PUZZLE 42: THE LARGE MAN (themeless)

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Solving Music: Vaudeville Revival - Meanwhile at Saddle Ranch!

It's that time again: SUNDAY SIZE THEMELESS TIME, baby.

Some entries in my themeless seed list are there because I have a sick cluing angle for them (these are usually left out of my publicly available seed list unless I think the entry itself is cool enough to warrant being a seed in its own right). 63-Across in this puzzle is one of those entries. Last time I did one of these, I tried throwing some seeds in a pinwheel shape, but this time I went for a modified version of a center stack with a 21 running down the middle and used entries from my seed list wherever the opportunity presented itself. 21x themelesses are cool like that; there's so much more space to play with in terms of grid structure than in a standard 15x, where you usually end up with some form of stacks in the corners, maybe the center, and a few other nice long entries thrown in.

I threw some image clues in this time to spice things up for applet solvers (I also set a quick 65-Down puzzle just so I could use it for its own image clue; if those are your thing, there's a solving link in that clue).

Enjoy the puzzle!

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PUZZLE 26: THE BIG CHUNGUS (themeless)

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Solving Music: Eve - As You Like It

The title has absolutely nothing to do with any entries in the puzzle. It's more representative of what the puzzle is: a 21x Cruzzles themeless, a big chonker of a grid crammed with gaming references and memes. It is the Big Chungus of puzzles. I'm so sorry.

This was a very fun one to construct; I took a similar strategy to what Byron Walden did for his themeless for the Couchword tournament. The puzzle was seeded with the four 14-letter words pinwheeling in the center: 52A/73A/10D/48D (the second half of 48D actually changed to improve fill, but it's all the same). All four were taken from the 14s section of my wordlist, which is the sad place where entries that are *almost* 15s go to die. I figured a chonky themeless would be the perfect place to finally use some of those 14s, and it definitely worked out. This is gonna play way harder if you aren't up on your pop culture; the center-right chunk in particular is filled to the brim with games/cartoons/comics stuff. Hopefully it's not all too niche.

Gonna use this space here to plug Grids For Good (let's be honest though, if you're following this blog, you've probably seen it shared around already). It's a collection of 42 puzzles from 44 constructors, available by forwarding them a receipt for a donation of $10+ to a COVID-related or racial justice organization (they have recommendations for orgs on the site). It's a great cause, so I'd highly recommend getting in on that soon (especially since some of those puzzles are metas with a contest deadline of the 18th).

Happy solving!

SOLUTION:

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PUZZLE 13 - DROPPING BOMBS

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Solving Music: Vaudeville Revival - Without Your Knowing

 

Sunday size puzzles are back, y'all. This puzzle happened because I realized the wordplay in 113-Across was possible, and it was so cursed I needed to curse all of you with it. Glad I found a revealer to tie it all together. Since I went into this knowing I wasn't submitting this anywhere, I decided to really niche up the theme answers, which paid off really well imo. I kinda rushed the fill in some places, so there are some rough patches, but I'm ultimately happy with being able to pull together a 21x in twoish days, given that I have 21x puzzles sitting in my puzzle folder that are killing me to finish. Kinda wish my luck for the blog puzzles would carry over to my regular venue submissions, but eh.

Btw, the solving music today is by Vaudeville Revival, the band of a friend of mine. Go check out their album "Free Dirt" on Spotify; it's pretty good stuff.

SOLUTION:

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PUZZLE 3 - I'VE HEARD IT BOTH WAYS

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SOLVING MUSIC: Moon Duo - Lost Heads

21x grids won't come too often around here, but I thought I'd post one for the first week. This is my first attempt at a Sunday size grid, and while it got turned down, I'm still really happy with it. I'm pretty happy with the theme, and that I was able to get three themers to cross in the center. Hope y'all enjoy.

SOLUTION: