ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ THINK THICK]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ THINK THICK]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
It’s another episode of “Behind The Puzzle.” But first:
I haven’t forgotten about all the penaly/requests you’ve given me. According to my records I still have three to go: an anything goes-esque puzzle in the style of Trip Payne, a Liz Gorski puzzle-as-art-as-metapuzzle-as-zen-koan puzzle, and now a how-many-bullshit-themes-can-I-feasably-fit-into-one-15x? puzzle. (If I’ve forgotten any, let a brother know, okay?) All I can say is those babies are coming. Please bear with me and keep the pitchforks and effigies at bay. Thank you.
So it seems that the themelesses get the audience ecstatic, ergo, today’s lovely 68 worder. I’d been looking back at my previous work and I realized I hadn’t done this sort of shaped grid yet for the blog, so I went at it. For those who are playing “guess which entry Brendan started with” and guessed WELL ANYWAY, you’re wrong. CRAIG’S LIST was the entry point. (C’mon, all the regulars know I’m moving and Craig’s List is the site to go to sell shit you don’t need!) Well anyway, I did try CRAIG’s LIST down at 55-Across, but I didn’t like any of the crossings, so after a couple two three blah efforts in the NE quadrant, I found the home at 22-Across. JAWAS at 5-Down was next partially because of the Scrabbly letters and partially because well, c’mon, it’s “Star Wars” and two and a half of those three movies are fucking incredible (in my opinion “Return of the Jedi” is mostly a toy commercial and those prequels never happened).
Wierd side tangent: I’m kind of enjoying packing as I’ve stumbled upon things I never even knew we had. Specifically: Liz has this great book she never knew she had either:
Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary: or why can’t anybody spell?” by Vivian Cook. It’s a wonderful little book mostly lists of types of misspellings, and a somewhat pop psychologist approach to why. Cute stuff. One section was all about the strange English phoentic spellings of aliens in science fiction, which I think will be a theme once I get around to that one. I think I had aliens on the mind, ergo JAWAS.
WELL ANYWAY, JUDE LAW and (after a couple two three attempts) JAIL BAIT came next, and I thought that was a decent SW corner although we had the dread verb + TO at 48-Across, the awkward plural at 50-Across, the variant spelling at 41-Down, and who dat? at 45-Down. Budding crossword constructors take note: leave yourself an out whilst making wide-open grids: 45-Across could go loads of ways in the extending in the SE quadrant: RADAR BLIPS, RADARRANGE, RADARSCOPE to name a few.
Oh, I’d be curious to see how many people were stumped at the 3-Down/28-Across crossing. Admittedly, 3-Down is a whuzzat? kind of entry, unless I guess, if you’re an expert in ornithography. Two of my test solvers guessed SWATCHES incorrectly at 28-Across. I mean, I guess I could see that becuase we’re putting some paint samples on the wall. Please, let me hear it in the comments section.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there. Get yer Zappa out on Sunday.
Yep, I had one wrong square. I assumed you were so immersed in picking out paint colors that you had SWATCHES on the mind, and ARACARA…well, I swear there’s some other bird that halfway rhymes with that and ends with an A. There’s the evergreen conifer Araucaria. Maybe that bubbled to the surface of my cruciverbal lobe.
I don’t know my Pet Shop Boys, so piecing together 12D when I didn’t know 21A and 30A (and when I was reading a truncated Across Lite clue for 27A that lopped off “Pistons”) took some time.
Budding constructors, don’t go with RADAR RANGE. The old brand is Radarange.
I needed urbandictionary to explain 56A to me. 🙁
Yup, I had SWATCHES there…another wtf square was 13D/21A…never heard of either of those. Also got tripped up by “Romantic interludes”–threw in TRYSTS there, of course, after getting the Y from PRY. TEENERS is a bit of a groaner, but other than that, great puzzle, even if I can’t say IM HOT about my time.
Basically, Amy isn’t like roll that shit light that shit smoke it.
Hmm… I guess there’s the problem with trying to find new fresh clues for the old repeaters.
Oops on that Radarrange. I think our new place has an Amana.
well I know my cheeba, but have never heard the term SESS!
