PUZZLE 4 - RICKY MAKES A BIG MISTAKE (themeless)

 [ACROSS LITE | PDF]

SOLVING MUSIC: Aesop Rock - Ash

(I was going to link Cat Food by Aesop Rock, but apparently most of his songs don't show up in Blogger's search results, I assume for copyright reasons. I tried sneaking it into the HTML and it broke the post, so this instrumental will have to do. Still a good one, but listen to Cat Food if you have the time.)

Apologies for the hiatus there, I got hit with a horrible flu, but we're good now. Coming back atcha with this themeless I both love and want to send to the depths of Hell. There's a story.

Back in July, I sent this puzzle to the NYT; I was really happy about how it worked out. For reasons you'll see when you solve, the central stagger-stack of 13s was actually really easy to get to function, and it made the whole gridding process way easier than most themelesses.

The issue is that 30-Down is a big giant stinking mistake, and I didn't find out I got the name wrong until I got the rejection email in October. Probably the worst part about the 3-month NYT feedback cycle is missing out on feedback like that for such an extensive period of time. But hey, you deal. I'll retry this kind of stagger-stack at some point and get an error-free version sent off to the NYT, but for the time being, we have this monstrosity. Hope you enjoy everything except for 30-Down.

SOLUTION: