ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ BEQ’s TOP FIVE ALBUMS OF THE ’00S]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ BEQ’s TOP FIVE ALBUMS OF THE ’00S]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
This one might be dead easy if we listen to similar music, or if you ever saw shows with me, or if we were roommates once. This one might be nigh-impossible if none of those apply to you, or if you’ve never heard of any of this stuff before. So, how do I rate this one? Easy? Hard? Medium? A portmanteau of all three words? No, instead: put your hands together for another BEQ.com debut: the “???” difficulty rating. Enjoy!
Oh, and I’m a total jerk. I should have put some spoiler space above the picture as I’m holding up a copy of 17-Across in that blurry picture up above. Forgive me.
Well, since I guess I’m already giving away some of the answers, here’s some YouTube links of the material: #1, #2, #3, #4, and #5. Relive the ’00s with me.
Quick thought: Thanks to all who were able to give a little bit to the tip jar so far. Every penny helps immensely toward keeping this site independent and running smoothly (have I mentioned my laptop died and needs replacing?) Any tip is a way of saying thanks for the puzzles this month (or year). And again, I will give any object from the BEQ.com store (t-shirt, mug, you name it) to one randomly selected donor. Thanks again.
Share the puzzle. Tell me how amazing my taste in music is in the comments section. (Or, conversely, tell me how much it sucks or what I missed.) New puzzle on Friday.
Man, this is my kind of puzzle. I’m not huge on the Dizzee Rascal or Streets records and I haven’t heard that particular Fiery Furnaces record. I will get on that. Since I Left You and Illinois are both ledfloyd approved.
My list: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Kid A, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, The Blueprint and Sea Change
None of these are in the puzzle!
Fun puzzle, even if I hadn’t ever heard of these bands.
For me, it’d be (in no particular order):
Yonder Mountain String Band – Mountain Tracks: Volume 3
Bela Fleck and the Flecktones – Live At The Quick
Phish – 2/24/03 Concert (not released as an album, but available for download from their website – hey, I make my own rules!)
Gov’t Mule – The Deepest End
They Might Be Giants – The Else
It took me forever to figure out the meaning of the 42A clue. I love that one. And RLESS is priceless. Thanks for the puzzle, BEQ!
I think mine would be Ys, Mirrored, Apologies to the Queen Mary, Funeral, and Merriweather Post Pavilion. Pretty predictable. I’d take Blueberry Boat over Widow City, too.
nigh-impossible. The last of my top five albums came out around 1975, maybe 1980. But fun, nonetheless.
Happy new year!!
If I had put, say, the top 10 in a puzzle, “Kid A” easily makes it. I love Beck, but the early stuff’s where it’s at (pun intended). Love the story behind the Wilco one, but, the record kinda left me cold.
First 2.5 TMBG albums are essential listening.
If I had put, say, the top 10 in a puzzle, “Merriweather Post Pavilion” easily makes it. Joanna Newsom probably would make it if it was the top 25,000,000.
Not the top five of all time, Lon, just the ’00s.
Surprised how quickly I ran through it despite, shall we say, a disparity in our musical tastes. Ironically, the “music” clue I had the toughest time with wasn’t one of the themers, as I had to stare at “LAZY E” for a bit to realize where I’d erred….
i’ve heard most of those albums but none of them were memorable for me, so i put them out of my head — which made this a fun solving experience in spite of it! top five of the ’00s? hard to say. overmars’s ‘born again’ is probably on there. and definitely ‘choirs of the eye’ by kato dot (that’s top 10 *ever* in my book.) and if i could submit andras schiff’s 8cd recording of beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas as a single entry, i might do that. probably one of supersilent past three records would rate. um…the sea and cake’s ‘everybody’?
Wow! Major adventure in SWAGing and “learning opportunities”. Loud applause from the over-fifty-five demographic. Know roughly nothing of indie, punk, etc., as my ’00s sound more like Audioslave, Breaking Benjamin, Chickenfoot, Finger Eleven, Foo Fighters, Hurt, Nickleback, Saliva, Seven Mary Three, Shinedown, etc. But except for one “Check” when I got stuck late in the game, which caught me with EMO instead of guess #2 SKA, was able to work through the puzz “pretty quickly” (keeping in mind that the operant metaphor for my normal solving speed is cold molasses).
What kept this one out of NO-EFFING-WAY-HARD territory for me was how forgiving most of the fill was. Never heard of AVALANCHES, SUFJAN STEVENS, DIZZEE RASCAL, FIERY FURNACES, or THE STREETS, but all were gettable from the crosses. Only snag was my reflexive NO SHIT for 18D. Saved by SOLOMON and KARL.
