ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS FRIDAY]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS FRIDAY]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
Oh, and I also co-authored today’s Wall Street Journal with Francis Heaney, my editor on the Diagramless book. Get it as an Across Lite file or a PDF.
Believe it or not, my original intent for this puzzle was to clue it as a Puns and Anagrams. I figured that the big problem with the lack of “fun” with those puzzles was that the solution grids were stuck in the stone ages, filled with crap entries like REASSESSES and SENSELESSNESS. Why not make it full of all the crazy fun stuff we normally like in themeless puzzles and clue those entries in a P & A style?
Exhibit A why that was a bad idea: 35-Across. Anyone over a certain age is not going to know that guy’s name. It’s misspelled, so that eliminates guesswork. And, to top it off, for those that maybe have heard of him, I was a jerk and used his full name, not the abbreviated version that he is at times referred to.
Outrageous names that practically border on complete obscurity depending on your knowledge base pose an interesting question in today’s puzzlemaking. At the end of the day, an entry like 35-Across is, to an extent, an unchecked entry. If you have to solve that exclusively based on the crossings (or Googling), there’s no way to know if that entry is correct. I’m at times guilty of these kinds of entries. Certainly Karen Tracy pulls this stunt now and again to either great or terrible effect depending on how you feel about these sorts of things. The debate is still going.
How are these name any different from the parade of long-forgotten silent film stars or Senators in outer space that have typically held crosswords together in the past? (For good measure I threw in one of those kinds of actresses at 22-Across.) Anyway, those who know me will know I’ll skew this toward a younger crowd. How will we ever get the next generation on board with puzzles if the cluing skews toward things happening 20+ years ago?
Okay, I’m going to leave you with this. My Puns and Anagrams clue for 8-Down was going to be {Orator, teleprompter operator, audience plants, etc.}
Share the puzzle, everyone.
Great puzzle. I got stuck on the first letter of Soulja Boy’s last name, but I thought that was a great contemporary clue that I can’t imagine seeing in a mainstream newspaper.
I also got stuck in the SE, since I was absolutely convinced on SKYWAY, never heard of PEDWAY. If you’ve ever been to downtown Minneapolis you know why. In the winter here we only move around via skyways.
Really liked NYJET and AUTOTUNE. Overused is right, except when T-Pain is on a boat.
I may be unique in having been subjected to 35-across’ music when driving the kids around *and* having been a fan of the 22-across movie as a kid. So, I actually knew both of those (OK, I didn’t know the full name for 35-across, just the first 9 letters). I’ve complained to the kids about the oversynthesized sound of today’s pop vocals, but I hadn’t heard of the AUTO-TUNE. I thought this article was interesting, and there’s an audio podcast on the page as well that demonstrates the effect: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1877372,00.html
Thanks again for a great puzzle.
Gorgeous, dude.
I raise my hand for “of a certain age”! Didn’t get ETO right away – isn’t the T for Theater?
In your and Francis’s WSJ I had 38-D [Groups of swingers?] filled in as BIGBANGS for the longest time. I thought it was hilarious.
Well, most of the difficulty in this one for me was generated by 35A. Managed to get a lot by crosses but rather a frustrating solve for me because I knew it wasn’t going to give me any kind of “aha” even when I finally clawed my way through it. My rapstar knowledge doesn’t get much past Old School. 13D was a hoot though. My sound engineer bro-in-law complains that a lot of his clients are asking for it even if they have excellent abilities in that area.
I did the puzzle in Across Lite but couldn’t get Mr. Happy Pencil to come out until I ran through the alphabet on the first letter of the rapper’s last name. I don’t mind an answer I don’t know but can derive from the crossings–hey, that’s part of the game, right? But I thought the crossing with “Eto” theater was a bit unfair. Right up until I figured out that it was the “European Theater of Operations.” D’oh!!! Fell for the misdirection again!
Thanks, Brendan for a lovely puzzle. And I should add that it’s the first one I’ve seen where it wasn’t quite as hard as you ranked it. Usually I find them MUCH more difficult than you let on to us.
I’m with Eric. That layout is as pretty as it gets.
Great puzzle! i had zero idea TELL ‘EM was part of dude’s name. except for LSU, the only lame-ish fill was clued interestingly (ONO, LAD), saving it. plus, you had r&b hip-hop, star wars, AND medical subthemes. a good challenge and super fun, too.
I really enjoyed this one but maybe that’s because I flew through it getting the two 15s right off the bat which also may be why I thought this one should be rated a “medium”. I think 35-across maybe would have been more gettable a year ago when everybody was doing that “Superman” dance which faded out when enough people either got tired of it or figured out what it was really about. I really liked all the multiple word phrases since they always look interesting in the grid. At UF I know a lot of people who LIVE ON hot dogs, ramen, cereal, etc. so I thoroughly enjoyed that entry. Plus, the clue for TOGA was molto buono. My only quibble would be that I might have clued 37-down VIA “Like “I Know Who Killed Me” starring Lindsay Lohan” . Overall this is definitely a 5-star themeless.
