Crossword Fiend Forum

When a couple friends and I made an appointment to host a bar trivia night in a few weeks (at Wonderland Ballroom in DC) I had a brilliant idea - construct a crossword, hand it out at the beginning, and for one of the ten-question rounds, ask the participants to answer ten questions based on the completed puzzle. Unfortunately I was universally shot down by my cohorts who don't do crosswords and claimed it would be too hard for the audience. Too bad that, in my excitement about the idea, I had already constructed the puzzle and questions and vetted them through two test-solvers....

So, since this puzzle would otherwise never again be seen by human eyes, here's hoping someone here may appreciate it. I'm still new in constructing, so feel free to roll your eyes at some of the fill.

The ten supplementary questions are listed in the AcrossLite notepad or on the second page of the PDF.

CS

The Enola Gay was named after Col. Tibbits mother, not grandmother, and Gay was her middle name, not last name. The bomb was nicknamed Little Boy, after Tibbits himself.

I'm a newbie constructor, too, and I can see some pitfalls that need to be avoided. The right-center section has two entries that don't exist: ETCET and SOUCE. I know sometimes you get a tough corner and you just want to finish it off. But there are several ways of improving it and the best two I can up with just now are the following:

From top to bottom, in that section, you have SSA, NOOB, ...YOURE, ETCET and OLSENS. If you replace those with SST, NAIR, ...YOURE, ETTES and OLSENS, the down answers change to, from right to left, TRESS, SIREN and SAUTE.

Or, you can also replace the acrosses with PRC, NLER, ...YOURE, ETTAS and OLSON, thus changing the downs to CRESS, RERAN and PLUTO.

Other than that, the grid is pretty darn solid, and I love the naughtiness thrown in for good measure.

Also, I checked the clue data base and CSAR doesn't seem to be acceptable either. TSAR, CZAR and the less common TZAR are all there, but no CSAR.

However, if you change the three lower across entries to USER, CASE and HUSK, the down entries become ESAU, NESS and TREK. Of course, that gets rid of HTTP which was the basis of one of your trivia questions. But, then again, it's not like there's a dearth of Star Trek trivia out there.

One pet peeve of mine: 7D Fencer's foil. I have seen this clue more times than I can count and it always provokes me. A proper clue would read "Fencer's blade" or "Alternative to a foil or sabre." Any fencer reading this clue would find it akin to "Driver's Audi," with the answer being "Mercedes-Benz."

A foil is a foil. An epee is an epee. A sabre is a sabre. They are all three blades used in the sport of fencing - each very different in design and scoring rules.

A foil is not an epee. They are mutually exclusive.

In foil fencing, the blade is square and the opponent's legal target area is the torso, scored only with the tip (a touch).

In epee fencing, the blade is triangular and the target is any part of the body (yes, even the pinkie toe), scored only with the tip.

In sabre, the blade is, well, a sabre - just like the cavalry used. It is a flat, two-sided blade. Touch is scored by touching any part of the blade - point or edge - above the waist - including the head.

If you care to know more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fencing