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March 28, 2011

CROSSWORD #318: Themeless Monday

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

PROGRAM: [Java]

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

At the ACPT two weekends ago, a reader of the blog came up to me and said that his coworkers routinely solve the Themless Monday puzzles using only the Down clues. He told me that they tend to get the shorter answers first, which are usually standard crossword answers, and then play Hangman to guess the Across entries. Since the theme of the ACPT was all about speed solving, I was half-expecting to hear they blast through it, but (whew/surprise) it takes them a while.

Nevertheless, I was pretty blown away by this feat. I mean, I try to make these a bit on the challenging side, not only in terms of cluing but also by using words/phrases that you are pretty much guaranteed not to see elsewhere. So I decided to be a bit of a troublemaker for this one and make their lives a living hell this week. Since it's harder for them to break into the puzzles with long answers, I flipped the grid so all the long entries go down, and all the short entries go across.

Share the puzzle. New one on Thursday.

Posted at 08:51 AM in Hard | | Comments (18)

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