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American Crossword Puzzle Tournament this week? American Crossword Puzzle Tournament this week. Man, it seems like only yesterday when Will Shortz called me up and asked me to do a rush job Puzzle 5 replacement. Speaking of that puzzle, I’ve reposted it here to get y’all psyched up for the weekend. Or, relive the horror of last year’s “bitch mother” puzzle. You decide. For the uninitiated, of the seven puzzles everyone solves, Puzzle 5 is intended to be so hard that it separates the contenders from the pretenders. The Heartbreak Hill, so to speak, if the ACPT is the Boston Marathon. Regardless, don’t judge the whole weekend based on this puzzle. Most of them are decidedly gentler. And besides, it’s really just a 48 hour party with your other family, you know, the ones in the puzzling community. No crosswords from me this year, the list of constructors are here. I will be judging, however. Or drinking. Probably not both at the same time. Regardless, if you see me there, come up and say “hi.”
While I’m here, my man Peter Gordon has launched a Kickstarter campaign for his Fireball Newsflash Crosswords. If you have a couple of extra bucks, consider funding him will ya? And stay tuned for another Kickstarter crossword-related project that’s dropping later this week.
Share the puzzle. New one on Thursday.
omg Why did I sign up to do this??? I didn’t go last year, but did the puzzles at home and so this was a second try and you KILLED me. Arggh.
Since you warned us, what are “double-crossers”?
Quite possibly the most unpleasant experience in recent memory, and the theme did nothing for me at all. How many obscure references can you put into a puzzle, Brendan? Puzzles like these make me question why I, or anyone else, do them.
Took every cross to finish this one. Fortunately I do not set a timer, otherwise I’d go to the box and feel shame. Even after finishing did not get the totality of the theme until about an hour later when I picked it up again and caught on to the crosses. If the intent was to create a hard puzzle, mission accomplished.
I usually enjoy the hard ones, but OMG!WTF?
Took me soooooooooo long. I didn’t get it for the longest time and I cheated by googleing for so many possible answers. Later I also came across a Matt Gaffney On Crosswords entry from 3/2014, finally I got my aha moment then it all fell into place!
Wow, can I borrow your brain, yours is amazing.
I got it 100% without looking up anything. Only problem is that I started at about 10 AM and finished around 6:30 pm. Subtracting an hour for a nap (got the beta waves on it) and two hours for errands (really needed ice cream to get through the ordeal) it took well over 5 hours. I’m trying to work up the courage to go to ACPT. How much time do they give for each puzzle? I didn’t really get rolling until about hour 4. Do they have ice cream?
This was a tough puzzle! I was stuck last night, put it down and picked it back up a little while ago and bing, bam, boom…done!
Totally enjoyed the challenge. Had to google 4 times. I guess this makes me a pretender. Took a couple hours. What was the winning time at last year’s ACPT for this one?
Re Jeanie – The 5 crossers are (I think) THOU, RAKE, ANGEL, HILL, and ROAD. For a more authoritative answer, check out Amy Reynaldo’s blog.
I solved it reasonably quickly (I didn’t time myself, but it was something under 20 minutes) without seeing the theme at all. After I was done, I spotted the double crosses, but I still didn’t realize the way they worked.
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