ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ ALL CAPS]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ ALL CAPS]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
A buddy of mine showed me this puzzle he’d been working on this weekend. It was pretty good overall with quality fill and an amazing break involving some current events. He wanted to know if any paper would take it, and I unfortunately said they probably wouldn’t. By the time any editor finally sees the puzzle, there’s no guarantee he’d rush it to print. So, their argument would be how current would it be at that point? (FWIW: when material does warrant immediacy, like David Kahn’s Michael Jackson tribute e.g., it’s done by people who are already well-entrenched in the puzzling world.)
But, for the most part, stuff that happens today (say Monday) doesn’t warrant appearing in the puzzle tomorrow (Tuesday). A brief story: In the fall of ’03, the baseball world almost had an (at the time) all-time-biggest-loser World Series matchup: BOSTON RED SOX against the CHICAGO CUBS. But two people fucked it up: GRADY LITTLE and STEVE BARTMAN. As dumb luck would have it, those split up symmetrically, so I pitched it to the two people who could turn it around immediately if they really wanted to: Will Shortz and Peter Gordon (New York Sun). Will balked (get it? balked!) because of the Time’s syndication policies. Peter passed because he’s a Yankees sycophant. I ended up making it anyway and sending it out on Cruciverb and the Time’s crossword bulletin board. (Stuff on the Internet doesn’t die, I’ve found out. If anybody has a copy of it, e-mail me and I’ll post it here.)
I don’t really understand the Times’ syndication policies. Apparently stuff in the puzzle needs to have a years-plus shelf life. I guess the explanation is for things like the syndication (some six weeks later than the original date it ran). And the other reason is they can republish the same work in perpetuity in books or on cookie jars or whatever. In today’s print-on-demand world, this seems like a cop out reason. Just run the ripped-from-the-headline puzzles now, and if they don’t jive on a cookie jar or in any of the books, don’t use those puzzles then. </editorializing>
Having said all that, the Times crossword recently affected events happening on the same day the puzzle ran. Wired held a contest earlier this year where a reporter, Evan Ratliff, was going to shed his identity completely and start a new life for exactly one month. If any of the readers found him during that time, they won some $5000. Kind of like a modern-day version of “The Running Man.” And like in that novella, Evan had to check in with the magazine to say what he’d been up to (it was at the editor’s discretion to share with the hunters) and receive tasks to accomplish. One way Wired communicated “goals” to Evan was through the Times’s crossword puzzle. Puzzlemaker Mike Selinker had the Times puzzles for the week of 9/7-9/11 and sent coded messages detailing tasks that could only be deciphered after solving the puzzle.In fact, the Monday puzzle was the final piece the hunters needed to catch Evan. Cool stuff. Read about it here and here.
Share the puzzle. New one on Wednesday.
amusing theme. i’m fond of that insult.
Under 4 = fastest BEQ ever.
ON is in the clue for ODED ON.
Loved BASS SAX (owned some Morhpine in the 90s… one of the few things about that decade I don’t completely regret).
Thanks
rp
Of course, the Times puzzle has synced with The Simpsons and the MIT Puzzle Hunt in the past, so matching up with the game in Wired is no big deal. I think the key is that all of these puzzles also worked as actual standalone crosswords, regardless of their other (topical) purposes.
Forgot both, but yeah, those were cool stories as well. And agreed on the stand alone-ness.
Clever, clever! I spent most of the solve wondering why you’d lowered yourself to do a simple ASS theme. I figured CAP meant “bust a cap in your ass” somehow. Smart to reveal what was really going on at the bottom.
inspired, sir.
I really miss Morphine. Saw them support the excellent album Cure For Pain at the Troubadour in LA and was absolutely stunned seeing Dana Colley wail on two saxes at the same time. Very cool.
Mark
We FLEW through this one. I couldn’t write fast enough to keep up with the entries being hollered at me. And a couple of our solvers hadn’t ever heard the term “asshat,” which surprised me.
None of us are bridge players; what is ONENO? I assume we’re parsing that as one-no?
I did it realtively quickly and made a couple of mistakes. I had ILL for IMP since I thought it was LAURA and not MAURA. I also didn’t know the crossing of SALADA/IDA.
11 down would have been better as “au courant”
I really NAILed this one! Been waiting to say that for weeks. It only hurts a little that this was clearly easier than most BEQ’s. I suppose I should admit that I read the comments first, so I was tipped to the ASSHAT thing, but I didn’t really use it. In fact, I googled to see if it was what I thought it was, and accidentally typed “ass cap”, which turns out to be another term for tramp stamp, which I learned about here, so I was primed for misdirection. Small world and all that. But it was pretty typical of a NYT Mon/Tue where I just flew through without paying attention to the theme.
quibble: au courant
@icculus When bidding, bridge players can choose one (or more) of a suit, or they can bid no trump, often shortened to one no, two no, etc.
I assumed “Au current” meant “gold now”. If you listen to the radio and hear all of the “buy gold” commercials, you’d know that buying gold was definately “in fashion”.
Right now, I see 30 people have already recorded their times and that looks pretty high. Is this a participation record for BEQ? I assume the “Easy” class puzzle inspires more folk to unashamedly share their results. Or maybe proudly report is a better term? Hell I’m thrilled whenever I finish any of Brendan’s puzzles in under 10 minutes…
au current, definitely clues gold rush
Times syndication note: their policy hasn’t stopped them from running 4th of July puzzles in syndication in mid-August, Christmas puzzles in syndication in February, etc.
I can’t see why one-off “current event” puzzles would be any different….