ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ SCREEN DUMPS]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ SCREEN DUMPS]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
Much like a lot of my rambling stories, I generally have no idea where a puzzle is going to end up once I’ve started it. Sure, when I start I’ll know what the theme is going to be and as I’m designing the black and white pattern around the answers I’ll have a sense of what the word count might be. But I won’t have any idea of what the fill might be.
That’s not to say that I won’t know what some of the fill might be. For instance with today’s puzzle, I knew that I’d wanted 1-Across to be that answer so I designed the fill and pattern around that. But generally it’s a bit of a suprise what things come up as I’m filling in stuff.
There are times when filling in the grid, where I notice I might be able to fit in some either really eye-popping Scrabble-y letter combination word or phrase. And generally, once that “aha moment” occurs, nothing shall stand in my way in order to cram that entry in the grid. If there’s a way that WIIITIS has a potential home in one of my puzzles, silent movie actress be damned, she’s going in there to make the fill work.
Interestingly enough, I find that the places where a lot of these new and exciting entries appear are in the fill spanning two (or more) theme answers. I’m sure that other constructors notice that trend as well. I recall one puzzle where I noticed that I could fit BILL HICKS in the fill, spanning across two locked-in theme entries. Well, once I noticed that, there was no going back. I was going to fit that entry in the grid, goddammit. Ripped the whole grid apart, actually. And that saved an otherwise mundane puzzle involving phrases using punctuation marks. (For those keeping score at home, I clued the Hicks entry as “Comic to whom Radiohead dedicated their album The Bends.“)
Cluing (really one of the most thankless parts of puzzle composition) can yield moments of wonderful I-can’t-believe-those-two-entries-lined-up-right-next-to-each-other moments. Last Friday’s New York Times puzzle, for instance, had consecutive down answers QUART and PINT, yielding the consecutive clues “Two 55-Downs” and “Half a 52-Down.” (Retyping those clues leads me to this bizarre side tangent: Friends of mine were in a band called Barbaro. The B-side on their wonderful 7″ [buy it here] is titled “Two Boozlers and Half a Poundstone.” I’m sure the title meant something at the time.)
It’s amazing to me: when I sat down to write this ramble, I was fully expecting at some point to go on about the breakfast test, but here I am, going off about Bill Hicks and my friends’s obscure metal band. Maybe the randomness that happens in the stream of consciousness, also happens while making a puzzle. It certainly seems that way. Whether this is a product of the rules of puzzlemaking, or the scientific fact of how the mind works, the moral remains: you don’t want to be in this mind.
Okay, enjoy this one. New puzzle and rant on Monday.
Tough one, all right! A few letters seemed out of place to me: I’m not familiar with the term ON A LINE (as opposed to IN a line) and ARIOSI seems to be a plural noun.
Still, there were plenty of pleasures to be had. TESH, KOHLS, YOU WHAT, DOWNSIZE, SO I GATHER, SAVAGES, POTATOE and USERIDS were all fun little victories. At first I thought CNN featured Wolf SPITZER, a strange case of getting the newsmen mixed up with the news.
I doped out the theme early– I’d been expecting you to try something like this fairly soon :)– but MITSUBISHI TVS still took forever.
The peek into your approach is interesting, too. Lately, I’ve just been trying to make sure that most of the answers aside from the theme answers are B-level or C-level, rather than risk a few D-levels for an A-level. But creative clues like the “Entourage” bit might be able to resurrect some of the old D’s. Just as long as I can limit my EPEEs and ARIAs to one each per twenty puzzles.
That NE took me as long as the whole rest of the puzzle. CEDE (for CAVE) was a big part of the problem.
Love the freshness of YOU WHAT!? and the historically valid misspelling of POTATOE. Keep up the good work.
RP
[Gasp!?]
Let me guess…You were holiday shopping and saw a sign for a sale on a particular TV brand and you were off and running. Fun puzzle. Love your site.
Nice…
Loved the puzzle. It really flowed from region to region, which was somewhat of a surprise given the narrow channels @ CAMEO, KITES. Often this layout ends up solving like a bunch of little puzzles.
Cluing of GEESE was great (Where to get down). Wrote DISCO in and was positive.
Thanks for sparing us the breakfast test lecture. IMAO the theme is the least interesting part of the puz and the theme content the least interesting part of the theme. Best part, getting S-H-I-T out of SHI-T, SH-IT, and S-HIT
ON A LINE in the context of PHONES. Of COURSE. (faceslap)
Question: Have you made the judgment that smallish duplications in fill are fine, or did you just not notice the GET in IGETIDEAS crossing GETSHITCHED and the SET in SET/SUBSETS? I suspect you saw the SETs since SET is clued as that Egyptian god.
Nice work making a 70-word themed puzzle with mostly longish Across answers, Brendan.
In NY, people wait “on” line to get into a movie…the rest of you wiat “in” line.
Tough going in the Northeast.
Love to have the bonus puzzle at the end of the week. Thanks.
I was once told that I look like Bill Hicks.
Man I wish that guy was still alive!
BEQ is making three puzzles a week and giving them away for free. Is it really necessary to pick nits? Just say thank you, people.
Nitpickers keep constructors on their toes, which is why we like them!
Nitpicking is part of the process! Keep the nits coming.
Amy: The mini-repetitions are kinda accidental. But at the same time, I once sold a Times puzzle with like three ON A whatever phrases. So I guess if folks like Will look the other way, it’s probably okay.
“Where to get down.” Man oh man, that’s some funny shit.