ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS FRIDAY]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS FRIDAY]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
I heard a couple of you were panicking, wondering where Themeless Monday (or fuck it, even Themeless Wednesday) went. Better late than never right?
I took a week off from solving puzzles this past week. You probably think I’d turned into Bubbles and started pushing a shopping cart around Nantucket, drooling all over myself. Nope, didn’t happen. Or maybe I should say, hasn’t happened. Yet. In fact, I feel pretty damn great.
Liz is utterly dumbstruck. She offered to bring along a couple of puzzle books, but I wouldn’t let her. Actually, she was kind of funny about it. She said she was planning on solving some vowelless crosswords, so she tried to pack Frank’s book. You have to realize this charade is coming from a woman who had never solved one crossword in her life. Anyway, her ploy didn’t work. And my planned puzzle-free vacation stayed in tact.
I’m not going to lie to you: at times it does feel a bit odd. Almost like having a phantom limb. Perhaps the withdrawal is starting to kick in. (For the record: when I Googled “phantom limb,” the above image came up. I don’t know what it means, but it looks awesome.)
Anyway, this week’s themeless. The smart money goes to all who guessed 12-Down was the seed entry. (No spoilers. It’s cool.) Simply could not lose those four cheaters when making this one. I can’t tell if they look bad or not. Favorite clue: 17-Across. Hope you enjoy it.
Just wanted to say you guys are all totally solid. Thanks for the tips. You’re helping keep the BEQ site strong and independent. For those who couldn’t give $5, $10, $20 this month, no worries, you can still help keep us going by simply sending an email to five friends who like crosswords and introducing them to this site. That’s also a big help! Thanks!
Well, like I just said: share the puzzle! New one on Monday, and I’ll announce the winner of a free copy of “Diagramless Crosswords” from those who donated this week.
Love the interlocking 15s in this one. More Medium than Hard for me, though that O’DAY / WAXER section, as well as the NE (VPS and not EDS, argh), took some effort.
Good stuff.
rp
I’m with Rex on the 15s … and the whole puzzle had that positive “seems impossible but slowly reveals itself” quality that’s in a good difficult crossword. Also, I’m a really big baseball fan but I’m almost positive that this is the first time I’ve ever heard of Ralph GARR… though I looked him up on Wikipedia and he’s famous enough to use, but just barely… 🙂
A lot of very fun entries — especially BOTOX INJECTIONS, which also had a nice clue.
“seems impossible but slowly reveals itself” — that kind of sums it up for me. I didn’t get through it all that fast; I never got stuck anywhere, but it kind of fell like a slow domino chain.
I was moving pretty smoothly through this one until I hit the SE. 12-down wasn’t a familiar phrase to me and I didn’t know 53-A or 58-A, so it took a while to work that out. 17-A was my favorite.
Like Al, I’ve never heard of SHOVEL-READY JOBS. Maybe it’s because I live in an apartment, and the only use I’d ever have for a shovel would be to break into my building when I lose my keys…
SISTERS and COUSINS tried to become my bridesmaids first, slowing down the lower end of my grid.
Why, in sports, do we use different forms for the past tense? SNEAKED instead of snuck… In baseball, so-and-so flied out instead of flew out. Is there a grammar thing I don’t get here, or is it just a perculiarity?
I’m with the slow-but-steady crowd on this. It was SE that had me itching for the google button. Couldn’t call up the Camus title, which I certainly should know, and the actress, writer/director and hit song were all completely blanks to me. Then I resorted to analysis–had the N and E for 49D and with a name like Mueller there were only certain answers within “fair” territory. Trying the obvious one got me the Camus and then the whole column fell.
Kudos for 53A BTW. I usually regard the appearance of JAI ALAI in any or form as the sure sign of a C- too-easy-to-bother-with puzzle. You managed to blow that theory out of the water.
OCEANAUT seems a bit of a strainer though….
I think it’s because using the standard past-tense forms breaks the connection with the particular play involved. “He snuck into the end-zone” sounds like a general description rather than a reference to a sneak play, which has a specific meaning.
Much more annoying, to me anyway, are commercial terms that also resist grammatical rules such as the utterly intransigent “Walkman” and “Discman.” What the hell is supposed to be the plural for those? Thank god they’ve been superseded by the iPod.
all those crossing propers in the SE were brutal. had to google. loved OCEANAUT, though, and the 15s were great fun all around. strong closer for the week.
One might lose one’s marbles doing this one.
Very cool looking grid when completed, Brendan. Just a ton of items in here that aren’t ever seen–I mean, LEGLIFTS over OCEANAUT over BOTOX INJECTIONS! Great stuff!
Mark
Very much a relief to finish this one after having my ass handed to me by the NYT Friday.
Thanks as always for the time you spend constructing these for us, Brendan. They’re great.
All the media coverage of Obama’s Stimulis Package’s, and You people have never heard of “Shovel Ready Jobs”?????
What, You just arrived from Mars????
WTF is TEATRO?????
John,
TEATRO is ‘theater’ in Italian. La Fenice is Venice’s opera house.
See, if you had been patient with one of your earlier brilliancies (Lemon aid?), you could have shoved SHOVELREADYJOBS, STIMULUSPACKAGE, and CASHFORCLUNKERS into one puzzle. Damn, HEALTHCARE REFORM is 16!
Italian for theater. Fenice (Phoenix) is the (THE) opera house in Venice.
Ooops, didn’t scroll down and see you’d already answered John. D’oh.