ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ SECOND LIFE]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ SECOND LIFE]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
I know, I know. I see the screaming hordes of crossword maniacs gathering outside the condo brandishing pitchforks and effigies of yours truly. In fact, it was the brick that was thrown through our bedroom window that woke me up this morning. The brick with a note attached to it saying: “UR DED MEET, BЭQ.” Well, to whomever the jerk was who did that, you’ll be hearing from my lawyer, Don Bixtler. Happy Monday, everybody.
I can understand. On Friday, I promised a cryptic for all y’all today, and, what do we have here instead but a garden-variety puzzle? Wait, let’s check that, an easy, but still (insert positive adjective here) garden-variety puzzle. (Much better.) What gives Quigley? Are you being a coquette again? Well, let me explain.
I’ve been making crossword puzzles professionally for 13 years. I’ve since lost count how many of these things I’ve made. It’s like “Watership Down.” One. Two. Thee. Four. Lots. That’s right. I’ve made lots numbers of crossword puzzles. (Anyone with time on their hands who wishes to figure out the exact number, be my guest.) And in that span of 13 years and lots number of crosswords, I’ve yet to make one cryptic. And since I have loads of experience making regular crosswords, I can now make one in the two to four hour range. Apparently, that amount of time isn’t nearly enough for the cryptic. For comparison: when I first started out, the first crossword I ever made (incidentally sold to the New York Times, thank you) took me in the weeks plural range.
(Hey, wait a minute there, Quigley. If you can’t count higher than four like Hazel and Fiver, how do you know you’ve been doing this for thirteen years? Haha! Gotcha!)
… [blinks]
… Okay, point taken. But what I was trying to get across is that the cryptic is taking a little bit longer than I thought. Probably not weeks, though. It’s actually finished, it just needs a little bit more massaging into shape. The moral: shut the fuck up, Quigley, and don’t promise anything you can’t deliver. And don’t make tortured references to children’s literature.
But, whatever. Might as well post this one, featuring one of my idols (srlsy). Enjoy it and share the puzzle folks! Once your done with the puzzle, and you posted your times, and gave me a piece of your mind in the comments, send it on to your acolytes.
O man, how do I spell ADA Lovelace like EDA LeShan at this point in my career? So sad. This puzzle was VERY easy for a BEQ.
Thanks, King.
I knew ATATURK from a Monty Python sketch, The “Eric the Fish” one. “…. Ataturk had an entire menagerie called Abdul” cool puzzle.
hey what happened to hard puzzles on Monday? hmmph. seriously, very nice easy puzzle dude–and I know that’s tough to create. um, who in the puzzle is your idol?
Who said Monty Python wasn’t educational?
If you have to ask, you don’t know.
Friday’s was supposed to be the cryptic, but I swapped it with what was supposed Mondays, but since I still don’t have the cryptic we’re in a holding pattern. (clear as mud?) Also, there’s no hard and fast rule for when difficult puzzles appear with this site (yet). That may change.
Wise choice. There’s no credit for “rubbish on time” when writing cryptic crosswords. I look forward to trying it when it’s ready.
Let’s see…NYT + Time Out + Visual Thesaurus + 3/wk. blog + (number of sports books x 25) + the puzzles I don’t know about = …hundreds. I’ll guesstimate around 500 or 600 BEQ puzzles.
Thanks, Peter. Be sure to tell your mates about this Yankee’s bollocks attempt at setting once it’s all sorted.
Why do those numbers feel like they’re missing a zero?
P.S. Brendan, you need to give a class on the proper construction of quote themes. I think your main lessons will be (1) find a quote with some edge to it, (2) my god, don’t use an old quote, (3) shoot for a shorter quote to avoid a large volume of “gotta work the crossings” stuff, and (4) elevate the fill with more interesting stuff and a lower word count. I’ve enjoyed most of your quote puzzles, whereas I usually loathe quote themes.
Thanks, let’s hit each one on a point for point basis:
(1) agreed
(2) agreed, again
(3) depending … I once fit this quote plus the full name of the source (Phil Rizzuto) in a 15: “I’ll take anyway to get into the Hall of Fame. If they want a bat boy, I’ll go in as a batboy.” That beast had a measly 74 words. And not intentionally too. It was the only way to make the crossings fit.
(4) agreed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkP_OGDCLY0
Brendan,
Your numbers rant reminded me of this clip from Mr Show.
Thanks for another fine puzzle.