By the way, what about the bananas off season in the NBA. Carter to the Magic, Shaq to the Lebrons, Artest to the Lakers and now the Celtics have Sheed this is madness!
Fully two minutes at the end trying to make sense of
PAS-STE-
I think Myrna LOY finally tipped it. Man. Wasn’t terribly hard, otherwise, though clearly I had no idea SOULJAH BOY had more to his name. AUTOTUNE is super-timely, what w/ Jay-Z’s “Death of AUTOTUNE” having just dropped and all. Nice!
rp
35A was a total gimme for me, for a couple reasons (heh), and I can’t believe you ran with it. I reeeally wanted 54D to be CHUG, and the crossing of 21D/31A got me stuck bad — there’s a sports team called the Pistons, right? I was looking for some football-related acronym but I have nearly no sports knowledge. Same goes for cars. And can I pat myself on the back for getting 15A from just the first letter?
Loved the puzzle! It fell somewhere between your usual medium and hard to me.
I dunno, “Kiss Me Thru the Phone” got pretty popular, re: 35A.
With the majority here so far, in that the T in the center last name was chili-oil spicy & nasty.
Was looking over an old geometry book recently and had just come across SKEW LINE, so that was a bizarre coincidence. “Nah, that can’t be right. No. Way. Yep, it is.”
Nice puzzle, though more of a medium for me. Not at all a fan of the genre, but knew Soulja Boy just the same. Time to throw in some White Stripes/Kings of Leon/Arcade Fire, etc. clues 🙂
Anyway enjoyed the solve !
Much the same as the previous comments for me as well – stuck on the T at the cross of 35A and 34D (did the typing the alphabet thing), and then smacked my forehead when I finally saw the crosswordese classic ETO.
I confidently filled in the “gimme” at 27A as LINUS, and the U gave me 24D right away. Then I got stuck for a long time on 3D – I knew that Lister pioneered antiseptic surgery, but who could another pioneer be ending in N? And what could Joe Namath be that is SY_ET?
I’m intrigued by the idea of a BEQ Puns and Anagrams. Keep at it ……..
“ETO” was a gimme for me. But I had 35-A’s name ending with TELLER. PASYSTER? Could 22-A be LOI? [insert palm-to-forehead smack here]
Definately a Medium in my book, and lots of fun.
Slightly OT:
Is anyone else getting a 404 Not Found error at the Leader Board? I’ve checked my Java and it seems to be up-to-date and working fine, yet I haven’t been able to do the Newsday puzzle since Monday, and now today I can’t see the BEQ Leader Board. HALP!
I’ve been to Mpls many times in a past life with a computer supercomputer company (before Cray) no longer in existence so I’m familiar with the Skyways. I’ve been living in Houston, TX for the past almost 40 years and we have an air conditioned tunnel system between all the downtown buildings due to the +100° heat and tropical humidity. An added attraction is it is lined with shops and restaurants. My daughter works downtown and uses the tunnel system for her lunchtime walks. She claims that sometimes she feels like she’s in an anthill.
If you’re running Mozilla Firefox and you recently added the Adblock Plus plug-in you will have to disable the plug-in for these pages as these imbedded apps are treated as popups. Been there, done that.
Thanks for the reply Stewart.
I tried it in both Yahoo and Firefox and the same error ocurred. It’s working just fine right now. I have no idea what the problem was as I haven’t recently added any plug-ins, nor did I adjust anything since last night. Strange.
As for Newsday, it looks the website’s route to the puzzle has changed and my and Cruciverb’s links were invalid. It looks like someone noticed now that it’s Saturday, and Cruciverb updated the link for all the Stumper fans.
Life is good again. 🙂
Nice puzzle – didn’t have to cheat at all, which is both good, and an indication that this is not a true “hard”… perhaps being able to recognize Soulja Boy helped me out, though. I had much more trouble with Monday’s puzzle.
Not sure this was a “hard” — I had the NW, NE and SE corners pretty fast, but got stuck because of 35A. Once I caved and let Across Lite fill it in, the rest flew by fast.
I clearly need to sit down and study some kind of reference work on rap music to get through your puzzles :}
Good lord, I am a chemist and BEAKER took me forever. I wanted something more complex I guess. I am catching up on two weeks of puzzles after being on my honeymoon. So I wanted to mention I loved Kneeling Bus in Wed puzzle. I never knew it was a real thing. But I did know it was a Pavement song. So that was a strange gimme for all the wrong reasons.
I didn’t know 35-Across but was able to suss it out with the crossings. My knowledge of contemporary music is extremely limited, but that doesn’t mean I find entries like 35-Across unfair. I consider those entries part of the overall challenge/learning experience of the puzzle.