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PUZZLE #61 & I want a penalty!

Posted on by Brendan Quigley




ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ IF I WERE YOU] 
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]

PROGRAM: [Java]

PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ IF I WERE YOU]

PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]


Anybody who knows me, knows that one of my family’s all-time favorite movies is “Amadeus.” My folks are opera-mad (well, to be fair, they’re pretty much music-mad, which is where I got it from). So it stands to reason a well-written, well-acted film with a killer classical score was pretty much watched ad infinitum. Other people my age quote “Caddshack,” I go around quoting “Amadeus,” typically some line from Salieri about being the patron saint of mediocrity or something.


Anyway, there’s that awesome musical chairs scene where Mozart gets caught without a seat and his penalty is to play a tune backwards, forwards, upside down, and in the style of Bach, and since he’s a genius it’s not much of a challenge. So he’s asked to do it in the style of Salieri, and of course, since Mozart’s a bit of a dick, he does a hysterical piss take on it.


Well, it got me thinking. I’d kind of like to try and make a puzzle in the style of other puzzlemakers. (You’d think that with the puzzle today called “If I Were You” it would be something about that. Or even something about body/mind transfer comedies. Nope, it’s just a wordplay gimmick). So please, if there are any suggestions of who I should emulate, please leave it in the comments section, and I will compile ideas and see what I can do. Consider this a long-term project/homage. Make it hard. I want a penalty! And I swear I won’t post these with a fart sound.


Somewhat entertaining sidebar: A couple years back at one of the Stamford conventions, David Kahn came up to me and showed me his book of baseball puzzles. (Sidebar to the sidebar: David’s all right in my book. A different year at the convention he was asking me if I was related to a Brian Quigley, which I assured him I wasn’t. David was psyched because his daughter was marrying a Quigley and he told me he was so glad he wasn’t going to have to celebrate Thanksgiving with me forever.) Anyway, David’s showing me the baseball book, and the themes are, you know, just insane stuff David does all the time. Long interlocking multi-themed entries, low word counts, clean grids, extra “oomph” in the cluing. Nice stuff.


Anyway, so David’s going through the book, giving me the “greatest hits,” and frankly, I think it was a sales pitch for me to buy his book. (It worked, I walked away with one) With one of the puzzles, he says that he was trying to come up with a baseball theme that only I would have done. The gimmick he came up with making a puzzle that only used the letters in “Cooperstown” (the home of the Baseball Hall of Fame). It was a damn fine grid, but … really? That’s what you thought of when you think of my style? A letter bank?


I returned the favor, slightly, when I started writing my own baseball books. One of the Red Sox puzzles is a letter bank using only the letters in “Carl Yastrzemski.” So maybe David’s right. A letter bank really is my style.


All right. Give me a penalty! Who do I make puzzles in the style of?


51 thoughts on “PUZZLE #61 & I want a penalty!”

  1. How about Eugene T. Maleska?? Be sure to put that scowl on your face a la Salieri. Pretty good letter bank there.
    Otherwise, Liz Gorski is always a fun solve.

  2. The first name that popped into my mind?? MALESKA!!!! Great minds must think alike!!
    Loved todays puzzle! Dont be Sully Indeed!

  3. Great, exc. that CMD / CWTS intersection. I just stared at it. Not sure what CWTS is or why it’s a plural. I just guessed that CMD must mean “command.”
    SUSAN BOYLE … pure BEQ. Are you a big baseball fan? BILL SIMMONS and ELIAS = pretty high-end stuff (tho’ I guess SIMMONS covers all sports … I just know him from The Red Sox book)

  7. CMD/CWTS = pure garbage, I agree. I really wanted CHOW YUN FAT and BOOTLEG CDS so, if you’re gonna make an omelet, you’re gonna hafta break a few eggs.
    Not a baseball fan at all. Mostly due to osmosis, though I admit I missed watching “Baseball Tonight” with the old roommates. Used to love Bill Simmons, but the dude’s slipping, fast. Kinda depressing. FWIW, the best sports columnist (in my mind) is Jason Whitlock.

  8. How would that look? I’m guessing all of you would have to drag my name through the mud and insult my appearance until you actually solved the puzzle and realized it was the greatest puzzle yet made by man. How’s that different from all the puzzle I’ve been doing on the blog so far?

  9. How about Rich Norris? Or Merle Reagle? They both have pretty distinctive styles, without being as ire-inducing as Maleska.
    Or Frank Longo. Actually, I’d love to see something that LOOKS like one of Frank’s gorgeous grids, only clued in a way that’s actually accessible to us mere mortals.

