THEMELESS MONDAY: [ ACROSS LITE][ PDF]
PROGRAMS: [Across Lite] [Adobe Reader]
So I’m chatting the other day with Erik Agard. You may know his puzzles, or if you don’t, you might recognize him from “Jeopardy!” If neither of those ring a bell with you, I don’t know what to tell you. Anyway, he’s a super bright guy, the current reigning American Crossword Puzzle Tournament champion, yadda yadda. So he starts off the convo by saying that my latest Crooked Crossword/Globe puzzle took him some 50 odd minutes. A panic surged through me. These puzzles are supposed to be easyish crosswords. Not like layups (I have heard that this one Erik struggled with was a bit on the hard end), but not like one that should take a speed solver of Erik’s formidable talent an hour. That’s just, I mean, wrong. Like, Brendan fucked up big time wrong. Like, the clues musta been too damn vague and we’re gonna have to have a Come To Jesus Moment about how I was going to clue the next one. In short: a catastrophe.
Then Erik casually tells me that he solved the thing Across clues-only. It made me burst out in laughter. I know the Big Wigs in the solvin’ community are all about the Downs-only solves. Especially for the comically hard puzzles like Saturday Stumpers and what not. Hell, there’s Twitch channels dedicated for that task that I have been known to lurk in. The philosophy behind those solves is that once you get enough of the down clues, you can play hangman on the crossings. And that in most themeless puzzles, more of the longer answers tend to go across. But Across only solving, I guess that’s gonna be harder because the theme answers are running in that direction, so there are fewer toeholds. Also, Sunday grids tend to have a shade more crud, not puzzle-killing, but a few infelicities. I don’t know. It just doesn’t make much sense to me. But then again, I don’t have a brain the size of a planet like Erik. I might lurk in a Twitch channel if somebody does Across-only sovling, though.
Anyway enjoy the puzzle. No matter how you solve it: fast, slow, with some or all of the clues of your choosing. Peace.
You might want to fix the Crossword number in the title today. It’s 1102 not 1021. The .puz is correctly named though.
That’s nothing — I solved it odd-numbered Acrosses only
Doing my part for infrapornography: demanding that the MRIs of my brain lobes shovv up on the A section of the Nevv York Times because even Solving Crossvvords can lead to CONCUSSIONS. Plus i loved vvatching Jeopardy feat. Erik Agard all this vveek.
OMG, sigh …
Trouble (again) getting to the .PUZ file. The internets are stacked against me.
And now I can get to it… thanks somebody