CROSSWORD #472: Themeless Monday & BAPHL recap

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

PROGRAM: [Java]

I’ve seen a million puzzles and I’ve solved them all. Okay, maybe it wasn’t a million per se, but it was a goodly number. And saying that I solved them all is a bit of stretch, but I at least contributed to some. Mostly the wordy ones. Oh, and one of the band name puzzles. Regardless, me and my crack team TUFTS competed in this past Saturday’s Boston Area Puzzle Hunt League “battle of the bands”-themed puzzle suite/contest. Out of 40 teams, we checked in at the mighty respectable tenth place. I’m not surprised though, TUFTS was comprised of yours truly and all the Brown University wunderkinds (puzzle solvers may recognize the names Jonah Kagan, Aimee Lucido, and Guy Tabachnick). These kids are sharp. Put it this way: in their spare time, these bright kids work at places like Google, Facebook and Zynga. Me? I beat the shit out of typewriters. I’ll let you guess who didn’t belong in said group and the first two don’t count. Anyway, Yay TUFTS! We’re #10! We’re #10!

Like I had mentioned before, BAPHL 6 was a puzzle hunt loosely-based around a fictional band Mystik Sprial (with a name like that, I suspect they have a rain stick player) and the settings for the puzzles was a bunch of rock clubs in my neighborhood. Literally. The finale was three blocks from BEQ.com headquarters. Of course the locations were irrelevant as the puzzles are meant to be solved anywhere. So how were the puzzles? Of the ones I solved, good-to-great, frankly. But I can’t say I’m surprised. I personally knew two of the hunt writers: Eric Berlin and Dan Katz. The whole thing is available here, but if you only have time for a few, here are three puzzles that I think regulars to this site will appreciate: Double Crossed, Close Enough For Jazz, and The Vinyl Countdown. When you’re done with those, head on over to Eric Berlin’s blog, will ya?

Share the puzzle. New one on Thursday.