ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ FRUIT BASKET]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ FRUIT BASKET]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
Since the first guest crossword was such a success, why not have another? This week, Michael Sharp takes off the Rex Parker mask and offers up this gem. He showed me this one a while back while he was making and I thought it was a winner, so I’m psyched to have it here. He doesn’t need much introduction, right? Y’all know his puzzle blog, his vintage paperback blog, and for those who’ve been regulars to the BEQ.com probably remember this prank we pulled off.
Anyway, that’s him up above. I didn’t want fame to go to his head, so I ran that picture. Oh yeah, heads up, we talk a little bit about this puzzle so SPOILER ALERT come back and read it later if you wish. Onto the interview.
BEQ: So, you’ve got the constructing bug now.
Michael: Hmm. I guess. A little. Damn blog takes too much work, so I can never really get “The Sickness” (that’s a “Killer Inside Me” reference). Kind of obscure. You should read that book. For sure. I’m teaching it. Which is why the quote came easy.
BEQ: What made you want to start constructing?
Michael: The Glory? Let’s see, I wanted to know (more) what I was talking about. A little knowledge is a bad thing. Now I can’t help noticing when people Easily could have done better. It’s made me a more appreciative but probably also more critical blogger.
BEQ: Do you consider yourself a good constructor? If you were reviewing this puzzle, what’d you say?
Michael: Oh my God, I am not telling you I am a “good” constructor, no. HA.
If I were reviewing it; I don’t know. I don’t like EDINA / EADIE crossing at all. Everything else I tried in there was worse, if you can believe it. Pretty sure a superior constructor could’ve fixed things in there, but not me.
Oh, Peter Gordon showed me a Sun puzzle that had a similar theme, but it wasn’t a rebus—fruits were just buried inside phrases. I think DELI MEAT was one of them. Otherwise, none of the theme answers were the same.
BEQ: You’ve dabbled in a little bit everything puzzle-wise: you blog the Times puzzles, you used to test-solve the Times puzzles, and now you’ve written a handful for the Times (among others). What’s the best and worst parts of each?
Michael: Best part of blogging is the community. Meeting and interacting with editors and constructors and solvers—a real treat. Some of my readers are interesting famous people — people I likely never would have met without the blog. Worst part is just the grind. Every single day. Tough to stay enthusiastic and not get tired.
Test-solving was enlightening, in a way—nice to get to see how the puzzle gets polished. Downside, there wasn’t much of one.
Constructing is a rush when things (especially themes) fall into place. But if you’re like me (and many constructors are on this point), you can get sucked into an okay but kinda weak square and rework it over and over and over and wonder if it’s really any better. Perfectionism sucks, worse than a windowless, clockless casino.
BEQ: How many pulp fiction books do you own? What’s the most valuable one?
Michael: I own vintage paperbacks, not really “pulp fiction”—I mean, they are “pulp” in genre, some of them, but not pulp in material (i.e. cheap pulp paper—those are an earlier format, big during the 1910s-1940s). Most valuable is probably “Take a Lesbian to Lunch,” which is strange since the cover is not at all pulpy and it’s from 1972, well outside the main time frame of my collection (1940-1965). It’s just a very rare cultural history of lesbianism by a lesbian writer (Ann Aldrich aka Marijane Meaker aka M.E. Kerr aka other things, I’m sure). I’m told the phrase “lipstick lesbian” was coined in this book. Cover features a stubbed-out cigarette with lipstick on it. It’s worth several hundred dollars. I paid one. $1. And didn’t know what I had until years after I’d bought it. But I don’t collect them for monetary value. I just love them.
BEQ: So you have a slew of Rexites who step in and guest blog now and then. One instant classic post was a flame war between Caleb Madison and Natan Last. I’ll leave you with this one: Are you on Team Caleb or Team Natan?
Michael: Team Natan.
UPDATE: I’ve changed the difficulty from Medium to Hard. Thanks.
