Different take on a quote puzzle, YOGI BERRA's famous "A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore" shown in double-letters. I liked the attempt to differentiate this from other quote puzzles by incorporate the quote using doubled letters. Sort of references the quote itself, given that two nickels do equal a dime.
The quote of a quote puzzle has to have great humorous or thoughtful impact in order to make all the solving work worth it. The a-ha moment for me wasn't as strong as I would have liked, mainly because it felt like there wasn't a very strong connection between the Yogiism and the fact that it was presented in double letters. I wonder if a different quote about "seeing double" would have been better?
Very difficult to pull off this grid, considering how many doubled letters PB had to work with — and in order! I liked getting some SCAPEGOAT, GAS CAPS, INTROVERT answers, which helped to keep me interested during my solve.
I did hitch at the various SDI (Will has said he wants to phase this one out), REARM, ASTA, SNO, EDD entries, because this is PB we're talking about, the master of smooth grids. This assortment of crossword glue would go unnoticed if this were any other constructor, but Patrick's bar is so high that this felt like a letdown. And having to go to 144 words — four past Will's usual maximum — was even more unusual.
So I investigated. Is it really THAT tough to pull off this feat of so many doubled letters, in order? Turns out, yes — and in spades! I played around with a grid to see if I might be able to put some more space between double letters, deploy black squares differently, etc., but there are so many of those letter pairs to work with. This is a much, much, much more difficult task than I had originally thought.
Given that, I appreciated this puzzle more than my original impression. Still, it would have been nice to get a stronger a-ha punch connecting the quote and the execution.
1 S | 2 A | 3 A | 4 B | 5 G | 6 A | 7 Y | 8 E | 9 O | 10 P | 11 A | 12 L | 13 S | 14 R | 15 E | 16 A | 17 R | 18 M |
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19 P | R | E | Y | 20 S | U | P | O | N | 21 N | A | M | E | D | 22 E | N | N | I | O |
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23 I | N | T | R | O | V | E | R | T | 24 U | N | I | F | I | 25 C | A | T | I | O | N |
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26 C | I | N | D | Y | 27 I | I | 28 N | S | I | S | T | 29 A | D | E | S | T | E |
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30 Y | E | A | 31 R | 32 O | C | C | O | 33 C | H | O | 34 I | R | 35 R | E | S | T |
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36 C | 37 H | U | K | K | E | R | 38 S | 39 P | R | O | 40 F | S | ||||||||
41 D | 42 E | 43 C | R | E | E | S | 44 T | 45 A | 46 K | E | I | L | L | 47 S | 48 A | 49 D |
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50 A | A | R | O | N | 51 P | 52 E | 53 L | I | C | A | N | S | 54 A | 55 S | C | I | I |
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56 B | R | E | W | 57 T | 58 H | E | N | A | N | N | Y | 59 A | T | T | A | R | S |
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60 S | N | O | 61 T | O | M | R | I | D | G | E | 62 G | 63 A | S | C | A | P | S | |||
64 S | 65 A | W | W | O | O | D | 66 P | O | S | T | A | G | E | |||||||
67 S | O | L | O | I | S | T | 68 N | 69 A | 70 R | R | A | T | O | R | 71 G | 72 O | 73 P |
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74 A | T | T | E | S | T | 75 P | E | R | C | O | D | A | N | 76 D | O | N | E |
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77 G | U | E | S | T | 78 A | 79 S | H | H | E | A | P | S | 80 N | A | A | C | P |
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81 E | D | D | 82 A | 83 R | C | A | D | I | A | 84 S | 85 H | I | I | T | E | S |
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86 G | R | A | M | M | 87 S | 88 E | 89 T | 90 S | H | O | T | S | ||||||||
91 A | 92 L | 93 T | O | 94 D | E | E | 95 M | 96 S | 97 L | I | E | O | N | 98 S | 99 I | 100 S |
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101 M | A | R | S | 102 H | A | 103 H | I | A | 104 A | S | E | N | 105 D | 106 O | N | N | A |
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107 B | Y | Y | O | U | R | 108 L | E | A | V | E | 109 D | I | 110 M | 111 M | E | D | O | U | T |
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112 E | N | S | U | E | 113 A | R | T | O | O | 114 Y | O | G | I | B | E | R | R | A |
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115 R | E | T | R | Y | 116 Y | E | A | R | N | 117 E | R | M | A | 118 S | E | E | N |
Answer summary: 10 unique to this puzzle, 2 debuted here and reused later, 3 unique to Shortz Era but used previously.
Found bugs or have suggestions?