Friday, January 23, 2009

Title: And the Nominees Are...
Author: Roger Depont, or some Peter Gordon anagram
Theme: Academy Awards Nominations

As of the time of this writing, this puzzle wasn't released yet. That's because the nominations were just announced this morning, and it's not easy to come up with a good puzzle on a moment's notice.

But... I'm out all this evening and my Mom is having surgery tomorrow morning, so I probably won't get a chance to blog this puzzle by the time you all have gotten it and completed it.

So... I'm going to do something new. I'm going to pre-blog the puzzle. You can all comment as you wish, as normal. (Joon, if you want to add anything after the puzzle comes out, be my guest.)

The Best Picture nominations are:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Slumdog Millionaire
Frost/Nixon
The Reader
Milk

If I were a betting man (and sometimes I am), I'd guess you'll see these as follows:

READER (6)
FROSTNIXON (10)
MILK (4)
SLUMDOG (7)
MILLIONAIRE (11)
CURIOUS (7)
CASE (4)
OFBENJAMIN (10)
BUTTON (6)

At least, that's how I'd try to do it, keeping the long titles together and in order. Amazing that it works out symmetrically. Still, it's a lot of theme fill, which makes the gridding process tough. Don't be surprised if you see some ugly clumps of black squares around the edges, and/or a few nasty entries. Just producing a viable puzzle from the above is no simple task, so you should be suitably impressed. Peter Gordon is, after all, the man.

It's for puzzles like these that you should go out and buy three friends a Sun subscription. Do you really want these to stop?

Thanks for listening.

- Pete M.