Film Characters: Extended Edition

                                                              "56-Down: More like Extended Cut, amirite"

Hi again! In this post I'll talk about the process regarding the previous puzzle.

*SPOILERS*

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Behind The Scenes:

I first came up with the idea when I saw the title of M. I then went down the googling rabbit hole on this topic and made grids for W., and eventually Z. The first two went by quickly, but Z was the hardest to fill cleanly, and I had to settle for Olav (*shudder*) and Obi (*also shudder*). I eventually made them into one whole puzzle and let it sit. Only after that did I see the theme had been done before in the NYT. I had only been thinking about the movies used in the NYT puzzle, but I realized there was another movie that came after that, X. I made the X quickly and added it to the full puzzle. It fits surprisingly well, barring the two-square barrier between X and Z. It also works in alphabetical order (47-Down). Cluing was easy enough, and I think this was the right mix of trivia and ? clues. 

Rejected Audition:

I will say, there is a movie less famous than these that is one letter long. It's O, a retelling of Othello directed by Tim Blake Nelson centered around high school basketball. (I honestly never thought I would be saying that sentence in my life). My goal was for the directors to be the main answers of the puzzle, that is to say, in the middle. Well, an O doesn't have a middle where I can put TIMBLAKENELSON. The other option, while being the odd one out among them, is to put TIMBLAKENELSON around the inside of the O. I tried this and came up with:

The moment LBAR had to be in the puzzle, I knew I was barking up the wrong tree. So, for this puzzle I'm going to choose to not include O. 

Deleted Scenes:

W was set in stone (no pun intended) until I realized the title is actually W. (with a period). I made a version with different fill and a 2x2 period. 

I had to make a hard choice with X. There was an amazing grid that had 4 more black squares, and I eventually chose the more open one.

I've put these two below. Thanks for reading!

PDF

Across Lite

Created by Harrison Walden with the free crossword puzzle maker from Amuse Labs