[.puz][PDF][Solution] Difficulty: 3.75/5
N.B. Due to its nature, today’s puzzle might best be enjoyed via a pen-and-paper solve. If you’re solving in the applet or in AcrossLite, take a look at the solution link above if you’re scratching your head at the end. -RT
What. A. Week.
Last Sunday I left ACPT with Parker and the B division champ in tow. On Tuesday we started fulfillment of >500 copies of the Honeypot Puzzle Fragments. On Thursday my latest New York Times puzzle went to press, and we led a crossword construction workshop at the local brewery. And this morning, we dropped off the Kickstarter zines at the post office in–where else?–Natick, Massachusetts. If you never got around to it, the zine is now available for sale online!
Whew. Deep breath. We’ll be doing a full post mortem on Monday night at 10p eastern on Cursewords Live. Drop by and say hi in the chat!
Big thanks to this week’s test solvers: Daily Crossword Links guru Matt “Top-10 at ACPT” Gritzmacher and Half-Baked Puzzles auteur Will Eisenberg. Thoughts and spoilers for “Court of Public Opinion” below.
Well, somebody had to do it.
If you’ve never seen a grid in this style before, they’re often called quantum or Schrödinger puzzles, and they can support two different answers in the same answer slot. In this case, 33-Across, [The party definitively at fault in a recent awards show incident], could be correctly answered as either WILL SMITH or CHRIS ROCK. The down answers that pass through 33-Across all feature a clue that’s valid for both possible down entries. (Don’t read anything into the fact that I chose one of the two names to be the “right” answer in the applet/.puz; the pen-and-paper solve is how to get the as-intended solve experience.) The theme answer pairs and their clues are:
CARS / WARS: Causes of ~75 U.S. fatalities from 1900-1901
HAM / I AM: Dr. Seuss line ender that rhymes with “Sam”
FOUR / FOUL: Word with “ball” in an umpire’s call
MMI / MML: 3rd millennium year
BEASTIE: Rap’s _ Boys
RAG / MAG: Certain publication, informally
ONTO / INTO: Get _ (board, as a vehicle)
NYC / NYT: Supposed bastion of the liberal media, briefly
DISK / DISH: Circular thing that might have cookies on it
How fun is that!
Happy solving, friends.
-Ross