ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
Couple two three quick hits for the morning. Let’s do this.
- Back and rested. The holidaze were good, thanks for asking. Sort of late on this photo but whatever: thats me up there just before York City thrashed Mansfield 3-0 on Boxing Day. Stood behind goal with 4000 other football lunatics, they hadn’t filed in yet as evidenced by the seas of empty seats. Good times, overall (football and otherwise).
- Speaking of late: I got this link over the weekend, so I thought I’d post it now. My Visual Thesaurus puzzle went up last week. Better late than never, right? Do it: here.
- To be filed under the “Whoa” department: rest in peace Dan Naddor. I first noticed Dan’s puzzles when I restarted doing the L.A. Times crosswords mid 09. It was kind of hard to miss him, he appeared pretty much every week. Never got a chance to meet him, but I remember he pinch-hit for Amy one day on her Crossword Fiend blog and spoke rather highly of my crossword. Dan died of complications from cancer treatment last Tuesday. He will be missed.
- Heads up: we’re only six weeks from Valentine’s Day, so if you’re thinking of giving your loved one a custom puzzle, talk to me.
- Thanks to all who were able to give in last month’s drive. Dr. William Jent of Austin, Texas wins the BEQ.com gift item.
Share the puzzle. New one on Wednesday.
man, i flew through the left side of this puzzle thinking ‘hard?’ and then the right side killed me. i don’t really like the clue for TESSERA. from what i can tell a tessera is one tile. i think short and direct feels off for NEAREST as well but that might just be me. i did like seeing HASHTAG, FREEMIUM, UNFRIEND, IN THE BAG and BIRTHER. all very fresh, even if the BIRTHER/CZARIST combo made me think of glenn beck.
Holy crap that was tough. I didn’t know SACCADE or HASH TAG (guessed it was PATH TAG) and didn’t get HAND OFF either (d’oh).
Mean guy! But I see Reynaldo did it in less than half my time with presumably no errors so perhaps I’m just dense today.
Pretty tough. Didn’t help that I went with HANDJOB instead of HANDOFF.
You really stumped me with “Modern-day political skeptic” for BIRTHER. “Modern-day batshit” would have been much easier.
41d – Short and direct. That clue is a bit off, isn’t it? Nothing about a superlative, or even a comparison…
no way! ha.
i thought it was tough too. i looked at my completed grid just now and wondered what FAR MAID meant.
I agree. The answer should have been TESSERAE or the clue should have said something like “part/piece of a”.
Now I am wondering if noseshot, tongueshot and fingershot are words.
I too think that the “nearest” clue was misleading even though I got what you meant. Consider, “On Mars the nearest bar is 100 million miles away”. That is not close.
@MG, couldn’t have described the level of difficulty any better without recourse to the F word. Wow, what a workout.
In contrast to @Justin’s experience, I first got traction in NE with ICEAX crossing ZEREX crossing CZARIST (had ISH briefly, but came to my senses)and was able to work my way down most of E. Then, apparently, the Thorazine kicked in.
Several snags. 26A JugHEAD? BAND? Hmmm. Oh, WINE (does anyone who does crosswords also drink that stuff?). Also started with gems such as 33d AMP, 44A JET, 17A GOODJOB, 19A RUN (lost the flip of that coin).
And so it went. 20 minutes in, with more than half the white squares unbesmirched, I hit Check. 10 minutes later I succumbed to the siren song of google, which gave me 1A HASHTAG (#@%#*&??!), 23A OMAR (I wanted DRUM sooo badly), 59A ACEROSE (huh?! Oh, Botany), and 4D HRE (brutal, but good, unusual clue). So I did eventually finish. But, geez.
Favorite clue of the day, 50A “Showroom?”. Nice indirection. Only clue cavil other than TESSERA was with 44A “Boeing craft” = SST. If memory serves, they never even finished their prototype. Anyone know for sure?
Having TRUTHER for 56-Across slowed me down for a bit, but overall this was one of my fastest themeless solves ever. Got HASHTAG, FREEMIUM, UNFRIEND, and WOZNIAK just from the clue with a minimum of crossings, and had early footholds for most of the puzzle.
I could see TRUTHER being clued as “Honest person”, or something of the like, in a more mainstream venue.
Weird, I thought this was one of your easiest “Hards” ever. Being on Twitter helped — HASHTAG was a gimme, then GLEE CLUB, and on and on across the top and down the east. Only problem was in the vicinity of SACCADE and FREEMIUM, where I had to poke around a bit and be patient. But otherwise, hot knife + butter. Nice work.