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CROSSWORD #1140: Themeless Monday

Posted on by Brendan Quigley

THEMELESS MONDAY: [ ACROSS LITE][ PDF] 
PROGRAMS: [Across Lite] [Adobe Reader]



So all the cool kids (cough cough) are solving puzzles downs-only nowadays. Using the full complement of clues is deemed passe, and really only (give or take) half the clues are necessary for a complete solve. I am pretty sure I’ve mentioned this fact already. But last week I watched some of the country’s brightest minds detonate some brain-scramblingly hard puzzles downs-only on some Twitch channels. I was blown right out of the water. Anyway, I bring this up not so much because I want them to downs-only solve this puzzle (but if any of you are planning on doing this, get in touch). But rather, I was awed at how freaking hard these puzzles were, and probably shades of that difficulty were in the back of mind while I made today’s offering. Forgive me, if this one is harder than normal.


Share the puzzle. New one on Thursday.

8 thoughts on “CROSSWORD #1140: Themeless Monday”

  1. Cousin is a big stretch for clue 20. “Man” would be a more accurate entry since, from a taxonomical standpoint, humans are more closely related to geckos than the actual answer to 20.
    But, that’s just a nit.

  2. Good puzzle. I think it might have been slightly harder than the usual or maybe not in my wheelhouse. There was a strange amount of fur and fashion in there.

  3. Really proud to have finished this one without Googling, and it didn’t take all day.
    I solve Mondays and maybe Tuesdays NYT downs-only, but can’t imagine anyone doing that with a puzzle like this. Some solvers have an intuition bordering on the supernatural.

  4. Does DST affect xword solving too?! This kicked my butt from start to DNF (errors). VG challenge.

  5. Fair and challenging puzzle. Good to have when the snow is falling in front of our home office window!

  7. I stream puzzles occasionally on Twitch, and consider myself a decent but not elite solver. All the other streams I’ve ever seen are strictly casual though. Nothing at all wrong with that, and always glad to see people puzzling, but curious if you have any Twitch’s you would recommend for competitive solvers. Thanks!

  8. I’ve seen this in many puzzles. Wrong question.
    An eft is an amphibian, a geiko is a reptile

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