your puzzles. Other than Frank Longo, the constructor who I find most difficult but also immensely enjoyable, is Bob Peoples, who lately has dropped below the radar.
I don’t know if my opinion counts because I’m a nobody in the crossword world. I have no idea what you mean by “cheaters” and “autofill.” This puzzle took me just under 18 minutes to solve, which is comparable to my Thursday NYT average time. “Heads up” is the best clue.
The photo reminds me of Jeffrey Tambor wearing a wig to look like Oscar not George… Nonetheless, I now have “I’m Oscar, dot com” stuck in my head. (here is hoping that was not too obscure for the folks here, I think it should be right in most people’s wheel house)
The puzzle was not bad at all. I had some guesses that turned out to be correct, so everything fell quickly. Much better than that ze puzzle from recent past. That one stumped me for a long time.
Yeah, this one wasn’t bad. I would have hated to see the earlier versions, though.
I took up your challenge and using a grid filler I just recently came across, filled your RickRoll grid in 5:42. Here it is if anyone wants to give it a shot:
http://alexboisvert.com/FilledRick.puz
Some fill I wouldn’t normally want to put in a crossword (1-Down, 27-Across, 54-Across come to mind) but it’s doable.
Hmm … great minds think alike?
Okay, seems like a reasonable level of difficulty. I gotta balance the incredibly nasty with a bit of the easy-ish side of things.
96 hours seems like a good checkout time.
You have that many gimmes and it’s going to give you a huge leg up.
That’s what I want to hear: challenging but fair.
Happy to oblige.
Hmm… maybe the BEQ puzzles are too hard? This is going to be a recurring theme for the next couple days. I’m afraid I’m scaring away otherwise intelligent people.
Nope, not Ben Tausig but Steve Coogan.
Well, the cheater squares were in the earlier version of the puzzle. Will probably do more of the Behind The Puzzle episodes in the future. Liz sez she likes the Barbara Cook version, called it “fabulous.” But what does it say about me that I liked the PSB/Minelli version more?
Cool beans.
You know, I wasn’t that into solving themelesses when I started off solving puzzles. Glad to see you’re coming around.
Taco Bell where you can eat like a king for pocket change.
A bell curve for BEQ puzzles. I love it. New T-shirt design perhaps?
Your opinion always counts here so please join the discussion. Glad you chimed in. And under 18 minutes is nothing to be ashamed of. Glad you’re having fun, too.
Hmm… Strange that you thought the themed one was harder than the themeless one. Glad you’re digging them though.
Jesus. CLEAR EYES crossing EYE isn’t elegant, but who’s counting? Impressive. Maybe I should make a post where we as a team try and come up with the most ridiculously wide open grid possible, and then fill it?
Not to mention EYE TEST below …
As for the ridiculously wide open grid idea, bring it on! I’ve been playing around with this new toy for about a week and it’s pretty cool. No progress on a 17-block puzzle or a 50-worder, but it can handle some pretty gnarly stuff (it reconstructed Longo’s 52-worder in about 10 minutes, for example).
I thought the puzzle was about medium in difficulty. JALAP was the trickiest, but made sense to me because it’s like jalapeno, except maybe not related after all. TETE DE PONT isn’t so bad for those who don’t speak French; TETE is in a lot of puzzles, and there are plenty of bridges in Romance language countries that people have heard of or are in puzzles (Ponte Vecchio, Pont Neuf), that PONT should be gettable, IMHO. I don’t have an idea of my solving time as I was solving while riding in a car.
I love when a puzzle takes me a while to solve…I’m not a speed solver and I like the AHA moments. This was hard and fair, the perfect combo. What’s BBB? Pardon my ignorance.
Jan, as long as you were just a passenger, and not driving while solving, that’s ok!
BBB = Better Business Bureau. Do they still exist?
Congrats on the new pad, Liz and BEQ!
Well, an okay puzzle I suppose. The big “Meh?” moments for me? 3D and 29A. Obscurity all very well, but no “aha” for those. Had to google–only after the fact–to reassure myself that those words existed in some language or other, but no satisfaction whatsoever in getting ’em purely by the crossing fills. Reads as “Constructor really groping for it” to me. I enjoy the wit and obscure indy rock references in your puzzles, but my honest reaction is that this one was sub par, fwiw. Not that that makes me any less grateful for you putting this up for us or any less of a major fan of your work in general, y’unnerstand.
Dominic West gets no love re: fave Brits, eh?
