ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
This one was a fun one to make. Eventually, when I have more spare time on my hands, I shall solicit more requests for other puzzlemakers to emulate (guestimated date: May 2011). Anyway, I think it's a safe bet that most people could mistake this one for a Dana Motley-esque puzzle. </tongueplantedfirmlyincheek>
While I'm thinking about it, huge kudos to Robert Jones, Caleb Madison, Eric LeVasseur and BEQ.com tech support team member Dave Sullivan for all the lovely answer suggestions I took while making this. I'll leave it up to the reader to decide which entry came from which person.
Oh, and what do we have here up above the blog post? Why yet another in what's turning out to be the popular reader-provided photo essay of BEQ.com fandom. Meet the "Reverend" Mike Lewis and his fellow puzzle-solvers-in-the-struggle. Mike writes: "This is the lunch group at Hudson High (Hudson, IA) working on your recent NYT puzzle. Kevin (dark hair and glasses) is our go-to guy for sports clues, Erin (long black hair) is our non-mainstream music expert, I (short hair and striped shirt) am the guy who gets to work the pencil." Right on, everybody. I count five unnamed folks in that picture, though. Not sure if they wish to remain anonymous, or are key role-players on the bench. Well, anyway, thanks for the snapshot. A communal "Diagramless" book is going out to those folks.
Share the puzzle. New one on Wednesday.
I love the splashy and topical long entries, though I could do without 20A. (Who??) Those are 5-star answers, but they’re balanced out by some 1-star fill (notably, 27D, 34D) and a few clues that seemed off (22A aren’t really “places,” they’re single cells; 42A would be fine as a FITB but seems incorrect as clued).
No quibbles with the “medium” difficulty designation today.
Thanks for using my entry, Brendan! I’ll also leave it up to the reader to decide which one that was…
–CalebM
I really liked this puzzle. 14D’s “launch pad” is about two miles from my house. 20A was a gimme for a baby boomer like myself. The referenced song was an absolute monster hit in 1968. Yes, it’s Muzak, but really beautiful Muzak: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_b6xaVvgeM . Check out Vicky Leandros’ version on YouTube if you want to hear it song in the original French.
Ditto what Caleb said…
Woo! We’re famous!
– The “Reverend” business is because my email address includes “rev” before my name. Technically, I am a reverend; I’m licensed to perform marriage ceremonies in the state of Ohio. Any folks in Cincinnati who want to get hitched: my services come cheap.
– The unnamed folks are: Jan (all the way down at the end), Tracey (next to Jan, munching her nacho), Kim (next to Tracey, looking bemusedly at the puzzle), Kevin (a different Kevin, next to me and hunched over the puzzle), and Mark (with the remains of his lunch and his waterbottle). Definitely key players. Proximity to the puzzle is not directly related to the person’s contribution.
Thanks for our moment in the spotlight!
Maybe you emulate puzzlemakers, but you emASCulated this puzzle-solver with your medium rating. U-TWO! Can you do that? Even after giving up, I kept reading that as UT-WO.
Embarrassing that I had most of SWINE FLU VACCINE, including the U and all of “vaccine,” and still couldn’t complete it. Kept trying to do H-ONE N-ONE or soemthing there.
F-minor–I think that was Albert Collins’s key. He kept his guitar tuned open to some weird chord like that.
20A is piano-hobbyist trivia–instrumental one-hit-wonder that was so easy to play that anyone who could play a little played it. For anyone else, especially the non-old, a definite “Who?” BTW iron oxide does fit the definition of a chemical compound.
too many Bad Crosses™ for my taste: MAURIAT/GALENA (who? whuh?), GANN/GALENA (which? whuh again?), VLAD/LARSEN/NAVE, though i guess “ship” was supposed to smooth this one out. lots of stuff i <3 <3 <3'd, however, including that clue, PANCAKE MIX, the balloon boy, GOING ROGUE, TROU, the clue for CRAZY... PENISENVY made me lol, but seems like it needed a question mark, since it's difficult to imagine that having a literal sense.
Good puzzle, but a couple of bad solver moments. I clung to “drop troW” like my life depended on it. Tick tick tick. And then, when “swine flu vaccine” got me into far west, I quickly filled in 26A and 30A. But as soon as I saw the “UTW_”, instead of even looking at the 39A gimme I brain-locked on WTF UTW could possibly be. Tick tick tick. 45 minutes… I will now go eat the LA Times for comfort food.
7D is the funniest thing I think I’ve ever seen in a crossword puzzle. Great one!
