ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS WEDNESDAY]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS WEDNESDAY]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
Spoiler alerts! Avert your eyes if you wish to solve without spoilers! This means you! You’ve been warned.
Really, you have to turn back now. This is the last time I’m going to mention it.
If you thought the picture of Justice was a spoiler, it wasn’t. They are in the clue at 24-Down, {Justice and Death are in it (no, not my iPod)}. Just saying that Death record “For the Whole World to See” is no joke. Totally recommended. Anyway, that clue was perhaps my favorite of the bunch. Though I was particularly proud of {Time life books?} at 42-Down.
So for all those who guessed that the seed entries were CAPTCHA, MOM JEANS and BIG BOX STORE, you were correct. Hat tip to my bro Mike Fournier for suggesting CAPTCHA. Good stuff. By the way, I’m always on the lookout for good seed entries, so don’t hesitate to hit me up.
I’ve been having some conversations with Brad Wilber lately over what makes quality themelesses. If you don’t know Brad’s stuff, you should. Top-flight themelesses. Anyway, he was saying that lately he’s been trying to go less name-heavy with his puzzles. He felt his reputation for harder puzzles originally came from you-either-know-it-or-you-don’t names in puzzles. As for me? I honestly don’t think there’s any way I could possibly make a puzzle without a name in the answer or the clue. I count 15 in this grid alone. That’s 21% of the grid. Yikes. Maybe in the future I could try to lower that number, but it seems nigh-impossible today.
Now some of the names in this grid like MIRA, NOAM, etc., I think are inevitable. They’re the glue that holds together much more interesting entries. (I tried for new clues for both of those names, BTW, so they don’t feel like tired repeaters). OTOH, I think names like STEINEM, HAN SOLO, and ALI BABA are on the colorful sides of things. (I’m not saying they’re fresh and new, because that’s not true. I do think they’re lively, though.) So the jury’s still out.
Share the puzzle. New one on Friday.
Vicious, but not that pleasant. Please don’t take too much direction from Wilber. I’ve always found his puzzles tough but not terribly enjoyable. Great workouts, but … sometimes just tough for toughness’s sake, which is never good. New clues = impossible clues on MIRA and NOAM. When short answers are absolutely ungettable, puzzle like this gets Very hard. Loved MOM JEANS and CAPTCHA and BIG BOX STORE (which I got off the first “B”), but hated ADENINE x/w SNCC (total guess at the “N” — unfamiliar initials crossing ??? is what prompted the NATICK principle in the first place, you’ll recall) and SCITECH (…) and BALDUR (???) and NOL (???). I kind of like proximity of BALDUR and RASH, as together they almost make BALDERDASH.
Way to keep experimenting. And I really apprciate your thinking out loud in the write-ups.
PS what’s with the clue on TAX HIKE? Facetious? Taxes aren’t theft. They are enacted specifically through legal means. If you had added [… to teabaggers], I might have believed you.
I’m not taking direction from Wilber, but we were talking about names in the puzzle. MIRA, I don’t have a problem with. Every time I’ve gone to the movies for the last I’m guessing 6 or 7 times I’ve seen an ad for her upcoming biopic “Amelia.” NOAM might have been a bit on the tricky side.
You should have seen the original clue.
I marched through three quarters of the grid and then stalled out in the southwest corner. Finally Googled to get the first two letters of BALDUR and the rest came together. Can’t believe I couldn’t make headway there with MAJOR ARCANA in place.
I like names in a crossword because I’m usually good at knowing them. Why not save your themeless puzzles with half as many names for the NYT and keep making the name-rich puzzles for the blog?
Love MIRA Nair, even though I’ve only seen one of her earlier movies (“Mississippi Masala,” with a steamy Denzel Washington). Just saw photos of her on the set of some movie in Entertainment Weekly.
I loved the seed entries but not SEA-GIRT, NOL, and ACTS SAD. My god, Montreal is an island?!? Did not know that. And who is TRINA Turk?
P.S. And what Rex said about the TAX HIKE clue. My kid just asked me yesterday why people have to pay taxes to the government. Public education, roads, clean water, sewers, national and local parks, and public safety? Yeah, I’ll pay my share for all that. I couldn’t afford to pay for all those things if they were privatized.
I’ll chime in with general agreement on Amy and Rex’s sentiments. I realize you could probably clue NOAM as just “Chomsky, to friends” and everyone would get it, but picking an obscure guy in the name of “freshness” just makes my Google finger itch. MIRA’s fine, though.
Can’t agree strongly enough with Rex and Amy’s sentiment against TAX HIKE’s clue, which flummoxed me for ages just because I thought you HAD to mean some kind of graft or kleptocracy. I’ll resist the temptation to fall into a debate on tax policy, and just say that when it comes to politics in puzzles, I think it’s wise to emulate the Russian joke, as you did with RUSHLIMBAUGH’s quotation.
I will speak up for BALDUR, though. Big Norse-myth fan here, comes from reading Marvel Comics for decades. (He’s sometimes spelled BALDER but I haven’t seen a standardization.) SCI-TECH works for me. And I think ACTS SAD is just fine as an answer, though I’d say “Mopes, e.g.” would be a better clue than just “Mopes.” There are other ways to act sad. Or “Plays for sympathy, maybe?”
Big bloody fail for me. New words/concepts to me: Captcha, Major Arcana, mom jeans (though I did guess that one finally.) I’ll object to the tax hike clue not on political grounds (I’m a whig, having broken with the Jacksonian Democrats over the silver standard) but for the same reason T-Campbell mentions. Every stepmother I ever had owned that goddamn Dr. Wayne Dyer book.
interesting… BALDUR was no problem for me, except i left the fifth letter blank (BALDUR, BALDER, and BALDR are all relatively common) and then eventually guessed that HULCE looked better than HELCE. nor did ADENINE trouble me, although i needed some crosses because GUANINE and THYMINE have the same number of letters, and i came at it from below so -INE didn’t help. (luckily not CYTOSINE or URACIL.) also, this is the second time somebody i think of as being pretty knowledgeable has pointed a finger at SNCC, and i’m as surprised as i was the first time. the student nonviolent coordinating committee was a big, big deal in the civil rights movement; again, though, the clue wasn’t very specific, as SCLC certainly would also have fit.
MOM JEANS, though, got me. never heard that expression. and CAPTCHA was one of those words kicking around in the back of my brain that didn’t surface until i had about five of the crosses.
i don’t remember the original TAX HIKE clue, but i remember it being very easy and non-opinionated.
As we all know, the formal definition of “unfair crossing” is “two entries I’ve never heard of”, which is of course unique for each solver. I’d never heard of CAPTCHA nor TRINA Turk, so I guessed wrong there, I instead of A. Thought the def for RET should have been eased up for that crossing as well, but I guessed that one right. So, as a consequence, I hated, hated, hated the SE corner. Otherwise, I loved the rest of the puzzle, except for the overtly political TAX HIKE def on which I share Amy and Rex’s sentiments.
It’s a “freestyle crossword,” not a “t****less”.
I can’t believe anyone says “t****less” anymore. Get with the times, son!
(dramatic introductory music) It was *I* who gave Brendan the clue {Increased government theft} for TAX HIKE!
OK, I didn’t mean it as a serious clue and I had no idea he would use it (I wouldn’t have used it in one of mine). As a libertarian I like the sentiment, but it was a tad strident for a crossword clue. As Rex pointed out above, tax laws are enacted by legal means so can’t be considered theft in a legal sense.
So the next question is: how political should crosswords be? On my site I limit my libertarian content to mentioning Ron Paul and Peter Schiff in the “About me” section, plus the occasional anti-Federal Reserve or anti-inflation reference (now inflation, *that* is literal theft!). At the end of the day, I try not to publish anything I think would seriously p.o. my solvers.
