ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
Mike Nothnagel was in town this past week, so he held a Boston-based puzzle beer summit this past Saturday. As you can see from the above photo, it was summit of three, as only Joon Pahk and yours truly made it out. David Quarfoot was supposed to join us, but there was conflicting information as to why he was a no-show. Either he was sick, or he thinks Boston-based puzzler beer summits are stupid. David, if you read this, let me know why you blew it off, okay?
All the predictable topics were broached: Mike’s recent contest puzzles for the Times, Joon’s improbability that he won it and the fact he probably should have been disqualified since he’s a Times contributor. I recounted war stories from the past M.I.T. Puzzle Hunt as I tried to recruit the two to my team. You might ask: did we try and make a puzzle? Yeah, to a degree. We did it without paper or computer, mind you, so if it’s a piece of shit, don’t blame us. Anyway, we placed three completely random entries without wondering if they may or may not actually work in a grid: STEFFI GRAF on top of POTATOES AU GRATIN on top of ANDROID APP. Not sure it’s actually doable, but it seems promising. Stay tuned.
Good night out, that’s for sure. Definitely a teachable moment, like all good beer summits.
Anyway, that’s all I got. Share the puzzle. New one on Thursday.
Three world class tenors of crosswords— Pavarotti, Carerras, and Domingo!
Much as I dislike RITZES (!?) and ISSA, I still think this puzzle is gorgeous. That SE corner is a work of art, Across-wise. At 8-something, I don’t know about “Challenging,” but … no, that’s reasonable. That’s NYT Fri diff. level for me.
1A: was a flat-out gimme, and would have been even if I hadn’t just (last night) watched “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” on TLC. She sees brown bears while out fishing and tries to make an analogy to Mama Grizzlies. To her credit, she seemed to know the bears weren’t grizzlies. And to Alaska’s credit, everywhere she went really did look beautiful.
Medium for me, maybe even easy-medium. 1A and 53A were two long gimmes, answers I knew just because, well, shit, I know quite a bit of stuff and those were in the category of stuff I knew. As for CO-ENACT, I guess you gotta do what you gotta do, but damn.
I didn’t like the clue for EXTRA CHEESE and I don’t know why. It just doesn’t ring true. Pizzas, yes; burritos, no. I mean, I know there are burrito places where you go through the line and they throw a bunch of questions at you and you come out with this two-pound wad of food packaged up in tin foil and you’re supposed to be real pleased with the world based on that, but I just can’t see asking for extra cheese on a food item like that. Guacamole maybe. But screw that, there’s lots of great long answers in this puzzle.
brendan’s more of a baritone, actually.
i look more than a little smug, but i would like to note in my defense that you’re looking at my fourth-string smile. i used up the good ones on previous takes where the lighting was bad. once both chads and the wildcat were out of the game, i resorted to tyler thigpen in desperation, and you can see the results.
I DNF the NE, so I will defend the HARD rating against all comers. Took another look at the SE after reading Rex’s comment…wow. And you’ve even got my scotch on the down!
When I saw BLANKETTOSS I thought it was going to be a Big Lebowski puzzle.
Beatdown here, was one of those where I hadn’t run across the 1-Across term, and couldn’t figure it out without a metric load of crossings. Was an omen of things to come.
Finished it though, and that’s about 8/15ths of the battle.
Joon, no worries – still beats my “one too many Sam Adams Octoberfests” pose, at which point one doesn’t really care when the picture is actually snapped. And Tyler Thigpen won that game, by the way.
Wow. A picture Brendan smiling. 😀
I do love that a “beatdown” for Howard is still under 6 minutes on this puzzle. (I guess it’s all relative!)
Very nice puzzle. NW and SE pretty easy. The other two quadrants were on the hard side for me. Not sure if I’ve ever seen EVANESCENT before. So, like Rex, Fri. hard NYT seems right.
And you know I can’t resist these things.
http://blatherreview.mu.nu/archives/quickythemeless.puz
i know. and actually, i like the guy. but “the tyler thigpen experience” was not a pretty sight today.