ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ WHEN THE LEVY BREAKS]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ WHEN THE LEVY BREAKS]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
HP Pavilion dv2000, the computer that was the brains and the brawn behind the BEQ.com enterprises, died suddenly Tuesday. She was two years old.
The cause of death was determined to be a completely fucked up motherboard. She had been suffering through many months of the “black screen of death” problem as well as general failure of the built-in wireless modem.
HP was born in a factory in Xiamen, China. Through rigorous and complicated shipping routes and international trade laws, she arrived in Houston, Texas and later was shipped to Boston, Massachusetts. Shortly thereafter, she was used primarily for assisting puzzlemaker Brendan Emmett Quigley with his books and award-winning blog.
“She showed such courage up to the end,” Quigley said in a released statement. “I really thought she was going to pull through.
“I’m glad I was able to rerun an old puzzle we made together from the old Time Out New York days to go along with this obit. It’s a nice send off, I think.”
HP is survived by a sister-in-law, Lenovo T61.
In lieu of flowers, Quigley asks that you donate money to the tip jar, share the puzzle, and look for a new puzzle on Friday.
My condolences.
Fun puzzle.
rp
Nice puzzle. My one hold-up was 34A. I’d never seen or heard of it before.
Sorry about HP.
RIP, HP.
@ sps, me too–never heard it called anything but a double daggar. And I was once a music major (classical piano) and never encountered the term in music history or music theory.
Geez. 63:22 today, and started off thinking I was rocking. Went smoothly across N and in from E (except for 34A), but bogged down the closer I got to SE. At 45 minutes resorted to Check. Had 41D tERnary (legit), 87A taxreLIEF (been the mantra in DC for decades), 55A tBONDs (which mature in 20-30 years), so can’t fault myself terribly on those.
ARNO, though, is so popular that it’s not in any word processing program I’ve ever used, which I hope suggests that it’s a recent development. Anyone know?
Thought GAMEY was a little gamy. Technically legit, but have never heard anything but “game” used in that sense. And I’m with RP re casting PREXY into outer darkness.
Overall, though, good puzzle, good fun, more fun when I get better.
I’d never heard of LES BAXTER, bob LEY, DIESIS, TRILL, or, ARNO. But that’s what makes it fun to solve your puzzles.
Loved the LES BAXTER reference…he basically created the Exotica/Lounge genre when he did a number of arrangements for Yma Sumac in the early ’50s. “Unchained Melody” only made it to #2, by the way.
Lon, that’s a TROLL.
How do you know Lon didn’t spell it that way deliberately?
Was flying thorugh this puzzle and then got stuck at DIESIS and double error fill in the SE stopped me cold. I filled in TAXRETURN and TBILLS rats. This could’ve been my fastest Medium puzzle, liked this one.
A loss of a computer especially a laptop since it goes with you everywhere, more places then a spouse in fact, is truly a personal loss.
BTW, Brendan, I meant to ask–did you pull this one purposely to taunt us again today with AVISO?
LMAO at your pre-amble. Even got my “not-into-crosswords” nephew to read it and he was hosing himself too. Sorry that we’re making light of your loss…
The puzzle, All I got to say is… Led Zeppelin reference!! Pity it wasn’t continued in the actual theme… Impressive construction none the less…
Honestly, I was dealing with this loss of the computer and trying to salvage all the old data from the hard drive. I just grabbed what I thought would be a good puzzle, and didn’t give much thought about what was in the fill.
DIESIS on top of ARENTXA crossed with ENL…
I think I broke my brain.
Tricky puzzle…nice work!
Only problem was staying with LESBROWN(E) for too long. Never heard of BAXTER. Agree that DIESIS/ARENTXA is a tricky area.
Hmmm. Our daughter got a Lenovo when HER laptop died. Two years later, in MID-dissertation, THAT died. Luckily her data could be retrieved, but whew. Hopefully you will not have the experience!
DIESIS was a new word for me. One I could have done without, in fact.
I also had the thought that you were tweaking us with recent puzzle clues from NYT, some of which had been protested…
This one is a couple two years old. Might have had some retread clues, not sure. I think I’ve come a long way since the TONY days (and that gig ended a little over a year ago, wow).
The Lenovo is Liz’s computer, FWIW. Seems to be running fine.