Just wanted to say that after this weekend, I wanted JOE KROZEL for [Stack maker], but it wouldn’t fit. Thanks for the puzzle 🙂
I know iron oxide is a compound, but what I’m wondering is: Is it kosher to refer to a generic OXIDE as an “iron compound”?
Nearly unsolvable for me. UTWO should not be legal at all. It’s truly terrible, not their name, and you must know this. Middle of puzzle was also disastrous for me, but that’s on me. Two ores?? Bleh. Had BALLOON and still had no idea … IST? That said, I figured it all out. But perhaps the least pleasant BEQ I’ve solved in a while. GOING ROGUE were nice (also supereasy, so puzzle felt really uneven — by contrast, WTF is PAUL MAURIAT?!). GANN? No idea. MAZY, meh. WIVED, ugh. Since it’s not technically called SWINE FLU VACCINE, I actually considered pulling it when middle and west wouldn’t work for me. A bad day to be me solving this puzzle.
rp
Great puzzle, although I didn’t know the bandleader which slowed everything down. I wrote XENA in without looking at any of the crosses, somehow just knowing it would be correct.
Whoops, PENIS ENVY should precede GOING ROGUE in above post. Also, BANYANS? Mother of pearl, uncle!
Indeed. Any compound of oxygen and another element is an oxide.
oof, no way was that a medium! fun but brutal.
Groaned at UTWO, too. But, overall, I thought this was a great one.
I guessed OXIDE right away, but I can see Amy’s point. The correct answer for the clue [Iron compound] would be IRON OXIDE, not simply OXIDE. But, then again, I think this type of clue-answer works great with, say, [Crepe variety] cluing SUZETTE. I wouldn’t have a problem with that at all, so maybe the OXIDE clue is just fine, too.
Wracked my brain for a bit to remember Les ASPIN and Natty GANN. Didn’t know Chris MARTIN but, with a few letters in place, it was guessable. (At least his name isn’t MAURIAT or something.)
And in the different solver = different solving experience department: With only the “g” in place, GALENA was a gimme for me since it’s often used in crosswords as a clue for ORE ([Galena, e.g.] e.g.).
And love love luv the clue for Don LARSEN!
Actually it just occurred to me that it’s the word “variety” that makes the difference in the crepe/suzette example, and that OXIDE’s clue could simply be changed to [An iron compound]. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Oh, and thank you BEQ for using one of my suggestions! 🙂
In 5D, how does ‘Distinctly’ translate to ALOUD?
WIVED? Really.
(anyletter)SU? Really.
This one BLOWS. I liked this one NOT VERY MUCH. The BOORS that should have been BLOWS agree. XENA can RAZE this one any time. However, I know I’m probably GOING ROGUE with my opinion.
I don’t feel as bad reading the posts, since I found this one difficult and needed lots of help to finish. I agree felt very uneven on some of the fill at a certain point I called Uncle. When I saw MAZY and WIVED, I didn’t feel so bad.
Finally – muscial clues that were gimmes. I knew if I worked these long enough you’d get around to some stuff that I knew. Paid off nicely. I had a lot of laugh out loud moments solving this. Most enjoyable!
I thought Falcon Heene sounded like a football player, or maybe a badminton boy. I don’t think I’ve heard his real name (and certainly didn’t seek it out). I agree with Orange re OVA, wouldn’t sperm be just as (in)valid an answer? I’m sure if Kevin were helping me he could tell me that Don LARSEN’s license plate refers to: “the no-run, no-hit, no-error line score from his perfect game” from [sometime before I was born]. In conclusion, I <3 BEQ.
I actually really enjoyed this one, despite forgetting the composer’s name. However, this sucker was on the Hard scale of my personal difficulty rating, probably one of the 5 or 10 hardest of BEQ’s I’ve done.
Loved the fill though, for whatever reason it just hit me the right way. Surprises around every corner.
Gotta defend Mr. Q on this one. Re “wive” as a verb, see e.g. Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” (yeah, that should be in italics, but how?), wherein Petruchio comes to Padua to “wive and thrive”.
Knew it was Palin’s book immediately, but didn’t know the title. The R got me ROGUE, and the rest followed quickly after.
In this neck of the woods, GALENA is a shopping destination, not a mineral. That one took us a lot of crosses.
Mistakes we made along the way: the -CINE made us put in MEDICINE for the end of 36A, which held us up for a while. We had SPCS for NCOS, and after fixing that, I stubbornly insisted on PANCAKE MAN, which completely boned us for the SW. Kind of a train wreck for our solvers, but we made it in the end. PENIS ENVY really is good enough to make the entire puzzle worth it, isn’t it?