Mark
You’re going to make me a quote-puzzle fan yet! Thanks for another great puzzle, BEQ… 50D made me lol
When I think about how good this cryptic is gonna be…. (35A)!
Mr. Show. Hah. Speaking of quote puzzles and Mr. Show, puzzle #2 on this site is a quote from David Cross. http://is.gd/19plN
Just for the record: I don’t hate, and have never hated quote puzzles. Ya gotta find interesting quotes by interesting people to make the puzzle worth doing.
Rex’s blog finally paid off after a discussion of:
ECU, the COIN (coming soon to theatres near you).
CUETIP – wonderful!
That puzzle was a beauty too.
Another nice part of this quotation is that it helped me finish the puzzle: I was blanking out on UNISOM and HELMUT Lang, and being able to infer the ending helped out the last few squares. IWONT for IDONT at 42A also slowed me down.
The 24A clue piqued my interest: the transaction in question was $40M (or $41M according to some web pages) for a Gulfstream Jet using the Gulfstream website.
I’ve started to get a feel for what Easy, Medium, and Hard mean and am not feeling so bad about my capabilites.
A theme for a puzzle that I was thinking of after I got my 1000th “Get longer and better performace” e-mail was spam subject lines. Whether it’s Nigeria, size, computer do your work for you, or horny married women, it is a humorous and fertile opportunity.
Nice one. I got stung by the cross of ALY / TRACY. I guessed ‘I’, and was utterly wrong. No way to suss that one out without a heaping dose of pop-culturey goodness.
Fun quote though.
Mr. Cuban, such a humble personality. Gotta love it.
I couldn’t quite finish. I didn’t know ATATURK (despite many hours with Monty Python), didn’t know ADA (really?), and MSTARS could have been almost any letter-plus-star, so I failed to grok ARMED. But that’s pretty good for me on a BEQ (no obscure bands [well, ALY, but the crosses were solid for me–non-30-Rock-watchers exception noted] or musicians crossing tough stuff). I enjoyed the attempt. Particularly CUETIP and DEWLAP.
What’s still interesting to me about this site is that I sometimes get about halfway through and then remember I need to watch out for swearing or blue humor. This time it never happened (unless you count “IWANTTOCOME”), but sometimes I get held up because I never consider entering something that wouldn’t show up in the newspapers. It’s not meant as a knock, just an observation
I hit the same ALI/TRACI square that Howard B did. At least I’m in good company. I was going to rant about your calling Watership Down a children’s book, but looking at faithful wikipedia I guess it did win some children’s books awards. We read it for ninth grade literature class, and I remember discussions of fascism in the book. Maybe it’s time to reread that book.
Um … AcrossLite said that ALI/TRACI is correct.
Who are they anyway. (No reply needed.)
I got stuck on ALY/TRACY too. Also in the NW, believe it or not, because my knowledge of baseball could fit in a thimble so I tried HOMETAG, and that combined with MOD (squad) just screwed up the corner bigtime. (sigh)
I fell into the same trap as Howard B, but I put a K there, thinking Track looked OK to my damned old eyes. Howard B was smart enough to check the cross. Ack. Solid puzzle, great quote and a mini Billy Joel theme with NOT ABOVE I LOVE YOU reminscent of “Innocent Man.” If Paul Simon has a pithy quote about having his Kodachrome finally taken away after all these years, that might be puzzleworthy. Or not. 🙂 — jesser in NM
BEQ,
How the f*%k does someone possibly solve this in under 5 minutes?
I am a fairly astute xworder, but clearly no where near the level of nerdom, that I need to be. I can only dream.
I did manage to solve the whole puzzle correctly, which is always my goal on any puzzle.
My favorite answer was YODA, as I am a huge Star Wars fan.
“I am Darth Nilus” – Star Wars convention attendee interviewed by Gary Garver on The Howard Stern Show
JJ
You should qualify that easy as in “easy for a BEQ.” I’d put this at a NYT Wed./Thurs. level. Now if you had no idea who MARK CUBAN was this would be a real bear. Loved it BTW.
Well, AcrossLite now favors the Y in ALY/TRACY. Ignore my previous post.
It galls when I need to know the spelling of two bullshit entertainments in order to solve a prominent crossword puzzle.
It helps to read BEQ’s commentary (and his “tweets”) to see what’s on his mind as he develops his next puzzles–TRAMP STAMP and MARK CUBAN both showed up recently on this site before they appeared in his puzzles. It’s like we can get inside his head and see the puzzle construction in process!
This is all too “Being John Malkovich” for me….