ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
Second week in a row with a themeless on Monday. I’m thinking I might continue with inverting the puzzle week, that is to say having the themelesses early on in the week. Or I might not. I’m down for whatever. You guys tell me. I here to entertain you.
I’ve been told by my test solvers this puzzle was a bear. This was probably not by accident. I was trying to do a super-wide open bizarre-o symmetry Frank Longo-esque themeless. Frank’s work is always going to be wide open, always going to have a couple new intelligent entries that are vocab builders, and a comical amount of white chunks with no unnecessary black squares. Seriously, check this book out. It’s some crazy shit. Oh, and Frank’s a whiz of a clue writer/editor. Basically, his contributions to modern-day puzzlemaking can never be repaid.
Side bar: Frank’s got the single most amazing ranked database of entries in puzzledom. There’s a handful of us who are always trying to stump him with entries that he doesn’t have. It’s a daunting task, because this guy’s pretty much thought of everything. Doesn’t mean I haven’t contributed a handful of stuff: mostly neologisms, fractured slang and obscure sports figures. They’re almost always ranked so high to guarantee they’ll never appear in any of his puzzles.
Anway, I learned a couple things while making this themeless:
- Symmetry-be-damned puzzles invariably will have some corners that are nigh-impossible to fill in. (This one I know has diagonal symmetry, still.) But after doing the daunting NE first, then the two chunky 4×8 corners in the NW and SE, I realized the SW was pretty much impossible for me. I tried and tried and tried to get something slick sans cheaters. No dice. Forgive me.
- It probably doesn’t deserve another numbered point, but let me reiterate: that SW corner was my Waterloo. The black square to the left of number 42 and it’s symmetrical partner were locked-in, and I tried every damnfool permutation of square placement to fill this sucker in. I thought a 3×10 intersecting another 3×10 area would have been cake, until I remembered that when I try to do this stuff I always, always, always start at the intersecting bit, not the other ends. Man that corner was brutal…
- … But not as brutal as the SE. I know in crosswords there are tons of words that appear all the time in puzzles that are hardly ever used in everyday language, but they’re perfectly fine words. The reason I say this is that the compromises I had to make for the SE corner (consensus hardest corner) had (count ’em) three S.A.T./spelling bee words at 32-, 40-, and 42-Across. And they stack! A thousand and one apologies for that one.
- I realize I’m not very good at trying to copy other people’s styles.
Anyway, hope you enjoy it.
Oh, and before I go I gotta say “The Hangover” was pretty good. Zach Galifianakis (who provided the theme for one of my puzzles) totally stole the show. Anyway, new one coming on Wednesday.
weirdly, this didn’t feel quite as hard as some of your others. Which for me means ONLY 16 mints to finish. 🙂 I have enough pathetic fragments of Latin left to get ACHROM…. which helped break that nasty spot open. Nice puzzle.
Cool. FWIW: I don’t have any test solvers who look at them after I’ve adjusted the difficulty. Two new clues in the SE probably got it to the right level.
I wish you’d provided links for both the original hard clues and for this adjusted clue set. It landed at no more than Friday NYT level, but I would’ve enjoyed getting a crack at the tougher version.
And I say huzzah for Themeless Mondays! I love themeless puzzles, and it’s great to break up the early-week monotony with a more challenging crossword.
Well, since you asked, I’ll tell you the two clues that were changed. 34-Down was just {Computer info} and 57-Across was {The Four Tops singer Stubbs}. That’s it. We felt a toehold was needed in that otherwise nasty area.
Definitely Themeless Monday! It’s always such a long wait for Friday. Strangely, the NE was the last to fall for me. Loved the clue for Jetsam. Embarrased it took me to long to get it! I resisted putting in LEVI because it seemed too easy, thanks for the new clue!
Right. That’s the funny thing about puzzles: sometimes you talk yourself out of the correct answer. Glad you liked it.
I was going for a sub-15 minute solve time when I hit the SE corner. I ended up cheating on TINAMOU (??) because I don’t see how “scrape”=SET TO so no dice. Guess I’ll have to wait until next Monday…
Nice clue for 1-Down, btw
Wow, that _was_ brutal — I gave up and had Across Lite fill in some answers for me. :/
Can I nitpick a bit?
* “Fist name in jeans” led to all kinds of interesting visuals until I realized you meant _first_.
* Isn’t “being without color” a clue calling for an adjective rather than a noun?
* And I’ve only ever heard TAPAS BAR (and “tapas restaurant”), never the singular version. (Although Google shows me a place called “The Tapa Bar” in British Columbia, but what do Canadians know about it? :-))
I liked SCRAP PAPER and JAPANESE IMPORTS, though.
Now I’ll go hide and lick my wounds till the next themed puzzle comes out 🙂
Didn’t know if 57A was a typo (“Fist name in jeans”)or if there was something about jeans and fists that I wasn’t aware of…though it sounds like it could be interesting. Was lucky to get quick toeholds with ANIDIFRANCO and SEAMUS Heaney. NE was the last to fall…somehow TITO the Builder completely escapes my memory. Another winner, BEQ.
