ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
No frills post for, hopefully, an all frills puzzle. I tried in vain to have no three letter entries in this baby, but it simply would not budge. So, forgive and forget the eight threes, right?
Heads up, my buddy Ethan Friedman started posting monthly puzzles at the Tablet website, so please take a look see at his work, thank you.
Share the puzzle. New one on Thursday.
Hey Brendan, at 6-Down, it’s Die Sonne, not Die sonne.
Oops, make that 8-Down, not 6-Down.
Oh, Die Sonne with a capital S . . . THAT must be why I was stumped . . . .
Not the hardest hard puzzle but still tricky and SEAS (really?) of fun, especially the TV and music stuff. I was SO CLOSE to finishing but I do these on the computer and it’s just way too easy to reveal an answer when I’m temporarily stymied. Should start doing them on paper and work them out – the payoffs are worth it!
Lots to love here, maybe a tad on the MARD side for me. 18A – what a great gimme.
Thought all the cluing in the NW was especially good.
I didn’t get what 17a was about. Given that this was a BEQ puzzle I assumed it was a sexual innuendo. But found this: http://bit.ly/cJ2fYH
It’s possible that I still don’t get it.
@r.alphbunker – Yes, it’s classic sketch that, I think, I first saw on The Electric Company. The page you linked is sort of what I remember. It’s basically “You MUST pay the rent” “I CAN’T pay the rent” etc. until the hero comes in:
Hero: “I’LL pay the rent”
Girl: “My Hero!”
Villain: “Curses! foiled again!”
I’m very disappointed right now that I can’t find an original video of this anywhere online, though there are plenty of re-makes. But I did spend the last hour watching old clips of the Electric Company, so my time was well spent 🙂
Certainly easy for a BEQ themeless but that’s just a testament to how smooth the fill is.
Loved the clues on 9- and 33- down.
I’ll have to mention 53A too. But my favorite is the bugs clue.
Def. hard for me, almost exclusively bec. of the SW. ALPES for ABBEY, and not understanding BETTORS, and not knowing FT LEE at all, pretty much crushed me. Rest was Medium.
[Hard worker?] = best thing in the puzzle.
rp
Ditto on the bugs clue, it took me too long to figure it out. I really wanted LIKEDUH, in fact I blithely filled it in with only the H in place, and had to back-track and erase. Still loving the puzzles, working on managing my withdrawal from three times a week…
Enjoyable puzzle! The answers to 19A and 51A popped into my head right away which helped a lot.
When I saw “Butts of many jokes” I immediately typed in SEYMOUR.
It was all downhill from there.
I smugly put ULALAME in for the obscure and random Poe poem at 54A.
In addition to it being wrong, I spelled it wrong.
Sigh.
Good puzzle, but I think I was on the wrong wavelength today. When I got stuck in the SW, I stopped to say “Hmmm… IUD = Intra uterine device. Too bad none of those is 7 letters.”
Except “uterine”, is, in fact, 7 letters.
Sigh.
Very nice. Like Rex, I got hung up a bit in the SW but getting ALOT and then BETTORS opened it up. Great cluing.