THEMELESS MONDAY: [ ACROSS LITE][ PDF]
PROGRAMS: [Across Lite] [Adobe Reader]
Another Monday, another Themeless Monday. The hits keep coming.
Looking for more puzzles? The Hub Crossword (Sunday puzzles by me and Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon) and Marching Bands year six have begun. So if that To Do list needs even more puzzles, you know what to do.
Share the puzzle. New one on Thursday.
Naticked on both 47 and 48D at 57A. 41D, well done. And another Beck reference (sort of). Cool puzzle!
Get out of here with your 41D.
Is that a name or a bad Scrabble hand?
I had the same Natick. Now the Across Lite link won’t work, so perhaps an adjustment is being made.
Never heard the word “noddle” before, so beyond me. Good use of ambiguity I guess, but falls kind of flat….
BEQ: you knew that word? Or might it’ve been supplied by a crossword puzzle generator ? Just curious.
Any idea whether Musk meant anything with that name ?
I wrote NOODLE, which got me nowhere.
Yeah, it didn’t work for me for a while, but it’s better now. Also, I emailed Brendan, and he sent me the file.
The “A-12” (or A-XII – California doesn’t let you include numbers in a child’s name) is pronounced “archangel” in reference to Musk’s favorite airplane.
I was joking on Twitter about who would be the first to put the poor child’s name in a crossword puzzle. (My guess was Sid Sivakumar. I was right!)
P.S.: Hooray, a pangram! (Actually, I thought you were attempting a double pangram, what with 21/23/41 Down. Alas. Nope.)
Looks like Musk caught the “celebrity virus” which starts by giving your children ridiculous names.
57A was really hard for me, too (never heard of NODDLE) but I don’t think it can be called a “Natick”. Rex Parker’s original description of his “Natick Principle”: (https://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/2008/07/sunday-jul-6-2008-brendan-emmett.html) was, “If you include a proper noun in your grid that you cannot reasonably expect more than 1/4 of the solving public to have heard of, you must cross that noun with reasonably common words and phrases or very common names.”
DIR. (director) being a common noun that pretty everyone knows, this crossing doesn’t meet the criteria of the Natick principle. Indeed, I didn’t know 47-D and 48-D either, but I was eventually able to complete the puzzle, which means it must have been possible. That said, I would agree that having two of three letters in an abbreviation being ungettable from crosses is unfortunate.
Thanks, Quiara …. with knowledge like this, I may be able to move out of the mountains pretty soon…!