ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ WITH A NAME LIKE THAT]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ WITH A NAME LIKE THAT]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
Well so much for setting this thing to Autopost. (TypePad WTF?) So, sorry about the slight delay, and since my flight for Toronto is boarding momentarily (stalkers take note), this is going to be insanely brief. (The other brilliant monologue that was supposed to be here today is gone forever and will have to run some other time.)
Ben Tausig is putting together a wonderful anthology of literature-related puzzles. I’ll have a couple in the batch, but this one couldn’t find a home there. But it’s got a home here on the blog. Hope you enjoy it.
When you’re done, why not go over to Alex Boisvert and Matt Gaffney’s Kaidoku blog? I just recently gave them a puzzle to run (click here and enjoy).
Share the puzzle. New one on Friday.
Naughty!
Haven’t done enough of your stuff yet to know how the difficulty ratings are scaled. If they’re keyed to days of the week a la NYT, this one seemed a medium Wednesday, mostly slowing down for me in the southern regions with the ORNAN-PEGGY answers being foreign to me. Forgive me if that whole discussion has taken place ad infinitum in earlier puzzle comments, as I suspect it probably has.
Regarding literary puzzles, I read your “Ten Bullshit Themes” post recently, and it made me think of two things:
1. In college I took a road trip over spring break to the Big Bend area with a high school friend, who was an art major. He was worried because he had to have some sort of art assignment in on the next Monday. I suggested (very earnestly) that a painting of some cowskulls or a windmill might be nice. He said, “My teacher specifically said no cowskulls or windmills.”
2. Only once have I tried to construct a crossword puzzle, and I decided it was going to be the coolest themed crossword puzzle ever created. I thought I’d hit the motherlode when I noticed that THE SUN ALSO RISES and A FAREWELL TO ARMS each had 15 letters.
More cowskull!
Pretty good puzzle up until the last theme answer fell for me, 60-Across, which made it hilariously genius. That alone made it a four-star puz. Was that the theme answer that you built the rest around? BTW I think I’ve got one in Ben’s book, too.
Re: Literary-themed puzzles…
I sure hope someone noticed that GRAVITYS RAINBOW is fifteen letters.
Keep us posted on that anthology. I think I’ll do better at that one than a book of sports themes.
I’m sure I’ll feel stupid later, but I don’t get the joke in NOEL COWARD / “Fear of Flying.” Trying to connect NOEL and flying. Chuck KNOLL. Grassy KNOLL. NOEL. The first NOEL. Not getting it.
No idea who CHRISTOPHER FRY is. Or the SNYTHS. Or LESH. Or ORNAN. Whole bottom was Way harder than “Easy.”
Have a good trip.
rp
Rex,
I think Brendan was going for the fear/coward connection. -Al
Wade,
I have a book of Maleska Saturdays that I pull out whenever I’m feeling particularly masochistic. The one I did this morning had A FAREWELL TO ARMS, ERNEST HEMINGWAY, and THE SUN ALSO RISES and I immediately thought of the BEQ list. It’s amazing to me that the puzzles in this book were considered good just 20 years ago. Every one would be absolutely unprintable today.
Loved the theme. Struggled with some of the clues (didn’t help that I had VILLA and ALPHA for 5D and 7D), but it’s a good solid fill all around. Sure, you wound up with your boring old EOE and CPA, but you also fit in nice clues for MON, MAR (I don’t think you needed the “, say”), and LEA. You’re good at that.
Got the coward/fear part. It’s the “NOEL” part I don’t understand. Oh wait … is the first name irrelevant? I see … yes. Yes it is. Alright then. Nevermind.
the ARP is a kind of synthesizer, like to make music with. They sound really cool.
i loved the theme. the fill wasn’t quite as zippy–having a zillion 3s will do that, plus there were some total “huh?” words like ORNAN, CHOO, RAR, and TCI. that’s the only thing keeping this one from ***** for me.
I just love how Brendan proclaims the puzzle “easy” and my time comes up 2-3 times what I regularly do Tuesday NYT’s. Maybe it’s easy for the BEQamaniacs who populate this site but not for the Average Bob that thinks he can play the x-words “from the blue tees” as we say in golf.
Got to agree with Rex, there were some ballbusters in this one. Lesh? Ornan? Spiderman’s girlfriend? Still, they were all gettable with crosses and that’s why we play the game. Tough, BEQ, but do-able and ergo (sorry, that was crosswordese, wasn’t it?) fair.
My completion times look pathetic in this group but I’m well aware that this is the Championship Flight and I’m way out of my league. Still, it’s a hoot to see how I compare against the A-Team. (Sorry. There I go again.)
Do you have the BEQ “NYT All-Stars” book?
More cowskull would made for an awesome motto for this (or any) site.
Congrats on the sale. e. e. was not the first in this batch, alas.
This whole site is analog gear pornography, but why not pull up an example of one really boss ARP: http://is.gd/24SmX
Thank you sir.
I’ll give you ORNAN and TCI, but Jimmy Choos? and RAR? I dunno, man. Caroline better force you to watch any chick flicks. And RAR? Zip some files.
Those top-flight solvers are humbling. Too bad Tyler, Trip, Francis et al. aren’t a little more, shall we say, regular contributors to the Leaderboard. Then it would be really humbling.
Andrew R said…
“Pretty good puzzle up until the last theme answer fell for me, 60-Across, which made it hilariously genius… Was that the theme answer that you built the rest around?”
I agree that this must have been the seed entry. (ba dum bum)
I do not. I haven’t broken down and bought any books of crosswords, yet… I’m still just hammering away at any free dailies (and the NYT archives) that I can get my hands on…
The extension for zipped files on a *real* operating system is .zip 🙂
C’mon, people are complaining about Phil LESH? I guess living near San Francisco I hear a lot more Grateful Dead than the average person.
But also … RAR? I guess that’s common if you do a lot of BitTorrenting. But I’d say it’s a little fringey for less nerdy folk.