THEMELESS MONDAY: [ ACROSS LITE][ PDF]
PROGRAMS: [Across Lite] [Adobe Reader]
Lollapuzzoola in the books, and your winner is Stella Zawistowksi. Great to finally see her win on the big boards … somewhere. She certainly took the early lead over second-place finisher Glen Ryan, and distant-third Sam Ezersky. But I found it mighty painful to watch as she slowly, almost too slowly, inch her way through one mighty hard, nearly opaque section of a themeless by Mike Nothnagel and Doug Peterson (flanking Stella up above). Loads of drama, folks. How else can you explain the eruption of applause when she was done. There will be no spoilers, just going to say that if you haven’t gotten them already and are into solving, click here and get yourself a copy to play along at home.
So how did Brendan do? That’s the question on the lips of nearly every person. Well, I came in 38th out 253 solvers. It has been brought to my attention that I’d be 47 out of 317 if we included the pairs division. But I’m not going to, thank you very much. The whole two brains versus one brain thing. Sort of an unfair advantage. And yes, 47 out of 317 is a better percentage than 38 out of 253, but 38 is a better result, so I’m sticking with it. While the number looks mighty impressive, I shouldn’t gloat too much, though. I stopped counting when I got to 15 of names of top solvers who weren’t competing.
That reminds me, at the lunch break I was 24th! Talk about uncharted territory! 24! Sounds impossible. Because it was. They hadn’t graded a lot of top solvers, including two legends: Jon Delfin and Ellen Ripstein. But dammit, I was walking on sunshine for that break. Me? Faster than Jon? Let me live in my fantasy world.
Share the puzzle. New one Thursday.
So i decide to make Rush’s Lugubrious song SUBDIVISIONS a song i listen to vvhile doing the crossvvords. The hard, hard ones.
Also in an intervievv i did once, intervievvee asks me vvhat vvas a common MISCONCEPTION of solving these things. i Say “that people think this is a vvaste of time and it’s all pointless”. Also i vvould like to have a BIBLE vvhich has every vvord that i have entered in the last 40 years or so and not including any i haven’t in yet. So it should be fairly easy to read vvith little genealogy included.