Friday, March 4, 2011

Puzzle Week: Another double quad

Around a year ago, the New York Times published a Friday crossword puzzle by the brilliant young constructor Kevin Der featuring four stacked 15-letter answers on both the top and bottom of the grid. Grid-spanning "triple stacks" are a relatively rare feat, and Kevin's puzzle was the first known example of a "double quad."

Not to be outdone, veteran puzzle writer Joe Krozel came up with a double quad of his own, which the NYT published today (again, on a Friday).

Haven't solved it yet but it looks pretty cool:


Way to go, Joe!

5 comments:

Elaine said...

We'll see how you feel after you try that baby. (Probably you'll feel fine--I think you're vastly better than I. This thing cleaned my clock even though I had more than a few sections well in hand.)

Ben said...

Yeah, I got through it with reasonable dispatch. I solve almost every puzzle in Across Lite but I printed this one at the office because I didn't have any computer leisure time yesterday. I was juggling a busy workday, dinner out, a party last night, and then a 6am trip to the airport today.

So I banged out the puzzle on my inbound commuter train from the suburbs back into the city. As with Kevin Der's quadruple stacks, I thought Joe's puzzle was as impressive for its overall quality as it was for the rare engineering feat of simply being a double quad.

Speaking of Across Lite, I guess I will attack the Saturday puzzle in the next few days... maybe after tennis tomorrow. La-di-da!

Ben said...

(No computer leisure time other than writing the double quad blogpost, of course. When I saw the grid I had to write something quickly before my train, what with it being Puzzle Week and all.

Elaine said...

I did not fare much better with the Saturday puzzle, and the Sunday puzzle was blah. Scowl. Will is probably trying to shake everyone up before the ACPT.

Ben said...

That Saturday puzzle was the toughest one in quite a while. Haven't looked at the Sunday yet, but out here in Arizona surrounded by newsprint New York Timeseses, I probably will eventually.