Monday, 7 May 2012

Running Back to Saskatoon

Up in Toon Town for the second time in three days. Drove up on Saturday night with a few friends for a Ghost/Mastodon/Opeth show. Ghost's bizarre stage show blew me away, and their compositions were tight. Mastodon was solid, but not as good as when I saw them last (granted, they were headlining that night). Had never seen Opeth before, and they were every bit as astonishing as I had imagined they would be.

After returning home basically just to sleep off Saturday night and watch Game of Thrones, I drove back up to 'stoon at 5 this morning for a work-related conference. Spent the day attending talks and fielding the tough questions, and then hit the town for some boozing and schmoozing with the coworkers and various auxiliary personnel. Needless to say, I'm completely bushed, and unmotivated to write much more than I already have. Alls I'll say is that this week's puzzle is another 15x themed. It was originally intended to be the final Campus Crosswords puzzle, but due to a scheduling snafu it won't be run as part of the CC series, so here it is! I thought it was a bit easier than the usual Cross Nerd fare, but my test solvers told me otherwise. Either way, I hope that you enjoy it.

***Update on Wednesday morning***
Errata: (SPOILER ALERT - highlight the following text to read about the last theme entry)
A few of you have pointed out a couple of weaknesses with the last theme entry, POUND'S GRAVE.  Before the puzzle was published, a few people expressed uncertainty about pound being a unit of mass.  In fact, it seems that "pound" has a complicated history of usage, and can be used as a unit of either mass or weight/force.  See the wikipedia entry for more elaboration.  I do stand by the usage in the theme answer, however, as an unqualified "pound" is assumed to be the mass pound.  Nevertheless, in hindsight this was a poor choice for a theme entry because of the ambiguity.

The bigger problem, though, which I only learned this morning (give it up one time for Jeffrey Harris, who brought it to my attention), is that Ezra Pound did not write "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," contrary to what the clue implies.  I had come up with the wording and format of the clue, and then quickly skimmed the Wikipedia article on Ezra Pound for a recognizable title.  In my haste, it seems I overlooked the part that said that Pound was merely responsible for the publication of the T.S. Eliot poem.  The clue still sort of works, but it's not ideal, especially considering the ambiguity resulting from the substitution of POUNDS for MASS.

Alas, I'm at work (and therefore without the means to change the puzzle) until the end of the day.  Therefore, the puzzle will remain on the site for at least a little while as a symbol of my lack of rigour.

***Update on Wednesday night***
The online puzzle has been corrected.
More words, crossed and otherwise, next Tuesday.

Puzzle: Measuring Schtick
Rating: XW-14A
Download the PDF and PUZ files here, or solve or download the Across Lite puzzle and/or software from the Java app below.

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