Though I do wonder sometimes: those of use who are skeptical about a large federal government solve puzzles all the time that have a big pro-gov slant (lots of govt. agency abbrs. we many not agree with, lots of Obama-themed puzzles — I wouldn’t have liked Bush puzzles one bit, either, though, and I used MALIA OBAMA in a puzzle recently. See how reasonable my views become when interesting letter combinations are available?) So why is it so awful to have a clue that’s pro-small gov?
I suspect it isn’t, that it’s rather the stridency of this particular clue that’s a problem. About 10 years ago I wrote a Sunday NYT that had the letters IRS removed from entries and THEIRS as the last clue across, something like {Org. that’s been removed from this crossword, or what your money is, to them}. The title (which was Shortz’s creation but I liked it of course} was “Spring Dream.”
Can’t get more libertarian than getting rid of the IRS, but no one complained about the theme. So tone matters too.
You taunt me with your discussion
of this puzzle’s seeds since my major
stumbling block was confidently
putting SEED for 45-A [Puzzlemaker’s
beginning]
What’s that quip for writers – “if you have a message, use western union”. Maybe that applies to cluing as well.
Worked my way (slowly) through the SE, NE, and SW, and was left with the NW, where the passel of names finally drove me to google. I can see STEINEM and HANSOLO being out there in the cultural flotsam and jetsam, but neither were in my wheelhouse. Didn’t know SHERMAN either, which killed me cause I usually get politics and American history. MIRA was another wtf. Now there was stuff in the rest of the puzzle that I’d never heard of (MAJORARCANA, BALDUR, TRINA)but got through crosses.
YESSED was a groaner for me…it’s not a word that I can ever imagine using. Also did not like TEAR for eye piece…a tear is a product of an eye, not a part of an eye. Put in ENISLED at first for SEAGIRT…
There is a thrill is finally sussing out a name or something that one eventually figures out, but I think there is also a place for clues/answers that really go beyond what we know and thus expand our storehouse. I guess in large part it’s a matter of placement and crossing. I was frustrated that I had to google in the NW, but…now I know some things that I didn’t know before, and I’m quite likely to remember them because of the context.
I take issue with the MOMJEANS cluing. The jeans are doing their job, it’s not the clothing that’s the problem. Clue classic joke: “No dear, it’s not the MOMJEANS that makes your ass look fat…”.
MOMJEANS, CAPTCHA, loved it! One question…What is a seed entry? Like a theme entry but not? I also didn’t really like seeing YESSED and, for that matter, PARRED. Also, AIDS had me cringing, but yeah, OK. I had AILS which for me, is true…But, whatev, the rest of the puzzle was a joy 🙂
But “teabaggers” is a very offensive sexual term, Rex.
Perhaps [Increased “legal theft”] would be a better clue.
And now I wanna know what the original clue was.
Loved the a-ha moments in the top half. But not knowing MAJOR ARCANA, CAPTCHA, TRINA, RET, DYER and ADENINE made the bottom half an unfulfilling (in more ways than one) experience. I finished in 29:57…the last 6 or so minutes spent typing in letters and using the check feature until it was done.
For TRINA, how ’bout [2005 Levee buster, to her “friends”]? Nah.
Hi Matt, I think the main difference comes down to fact vs. opinion. The existence of government agencies is a fact, so I don’t see how puzzles that use those TLA’s can be construed as pro-government. NRA shows up all the time as well. Characterizing taxes as theft seems to cross the line into opinion, IMO, best left out of puzzles. The clue referencing THE IRS/THEIRS simultaneously is exceedingly clever, so I’d guess folks were willing to cut it some slack.
I understand the AIDS cringe. As for moi, I was prepared to cringe when I saw “He hung around with thieves” and the first thought that came to mind was, “Oh, lord, the answer’s gonna be Jesus or Christ or Jesus H. Christ or something like that.” I was forever trying to stick Barabas [sp?] in those squares before I gave up altogether.
