ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
Refreshed, rebooted, relaxed, ready, and some other RE-words after the nice break. Hope everybody’s Thanksgiving was good. Let’s get back to work.
This may be inconceivable to y’all, but here goes: I’d never seen “Casablanca” until last Friday. Neither had Liz. It was just one of those films that we’d managed not to see all these years. Well, predictably, we loved it. Oscar Wilde said “now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations.” That quip might as well be applied to “Casablanca.” (Maybe not the “sit through” part, but you get the picture.) How many famous lines are in there? We lost count. Then, you throw in all the damn fool crosswordese the film provided: ILSA, UGARTE, SAM, RICK(S), LAZLO, LORRE, BOGART, BACALL BERGMAN, etc. It felt like meeting up with an old friend, albeit one we’d never met before.
Themeless puzzle today, and back to the more traditional grid. Thanks for letting me indulge in the odd asymmetric one now and again. Hope you enjoyed both.
Finally, I’m asking once again if you liked the puzzles I ran in November, and you’re already in the giving spirit of the holidays, a small donation would be greatly appreciated. The drive is really short this month (but feel free to contribute any time) and as a thank you/come on, I will pay for a year’s subscription to Peter Gordon’s Fireball Crosswords to one randomly selected donor who gave (The donor will be selected Wednesday). Your indie puzzlemakers are where it’s at, so you’d best be supporting them! Ya hear? And even if you can’t contribute, just spread the word about our two sites. While traffic doesn’t always pay the bills, it helps just as much.
So, share the puzzle! New one on Wednesday.
Took me a long time to figure out ZITCOM but nice entry once I got it.
Got 55-down (PICO) with no crosses!
48-across is a great clue.
Enjoyed the puzzle in general, but I’ll have to cry foul with the crossing at 1A/1D. Neither word is common – if you ever pulled that on a tournament puzzle, there’d be an angry mob of people waiting outside for you with sharpened pencils.
solid themeless. trouble spots were 1A/D, though 1D was at least inferrable, and the THEBAN/THANE/BARBARO triumvirate, given my ignorance of greek mythology, shakespeare, and racehorses. otherwise a fairly non-demoralizing monday.
“Demoralizing Monday”. Wow. Me too re 1A/1D. And others that SO wanted to be different answers. 54A was a gimme for ODD (Question for an advanced solver out there–isn’t the cluing on 54A kind of a stretch?). 57A was a gimme for “give ME A few minutes”. Then there was 35A. Started with FIBS, which fits the clue, then LIES, which doesn’t, and then the crosses gave me NITS… WTF? I can’t find anything in my English-geek references or even online that gets “nit” onto the same planet as “prevarication”.
Imagined sign above my desk: “The floggings will continue until moral (and solving skills) improve.”
Amazingly I saw the word ZUGSWANG somewhere (can’t place it offhand) recently, and thought of sending it to you as a cool word to use, but forgot. I played enough chess back in the day that I remembered it anyway, and so that got me off to a flying start; so did remembering LINCECUM with no crosses. UCLA for USNA and PACO for PICO slowed me a bit, but still on the easier side of Hard for me.
Was erratic for me got most of the puzzle but then got bogged down in the SW and FIBS/NITS UCLA/USNA did me in. I needed some help to get out of there but was surprised how where I needed a cross it seemed to be there for the rest of the puzzle.
Whyt dont you give ICARLY more press?? HANNAH MONTANA has more than enough exposure already. The puzzle bit me in the ass. 42+ mins. Things I dont care to know Greek Myth, sports, movies I havent seen, etc. Way too much stuff I didnt know and had a time figuring out. But fun nevertheless. Keep up the GREAT work!!
Toughie. I knew 63A, but not really. That is, knew it well enough to throw INC near the beginning and UM at the end. That was enough, thankfully, to unlock the SE enough to get the rest.
13D – the quote is cool, but probably not really needed. Is there any other Huffington of note?
Thanks for the puzzle, BEQ.
A “Twilight” reference?!?
The top-left Z was evil, granted. Not a particularly good chess player. That one took me a bit, but ENSOR/BOITE just killed me. I think I’d almost sit through a ‘Hannah Montana’ episode than try to figure out that crossing again. Almost. These puzzles have a have a funny way of finding your weak spot and tweaking you there.
Extra woe to those who didn’t know Tim Lincecum’s name, as that would probably up the difficulty heat level another notch.
That said, a hell of a lot of fun stuff in here. I like the bookend Os in the symmetrical ‘O CANADA’ and ‘JACKIE O’. Ya got style, kid.
Just because I have never read the books, nor seen the movies, doesn’t mean I can’t reference them in clues.
So much style that it’s wasted.
Absolutely. I have never read nor seen Out of Africa, but used it in my puzzle. Can you imagine if you were required to have seen/read/watched everything you referenced in your puzzles? You would either be very very learned or very very OCD.