THEMELESS MONDAY: [ ACROSS LITE][ PDF]
PROGRAMS: [Across Lite] [Adobe Reader]
PROGRAM: [Java]
Had a weird life-imitates-art moment this weekend when a friend of mine shared a story that managed to include both of the 15-letter entries in today’s puzzle. What made it weird is that he told me the story after the puzzle was completed, not the other way around, which made it even weirder. There’s plenty of times that I’ll hear somebody say something and go, “that’d make a great puzzle answer.” Never before has somebody used two marquee answers in a sentence after I’d already finished the puzzle. But hey, no spoilers, okay, and if he’s reading this (and it’s quite likely he will), perhaps he’ll feel the need to share it in the comments.
Thanks for everyone who’s been able to hit the tip jar. Reminder, between now and July 6th, everyone who can tip at least $10 will receive two brand new 21xs, a themeless and a themed puzzle. Don’t feel obligated to tip, I will keep the site chugging along at no cost to you until I drop dead. However, if you’d like a bit of instant good will, you know what to do.
Share the puzzle. New one on Thursday.
A tad too many facts in the NW: Jurgen, Versace, eqed, cta, rave, knite.
Love to see the text of that sentence. Nice puzzle.
So here’s the story (wanted to wait a day to avoid being spoilery)–
I test-solve for BEQ, and when working this puzzle, 15A caught my eye because — well, I’ll get to that in a minute. So I commented to him,
“17A — remind me to tell you the story of the time Jurgen Klinsmann gave me a ride home from the airport….”
And then it struck me as amusing when I got further down to send him the same comment on 60A:
“60A — remind me to tell you the story of the time Jurgen Klinsmann gave me a ride home from the airport….
”
The story in sum: I used to work Sports Information Director at a community college here in Huntington Beach, CA.
About 15 years ago, our women’s basketball coach starts telling me about a post player he’s got coming in. She’s been out of school for about 10 years — quit basketball after high school to model in Europe — but she’s supposed to be pretty good. The girl’s name is Debbie Chin. She turns out to be an OK basketball player. And her husband is a former German soccer star who she met overseas, who retired months earlier after playing for Germany in the World Cup in France, and you know where this is going. Really good guy, came to pretty much all of our games, almost always with their infant son, and was recognized once all season. And, yeah, gave me a ride home from the airport after one of our road trips.
Jurgen and his family still live in my area. No particular significance to the airport anecdote other than to introduce my fun little story.