ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
The triple stack used to separate the men from the boys. Then crossword construction software became more sophisticated and it wasn’t nearly as hard to do. Oh sure, some pulled off the three at the top, three in the middle, and three at the bottom with another 15 running down the middle of all three stacks. Okay, that was impressive. But the triple stack just doesn’t pop as much as it used to.
And yeah, two of the three Crossword Jesuses as well as Joe Krozel pulled off the quadruple stack in the middle of a 15×16 grid. Those would be an impressive enough feats until Kevin Der humbled everybody with the quad stacks at the top and the bottom. In a measly 15×15. Sheesh. Talk about making the triple stacks really unimpressive.
So yeah, today’s is a triple stack cuz I’m not bat-shit enough to try the quads. But at least they’re 3×16 chunks. Had to try something new, right?
Share the puzzle. New one on Wednesday.
VISWANATHAN ANAND has three consecutive sets of AN’s in it.
Special prize of NOT A DAMN THING! goes to whoever can think of a familiar food with the same quality.
The picture gives it away.
Special thanks to Gaffney for forcing me to read just enough about chess that I not only knew Anand, but also the spelling of his name.
Good puzzle…having SOP instead of SOG in the SSE combined with not knowing the Star Wars reference left me with INDUSTRIALPIANOS until I smartened up.
Matt – you like eating Botswanan antelope? How dare you.
Top three stacks came the easiest then the bottom. That chess dude was all by crosses with one mistake for TAP IN, I had TIP. My only other erase was FOCI for ARCS otherwise pretty clean. I know Gaffney is happy with this puzzle.
The answer, which Brendan got in 15 seconds when I gave it to him, is BANANA NUT BREAD. Since no one got it (or bothered to write it here), I am forced to award myself the special not a damn thing prize.
Anand trivia: here is his infamous six-move loss against GM Alonso Zapata in 1988:
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1018015
This site rocks! I’m psyched that I saw the link on the NY Times crossword blog today. Did today’s puzzle, and loved it.Took me 54 minutes, but the pop up said “Congratulations, You Have Completed The Puzzle!” Yeah, does that mean I filled in all the squares, or that the solution was correct? Just wondering, because a few of my answers look a little iffy?
I decided to try “25 Things About Me” and was pleased enough to knock that out in 23 minutes. Dan F probably did it in 2 minutes 30 seconds. Lol.
Welcome Jim.
I really wanted centripetal to fit in 42A when I had TRIP as part of the answer. It would really have been a cool cluing for the word. Alas, it was not to be. I guess it was just egotripping to think I was really on BEQ’s wavelength.
Matt: In the 2 minutes that I thought about it, all I could come up with was banana n’ peanut butter sandwich. Just knew that wouldn’t fly.
Brendan: I’ve been doing your medium and hard puzzles for awhile now. You truly save me from a Monday full of easy puzzles.
Great construction, fun solve. Being a bit chess-illiterate despite Matt’s best efforts, the middle answer beat me down hard.
I’ve lost in about 10 moves to a 9-year-old kid when I was back in college. Of course, I think he was taking advanced chess classes. Yep, that’s my excuse.
But at least they’re 3×16 chunks. Had to try something new, right?
http://blatherreview.mu.nu/archives/PuzzleFive.puz
Mine wasn’t nearly as good as yours, though, as I stuck in some questionable fill.
Give us a chance! I just did the puzzle (it’s about 9:45 PM EDT), and am reading the comments now. Got banana nut bread pretty immediately. (I recently brainstormed foods with “anna” sounds in them, after my cousin’s friend Anna contributed an “Anna Cotta” to a dinner party. We’ve got all kinds of things lined up for her to bring next, including pineapple, AKA ananas.)
Somewhere, Evgeni Plushenko is putting down BEQ for not putting up the quads. “Without quads, it’s not crosswords, it’s word search.”
What made this hard for me was the essentially random arrangement of letters across the middle. Yes, I don’t follow the World Chess competitions. Top and bottom on the other hand went fairly quickly. Nice puzzle.
Banana was a gimme, and the rest came to me within 40 seconds (after rejecting Banana Nachos)….
Was just thinking to myself “There must be an awful lot of untapped words that are 16 letters long to make themelesses with…” Yup! and there’s some good’uns here too. Quite a few unfamiliar names, not least that dude in the centre (though I know enough about Indian names to recognize Viswanath – which saved me @ crossing with RISON)
Great puzzle. I had assumed the 5D clue Florescent was a misspelling of Fluorescent, but Merriam-Webster straightened me out. Who said crosswords couldn’t be educational? No one. That’s right.
Chess champ ANAND was in a puzzle recently, which was the only reason I knew that answer. My favorite clue was 65A [Cranes may be perched here]–since the birds don’t really perch, CONSTRUCTION SITE popped into mind. I think it was a miracle.
Had EGOTISTICAL, which had to be unraveled almost at once, but the two long answers helped this puzzle open up like a flower. Hand up for ARCS before FOCI. And I thought Bear Bryant wore a fedora a lot, too…
This puzzle was just a jewel.
Ellipses have foci. Circles have centers.