This was a killer puzzle. If it hadn’t been for the ANIDIFRANCO gimme and guessing right on TINAMOU (which I didn’t know was a ratite), this probably would’ve taken 10 minutes, especially since I started with ACHROMATOUS.
I agree with Ellen, achromatism would have been more accurate as “state of being w/o color”. And how about Tito Fuentes, or Tito Jackson, or Broz, or even Tito Smith for God sakes! I do like these on Monday, kind of balances out the breezy ones.
Steve
sounds like people are pretty split over the difficulty, even after the adjustments. i didn’t find it all that difficult, certainly far less difficult than some other puzzles you’ve posted recently. the only snag i hit was in TINAMOU (huh?) / STEADING (whuh?) / ACHROM*, the indicated portion of which i got immediately (thanks, piero monzoni), but up until the last i just couldn’t figure out how you wanted to end it. i think this is just one of those puzzles that comes down to personal knowledge: knowing ANI DIFRANCO, SEAMUS, LOT, TIRAMISU, and a few others off the bat gave me footholds in most quadrants, which helped me conquer them without much trouble. quibbles: TAPA BARS (covered already), ROSE TEA (the clue for which just felt super random, but i also can’t think of a better one), EDITOR and ARAS (references to shows i don’t watch are irritating, but hey, it happens), and DATA FILE (the clue seemed to express your embarrassment here). loves: URBANA (being a ’90s indie rock nerd), JETSAM, ACHROMATISM (despite my trouble with it), and the pièce: THE DEFENSE RESTS.
Thanks! Yay Wikipedia!
“This is an example of being without color, or achromatism.” That’s a noun phrase, just sayin’.
Thanks Mo.
C’mon now. Don’t brag. You still nailed it in 6 minutes.
Monday Themeless seems to be a winner.
If it helps: I’ve never watched seen those TV shows either.
Urbana. Man, wasn’t Sarge supposed to be the next big thing for like two weeks?
man, brutal puzzle, but I love it on Mondays! Usually the most difficult part of the puzzles on Mon/Tues/Wed is typing as fast as your brain is filling in the answers (before you even get to the clues!). This wasn’t so difficult that I had to resort to google, thank God, but I’m glad I forgot to turn on the timer, otherwise my ego would have gone pffft…btw, your original clue for 34D would have been easier for me — the modified one had me scratching my head for awhile! I went SE, SW, NW, NE. Go figure.
I was able to get 3/4 (died in the bottom right), but after reading the comments I don’t feel so bad.
For 42-across, the only thing I could think of that started with ACH was ACHDULIEBER, but that didn’t make much sense.
lol! a request: a puzzle incorporating ACHDULIEBER.
I echo @lorraineb: {Computer info} would have been easier for me than {Part of an application, maybe?}, though maybe this was just that (despite being a techie guy) the computer sense of application didn’t occur to me until the last minute. I think that LEVI Stubbs wouldn’t have been so hard for me either. Like others, TINAMOU was a killer for me, and I had ACHROM… for a long time.
More amusingly, I had HARMONIES for HARMONICS for too long, leading to being puzzled how 53A could start with SERAPP…
A hard themeless on Monday is a good change of pace, but I got whiplash by not getting warned of the difficulty (some of your themelesses have been easier than this). It took a while for it to sink in that this was quite a hard puzzle, and it wasn’t just me being stupid.
Just to clarify, I’m not the Ellen above. Still, this was a bit of a struggle (5:55). It was going well until the lower right (never heard of TINAMOU), which seemed stuck until I finally got NOSEDIVE. — Ellen R.
I would have had a better time with the Four Tops clue for LEVI, actually. The bastard on this one for me was having 4 words stacked that I had never heard or seen before starting with STEADING in the top bunk (at least ACHROMATISM was gettable from the root, but damn that nasty clue). I spent half my time starting at that pileup until it came loose.
I do like the asymmetry. A little abnormality does us all good.
Oh, and I got fooled by TAPA BARS. I always knew it as TAPAS BAR(s), so I kind of butchered the top a bit too. Fun stuff with lots to learn.
Another vote for Mondays. I like it.
I’ll see what I can do request-wise.
Yeah, this one was definitely harder. Maybe it’s because I was trying to emulate Frank Longo I inherently made it harder.
Your talent is safe, well-known and respected here. I think most people know you as “Ennie” any way.
If I could do it all over again … I still don’t think I could have done that SE corner. Damn that was hard. Sorry. Glad you’re enjoying them.
You got me with this one. Did most of it at about a Fri. pace for me but got stuck in SE. Wanted ACHROMATOUS, which made me doubt IMITATE and NOSEDIVE. Finally went to my American Heritage, looked up TINA, found the bird and finished the puzzle. BTW STEADING seems like a pretty obscure def. for small farm. Its not in my dic. nor does it come up on top with google.
Oh, and put me down for a yes vote on themeless Mondays.
Yes vote for hard Mondays. Just don’t expect to hear from me till I finish them on Wednesdays.