Funny the square he mentioned was the last one I filled in. Liked that. Got hip to the theme fast, but still had a little trouble with a couple of them.
I wondered (aloud) this a.m. whether Not having a title would have made the puzzle slightly more difficult …
Do those fruits line up with any kind of candy variety pack? “Life-Savers” or something would make a cute title- especially since it’s Halloween now.
Far beyond medium for me — DNF. Too many names (of people, books, characters, movies etc) I’d never heard of. Spent about twice as long on it as today’s NYT, and gave up on a couple of squares. Just goes to show that what’s familiar cultural knowledge to one person is a total mystery to others.
Definitely a hard puzzle! I was thinking of turkey as a bird, Thanksgiving dish, dud, bowling term–anything but lunch meat. Did not at all know EADIE, and couldn’t think of an Irish town ending in RICK. Gah!
hard here, too. had all but the center rebus square worked out in under 6 minutes, then had to tank for a while to get ORANGE. i mean, i actually even considered ORANGE and didn’t see how it worked, then tried to think of other fruits, etc. i couldn’t even fall back on the alphabet game because i knew it was a rebus square. anyway, super-tough crossing for me because INTO RANGE doesn’t really sound like a crossword answer and i’d never heard of the song.
@joon, for the record, Peter Gordon agrees with you re: INTO RANGE. @Amy, I learned EADIE from crosswords, so you Must have seen it … more than once. Not that that makes it any better as an answer.
My downfall was the Bobby Vee song crossing the 24D clue, as I could not come up with an answer in that one square that fit both. The film titles for me are Just Brutal, anyway (capitals intended for emphasis). The rest of the fill definitely made you work for the solve, and that’s just fine :).
Creative way to cross theme answers. Had to mentally parse some of them repeatedly to read them – and that’s fine too.
“Go Rangers!” would have worked as an alternative. For the crossword, I mean. Not in real life apparently.
That was tough, especially the EADIE corner, like you said. I took a stab at that area per your challenge and all I could get was
DAFT
EIEIO
LRICK
ATSEA
TOTSY
which yeah, is not much better.
So is this Friday BEQ thing a permanent feature or just a little temporary treat?
Definitely a hard for me, too! One of my first fills was QUEENSIZE, and, looking at the title, thought “No way that can actually be the theme!” Took way too long to get the rebus, but then it all fell into place. ORANGE was my last square to go in.
Lots of fun, Rex!
The Friday puzzles will run when I have good puzzles to run. So, semi-regularly, but by no means weekly … yet, at least.
This puzzle reminded me of the movie “City Island” which started slow but had a great ending. I bounced around doing the small stuff at first and felt bored with the vague clues for commonplace answers. But then I hit the rebuses and things got interesting so I ended up liking the puzzle. Took me a while to erase MODEL and put in ASANA. Had to google a couple to finish during lunch.
The guest puzzle is a good idea. Perhaps you will discover the next crossword Jesus and publish his/her first puzzle. But then again, maybe you should maintain a “don’t call me, I’ll call you” policy.
Believe me, “GO RANGERS!” was on the table…
Def hard for me. Made harder by the fact that I’m on the road with no printer so solving in AL (which I don’t like doing) and I have cold. *cough sniffle*
I like it because the rebus part itself was difficult. Usually rebuses fall easily for me. Non-theme cluing was also tough – INGA/IGOR mis-direct was great. Cluing LIMERICK via Cranberries might be a little cruel, but I liked it. Only thing that clunked for me as ASPHALTED. Made me think of John McEnroe serving badly.
Tough, but fair puz. Best effort by far that I’ve seen out of this dude. Thumbs up. Like for many others, SW just killed me. Let my guard down, on the fruit-rebus possibilities there. EADIE didn’t help.
First-class clue: “Provider of renewed coverage.”
Fun stuff. Thanks, 44!
How about we see what the sex education teacher was talking about?