  10. Merl, might be easy to at least reference, but practically next to impossible to duplicate the humor. That would be a good workout.
    I’d hafta spend a little time with Rich’s puzzles again to get his vibe.
    Frank’s grids would be effing hard to pull off. And yeah, his cluing is on the brutal side of things.

  12. Sweet puzzle. Props for CHOW YUN FAT since I am a big fan of Hard Boiled. If you are taking requests, I recommend you go for one of those Patrick Blindauer diagramless puzzles where the shape of the grid ends up making some cool picture. Those are always really fun to do. You could do one in the shape of a tongue and have it be all about the Rolling Stones. By the way, what’s going on with the Celtics?

  14. I think other constructors have started to make puzzles in the style of… you!
    Have you ever thought of taking submissions for the site, and becoming an editor of some of the puzzles, say, once a week?

  18. Another great puzzle… got stuck with the other on the CWT/CMD place, but otherwise very enjoyable.
    Maybe you should make one grid with a couple sets of CLUES in the style of other writers. I think it’s really cool that the same grid can range for simple to nearly impossible based on the style.
    If you go with one of the classic constructors, I think you should still put your spin on in. Like take a puzzle with eight theme entries about types of trees or birds (IE, totally boring) and then give a dose of the BEQ kool aid. Not sure what that would be, seeing as how I’m not you.

  19. You know what would be a fun exercise? create a basic theme–letter substitution like today’s, or a category theme–design the grid, and invite 2 or 3 people to each create a puzzle for that grid. Would be interesting to see your fill, say, vs. some of the others’.
    Or just take an old Maleska puzzle with an okay theme but crappy fill, and rework it to see what you could do with that….

  21. Trip Payne! I’d love to see you do a Something Different. Though if Trip hasn’t trademarked it, he should!
    Then there’s Mel Taub’s Puns and Anagrams….

  23. What Amy said about the book, and … I dunno. The Celtics are fine barring the losses of Powe and Garnett. The Bulls aren’t a chickenshit team and no matter who they were going up against they’re going to be a tough out.

  33. One of those Liz Gorski ones with a ridiculous rebus theme that you don’t even realize is a rebus until the very end and then it makes some crazy picture that ties in with all of the theme entries, which, by the way, are all interlocked.

  34. The problem is, which constructors have really distinctive styles? Liz Gorski, you could argue, with the puzzles that contain a picture or some other rebus trick. But how about a style that only one constructor does that you could emulate? My vote is the following: do a “wacky” themeless a la Trip Payne, or a “vwlless” a la Frnk Lng. Heck, if you do a Wacky, you could potentially get under 18 blocks as a bonus (Trip has done it).

  36. I like Ethan’s idea: you could post the completed grids and see if readers could match the grids to the constructors. If you tallied the votes, it might be interesting to see what percent of each grid’s votes goes to each of the constructors.
    As for the “penalty challenge”: Liz Gorski’s name immediately came to my mind, too.
    MN

  37. Well, ya kicked me in the teeth on this one, but I blame that on strep throat, antibiotics, swine flu hysteria and bourbon. Also because of Susan Boyle and other WAY contemporary stuff that my 50-year-old gay brain is not ready to embrace. LOVED amyl! One of my first fills, and one of my first highs, way back in Houston in the days before The Plague. Fond, acrid memories. I shall not be challenging you, amigo. The world would get lopsided. Keep ’em coming.

  39. My immediate thought went to a Trip Payne Wacky Weekend Warrior-style puzzle, as well.
    And I just KNEW you’d be the first to get Susan Boyle into a puzzle and was actually surprised that she didn’t show up by Friday.

  40. Something right out of your comfort zone would be a Gail Grabowski Monday Newsday, but it might not suit the target audience very much.

  49. I’ve got a throwdown for you. A puzzle with 100% theme answers.
    Actually, I think if you made the theme really broad (like Shakespeare’s plays… or say, I dunno, something like, maybe…jazz) then you could fudge your way through on some of the cluing. Still, the bragging rights on that one seem pretty high.
    Oh, new idea coming, what about puzzles in the style of different NEWSPAPERS? I think that would reach the most people. All those USA Today-ers and what not.

  51. Does it make me a bad person to ask why the “I” in “stuck up artIsts” isn’t changed to a “U”?
    And me three for one of those Trip Payne Something Differents.
    -M

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