ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY] 
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]

PROGRAM: [Java]

PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]

PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]

After hours of fudging around with this grid, I stumbled upon an entry that was almost too-good-to-be-true. It was one of those epiphanies wherein I couldn’t believe the crossword gods were allowing this to happen. Brand spanking new entry? Check. Hysterical way to clue it? Check? Miracle alignment of all the crossings so that it can fit? Check.

It was a dream come true.

Then came the cluing.

And it suddenly dawned on me (long after I had written 80% of the clues) that I had repeated two very long entries to get said too-good-to-be-true entry to work. It wasn’t like small potatoes stuff like duplicating ATE and EAT. It was one 8- and one 9-letter entry repeated (okay, the longer one was plural). FML. Revision added hours onto the project. Yuck times infinity. This is the last time I’m going to just plunge into cluing with reviewing the grid first.

Or course, if I had a dollar for every time I promised myself I’d look over the grids with a fine-toothed comb before cluing the puzzle, well, I’d probably have upwards of $56. FML, indeed. (Wouldn’t mind the $56, while we’re at it.)

On the plus side, the miracle too-good-to-be-true entry provided me a seed for a future puzzle. (You were wondering why I didn’t mention what the entry was, weren’t ya?) So maybe the gods were smiling on me as well. There’s just never enough good theme ideas.

Share the puzzle. New one on Wednesday.

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