CROSSWORD #154

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

PROGRAM: [Java]

PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]

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Refreshed, rebooted, relaxed, ready, and some other RE-words after the nice break. Hope everybody's Thanksgiving was good. Let's get back to work.

This may be inconceivable to y'all, but here goes: I'd never seen "Casablanca" until last Friday. Neither had Liz. It was just one of those films that we'd managed not to see all these years. Well, predictably, we loved it. Oscar Wilde said "now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations." That quip might as well be applied to "Casablanca." (Maybe not the "sit through" part, but you get the picture.) How many famous lines are in there? We lost count. Then, you throw in all the damn fool crosswordese the film provided: ILSA, UGARTE, SAM, RICK(S), LAZLO, LORRE, BOGART, BACALL BERGMAN, etc. It felt like meeting up with an old friend, albeit one we'd never met before.

Themeless puzzle today, and back to the more traditional grid. Thanks for letting me indulge in the odd asymmetric one now and again. Hope you enjoyed both.

Finally, I'm asking once again if you liked the puzzles I ran in November, and you're already in the giving spirit of the holidays, a small donation would be greatly appreciated. The drive is really short this month (but feel free to contribute any time) and as a thank you/come on, I will pay for a year's subscription to Peter Gordon's Fireball Crosswords to one randomly selected donor who gave (The donor will be selected Wednesday). Your indie puzzlemakers are where it's at, so you'd best be supporting them! Ya hear? And even if you can't contribute, just spread the word about our two sites. While traffic doesn't always pay the bills, it helps just as much.

So, share the puzzle! New one on Wednesday.