After staring fruitlessly at this Saturday’s NYT puzzle, this seemed pretty easy – except that I couldn’t get past JA*AP and BB*, and didn’t see LIBRARIES, so I CHEATED!
The rest seemed fair, and the puzzle was fun. It felt NYT Thursday-ish to me.
Not to mention SEER crossing FORESEE. But cool.
16:19 for me gave it the feel of a Friday, but with some more interesting fill and cluing than you’d see in most NYT Fridays. Going with “yesir” for [plebe’s answer] was obviously stupid and fouled me up for a bit. And despite being a Celtics fan, I looked at 18A’s “pierce’ as a verb for way too long. Easiest answer with the longest clue = 32A. Overall, an enjoyable puzzle!
Didn’t find it impossibly hard, and I’m way sub-expert. Basically had the entire right-hand side filled in with the left still blank. A good thing about these chunky, blocky puzzles is that big areas all come together at once — even with a few new words.
I am glad you eased up on some of the clues, though!
This one wasn’t as hard as some of your recent ones, even with the obscure JALAP and TETE DE PONT. (I started in the NE and worked my way around, with the NW falling last.)
Oddly enough, the clue that held me up for over a minute was the tan in Black & Tan, which I desperately wanted to be Bass (I always used Bass + Guinness) but couldn’t cram into three letters 🙂
Pretty tough, but I think we (as a collective solving audience) have just a healthy enough masochistic streak to enjoy these things, no matter how long they take. As long as there’s enough fair clues to give a chance to break into it, then eventually something’s gotta give. And yes, SOYA BEAN messed me up pretty good for a bit too. Good stuff.
FWIW: when I had a car, I would routinely solve puzzles while driving.
Thanks, can’t believe we got it.
Thanks for the honesty. It’s tough to figure out what the audience wants. Probably will have more indie rock bullshit in the future.
McNulty was a joke.
Cool. Saturday’s puzzle was effing tough.
Frigging Bulls.
Yeah, if there’s one thing I don’t want is puzzles comically impossible. Those aren’t much fun and they feel like vanity acts by constructors.
Mmmm… Black and tans.
Go figure, I thought the “edamame” bit would be a slam dunk.
That about sums it up.
The SW kicked my ass, but I cruised through the rest of it. I had sycamore where soy bean belonged, and that mucked up things in a major way. I love your puzzles, BEQ!
— jesser in crosswordy Las Cruces, NM
First try at your puzzle here, BEQ–came in under an hour, which is fine with me. Nice combination, I thought, of things like MISSME with things like JALAP.
NE and SW were easiest for me. NW west took a bit more time, and I couldn’t get the SE without using the check function to see what I had wrong. 5D was hardest for me, the “bridge” portion, at least.
I think what makes it successfully tricky is that several slots could take different words that start with the same letters. RIOT or RAGE in 54 down. And I had a few answers after the first word in 27D. And 3 down…dang…
favorite clue, answer, 30D.
I took the whole weekend to work it, going through various stages of revelation and eventually triumphing except for ELOGE (I had elegy and couldn’t figure out what else it could be although I knew “sherten” wasn’t right).
This was far from comically impossible. My solving level: I generally have limited luck with NYT Fri/Sat and often don’t even try them anymore because it’s so distressing not being able to get a foothold (am I that dumb?); and I don’t enjoy googling as I don’t feel that’s truly solving. I appreciate it that you avoid going down that path. Your puzzles are just fun in the extreme.
It’s fine with me that the indie stuff is in there – you’re very balanced, it seems to me, with Beatles and the Dorseys – that’s a very broad musical continuum!
Liked it a lot, didn’t think it especially difficult (didn’t time myself though), but then there were a few gimmes for me that smoothed the way (mmm “Evita”, my favorite musical ever). If you wanted to produce more like this, my vote is yes. (No, the BEQs are NOT too hard! I like them the way they are!) A very fun solve.
I love you too, jesser.
Hope to see more of you, snowbound.
I liked that clue too.
The whole weekend? A+ for sticktoitiveness. And welcome. Hope to see you in the comments section in the future.
And fear not with the weekend Times puzzles. If you can’t finish this weeks, give it a shot, and try again next week. You’d be surprised when you’ll be able to turn that solving corner.
And glad you feel there’s a little something for everyone, I’m shooting for that.
Well, I’m hoping to produce more like this. At least that’s the goal. Glad you enjoyed it.