ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
Hey now. What’s this? BEQ has a puzzle in today’s New York Times? And what’s that? It’s been in the hopper for nine years??!? What happened? Did it fall in a crack behind a filing cabinet? Under a sofa cushion? Beats me! Honestly, I only vaguely remember making it. A lot’s happened since then: puzzles have changed a lot, my style has changed a lot, 9/11 (totally unrelated to puzzling, bears repeating tho’), I’ve drank rivers of beer, etc. Yet, here we are! And they said it would never be published!
And what a better puzzle to compare/contrast with than today’s Themeless Monday offering? 1-Across certainly wasn’t happening nine years ago. It probably wasn’t happening nine weeks ago. By the way, tip of the hat to Francis Heaney (mostly) and Ben Zimmer (just a little) for that clue. Yes, it took a couple people to get that phrased just right. For the, uh, unfamiliar with that, uh, fad, I humbly offer this (probably NSFW) video.
Thanks to all who were able to contribute to last week’s drive. And congratulations to Stephen Witthuhn of Manhattan as the winner of whatever he’d like from the BEQ.com store.
Share the puzzle. New one on Wednesday.
That answer. The one I gave you. Is in the same place in your grid as it is in mine. It hurts! 🙂
You are right– VAJAZZLE is making me hear screaming noises. Bejewel, bedazzle, shazzle even…. Haven’t yet watched the video (though have low expectations of being convinced…will try to keep self from shrieking and scaring non-puzzle husband.) Had to use Reveal, as I don’t have time to be stumped all day today.
BUT 30A [SchemING] = WILE???? WILY, yes. We usually speak of using wiles to achieve a coup of some sort, and WILE could be an element of a scheme (on a stretch)..but for [scheming] I think it’s gotta be WILY, eh?
Oh, I get it. Duh. and Ick. Decided to bypass ‘sign in’ for video. Not old enough.
Otherwise interesting puzzle.
it works if you treat “scheming” as a gerund. tough, but fair.
I like how your NYT puzzle today features a Virginia uprising and your BEQ puzzle features a vagina uprising (as in “What the hell is that rising up from your vagina!?”).
rp
Hey now!
Anything with VAJAZZLE, XKCD, and Orwell in the same puzzle passes my breakfast test. Could use a bit of bacon though…
Married, but not old enough to watch mature YouTube clips? I don’t underst–…oh, Arkansas…lol
Even with the big, fat gimme at 1A, I still have made frustratingly little progress anywhere except the NW…need to put this one down for a while, go for a hike in the snow…and think about Bryce Gruber some more…
fave clue: 44D. very klahn. inspired. too bad it hadda be plural.
First thing that came to mind for 33A was “neurotic”. Mercifully I had some down answers that I was confident about which made that answer impossible. Great clue!
@Elaine, I’ve gotta admire your optimism on Rex’s NYT blog this a.m.—“Wondering if BEQ will offer a puzzle this cute’n’cuddly on his website today…” Hope springs eternal.
IRW, however, it’s going down like this. An hour in, I’m staring at 10 blank squares and am annoyed as hell that I can’t think of Izzard’s first name, which I damn well know.
Finally give up and google to get EDDIE, but no further payoff. Then I resort to Check All and find out that WILY isn’t. What, WILD? Nah, wrong meaning. WILE? Nah, wrong word form (not an adjective or present-progressive verb). No, wait a second, damn, “scheming” can be a noun.
So now I google Munroe. XKCD, huh? And…oh crap, AXLED. I’d been expecting something botanical. “CK One”? If you say so. Which means 26A’s about gotta be STReet. DESERET?! Learn something new every[Mon/Wednes/Fri]day.
Except for NE feeling like I stuck my PETER in a blender, the puzzle was an interesting challenge. Best misstep of the day was starting with NEUROTIC for “Woody Allen often plays one” (but you were expecting that, weren’t you Brendann?).
I wonder if 41A shouldn’t read “Composer Shostakovich (var.)”. I’ve only seen DIMITRI in French (where the last name is also spelled differently). Just a question of common practice, not one of technical (in)correctness.
Got all but three letters in just over 15 minutes. The last three letters — to complete 16A (C_ON_) and 26A (ST_) took me about 7 minutes to work through all the possible permutations. Once I got it, I figured CKONE to have something to do with Calvin Klein. Never heard of DESERET.
Also never heard of the “theme” of the puzzle. I made the mistake of googling 1A at work and had to quickly cancel out before anything interesting happens.
@jimmy d
Hey, now! Okay, you did make me laugh out loud, but my name on a different puzzle blog is ‘Mean Old Lady.’ I think my arthritis was kicking up that day. (Saying I’m not old enough is my way of handling it when there’s just something I’d rather not know. Having to sign and and swear I’m over 18…dead giveaway.)
@lit.doc
Yeah, I threw in the towel, too. Didn’t get the way to reconcile WILE with [Scheming] until Joon stepped in to help the little old lady across the street.
I thought [Tabu competitor] was MY SIN and had a hard time giving it up since XKCD and CKONE made no sense whatever.
I did know DESERET…not that it got me very far. Put in COMEDIAN for Woody Allen…he got seriously unfunny to me after the Soon Yi business. OH, well. You win again, BEQ!
Holy crap, BEQ’s got the latest Chronicle of Higher Ed puzzle too (you can get it at http://chronicle.com/section/Crosswords/43.
So it’s a triple play day for BEQ…pretty awesome. Looking forward to getting home from work so I can check out that video…
Sick! I have heard of this fad, but couldn’t remember if it started with BEDAZZLE or ended in DAZZLE, so I had to google it. I typed in bedazzle your…and google helped out with offering “bedazzle your vajayjay”. Oh, Oprah how you have truly changed our lives. And, apparently JLH, too. Great word, loved the ZZTop crossing. DJBOOTH is my favorite entry, though, cuz I was about to give up when it just popped into my head allowing me to finish the puzzle. Good to have a hard one on Mondays. Thanks!
So if a puzzle takes close to 10 years to get published, do you get the rate originally promised a decade ago or the current daily one? Its amazing something could be sitting around for that long.
This was a frustrating one and not just because it was hard. It had some great fill but there was so much crap mixed in that I didn’t really care. WILE/STR/MOSSED/OSTEO/XKCD it goes on and on. Not too happy with this effort.
I just read about VAJAZZLING (ick), regularly read XKCD, and know about DESERET from my stint in Mormonism. In short, I was all over the puzzle, until the bottom left got me stuck for a bit. Nice puzzle.
CKONE / XKCD was a Grand Canyon of ignorance to me here. I could not have solved that square if you gave me 30 guesses, because I would have tried numbers, schwas, and possibly an emoticon or two before attempting a K on that.
it hurts :).
Busy day at work, so I didn’t get to this until late. Unfortunate for me, as it would have provided me with an answer at the dentis this afternoon – “How the hell did you get glitter stuck between your teeth?” BEQ answers the big questions in the universe.
I was wondering why the NYTimes them answers where vertical. But we have an UPrising, MakeUP, coffee (which keeps you UP), and a toast mistress (who stands UP). Maybe you should have also reflected the grid top-to-bottom. But then again, breakfast foods are things that you get down.
All I can say about 1A is: oh no you di’int!
Loved that Cheryl Tiegs and XKCD are in the same puzzle. Those represent the endpoints of my native cultural knowledge.
31-Across is a brutal, brutal clue. Between the tricksy usage of a secondary meaning for “complement” and an uninferrable answer, that’s just… whew.