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If you’ve been paying a bit of attention over the years, some subjects keep popping up in my grids on this site from time to time. Therefore, if you notice these things, then you shouldn’t be surprised in the least about one of the seed entries in this grid.
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Thanks as always to the test solvers for their input.
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Not often that I use a movie as a seed entry. As I probably have mentioned before, the last movie I saw in the movie theater was “The King’s Speech” in 2011. So, obviously, I didn’t even see this film that I put in this grid. I didn’t even put it in my seed list when it came out. The title just got stuck in the subliminal portions of my head then, and recently wormed its way to the surface of my brain as a good entry.
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Thanks as always to the test solvers for their input.
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Freestyle 569
Word count: 72
Mean word length: 5.19
Freestyle 570
Word count: 68
Mean word length: 5.65
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Surprise! Your crazy Club 72 emcee strikes again. Hoo boy, do I have a story for you! It sounds like a cover story, but I swear all this is true.
Yes, I lost the file late Monday night when I saved over it accidentally. Yes, I went to bed Monday night lamenting my mistake. No, I didn’t recover the file from the sea of 0s and 1s on my computer or phone. However… on Tuesday, I decided to see if I could reconstruct the grid that I lost, just as a memory exercise. What the heck, right? I sorta worked at it like a diagramless — I remembered the exact locations of some of the entries, and I was able to work the whole grid back together, entries and block positions, gradually from there. Great, I did that much… now, I wondered, how good is my memory really? How many clues could I remember? I started at it, expecting to get maybe half of them. Believe it or not, when I was done, I remembered a full 70 out of the 72 clues I had, in the span of less than a half hour. I only failed to recall two of them. (Believe me, as soon as I finished that file, I saved it and backed it up!) So, obviously, once I was able to recreate the grid and clues from memory, I was going to post that along with my normal grid today.
I know some of you sent me emails and comments basically forgiving me for this snafu. I apologize that I didn’t respond to you… I held back from saying anything because I wanted to act coy. Believe me, I did not at all plan on resurrecting the grid when I posted my mea culpa on Monday night. I was not in the least playing coy or lying to you in that post. But here it is. The grid I had for today, plus the grid I would have had for you on Tuesday. This past Wednesday was the sixth anniversary of my first grid on here; I’ve never missed a post, and I wasn’t about to let that happen without making it up to you somehow. So have at it!
Thanks so much to all who’ve left a tip! It’s much appreciated, believe me.
Thanks as always to the test solvers for their input.
As always, share this link! Pass it around! New puzzle on Tuesday!
Please forgive me. There is no puzzle for 12/1/20. I had one clued and ready to go the night before, so I decided to get a head start on constructing the grid for Friday 12/4. Like an idiot, when I finished with this construction, I saved over the grid I had ready to go for today. I didn’t mean to use the same file name but I hit “save” and it was too late. I’m so frustrated because I work so hard on every grid and all that effort I put into that one was just wasted in a flash.
This is the first time in the six years of this site that I haven’t had a grid for you on schedule and I humbly apologize. I’ll have a new one on Friday.
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So hopefully this is late enough after your Thanksgiving repast that you aren’t still tired from the carb overload. There are a lot of things I wouldn’t recommend doing on a carb overload, and this grid is definitely one of them. I’ve got five — count ’em, five! — pairs of helper squares, including two in the corners, so, crossword purists, look away!
Thanks so much to all who’ve left a tip! It’s much appreciated, believe me.
Thanks as always to the test solvers for their input.
As always, share this link! Pass it around! New puzzle on Friday!
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I hope all you American folks have a beautiful Thanksgiving. My family usually has 40 to 50 people together for Thanksgiving, but times are different this year and we’re only celebrating with our immediate families. So enjoy this holiday for what it’s worth so that we can all go back to what we usually do next Thanksgiving.
Thanks so much to all who’ve left a tip! It’s much appreciated, believe me.
Thanks as always to the test solvers for their input.
As always, share this link! Pass it around! New puzzle on Friday!
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This grid went through a really unusual process. When you see two 15s crossing each other, you’d figure that’s where I started. Far from it. But this grid started its life with double stacks where the triple stacks are, triple stacks where the double stacks are, and only one 15. But that 15 was not the seed — what’s now 14-Across was. That one was too good not to use immediately.
Thanks so much to all who’ve left a tip! It’s much appreciated, believe me.
Thanks as always to the test solvers for their input.
As always, share this link! Pass it around! New puzzle on Tuesday!
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Don’t worry. The title of this post and the seed entry in this grid are not part of a subliminal message about how I’m feeling constructing these grid for you. Quite the opposite. Sometimes people read into things that aren’t there, and there definitely isn’t anything there. You can see the two helper squares in the corners, and that means one thing: I had one hell of a time constructing both the upper right and lower left. To blame were 23-Across and 48-Across: they were quite limiting, and when you’ve got a triple stack of 11s as it is, three letters with limited options or only one option fixed in place makes things exponentially more difficult.
Thanks so much to all who’ve left a tip! It’s much appreciated, believe me.
Thanks as always to the test solvers for their input.
As always, share this link! Pass it around! New puzzle on Friday!
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As you might be able to tell from the jagged block structure, I definitely had to play a game of Whac-a-Mole with the top center and bottom center. Every time I moved a pair of blocks, it’d work in one section and not the other. If I then moved a different one, it’d work for the other side and not the first side. I always seem to be able to wield the virtual shoehorn, though.
After you’re done, highlight the white space below for a question (it might be a spoiler, so I’ve hidden it in white):
You will also notice something about this grid that came by accident, but has what I believe is an unusual property for my grids (not for crosswords in general). Do you know what I’m referring to?
Thanks so much to all who’ve left a tip! It’s much appreciated, believe me.
Thanks as always to the test solvers for their input.
As always, share this link! Pass it around! New puzzle on Tuesday!
Have something you wanna say? Got a question? Want to do a guest freestyle? Want to collaborate on a freestyle? Want to just say hello? Hit me up by email!
Usually, the first seed in a stack like this is the center, but I think you can figure out why the seed was 31-Across this time. As usual, when there’s a 15 like 7-Down cutting through the stack, I didn’t plan on having a 15. I had the damnedest time figuring how this stack could fit the rest of the grid, and breaking a 15 through the center of it was the only way it would work out.
Thanks so much to all who’ve left a tip! It’s much appreciated, believe me.
Thanks as always to the test solvers for their input.
As always, share this link! Pass it around! New puzzle on Friday!
By Tim Croce ||| Original freestyle crossword puzzles on Tuesdays at 6pm Eastern ||| Original puzzles (sometimes more freestyles, sometimes variety puzzles or even themed puzzles) on Fridays at 6pm Eastern
