ACROSS LITE PUZZLE:
[ THEMELESS WEDNESDAY]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS WEDNESDAY]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
I was cruising through Bob Klahn’s book whilst “watching” the Oscars on Sunday. Okay, let me clarify. Liz had the Oscars on in the background and I wasn’t cruising through the Klahn book. I certainly was solving as fast as I could, though. Some good stuff. I took the grid pattern today’s puzzle from that book. I kind of liked how it was really just one long puzzle weaving through the 15×15 square.
Oh, and for whatever it’s worth, one of my test-solvers had nearly 75% of the grid filled in in ninety seconds, while the last corner took nearly four and a half minutes. Hate the game, don’t hate the player. I don’t think the others felt it was easy.
Share the puzzle. New one on Friday.
Maybe I was just on your wavelength here, but usually when BEQ says hard I’m looking at a long slog, but I was through this in a BEQ-medium sort of time.
Love 6A, mainly because it’s fun to say out loud.
I also must have been on your wavelength… this may well be the first (and only) time I ever beat Amy on a puzzle labeled “hard…:
Some really good fill…
Agree that this was MUCH easier than previous BEQ “Hards” for me. No, wait, it’s that I’m getting better! Yeah, that’s the ticket. Don’t get silenta, will have to google…
Please ignore the reference to silenta above. I’m just toopid.
Was it ever called Al’s? I thought Al took over from Arnold but kept the name of the diner.
Or maybe I’m just SORE AT you because I put WISconsin.
Very fun one — NW and SE corners are pretty.
And nice job getting BIGELOW in there so quick.
Beautiful grid, nice fill, fun clues – a great ride. But if I can finish it in 8:37, either it’s a Mard, or my solving skill jumped two levels in a day.
Easy puzzle. Who told you “challenging?” NAIRA and SAIS were WTFs, but … easily gettable from crosses.
Yo, are those Klahn puzzles all new!? Please say ‘yes.’ I’m gonna buy five and give several away if they’re new. Maybe even if they’re not, but Definitely if they’re new.
Longo’s Cranium-Crushers and his Vowelless are the only books I solve from regularly, and I’m almost done with the former.
I mean, “Who told you HARD?”
I dunno if they are new or reprints, but they’re tough.
The test solver who won the B division did it in 90 seconds. Everyone else thought it was brutal. I will admit, that they had unfair clues in the SE that were changed up, slightly.
The Klahns are reprints of CrosSynergy Sunday Challenges from the last 10+ years. So, new to most of us. (But not NYT-difficult.)
Closer to Medium today, I thought.
yeah that was somewhere between an easy and a medium, although the 90-seconds-then-four-minutes thing happened to me too, but it was the STIEB/ERIES/PENCE what done it (with an assist from MELINDA/BELINDA). whatever clues you changed up may have tipped the balance.
let me second your praise of the Klahn book. the thing i like about his puzzles, in addition to his WTF cluing, is how un-showy his grids are. a lot of constructors like to put fiendish words in there with lots of scrabble letters, but that actually ends up aiding the solver. in Klahn’s puzzles it’s all Os and As and Ts and Ls, which give no ground, and yet almost no crosswordese and tons of fun phrases (lots of three-word phrases, too, which i don’t see enough of in other grids). he is a genius of understatement.
Oh, I just knew it. I was feeling all smart after getting even the *sports* clues AND 6A (beauty products being something I knew even less about, other than I am allergic to all of them.) Then I check in here and sure enough, Easium. Like MitchS, would prefer to think my skills are improving.
Best miscue: 19A I had ETCHES in there, thinking you weren’t gonna trick ME. But, BEQ, are you one of those people who says ‘itches’ (as in, ‘Itch my back for me,’) when he means ‘scratches?’
Loved the wide open flow of the grid and the fill. Really fun puzzle.
Despite my dead last position on the leaderboard, I also thought it was easier than feared when I saw the Hard rating. As a relatively novice solver, I always find longer entries more time consuming to parse and solve. I never really got stuck anywhere but it still took me quite a bit longer than your typical mediums.
Maybe your puzzles should be rated like golf courses, which have a course rating and a slope rating. The course rating tells you how hard the course is for a scratch golfer, the slope describes the relative difficulty of the course for a bogey golfer compared to a scratch golfer.
@Bretski:
What? now I have to know golf to think crosswordly?
Scratch golfer?
Please: do NOT give them any more ideas!
@ Elaine in AK:
A scratch golfer is someone who averages par. A bogie golfer is someone who averages one over par per hole. However, some courses ameliorate or exacerbate that skill differential. Some things like fewer hazards, wider fairways, shorter rough all favor lesser golfers more than scratch golfers, because presumably the scratch golfers are in the middle of the fairway anyway. In the same manner, “bogie” solvers (like myself) derive a much greater benefit, in terms of solving time, from shorter and more conventional fill than “scratch” solvers (Rex, Joon, et al.).
I thought the analogy apropos, at least regarding my own experience with the puzzle and it’s perceived difficultly versus solving time.
Golf knowledge is certainly helpful in Crossworld, but all the golf knowledge in the world wouldn’t have helped you with the golf clue in todays NYT. 🙂
Thanks, Bretski.
Life suddenly seems much more complicated.
Your explanation is very well-done, and I appreciate it. Now I am just hoping to sandbag someone with my use of ‘scratch golfer.’ Or I would if, that is, I knew someone who plays golf. (My sister-in-law does, but I wouldn’t dare go there.)
I am going to share a secret: re the its/it’s thing. I have written a dozen articles and two books, and EVery time I get to its/it’s I have to stop and parse it out. I swear it: Every Single Time. If I don’t, it’s always the wrong one. It averages out to ten dozen times a day. I hope this is comforting to everyone who reads this.
I appreciate that you took the time to explain the golf things, because it was incredibly generous of you. I admit that I will forget it in the near future, but for one brief shining moment I understood the concept!
See you on the blog…
P.S.
@EVERYONE
AK is Alaska. AZ is Arizona.
I cannot tell you how many posts I get asking how I like it in Arizona. ….or how the weather is in Alaska.
ARkansas….the Invisible State. Like West Virginia, it’s rural, agrarian, poverty-ridden, and little-known. (I am skipping further address of the truly sad Central HS Story, because in maybe 300 years it may be less painful to discuss. I will say that it was merely the flash-point of racism that flourished in all 48 states at that time.) Sorry for the digression… back to Golf!