ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ GETTING EXTRA C-R-E-D-I-T]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ GETTING EXTRA C-R-E-D-I-T]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
Oh yeah, Paste magazine finally started running the puzzle. For those who are already at Bonnaroo, you can get complimentary copies there. For those who weren’t brave enough to attend, click here and knock yourself out.
Keeping this one extremely short today.
In the odd chance you didn’t already notice, I’ve added a difficulty badge at the headers of each of the puzzles. Hopefully that helps the ambiguous nature of what level of difficulty you might expect on any given day. Also later on today, I hope to be sorting puzzles by type in the middle column. (Once I get around to figuring out the kinks of the HTML programming.)
Side bar: way back when when I went to UNH I fully intended to get a degree in computer science. I was pretty confident I was going to be a video game designer. But it turned out programming wasn’t really my bag. So I unceremoniously ended my computer science career on what I felt was a remarkable note: the grade I received for my last class was identical to the programming language I supposedly learned: C+(+).
Who would have predicted I’d be back at it (semi-)hardcore?
Okay. Hope you enjoy this one. Oh, while I’m here: I have this Sunday’s New York Times puzzle as well (I’ll throw up a link here when it goes live). Update: Just got it: Nab the Across Lite file or printout. All BEQ, all the time.
I am excited for the XL BEQ on Sunday. I have been doing the puzzles in the Times every day since 2005. I sadly did not pay attention to the constructor until about a year ago. Now I have constructors I love, one’s that I do not like so much, and even one’s who frustrate the hell out of me (I am looking at you Trip Payne, grr…)
Also, I saw your Boston Red Sox puzzle book in a ‘middle of nowhere’ grocery store (Stafford Springs CT). If you are in a po-dunk place like that, I think you have officially made it.
How’s that phrase go? “If it plays in Stafford Springs, CT?”
Whew that was a tough one! Nice since today’s NYT was such a breeze. Loved clue for 1A. And I had no clue what the answer to 34A waas until I got the crossings–but then it was nice to see a new clue for that hoary old standby.
Avg BEQ difficulty for me, but that middle f’d me up. Convinced my self that 38A was riffing on KEN DOLL (!?) and had KIND DOLL. Plus 35A was just really hard to see (ACT UP). Also spelled ICHOR wrong (ICHER?) and have never heard of BRIDGE WHIST (?).
[Silver dollar covering] is my fav clue
rp
This was way easier than Wed. where the joke bordered on being a non sequitur and I’d never heard of Patton Oswalt or the 2d game which I missed by one square. This one me likey! Oh, and its not that I hated Wed. It was just way out of my wheelhouse and I still only missed it by a square, which means it was actually pretty doable.
not feeling ASY ACCESS for either EASY ACCESS or EASY AXIS. am i missing something?
as a bay area native, i loved seeing BRIDGE TWIST. in my high school physics class we watched footage of various bridge collapses due to wind-gust resonance, like the tacoma narrows bridge footage shown here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0Fi1VcbpAI&feature=related
in one (which i couldn’t find on YT), a gentleman is shown walking down the center line of the bridge as the edges whip up and down on either side of him, which my teacher showed us to demonstrate nodal points in standing waves.
Scooper, one of my Crossword Fiend readers figures the E one began as Z-axis. I couldn’t for the life of me figure that one out either. That bridge twisting footage is insane.
I got about 2/3 of this one but couldn’t solve it because the long answers I had — CHARIOTLANE and HARDICHOR — both have most of the letters of CREDIT, so I thought the theme had something to do with rearranging or dropping those six letters within each answer.
PS the “difficulty badge” is alarmingly phallic. The fact that it’s red and says “HARD” underneath it isn’t helping.
ALBAS! Does Jessica have a sister?
I really enjoyed the clue for 1D. Once I figured it out.
Frankly, I still don’t get the theme.
I appreciate the (phallic) difficulty meter. Knowing that this one was hard going in made it easier not to panic when I bogged down in the middle (though arguably it’s more of a challenge to go in not knowing what to expect).
It amuses me to have it pointed out that Hunter Thompson and Harry Truman have the same initials.
@Craig: The theme is tricky and takes some hard thinking. Each of the six theme answers had a successive letter of CREDIT added to it, and then changed homophonically into a wacky phrase:
Harriet Lane + C = CHARIOTLANE
eiderdown + R = RYDERDOWN
z-axis + E = EASYAXIS
kind of + D = KINDDOVE
hard core + I = HARDICHOR
bridge whist + T = BRIDGETWIST
(Hat tip to Orange’s blog http://crosswordfiend.blogspot.com/ for helping me understand the first and last of these.)
I have to agree with Joon’s comments over on Crossword Fiend, that I don’t find the way that the letters of CREDIT were added to be consistent. R, D, and T seem consistent with each other in that they are simple phonetic additions of their respective consonant sound to the representations of the original phrases. E and I are added as long vowels. But then that C is just weird.
Also the fact that the sound added floats from the beginning in the first three theme entries to the middle of the second three also comes off as odd.
And never in a million years would I have thought of Harriet Lane. *shrug*
LOL, didn’t get EASY ACCESS either; it doesn’t help that where I’m at we say “zed” no it doesn’t.