I Was Rick Rolled by A Master

I enjoy doing the Sunday crossword puzzle in the Washington Post Magazine. The puzzle was created each week by the brilliant Merl Reagle from 2008 until his death in 2015, and is now produced by Evan Birnholz, at least as clever and funny as Mr. Reagle, but more devious.

The April 1, 2018 puzzle is a masterwork in creativity and was like peeling the layers of an onion.

Five of the 21 X 21 square puzzle’s clues asked for the name of an historical personality: Cold War leader (Harry Truman), “Rebecca” producer (David Selznick).

Answers to six other clues helped you piece together a website URL, which got you to www.devilcross.com/. But that wasn’t enough information. You had to go back and determine the missing middle initial of each of the five personalities. They spelled out S-O-L-V-E.

The puzzle’s directions explained that once you had the correct link, go there and enter your name and email address for a chance to win a prize.

I did. I entered www.devilcross.com/solve, which took me to Rick Astley's “Never Gonna Give You Up” music video – I’d been Rick-rolled!

Below the video was this message:

Oh, were you expecting a contest that you could enter to win a special prize? Sorry, but there is no contest. I did what Mr. Astley said I shouldn’t do: I told a lie. Hopefully I didn’t hurt you.

But to make it up to you, I hid two other features in the puzzle:

1. The first letters of the clues to the 11 thematic Across answers, in clue order, spell out what just happened.

2. There’s a familiar two-word phrase hidden diagonally in the puzzle that explains why I did it.

Sure enough, the first letter of the five historical figures clues and the six website clues spelled out R-I-C-K-R-O-L-L-I-N-G.

And yes, diagonally from the top left corner to the center cell, the letters spell: APRIL FOOLS.

Well played, Mr. Birnholz!

Comments

Jack and Erin's Wedding!

This past weekend Jack married Erin Breslin in Santa Barbara. Erin is smart, sassy, strong, funny, and beautiful. She and Jack are nearly inseparable, and when they are together, they talk and laugh nonstop like two school kids. As Donna noted in her beautiful, heartfelt remarks at the rehearsal dinner, it's hard to know what they have left to talk about after carrying on this continual conversation for more than three years. It is obvious to anyone who sees them that they are head over heels in love. Donna and I had met Erin's parents last December in Philadelphia. We immediately became friends and found that we shared a lot of common values -- particularly the importance of family. It was great to see them again in Santa Barbara and to meet their son Gerard and many of their siblings and in-laws. It also was great to meet some of Jack's fellow YouTubers. There's a culture of camaraderie in the industry, and many of them were eager to help Jack when he was g...

Paris In the Spring

Donna and I just returned from a week in Paris – and it was spectacular. France hadn’t been on my bucket list. First off, there’s the whole foreign language thing. Not my forte, in the same range that brain surgery isn’t my forte. Then there's the reputation of French inhospitableness, particularly toward Americans. If I’m not wanted, don’t worry, I’ll stay away. Finally, I imagined it as a snooty, glitzy, high-end-fashion kind of place – you know, movie stars, swimming pools – out of my comfort zone. We ended up going to fulfill a dream of Donna’s: Not so much of seeing Paris (she had done so years ago on a high-school trip), but of seeing Yundi Li, a 40-year-old Chinese pianist, give a performance there. The language barrier turned out to be manageable. Donna took eight years of French in school and was using Pimsleur to bone up. I started using the online app too – though at the introductory level. In real life, I could have gotten by without Donna’s near fluency because mos...

My Childhood Paradise

When I was five our family moved to a neighborhood in Rockville that would become a Paradise for me. Our new home was on Leverton Road, the southernmost street in Hungerford, a suburban tract development of modest single-family houses. 800 Leverton Rd. Two attributes made my childhood home special: One was that the sprawling neighborhood of a few hundred homes was built all at once and filled with families, like ours, with kids, so I instantly had playmates by the dozen. The second advantage was that within walking distance were my elementary school and a rec center with a ball field; a community pool and a fantastic park that were built a few years later; and, best of all, dense woods on three sides of us and winding, long trails throughout them. We spent as much time outdoors as possible . Nobody I knew stayed inside much unless they were sick or being punished. We found plenty of things to do. We were among the first people to move in, so ther...

What's in Dave's Head

Search This Blog