Feeling isolated? Perhaps a crossword puzzle will help.
Click on the image to do the crossword puzzle on line, or click here for a printable pdf.
If you do the puzzle on line, you can click the “submit” button to bring up a form where you can enter your name and submit your solution. I will find a suitable way to honor the best submissions.
Meanwhile, please do not post spoilers!!!.
Update: Thanks to biopolitical, who pointed out that there was a problem with the clue for 24A. That clue is fixed now.
Thanks also to my Mom, who informed me that the pdf wasn’t printing properly. That’s fixed now too.
Fiendish! I assume you are the author of it …
Daniel R. Grayson. Your assumption is correct.
24A says like 49A but not like 49A. Is that correct?
Biopolitical: Thanks for catching this mistake. It should be NOT like 49A. I’ll have this fixed in a couple of minutes.
Biopolitical: There were actually multiple problems with that 24A clue, which I was aware of and thought I had fixed before posting, but apparently my changes didn’t get saved. Anyway, it’s all fixed now. Thanks again for this.
This was a lot of a fun. I submitted my incomplete solution just now and will admit to cheating on one word using an online solver – but after some more online analysis post-submission, that guess turned out to be wrong, anyway.
When submitting, we get this error message: “Error submitting: must have internet connection and be submitting to same website as puzzle page”.
We think we did the whole thing.
Daniel R. Grayson: I know exactly what’s causing this. I’ll have it fixed in about five minutes.
Dan: It works now.
It worked.
We’re unsure about 1 answer…
Aargh, we did get that one wrong. Clever clue, though!!
34 down – what you have to be good at to solve this puzzle (10). Madbastard? Crazyfools? Numberwang? Crosswords?
This is the only clue that does not reference another.
I am at a loss as to how to approach this one, but that last answer seems to make some sense.
Numberwang reference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0obMRztklqU
Since the contest is over, is there a trick for getting started on something like this? I’ve seen a crossword puzzle quite like this before, and wouldn’t even know where to begin. Or is it just the sort of thing that takes a lot more patience than I have?
Steven J Reilly: As the constructor, I was the one person who didn’t need to find a trick. I suspect that there was no one first insight common to all (or even most) of the solvers, but of course I can’t know this.
The first clues I think we solved were 41D and 40D, both from 41D itself and other clues that referenced it.