ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
Here comes a bulleted list.
- We’re little under two weeks away from the Boston Crossword Tournament on April 11. This is the second go-around of this here Tournament run by my buddy, test-solver, and all around nice guy Joon Pahk. I was unable to make the first one as I was in Denver, but it looks to be another winner. Joon and I will have puzzles in the tournament. Couple two three crossword celebrities will be in the house: Will Shortz, Ryan & Brian, and uh, me, silly. Besides, it will be T-minus 4 days until Tax Day. Lament with me how much money the government takes away from us. And what’s better than a day of puzzles to distract oneself? Hoo boy. Click here for more info.
- I’ve mentioned it a couple times, but there’s some stellar variety puzzles at the Wall Street Journal on Saturday. I had to play catch up this weekend, but I wanted to bring to everyone’s attention (if they haven’t already done it) this Marching Bands puzzle from a few weeks back, by (who else?) Crossword Jesus #1. I utterly love solving these puzzles. Great, great stuff.
- Slight book-keeping point of order: If you were thinking about getting a custom puzzle made for Mother’s Day, but haven’t hit me up yet, I suggest doing so soon. We have plenty of time, but the month ahead is starting to fill up fast. Thanks.
- Lastly, if you liked the puzzles this month, would you please strongly consider giving a little bit into the tip jar. BEQ.com will always be free. And it will always be a breath of fresh air in the puzzling community. Yet there are small costs to keep this running smoothly and efficiently. Any contribution helps out immeasurably. As a thank you, I will give one random donor a copy of “Diagramless.” Thanks.
Share the puzzle. New one on Wednesday.
Started with 10A and had the NE, then SE, and part of the NW finished very quickly. I had to Google 2D and 22A to finish the NW (I remembered 1D from stumbling over it in an an earlier NYT puzzle). (I like the 22A/34D pair!) I had as far SW as 39A and 51D, then got stuck. I Googled 38D which is really embarrassing considering that I heard it in the car yesterday on the way to the hotel. I didn’t get 6D right away, but my excuse is that we don’t have those where I live, so meh.
I enjoyed it … thanks!
1A is great to see in the prime position. Will have to Google NABOO. Also, not familiar with reporter or designer GENES.
As usual, your HARD puzzle for me would be IMPOSSIBLE if not for the CHECK function.
Now, to sit back and wait for the bile of the Simpson’s haters.
I don’t get GENE, and that “N” was a complete guess. Otherwise, solid.
FREAK FLAG is great.
rp
What’s above Hard? KAHard? FHard? After doing BEQ’s puzzles for long enough to feel like I was learning his wavelength, along come today’s and last week’s puzzles! They were epic failures for me, but BEQ’s work is so fun I keep coming back for more humiliation.
Thanks for the puzzles!
Mark
SW was a painful, agonizing slog that finally drove me to The Google.
I assumed 64A was meant as kind of a gimme, so if that was the usual crosswordism then 55D looked like it had to be… what it turned out to be. But it didn’t make sense! GENE sounded okay with “designer” but it sure didn’t ring any bells for me with “reporter” so I couldn’t get past it.
Having filled 21A earlier on I decided the least ignominious cheat would be to resolve whether 54A was KAPPA, GAMMA, ALPHA, SIGMA, or, as it turned out, OMEGA and the corner finally fell, but I count resorting to the big G as a fail so I won’t even post my time, which was pathetic.
You a very nasty man BEQ.
Not “gene reporter” but “reporter gene.” Does that help?
I’m opined previously that BEQ really ought to finish out his easy – mesium – medium – mard – hard sequence, even if it involves the eff word. I’m still a starter on the epic fail team but, like you, I keep coming back for more.
Any day when I can wrestle a hard BEQ puzzle to the ground with no more help than the Check All utility is a proud day in my house.
Unfortunately, this was not one of those days. I was lucky to finish using google. Educational exerience, though, as always.
NARDS? Totally new to me. The word, I mean. When goNADS was too short (I cringe at the thought, though it does sound like a good cheer), I couldn’t figure out what to stick in there.
FREAKFLAG also took an embarrassingly long time. “Keep your freakflag flying” always makes me think of long hair (long gone), tat’s, and my 6 ga. earrings–gestures of physical appearance, rather than behavior in the ordinary “see Dick act eccentrically” sense.
It’s all right with me if we just leave the hardness factor where it is. We already have about 30% of the comments on whether BEQ got it right to begin with and to add in mesium and mard and fhard would just double those useless discussions.
Whatever Brendan says it is, that’s okay with me. YMMV but that’s the way it works.
I vote fhard on this one, though. C’mon, isn’t there someone out there that took longer to finish than I did? Sheeesh.
I finished the entire east side of the puzzle but the SW and NW did me in. Two variant spellings in the same quadrant with a Simpsons reference and a not so famous Iowan city made the NW a sinkhole.
Tough one. I hadn’t heard of ‘reporter gene’ either, but couldn’t find anything that fit better.
It was the combo of the guitarist and the obscure Simpsons reference in the upper-left that took me down pretty hard.
That, and (this may be embarrassing) I couldn’t parse that clue with the ‘Jack in the Box’ reference, possibly because there may not be one of those chains within at least 50, maybe 100 miles of me; I’ve never eaten there before, but at least I’ve heard of it. I just could not understand what the heck the clue meant!
Funny, and kinda cool, how those little knowledge voids unexpectedly sneak up on you.
okay, i’ll take some responsibility here, as the simpsons clue was my idea. surely it was a gimme for some people, though?
@Joon, that’s a big yes re the Simpsonator. Props for your pop culture love. I hope it annoyed the crap out of a bunch of people.
I’d call that a uniformly tough, but not impossible solve, with lots of nuggets of gold to find! 33A made me think of this cheesy 80’s pop song (local): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73PPofzvOX0 – which has become something of an earworm! 38D is one of favourite Doors tunes, but I could never hear that lyric!! Was quite amusing as I was going LAW something, LAW something.. Oh. Oh!! Also the one-word clue at 44D was a big and very aha. Am I the only confident enterer of ARCHITECT @ 60A followed by “No that’s just too easy!” It was. No idea about 1A and 10D – I’m slacking with my neologisms! But 10D still much better to see than the old-school “Perfume plants” or somesuch!
A pox on those two var’s though!
According to “He Who Does Not Blog” Mr. Feyer flew his freak flag and solved this in under 4 minutes. I guess it was easy, after all. The man is sick-fast.
“Wolfman’s got nards!”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093560/quotes
< 4 minutes (but over 3) for Mr. Feyer pretty much pegs this solidly as a 'Hard', I'd say. Trust me on that ;). (He's an Across Lite wizard, there has to be a twist...) Not meaning to speak for you, Dan. Just paying a compliment.
Gotcha Howard B, I was also paying homage. No way this is “Easy”.
Yes, more or less, though with my accursed and ever-worsening name aphasia I had to get a couple of crosses to pry the necessary synapses loose.
Anyone else have DYNAST sitting there for 23D (“Legacy builder”) at all? The caps in “Jack in the Box device” registered fairly early on for me and gave that one away, but it took me a heck of a while to think of the possibility that Legacy was a proper noun….
The name was a gimme, but the spelling was another matter entirely.
@Gareth, hell no re “architect”. Geez, did that on slow me down!
Like JD I knew the name but wrestled a bit with the spelling. Plus I needed my grandson for NABOO. Tough puzzle!