ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ STUFFY NOSE]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ STUFFY NOSE]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
I’m not feeling too hot today, but I’ll be back with a longer post on Friday (I promise).
Quick reminder: if you liked the puzzles this month, and/or you feel like tipping, the people in Haiti need your money more than I do. Please give a donation to the Red Cross instead. Thank you.
Share the puzzle. New one on Friday.
Read the clue as [Hannah Montana’s boyfriend]… !?
WTF on the SUSIE clue?
And what up with the right-wing rhetoric in the NW. Who in the world is “PRO-TAX”? It’s not a real stance. It’s an accusation. Almost everyone is PRO *some* TAX, but no one runs on a PRO-TAX platform or declares him/herself PRO-TAX. I’m not PRO-IMPRISONING PEOPLE, though I think it’s a necessity in many cases.
And [Job creator]? Have you seen what Wall St. EXECs did to the economy? I enjoy political neutrality in my puzzles.
BOWED FACED doesn’t feel like it works. Else, fine. Definitely a “Medium.”
Take care of yourself, Brendan. Rest; plenty of liquids. What the hell, man, indulge yourself. Be well.
What Rex said. I was laid off in ’97 by EXECs.
Is “sold sign” a thing?
Outside a house maybe, but not outside a theater.
It’s an interesting question, this idea of what political slant, if any, is acceptable in a crossword.
EXECutives certainly do create jobs, for example, and Walter Mondale in 1984, for example, ran specifically on a platform that could accurately be described as PRO-TAX.
Not sure if it’s a real word, but that’s another issue.
For some reason (maybe because I had GUST incorrectly written in at first), I really wanted 11D to be FUGLIEST.
Get well soon.
Wouldn’t pro tax be a left wing position? In that case NW is politically balanced. Like NPR tries to do.
“SOLDSIGN”? Not on my planet.
I’ve got no problem at all with some political stuff in a crossword, so long as it’s non-divisively clever and/or laugh-out-loud funny.
Oh, and obeys the rules. To wit, I think there are some agreement problems with 2-D and 29-A.
[In favor if government spending, say] is not interchangable with PRO-TAX. There are politicians aplenty who love to spend money (“yay, more stuff!”) and hate to raise taxes (“and it wont cost a dime, yay!”). They create massive budget deficits.
And cluing EXEC as [Job creator, for short] is kinda like cluing BALLPLAYER as [Perennial MVP candidate]. Sure, every exec would like to be successful and, thereby, create oodles of jobs. But there are also plenty of execs out there who are incompetent, career job killers.
Anywho, loved the theme. BOWED FACE, especially. Such a silly visual.
I was out of touch on Monday, so I did both the Monday and Wednesday puzzle today. Liked both. Interesting to have ITAL and ITALS in the same spot on both. Also, ALER and ALMVP. Probably other similarities that I didn’t notice.
As for political correctness or just political sensibilities — I like the personal slant (and profanities, etc.) that you bring to these. A departure from the NYT or other newspaper-published puzzles is a welcomed change. Not better, just different.
Thanks again.
@Rex, well done! Thanks for posting here.
@Brendan, hi, hope you read the late posts. Progress reports today, so very busy with whining students.
Feel kinda bad about being so negative on Monday. Very different solving experience for me today. MARD for me, but I did (slowly) knock it out, and it was fun. Mostly.
Though I’m veeery liberal left, I’m more interested in figuring out the answer than what I think about the clue/answer’s nominal content, so what bothered others (and, in fairness, not without reason!) didn’t bother me.
Lit.easily.amused.doc enjoyed the theme thingy, with little expectation of its making sense in any strong sense. And loved some of the clues. The “55-Across material”/”Sheik” pairing, though I had to stare at LATE_ until I worked into the south, was terrific—LOL + Aha! moment. Also thought “Globe position” was nice indirection.
Less nice was the ASIA/SUSIE spot. Had a good laugh when I fiiiinally sussed “Polo ground?”—very clever. But the effect was blunted by [N or A?]LMVP on top of _USIE. And wondering if Gary Busey were gay just to get a letter to try didn’t help. Ended up having to grind through N[alphabet run]IA and then A[ditto]IA before I saw it. (Primitive solving technique, I guess, but that’s what I was reduced to.)
I have no patience for the demonization of “Execs”. I find it interesting to see people who are very sensitive about how we deal with discrimination of the perceived traditional injustices both racially and gender related. They however are very quick to take a very wide brush when dealing with those fat cats and their selfishness. 70-80% of all job creation comes from small business(less then 500 employees) that is run by “execs” that’s right those small businesses top five employees are considered execs.
Oh the crossword puzzle, it was hardium for me the themes didn’t come easy for me.
Hey Brendan, whats going on with 26a? I initially had SEWEDSIGN which seem correct but made no theme sense. So I changed it to SOWEDSIGN only to find it was really SEWEDSIGN when I did a puzzle check in AcrossLite. Amy seems to think its SOLD, WTF?
@jae, can’t speak for Ms. Reynaldo, who knows waaaaay more about CW stuff than do you and I together, but…a “sampler” is “a decorative piece of cloth embroidered with various designs or mottoes” (thefreedictionary.com, cuz it was fast ‘n easy), and thus a “sewed sign” = “SOLD” sign might well be hung outside a failed theater.
All the theme answers are, phonetically, missing an “l”, as in GOAD DIGGER = “gold digger”. I speculate that Amy’s point was that the other theme answers were rather more familiar phrases or expressions: COLD COMFORT [Farm], [twice-]TOLD TALES, and BOLD-FACED [lies].
Lit-geek full disclosure: I doubt that Brendan intended “Cold Comfort Farm”, as “cold comfort” is actually a common phrase in its own right. I threw it in for any who may have suffered through Thomas Hardy novels specifically or literary naturalism generally. Stella Gibbons’ parodic novel “Cold Comfort Farm” is hysterical, more especially if you’ve survived Hardy et al. (and the movie isn’t too bad either, but read the novel first).
@Matt Gaffney I know this was a long time ago Matt since you posted this, but after 2 years of doing your puzzles I definitely get the feel of a left leaning political slant in your crosswords.