And, as usual, some really interesting cluing. Fav’s were “Like a Boston accent”, “‘Long’ amount”, and “Give me a hand”. Stared at 42A ANT_ thinking WTF?. Tick tick tick. RED ANT finally filled it, but I was still in WTF paralysis for maybe ten seconds before it clicked. Still trying to figure out where Doh! stops and Aha! starts.
Only cavil was “Met shot” for OPERA, where the connection seemed tenuous. Aren’t AUDITIONS usually how you get a SHOT at performing on stage?
@Eric Maddy and @*David*, thanks for the help with “Office Space” and “10 gem”.
I have never heard of these groups, these albums, or the music therefrom….but I did enjoy the puzzle and surprised myself by getting most of it! No Googles! That in itself is amazing to me, though it does account for my DIZZLE and LAZY E answer, which I take it is wrong. (I was also convinced that SUFJAN was not correct, but it was all I could make work in the crosses.)
I do not get 42A AN EE? ANE E? A NEE? Please, someone– kindly enlighten me.
Never heard of any of the bands, so I give it a medium, except for the middle west (hard). Couldn’t get past LAZYE and LITTLE RASCAL.
Most of the videos were unwatchable, except for Streets and Avalanches. I just added an Avalanches station to Pandora (they sound very Propellorheadish).
Thanks for a great year, and check your tip jar today.
42A: ANTE (as in poker hand)
A “long” amount (44D) is a TON
Yeah… I do appreciate these more personal puzzles, I guess. Just tough to fathom out – only one I’d even heard of was DIZZEE/RASCAL; got that right away, despite only hearing the singles. The rest of the puzzle was well designed to make the puzzle workable, if frustrating, and there were one or two thorny letters. Loved the in-jokes of IFATTY and the new ULEE clue!
@Lit.doc: putting my hand up for Hurt (probably Vol. 2…)
BTW, not so sure SKA is a punk sub-genre. It’s more an independently developed genre that has a habit of being fused with punk, thanks to Specials wannabes (though that’s probably being overly dismissive.) And no, the above diatribe should not be used as a clue, at least not as is.
PEDANT for “Hill pest” seemed so right.
I stopped listening to new bands some time in the late ’80s/early ’90s. Except for King Missile, of course.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8HLgRZXEl8
I wonder if they’ve made any new CDs in past ten years.
I had heard of all the bands but one was faintly in the recesses of my mind(AVALANCHE). DIZZIE RASCAL and THE STREETS toured together as I remember almost going to see them because I did like The Streets. This selection of Top 5 would definitely not hit my sensibility which is more alt-rock indie but I get it as opposed to Wilco and Mr. Tweedy that holds no interest to me at all.
I’d go with any 5 of the re-mastered Beatles’ albums.
D’oh. Thanks, Philip. I had EONS, which kind of worked… I can’t make Solutions show up on my computer, so I can never find my errors unless the Comments uncover them for me.
Like Lon and others I stopped paying attention in the late 70s/early 80s so I knew none of the groups/artists. However, the puzzle was a doable medium/hard because of the crosses and some inferring. I also didn’t get the clue for OPERA? Liked the puzzle.
Love the Avalanches, could do without Dizzee Rascal, and need to familiarize myself with the other three.
I can never come up with a definitive Top 5 list, but here are some of the albums from the past decade that have been stuck in repeat in my CD player or iPod:
“Sonic Jihad” by Snake River Conspiracy (2000)
“Beautiful Garbage” by Garbage (2001)
“A Hundred Days Off” by Underworld (2002)
“Basic Glee” by Richard X. Heyman (2002)
“Funeral” by Arcade Fire (2004)
“The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place” by Explosions in the Sky (2004)
“Cexcells” by Blaqk Audio (2007)
“School of the Arts” by School of the Arts (2007)
“Seek Magic” by Memory Tapes (2009)
In addition, “Kid A” (2000), “Hail to the Thief” (2003) and “In Rainbows” (2007) by Radiohead have all also taken turns in my heavy rotation.
I’m sure if I were to sit down in a day or two and think about it, I’d come up with another dozen.
When I got RASCAL I was afraid that Rascal Flatts was going to be in your top five… luckily I figured it out.
EASY to MEDIUM. Even if you don’t know these obscure bands and artists. Or perhaps they are obscure a mere 8 years on.