I love love love this puzz. It shouldn’t have worked, but it did. Jeopardy fans rejoice! We’ll discuss, but first a couple of heads-ups:
If you’ve been enjoying the online crossword tournaments that were on offer this summer, the Boswords team is running a weekly competitive solving event on Monday nights: the Fall Themeless League.
Meanwhile, there was another waggish #rossword puzzle in last Tuesday’s New York Times, co-constructed by Amanda. Have a solve, if you’ve not as yet solved.
Thoughts and spoilers for “Movie Lines for $200, Alex” after the jump.
This puzzle brings me much joy. I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do with the lovely found symmetry of CONTESTANT MUST ANSWER (20) IN THE FORM OF A QUESTION (20), but I knew it had to be *something*.
I liked the idea of mimicking the Jeopardy! syntax of burying the question in the answer (and the answer in the clue), so I started with a concept wherein all the theme answers began with WHAT IS or WHO IS, but there were surprisingly few options. It also seemed essential that all the theme answers fall under the same *category*, as they do in Jeopardy.
Eventually I found WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT?, which also happened to be 20-long, which prompted the decision to tweak the grid dimensions and stack the revealer in the middle two rows. You can imagine my delight when I was able to find three (3!) more movie titles that were themselves questions *and* 20 letters across.
This is yet another one of those ideas that probably shouldn’t have been worth the time to “see” if it was viable. But, I’m a constructing addict and masochist, and here we are.
Happy solving, friends*.
-Ross
*We’re only act-shoo-al friends if you VOTE.