ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
Great to meet all of you at the Boston Crossword Tournament yesterday. Congrats to Huntington Beach’s Eric Maddy for winning it all. Yeah, you read that right: Huntington Beach. As in California. Guess he also owned it at the tournament that Brown University held the night before. Jeez. And if that weren’t enough, he made a pilgrimage to see the Broons and Sawx. Sounds like my kinda weekend: sports, travel and crosswords.
So, Q, where’s the puzzle you and Joon had in said tournament? Hold your horses, it’s coming this week. Thursday, to be specific. I’ll post it here, or, if you’re friends with Joon, he’ll probably post it on his Facebook page, too.
Reminder: there’s still plenty of time left to enter last Friday’s contest. Get to it! Swag is at stake!
Finally, for today’s puzzle I wanted to try and do the two triple stacks thingy, with the additional challenge making sure all the crossings had to be at least 4+ letters. For those who guessed 53-A was the seed entry, you are right. Enjoy.
Share the puzzle. New one on Wednesday.
Got er done, around 45 minutes on paper. Not bad for me. The top half finally fell with a few fortunate guesses, but needed to Google 36A, 41D and 48D before I could get the bottom half. Nice job BEQ. Strange to be the first one to post. I’m off today.
solid. props also for the cro-mags ref on friday.
This “Hard” was easier for me than many of your “Mediums.”
This one didn’t seem as hard as your usual “hard” to me. Pretty much breezed through, with the exception of several pop-culture references, which I’m never good at.
I toyed with it as a Medium, but I figured the UH HUH HER and AUTOTUNE THE NEWS might be a little on the near-unfair side of things.
I’m with the “easier than hard” camp – but only for the top and middle. Had to DNF the south. I DID get UHHUHHER which was more Huh? than Aha. Couldn’t quite get any of the stacked 15’s in the south. Should have had WATERLOO though! (obvious pun resisted.)
Nit: TOWN for “sticks”? As in “small” town? Uh uh. Sticks equals country/rural in my town.
If *I* can do almost all of it, it’s definitely not hard 🙂
Got the middle first, then the south, and finally the north. Loved the stacked entries.
36A and 53A were where I had my uncertainty or errors ([D]OODO[O], TW[E]E, ARM[O]S, NE[I]N). At least I guessed R[E]S correctly.
Extremely minor nits that in no way detracted from my enjoyment of this puzzle:
As of 1997, 7A should be clued as [Miami’s county, once] or [Miami-____ County]. I like the former version since it could refer to Miami, AZ, which is in Gila County.
Should 8D be clued as [Landing figs.]? Or do ETA and ETD not require an abbrev. ref.? This tripped me up for a bit longer than it probably should have.
TOWN for [Sticks]? I thought those two were opposites.
Almost actually finished this one. Worked through nearly the entire grid (as others noted, the bottom was a good bit harder than the top) but then ran aground on 36A UHWTFUH.
In retrospect, I guess I ought to have been able to parse “UH-HUH” HER, or however the album has it. But I ended up with 37D DOO-DOO (as in bad luck = stepping in it) and 27D THE “D” word (couldn’t imagine that “retard” would be in the clue if the answer wanted “R”).
And @MitchS is way right re the clue for TOWN. To be in the sticks is to be out of town. Way out.
I hadn’t heard of either of those, so they definitely bumped my time up.
Brendan, are you going to explain the clue for 50D? Three posters bitched about that. I googled 56A 3rd letter because I couldn’t believe sticks = TOWN, but I didn’t complain. WTF???
I’m going to keep reading it as UHH-UHH-ER cuz I like the way that looks. Haven’t heard it, or the artist. Hip hop?
I agree with sticks=TOWN, if you’re in the city all the small towns are the sticks. If you’re in the town, it’s the unincorporated areas are the sticks.
And those were the two that wrecked me pretty good. But it was a good kind of wreckage. You know, the cheering at a demolition derby kind.
Although the album was cruel, it was an irresistable letter combo. The site I also hadn’t heard of, reminding me again that I need to be more in touch with unreality. Thanks!
i read TOWN as like, if it makes sense to describe a person as “town,” then you are undoubtedly in the sticks, even if it’s the towny part of the sticks.
also pitching my tent in the this-was-a-medium camp, not that the rating matters a whole lot.
Using my own skill level as a guide, I agree this puzzle was closer to A Medium. I understand the up-grading because of 36A and 53A, but I wasn’t going to get those without Googling anyway. Since I consider any reference check as a “Fail”,I resigned myself to a DNF. Most likely, I will never be able to finish a B.E.Q. “HARD”, because my knowledge of pop culture is minimal, especially when it comes to music. Sometimes I can get lucky with the crosses, but not always.
That being said, I almost finished. I got most of 36A, except that I has VOODOO for 37D, and had no idea what the last letter of 27D was supposed to be, until I came to the blog. Hating PC as much as I do, I never thought of “The R” word.
I had 43A and 52A filled in correctly, and had the AUTOTUNE part of 53A plus the crossings at 38 and 49D. However, I couldn’t come up with the first T in 48D. I was thinking of “adhesive” for 50D, and couldn’t remember 42D. I gave up after 45 minutes, with 7 empty blocks in the SW, and 2 incorrect letters in 36A. I probably might have got the SW if I had stayed with it a bit longer, especially if I could have come up with TOWN. It’s not quite fair to assume that every place outside of a city, is STICKS.
FWIW, my source for {Sticks} cluing TOWN is here: http://is.gd/brop7
@BEQ, thanks for the link.
HA thank you for 53-Across!
Speaking of viral videos, I am eagerly waiting for you to clue a certain song about New Hampshire… unless you have already and I missed it.
Looking at that link, I’m just happy you didn’t clue TOWN as {Apple}….