THEMELESS MONDAY: [ ACROSS LITE][ PDF]
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So the 1000th BEQ puzzle on this site is coming up quick. And last week I asked you the solvers to help me out with some preposterous ideas for the event. Though we had a sparse number of entries, just 64 to be precise, they still lit up my day. And probably underscored how difficult it it to come up with themes.
One of the more popular suggestions involved my monogram. One such entry came from Andrew Simmons: “How about having your initials in every answer? Could you come up with enough words with the letters B E and Q in them?” Short answer: oh Hell no. I had strongly considered making a cryptic that had BEQUEATH in it, but, uh, yeah, that’s a hairy word to clue.
Math suggestions were plentiful. Ryan Kelly suggested: “A 10x10x10 puzzle cube, because 1000 isn’t a perfect square.” Ryan, life’s too short, dude. Keeping with the three dimensions, Jeff Anderson proposed “A 3-D puzzle. It would have to be done in PDF and require the solver to first print out three grids and then align and attach the grids in layers one over the other with spaces between each layer. Then the clues would lead to answers that will jump from one layer to another, perhaps even multiple times for one answer.” And if that wasn’t insane enough, Jeremy Horwitz opined: “a 1000×1000 puzzle seemed too obvious, so allow me to suggest (instead of the usual mundane 2-dimensional puzzle) a 1000-dimensional puzzle.” I’ll just drop a few hits of acid first.
If I were a true jerk, I might have strongly considered Nate Cardin’s suggestion. He writes: “A mega puzzle with 1,000 entries (so, a pretty huge grid, but you wanted preposterous + they sell mega grids in sky mall and yours would be way better). The fun part: the grid contains exactly one piece of fill from each of your first 999 puzzles. It’s a meta puzzle and the meta answer is the one entry of the thousand in the grid that doesn’t represent one of your previous 999 puzzles.” Uh, no.
Lists? Sure. Diane Dym suggested a puzzle based on Tom Moon’s “1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die” book. It’s a fine book that I look to now and again for suggestions of what to listen to. And while I couldn’t make a puzzle out of it, it reminded me I had been neglecting it. And while we’re on the topic of music, Jack Martin writes: “Richard Thompson gave us ‘1000 Years of Popular Music’; give us ‘1000 Years of Crosswordese: from EVOE to DEVO.'”
Our winner comes from Jeffrey Krasnick. “For #1000, how about a puzzle that only uses words (in clues and answers) that existed in the year 1000.” Rest assured, this puzzle will never happen. For Jeffrey’s suggestion, he’ll get some sort of BEQ swag, either puzzle-related, or shit-lying-around-my-condo-that-I-don’t-want-anymore-related. Congrats, Jeffrey. And thanks again to all who gave me a chuckle.
Share the puzzle. New one on Thursday.
Congrats on your 1000th. Disappointing milestone puzzle though.
Congratulations! And just in case anyone didn’t recognize it, yes that’s the Beowulf manuscript (Cotton Vitellius A.xv)
TAIWANESE…respect. Best night market food evah…beef noodle…mmm!
What if you there was a crossword puzzle that adjusted its clues to match the solver’s speed. If I chose to spend 20 minutes on a puzzle I’d be given clues, one at a time, easier or harder, depending on how fast I filled. Adaptive like the old GRE.