Ryan and Brian Do Crosswords

I’ve had this Brendan Emmett Quigley puzzle open for almost 6 hours and, to be honest, I don’t have much filled in as yet.  For whatever reason (I’ll leave it to you kind folks to decide) my brain is just not jiving with these clues.

4D. It has made many people lose their heads (HEG_TNE__Y_).  Are any of those letters correct?  They sure don’t look it to me.  I’ve tried to think of every type of head that could reasonably show up in a NYT puzzle.  A person’s head, the head of a beer, the bathroom, etc.  So far nothing is making sense to me.

I don’t have any of the long acrosses in the top right:

5A. City at the foot of Mount Entoto.  I guessing this is somewhere in Japan.

16A. Sludge buildup sites.  Something with oil, maybe?

18A. Brownish orange.  I’m color blind which automatically disqualifies me from attempting to answer this.

I possibly have the long acrosses in the bottom left:

52A. Gardener or landscaper (OUTSIDE MAN).  This actually might not be right.

56A. Some forms are filled out in it (TRIPLICATE).

58A. 1993 Emmy winner for Seinfeld (LARRY DAVID).  I’m pretty sure this is right but this puzzle is making me doubt everything.  I hear they’re working on a new season of Curb.  Love that show.  His character comes closer than anything else in the media to sharing my world view.

There are a few (a very, very few) that I’m sort of (very, very sort of) sure about:

47A. Cry when you don’t think you’ll make (WERE DOOMED).

23A. Journalist with a widely read “Report” (MATT DRUDGE).

You know, that’s about it.  I have some more filled in but I’m iffy about everything else.  So, I feel kind of like a moron here.  I know it’s a Friday but I feel I’ve been doing pretty well with Fridays lately.  Is this one just really super hard or am I regressing back towards a fetal state?  I see the Great Howard Barkin, Knower of All Things took almost 5 minutes to solve it.  I haven’t yet figured out how to extrapolate that information into an accurate measurement of the puzzle’s difficulty but that seems longer than usual for Howard.

I was on BEQ’s site yesterday doing one of his puzzles and I read a blog post of his about how “a puzzlemaker’s biggest fear is that the puzzle will not be solved”.

But for most of us, an unsolved puzzle is an unsuccessful one. It may not seem like it, but we really want you to get that last entry, even if it means scrambling, straining and reaching into the darkest recesses of your mind to pull out the finishing letters. This is entertainment we’re talking about here. And if you just say “screw it” in the middle, we didn’t get the job done. Now that, my friends, is a huge problem.

Well, I’m not about to say “screw it” but I am feeling frustrated.  The puzzle is clearly solvable but is BEQ saying the puzzle is a success for those that can solve it but unsuccessful for those who can’t?  Can a puzzle be successful and unsuccessful at the same time?

Ah well, I will keep at it.  BEQ constructs great puzzles and I’ll do what I can to make this one a winner.

Next stop, Saturday.