ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS FRIDAY]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS FRIDAY]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
Okay everybody, say the rules of American-style crossword grid construction along with me: 180° symmetry, no more than 1/6th black squares, everything checks and no two-letter entries. Good job, class. And can anybody tell me why those rules are in place? That’s right, they are there to make the constructor’s job harder (and to a lesser extent the editor’s job easier). Slack on just one of these rules and it’s obvious the constructor took the easy way out.
Well, not exactly. I broke the symmetry rule here and debatably made my job harder. Then, of course, the unchecked rule was laid to waste here here and everything worked out fine. Nobody complained. At least not to my face, or in the comments section. Or maybe I deleted all those. I can’t remember.
The moral. You gotta know when to break the rules!
So the above themeless grid has a higher word count than is allowed with most themeless grids. 74 words versus the accepted 72 words. (Hey, Quigley! What gives? I thought you were all on this whole “Moneygridding” kick?) Well, let me explain my motivation. The culprit was 16-Down. There was not supposed to be a cheater directly above it. But alas, I simply could not find a suitably famous person with the same last name as the answer at 16-Down (no spoilers today).
Adding those two black squares meant one of two things had to happen: I had to lose another pair of black squares to keep the word count at 72, or I could just say “fuck it,” and keep the new word count of 74. I opted for the later after a little bit of fudging around. Why? Because I felt I got the cleanest and most-fun fill this way. And isn’t that the point? (I doubt the average solver even noticed.)
Now this isn’t an invitation to raise the word counts across the board (frankly, I think we should lower them, but that’s a rant for another day). I think the idea is that if a puzzle is made better by breaking a rule (and you’re not breaking rules every single damnfool puzzle), it may prove to be a more entertaining solve.
Share the puzzle. New one on Monday.
Excellent puzzle … fun but solvable.
Right away I knew 37-down was RBIS, so with the B there I put in POLICEBRUTALITY (and started mentally composing a complaint comment that whatever it was, it wasn’t brutality).
BOT to TOTES to ESP held me up more than anything, and the middle was embarrassingly hard for me to open up (knowing nothing of the HANS guy, having PSAT in place …).
Nice, blunt clue on WAZOO.
rp
I thought this was a great themeless with exceptionally clean fill. I didn’t even notice the higher word count. The triple stack in the middle more than makes up for it. I would have rated it more of a hard than a medium. I loved the “cross-reference” at 27-D, has anyone done that before? Great stuff, definite 5-star.
Who are Meg and Lois? I didn’t think Lois Lane had a daughter…One of my other problem spots was the crossing PAK and KAEL, too odd names I haven’t heard of (I kinda wish the one had been pahk). But overall a good, tough puzzle. I’ll look up Skip Gates over the weekend.
Found this one easy compared to how I normally do on yours. Like Rex, the BOT/ESP/TOTES bit was the toughest, and I wound up with a wrong letter at the BO_/_OTES crossing. It was a punt.
I never notice word count or symmetry (maybe because I have one leg shorter than the other) unless somebody points it out. Hell, I usually don’t notice themes unless somebody points it out. I’m one of those people on whom much is lost. I like this one–was proud to get artistic license and insect repellent off just a handful of widely spaced letters.
I struggled SO many places on this, especially in the SE (didn’t help that I had SAUDI for IRAQI).
Doesn’t “KEKE PALMER” pass the fame test for you, Brendan?
Keke Palmer is awesome. She was great in that spelling bee movie (Akeelah and the Bee) and she stars in a Nickelodeon series.
Didn’t notice the word count. I like that about half of the triple stack’s crossings are on the long side.
I had everything but the upper right corner in a little over 5 minutes, but drew a blank on that whole corner. Guessed at HANS, guessed TITAN before TEXAN, misinterpreted a bunch of clues there.
Who was that Republican who called Sonia Sotomayor “Maria”? Bastard planted a seed in my head and made me put MARIA there. Luckily, I was saved by the slangy [Anus].
aw, shucks. 🙂 if it’s any consolation, PAHK and PAK are different transliterations of the same name in korean.
i asked brendan the same question about MEG and LOIS. they’re from family guy, which … actually, i guess i did know, but it certainly didn’t get it from the clues.
skip gates is the harvard professor of african-american studies who was arrested in his own home in cambridge for breaking and entering and then disorderly conduct. it was a pretty big incident a few months ago.
i also loved the clue for 27d and 27d. brendan has done that before, i think with YADA (or YADDA). but i’m not sure. in any event, it’s a great, lively clue for what could otherwise be a pretty dull word.
Rex, I had problems in the same area as you. I kept trying to somehow think of a (non-disgusting) way that KOTEX could be a rainy-day brand.
My wife’s name is Marie but living in South Texas she is more often called Maria, both by Anglos and by Hispanics. I’m surprised no one complained about 50D.
i really liked this puzzle, thanks.
Wazoo has to be one of the coolest entries I’ve come across since maybe…forever.
Keep breaking all the rools, BEQ. I love it.
WAZOO wrecked me since it’s a term I hadn’t heard. I like the word, but just wasn’t in my ken. The HANS name was also freaking brutal. That one was double-barreled nasty, as both the clue and the answer had no resonance to me without a heaping dose of Wikipedia.
I got the name referenced in the clue at 39-A, but couldn’t tie it to the correct answer without twisting my brain into a Moebius strip, which was a bit uncomfortable.
That stuff out of the way, the rest of this was a fun, Scrabbly challenge, with lots of ‘aha’s waiting around its many labyrinthine corners. Trivia, trickiness, and some other random bizarro stuff made for a good time.
11-A/13-D – I recognize the golfer now, but never heard of the critic.
Overall, nice fill though.
A little late but, I put the puzzle down for a couple of days and just came back to it to have BOT/TOTES dawn on me. Really liked this one. No idea about HANS, MEG, or LOIS but very gettable from the cross. My only problem is not seeing how ONLAY is a relief?