It's kind of ironic that I made this puzzle, given that my idea of cooking MARINARA is:
It makes so much sense! You don't have to wash a bowl. You don't use any oven/microwave power. And then you can just lick the spoon and put it back into the drawer. Easy cleanup!
I hope my wife isn't reading this.
I so badly wanted the mixed-up ingredients to go vertically, each one intersecting MARINARA SAUCE (which would run horizontally across the center of the puzzle). How cool would that have been, like each ingredient being dropped in! But it was not to be — I had a limited pool of options for each ingredient (ONION, TOMATO, GARLIC, HERBS, in case you didn't figure them out), and I couldn't get the symmetry to work out.
Gol durn crossword symmetry!
I even tried different "recipes" to get such a fortuitous interlock — PESTO SAUCE with BASIL, PINE NUTS, etc. was the closest to maybe possibly sorta kinda iffily working — but nothing would fully cooperate. Dratted PEN I STUN. Er, PINE NUTS.
To those who have never played ZORK, you have not lived. Okay, maybe you have, but still, ZORK was such an integral part of my childhood, a sort of augmented Choose Your Own Adventure that got me obsessed with computers and programming.
BTW, apologies to those who scratched their heads at the PROSODIC / ZORK crossing. I figured whether you're a techie or a fuzzy (engr/sci vs. humanities), you'd likely know one of them. (PROSODIC is related to "prose," so you should be able to suss it out, yeah?)
I always try to work in a bunch of bonus entries, pushing and pushing, hopefully stopping before having to hold the puzzle together with a bunch of ugly crossword glue. And although my efforts to draw from different areas so that there's something for everyone — MAKES BANK, MON CHERI, INKBLOTS, ARGONAUT cover a lot of ground — I couldn't resist putting in MC HAMMER, even though I had already worked in AEROSMITH.
What can I say, I love me some Hammer pants.
1 R | 2 C | 3 A | 4 U | 5 M | 6 P | 7 S | 8 M | 9 O | 10 K | 11 Y |
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12 A | R | E | 13 Z | O | R | 14 K | 15 S | E | C | U | R | E |
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16 Z | E | R | 17 O | I | N | O | N | 18 A | S | H | T | O | N |
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19 O | D | O | R | 20 C | S | I | 21 N | Y | 22 A | I | N | T |
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23 R | O | S | S | 24 H | O | T | O | A | 25 T | M | E | A | L |
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26 M | O | 27 O | E | D | 28 W | H | A | M | ||||||
29 R | 30 B | I | 31 K | R | I | 32 S | 33 R | E | 34 M | 35 U | 36 S |
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37 A | R | T | 38 I | F | I | C | I | 39 A | 40 L | G | R | A | S | S |
41 J | O | H | N | I | 42 T | R | E | E | 43 K | E | N |
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44 K | N | 45 O | 46 T | 47 G | O | T | 48 M | E | ||||||
49 B | 50 A | 51 R | B | E | R | S | 52 H | O | P | 53 A | S | 54 P | 55 S |
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56 I | D | O | L | 57 S | A | U | N | A | 58 I | B | E | T |
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59 R | O | B | O | 60 T | O | 61 M | A | R | 62 I | N | A | R | A |
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63 C | R | E | T | I | N | 64 S | U | D | S | 65 N | S | C |
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66 H | E | S | S | E | 67 T | S | P | 68 K | E | Y |
Access this site for a full year:
Answer summary: 5 unique to this puzzle, 1 debuted here and reused later, 1 unique to Shortz Era but used previously.
Found bugs or have suggestions?