Figured out SWITCHES before the Downs came in the NW. And thank you to themeless staples PANATELA and ALLAN-A-DALE for my entree into the SW…
What would a themeless be without themeless staples?
also got caught SWATCHing.
this puzzle was great, but it allows me to point out one of my pet peeves as a solver: what i guess you could call false plurals. i mean, you can add an S to anything and make it plural, but there are some things that just become nonsensical when you pluralize them, and GUACAMOLE is one of them. i suppose it could work if there were several varieties of guacamole on hand in your taqueria — as there often are, say, SALSAS — but i’ve never seen this. i’m not saying false plurals are illegal or even that dire of an infraction (sometimes you just have to do it to pull together an otherwise stellar quadrant). but like i said, to a solver like me, they bug, and they tend to pop up more often than i’d like them to.
also: i agree, TEENERS was groansville, but JAILBAIT for “some texters”? superb. and the cross w/ TEENERS was inspired.
Scattered notes:
Yep, the switch from A to I in SWITCHES was the last freaking correct letter I put in the puzzle. Nasty stuff there. Just had some nice homemade guacamole the other day, so that was a tasty way to break into the GUACAMOLES corner.
Considering I’m a person who can get a strong buzz just from being at a concert where someone lights up 6 sections away, it’s best that I didn’t see the clue for SESS until after the solve – I wouldn’t exactly have figured that one out.
Yeah… they’re not the most elegant answers. Hopefully a shade better than REASSESSORS or something.
Uh … that’s Sexters … Thanks for the kudos tho.
Strange… none of my testees knew SESS either but I felt it was common knowledge. Maybe I’m listening to too much rap?
putting me down also for not knowing it, and for smoking plenty of it.
f*ck, right. sexters. that’s what i meant to type. btw, was this clue at all inspired by the recent nytimes story on the topic?
Another vote for SWATCHES/ARACARA. I spent something like 6 minutes trying to get Mr Happy Pencil. I was sure that my error was somewhere amidst the obscure ARA or ADENT or ASE part, until it finally occurred to me to Google ARACARA. Well, anyway, SWATCHES fits the clue a bit better, grumble, grumble.
As someone far removed from bright college days, both cheeba and SESS were as unknown as ARA and ASE to me.
Hmm … surely there must be somebody who got SWITCHES easily, right?
I fell for SWATCHES too. In fact, I needed Across Lite to tell me where my mistake was.
Fairly high number of “huh?” clues in this one, what with Armenian King’s sobriquets, indian physicists, Windows laptops (I’m a Mac guy) and hiphop drug lingo from before my time sonny, but I managed to get ’em all with the crossers. Still, it came out as a bit harder than today’s NYT for me–about 17 minutes for this to 12 for the Times. I had a lot of big blank areas going, but for some reason 23D cracked it for me and it fell in about three minutes after that.
SWATCHES never occurred to me.
Maybe I’m dense, but isn’t the Frost quotation “like a dent in dough”?
Hey, I got the SWITCHES. Mark me down as someone who doesn’t know their cheeba from their SESS. I goofed at putting IFY with complex (after I had complexion, of course). And I didn’t think GEEGAW was a variant.
Not me. Mainly because SWITCHES aren’t “against” the wall, they’re in the wall.
Yeah, I had switches too. To me, swatches are fabric samples so it never occurred to me that they’d be on a wall. I had many of the same hangups as Dr BB – and this took me a whole lot longer than today’s NYT – but it was, as always, quite an education.
Dude, SWATCHES.
Never heard of SESS. “Sexter” = now I get it, but if you’d asked me what it meant before I read comments, I’m not sure I could have told you.
Exoticisms should not cross answers where the vowels (in particular) can be iffy. SWITCHES is the better answer, I guess, but not at all clear from the clue.
I also misremembered ALLAN ADALE as ALLAN ADARE. Again, not smoking (anything, anymore) did me in, as PANATERA sounds as good as PANATELA. Better in fact. Sounds like PANERA, where I eat sometimes.
PS also sounds like PANTERA.
Call it a vulgar display of power.
Hmm… maybe went a little too overboard with the references. SWATCHES here too…
Is it just me or does Panera suck?
Yeah, I thought swatches were for fabrics and not paint. Dunno why everybody’s thinking paint. Glad you liked it.
Cool, switches here, but no weed reference here. Hmm… and I’ve never said geegaw or gewgaw.
This is what I want to hear. Getting stuff from crossers.
nice one. I went with SWATCHES and ARACARA too for awhile so clearly was on the same wavelength as Amy, only 50 times slower b/c my mind works–relatively–at the speed of a somewhat drunken, elderly turtle. At least in crosswords. Cheeba? totally new word for me.
Late to the party but SWATCHES here also. My only error. No idea on Cheeba and SESS but the crosses worked. Those days were over decades ago. My post solve google of cheeba did not turn up SESS easily. I had to dig around/through some links to come up with it.
Hey, my in-laws have a new microwave. It’s an Amana Radarange. It lives!