Hey, me here. Thanks for chiming in Matt, but I gotta take the heat with the TAX HIKE clue. When you told me the clue I laughed, and interpreted it as cynicism straight up, not for any one particular party per se.
Same here, Joon. Loved the term MOM JEANS, but hadn’t encountered it before so it stalled me. No trouble with BALDUR either, but it just shows how the difference in each solver’s experience totally changes the puzzle experience. NOAM was a mess for a while too. Not a fan of the less-popular/niche names thing.
As for TAX HIKE, once a few crossings were in place, I put opinions aside and asked, “What (might) BEQ do?”, and that helped unravel the corner.
I’ll probably repeat many sentiments already posted, but here goes. I’m a big BEQ fan, and have on your shirt right now, but this didn’t seem like your best effort. I don’t mind the obscure references (trina, SNCC, Mira), so much as those that have me scratching my head AFTER I get the answer. Some examples:
Mom jeans? oh, really? Angelina Jolie is a mom! Yessed? Has anyone ever actually used that word?
Government “theft?” Spare me the libertarian slant
blacks out = bans?
eye piece = tear?
scitech? Never heard such a phrase.
Got 4 out of 4, say? Not an accurate phrase for par.
AND . . . I still don’t get the AIDS answer.
Keep it up.
In regards to MOMJEANS – Here’s the SNL skit http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/clips/mom-jeans/229048/. Made famous I believe by Jessica Simpson.
In regards to the AIDS question, it takes a “cocktail” of drugs to help people with AIDS…At least that’s how I interpreted it…
BEQ you are the Trey Parker and Matt Stone of crosswords 🙂
Got my butt kicked by that upper left corner, but that being said, I think my least-liked answer in the puzzle was actually SCI-TECH, though at least I understood it.
Other clues: I remembered BALDUR quite well from the mythology component of some random summer gifted program from three decades ago and consider it fair game. NOAM and MIRA less so. I still have no idea what the ELIAS Sports Bureau is, which probably gives you a sense of my sports interest.
Finally, you can add me in to the chorus of folks who were less than enamored by the clue for TAX HIKE. 🙁
I’m chortling at these comments because some of my gimmes were MAJOR ARCANA, CAPTCHA, and RET. New to me were slumgullion (‘a cheap stew made by throwing anything handy into a pot’), ELIAS Sports Bureau (‘The Elias Sports Bureau is a company that provides historical research and statistical services in the field of professional sports’), NOL pros (“we shall no longer prosecute”), and MIRA and NOAM. I laughed when I got the government theft clue, and was quite misdirected by the cocktails. I just learned this weekend that Martin Van Buren was a Jacksonian Democrat. Thank you National Park Service.
I think the reCaptcha tech is interesting because in addition to proving you are human, it’s helping decode poorly scanned words to improve public records. One of those ways I can do good without working too hard.
Boy, after a year of Obamamania in crosswords, you guys are pretty sensitive with political opinions. Teabaggers is only incorrest when used on non-Republicans, right Rex?
Very tough for me but I kept at it and ultimately failed in SE. Never heard of CAPTCHA so REE was a WTF and ELEGIAL seemed OK. I was sure for a while the 44d was TURING even though it didn’t exactly fit (tried two Rs). Stared at 15a for a very long time because I couldn’t believe HIKE was right for the reasons others have posed. Still, as usual I liked the puzzle, a good challenge even though undoable for me. (Makes me feel better to know that Amy googled).
I, too, “marched through three quarters of the grid and then stalled out in the southwest corner” … I think what killed me was hanging on too long to “ACLU” for the civil-rights organization and “ONEA” for the puzzle beginning. Eventually I knocked off the whole corner, but I had to guess on the final letter (crossing SNCC with ADENINE) and guessed wrong. Sigh.
Loved CAPTCHA and HANSOLO — he’s my hero. Captchas aren’t 🙂