ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS FRIDAY]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS FRIDAY]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
I also have the puzzle on Visual Thesaurus which went live today. It’s a subscription-only thing, so I can’t post it, but those who are already on-board with the VT can click here.
Big night of sports at our hotel last night as Liz and I were flipping between the Cavs/Magic series and the National Spelling Bee. Couple thoughts on the hoops: How’d Mike Brown get Coach of the Year honors if the Cavaliers game plan is just have LeBron do everything in the fourth quarter? Also, is there any way we can have a 24/7 Charles Barkley channel? Finally, I’d love to have shoulders like Dwight Howard.
Couple thoughts on the spelling bee: I knew two of the really late round words from crosswords: MENHIR and REREDOS. (Who said you don’t learn anything with these puzzles? And yes, I’ve used both in grids once). I know it’s all luck of the draw, but it was a hoot to see some of these kids knew the words right after they were announced, when most of us had never heard them before. Like LAODICEAN. The winner, Kavya Shivashankar, obviously knew that word and by extension that she was going to win. Great stuff. BTW: It didn’t surprise me at all that the runner up’s favorite band is They Might Be Giants (that is not a dig, BTW, as they were a solid act circa 1986-90, IMHO). Just asking, but are the parents soccer mom/NASCAR dads only of the academic kind? Regardless, all of those kids were tough as nails.
Trivia: I came in second place in some spelling bee back in I’m gonna say like seventh grade. That’s funny, because nowadays I lean pretty heavily on the spell checker (and even then then, I’m still sloppy). I remember controversy arose when I spelled CREEK correctly, but technically they were looking for CREAK. There was none of this define-the-word/etymology/use-it-in-a-sentenct/etc. thing at the chicken-shit spelling bee I was part of. Just the teacher saying the word and the kid spelling it. Good times.
Oh, and I’ve always wanted to name a band The Chiaroscurist, which was the winning word for the Spelling Bee about ten years ago. For those who might be thinking about naming a band, this is a terrible, terrible idea for two reasons. One, no one will be able to spell your name, and, two, no one will know how to pronounce it either.
As for today’s puzzle: this one was without a home for a while, until it landed on the blog of misfit puzzles. QBERTSQUBES was the starting point, couple two three nasty hard entries: CARNET, A DROITE and LIMOUSIN, so please forgive me. Hopefully the good outweighs the bad.
Spelling bee trivia, part 2: I was in the National Spelling Bee in 1988 and 1989. Came in 35th the first time (doubled the second N in QUINQUAGENARY) and 104th the second time (forgot to double the first T in SAGITTATE). Haven’t been able to get either of those into a grid, yet.
MN
Only if they don’t show him playing Golf. He Sucks at it!
their offense really was very good this year, but it’s still true that in crunch time they space the floor and let lebron run the show. note, by the way, that this is a damn good strategy–they killed the magic in that 4th quarter. of course it’s a lot harder when mo & delonte & Z aren’t making outside shots, because then they can just pack the lane against lebron and force him to give up the ball. yesterday they were hitting their shots (along with wally and boobie gibson off the bench) and that was curtains for the magic.
dwight has ridiculous delts. he looks like he could be a swimmer.
I don’t know where to comment about this, so I’ll put it here.
Your last AV Club Crossword was great fun, but I’m wondering if it was intentional to put only a 3-letter bridge between the two halves of the grid, requiring long theme answers on either side to to bridge the gap?
See, I’m one of those OCD types that doesn’t like writing anything in that doesn’t cross what’s already in the puzzle. That gap drove my subconscious CRAZY.
Wow, brutal themeless, dude…of course, I started with GRAIG Nettles…then came to a screeching halt. Luckily, I got AXEL and JAR, which gave me ORTHODOXJEW..and I painstakingly took it from there. I had -TEVE at the end of the #16 movie…but kept thinking “The Tao Of Steve” lol.
Somehow obscure cattle breeds are not bad for me: I got LIMOUSIN pretty early, which helped. According to http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=limousine both the breed name and the stretched car name ultimately come from the region around Limoges: the cattle came from there (and look quite similar to the cattle painted on the walls of the caves at Lascaux), and early limousines had profiles resembling the cloaks of Limoges people, or Limousines.
I guessed AXEL and JAR early but the XJ looked wrong, until a flash of insight said that it could be ORTHODOXJEW, but Rambam was new to me. For me the puzzle was not so misfit after all.
Substitue SOHIO for A DROITE, and you’re right about the killers. Nice work. “Approved.”
rp
QBERT’S QUBES is evil, but it’s just my kind of evil, right in my wheelhouse. And not a bad game either, as far as obscure sequels of geometrically-based games go. Raconteurs… fun band too.
The cattle breed and SOHIO, however, that’s another story. Beat me down pretty hard.
your puzzles rule.
i loved seeing QBERT up there.
tmccormick4: You may know Rambam as Maimonides (it’s an acronym: Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon).
my favorite was SENATESEATS … if only you could cross it with BURRIS or BLAGOJEVICH now that they’re back in the news …
The Bee was especially compelling for our family since we’ve met the champ once, and the girl who finished tied for second (Aishwarya Pastapur) used to live in Kansas where I am and I helped tutor her a couple of years ago for the Bee. Her dad and I were on a corporate team that won the KC corporate spelling bee in 2006. She’s a great kid and as down to earth as any you’d like to meet. We knew the two of them could do very well in the Bee, but kept gasping as the umbers fell to 11 finalists, then 10, then 7, then 4 then 3. We were fine with Kavya winning — she was probably the best speller, pure talent-wise, of them all.
Anybody who loves sports and/or crosswords should enjoy the Bee.
Here’s a sports blog from today that’s kinda cool, comparing Kavya to
Kobe and Le Bron:
http://www.sportingnews.com/blog/the_sporting_blog/entry/view/24812/shanoffs_w.u.c._kavya_vs._lebron_and_kobe
My sister found your website and we were surprised that you have the same name as our late Uncle Brendan Quigley. Our late Dad did crosswords everyday til he died at 86. We are a crossword family and its now fun to do them written by a fellow Quigley!!!
Hardest part of this one for me was NE as QBERT was only a very dim/vague memory, but it was ultimately doable. So, kudos on a tough but fair one.
Whoa … This is stunning information. Did you make it on TV? YouTube that thing if you were on the telly.
What a weird OCD thing. I’ll tell you something. The amount of theme dictates the shape of the grid. So the 3-letter bridge was totally accidental. Glad you like the puzzle tho.
“The Tao of Steve” is probably on nobody’s favorite movies list.
The things you learn crosswording.
Eight bit games are the only good video games, I think.
BLAGOJEVICH might make for a good themeless entry… hmm…
Wonderful, wonderful post. Thanks for sharing this.
Here’s the bizarre part: Eventually, when I figure out time travel, I will go back and become your uncle.
You got it Jae.
I have gotten plenty of “nintendo thumb” playing Qbert over the years. Loved the entry. Thinking about themeless entries, how about Natthaweeranuch Thongmee. She was an/a FHM sexiest top five, so it is not out of left field. But then again, the name is nearly impossible to spell, and you want puzzles to be tough, yet doable. Still, how many 15 letter names could there possibly be?