2957: A Crossword Puzzle

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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A Crossword Puzzle
Hint: If you ever encounter this puzzle in a crossword app, just [term for someone with a competitive and high-achieving personality].
Title text: Hint: If you ever encounter this puzzle in a crossword app, just [term for someone with a competitive and high-achieving personality].

Explanation

Ambox notice.png This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Aaaaaaa aa a AAA - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.
If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

This is a crossword puzzle. On a surface level, the answers seem extremely difficult, with some involving base conversions, and some involving wordplay typical of crossword puzzles. But the joke is that every single letter of every single answer is the letter "A".

The comic's title could be wordplay on the word "A"; i.e. "a crossword puzzle with As".

Location Clue Explanation
1-Across Famous Pvt. Wilhelm quote Reference to the Wilhelm scream.
11-Across IPv6 address record An IPv4 record is an "A" record; an IPv6 record is four times the length and is designated an "AAAA" record.
15-Across “CIPHERTEXT” decrypted with Vigenère key “CIPHERTEXT” A "Vigenère Cipher" translates the original text by the distance from A from the key, letter by letter. For instance, if the plaintext is "XK" and the key is "CD", the C shifts X 2 forward to become Z, and the D shifts K 3 forward to become N, yielding a ciphertext of "ZN". Since the ciphertext and the key are the same in this case, decryption just shifts all the letters back to A, akin to subtracting a number from itself and getting 0.
16-Across 8mm diameter battery An AAAA battery is a 1.5V battery that measures 8.3 mm in diameter, 2.2 mm smaller than the more common AAA battery.
17-Across “Warthog” attack aircraft The A-10 Warthog is an attack aircraft. Here, A-10 has been turned into AAAAAAAAAA (ten As).
18-Across Every third letter in the word for “inability to visualize” Aphantasia is the inability to visualize. Following the instruction, we determine that Aphantasia gives us the word "aaaa". This clue is particularly mean because of how it instructs you to visualize the word in order to get the answer.
19-Across An acrostic hidden on the first page of the dictionary The first page of the dictionary (if you ignore the copyright page and the index) is the list of words starting with A. An acrostic of this page, taking the first letter of each line and arranging them in order, would just be a sequence of A's.
21-Across Default paper size in Europe A4 paper (here written as AAAA) is the default size in Europe. At 210x297 mm, it is approximately 0.24" narrower and 0.71" longer than the 8.5"x11" paper used in the United States, and due to having an aspect ratio of 1:sqrt(2), can be cut in half to create two half-sized sheets with exactly the same aspect ratio.
22-Across First four unary strings Unary's when you get to use just the one symbol. E.g. 32 in unary would be 11111111111111111111111111111111. The first four strings in unary, if you used A as the first (and only) symbol, would be A, AA, AAA, AAAA.
23-Across Lysine codon Lysine is an amino acid, with codons AAA and AAG.
24-Across 40 CFR Part 63 subpart concerning asphalt pollution "40 CFR Part 63" refers to federal air pollutant regulations in the Code of Federal Regulations. The subpart for "asphalt processing and asphalt roofing manufacturing" is AAAAAAA.
25-Across Top bond credit rating The highest credit rating for bonds is AAA.
26-Across Audi coupe First of three Audi references. Audi's car models range from A1 (subcompact hatchback) to A8 (full-size luxury sedan); the A5 is a compact executive coup.
27-Across A pair of small remote batteries, when inserted Two AAA batteries (AAAAAA).
29-Across Unofficial Howard Dean slogan A reference to Howard Dean, an American Democrat who ran for the party's nomination in 2004. He famously yelled at a rally in a way that was thought to be bizarre and which, it is thought, doomed his campaign.
32-Across A 4.0 report card A 4.0 GPA, at least in the USA, is all A's. This clue assumes seven classes.
33-Across The “Harlem Globetrotters of baseball” (vowels only) The Savannah Bananas, the vowels for whom are aaaaaa.
34-Across 2018 Kiefer song AAAAA.
35-Across Top Minor League tier The top Minor League Baseball tier is AAA.
36-Across Reply elicited by a dentist Dentists ask patients to "say aaaaaaa", i.e. "open up". This could also be an expression of pain; particularly the only kind you can make with dental tools in your mouth. (As Autechre put it: "Now, I don't want you to panic... just lean back and relax.")
38-Across Anaa’s airport Anaa is an atoll in the Tuamotu archipelago of French Polynesia. AAA is the IATA code for the airport there.
41-Across Macaulay Culkin’s review of aftershave In the movie Home Alone, Macaulay Culkin puts it on because he's home all alone and dislikes it, then screams.
43-Across Marketing agency trade grp. The American Association of Advertising Agencies, also called the 4A's (here AAAA).
44-Across Soaring climax of Linda Eder’s Man of La Mancha The final high note in the song The Impossible Dream
46-Across Military flight community org. The Army Aviation Association of America, or AAAA.
47-Across Iconic line from Tarzan When he’s swinging on a vine, yelling “Aaaaaaaaaa!”
48-Across Every other letter of Jimmy Wales’s birth state The birth state of Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, is Alabama. Taking every other letter of Alabama gives "Aaaa".
49-Across Warthog’s postscript after “They call me mister pig!” Pumba in The Lion King yells "aaaaaaaaaa" while charging at the hyenas who insulted him.
50-Across Message to Elsa in Frozen 2 The call which Elsa hears in Frozen 2 is a sequence of four notes which resemble the requiem music Dies irae. The sequence is sung entirely with an open rounded vowel sound, or a soft "a" sound.
51-Across Lola, when betting it all on Black 20 in Run Lola Run In Run Lola Run, Lola (Franka Potente) screams loud enough to affect the outcome of a roulette wheel where she has just bet all her money on Black 20. The scream could be transcribed as "AAAAAAAAAAA"
1-Down Game featuring “a reckless disregard for gravity” AaAaAA!!! – A Reckless Disregard for Gravity - notably the title is commonly extended in promotional material beyond 6 A's.
2-Down 1010101010101010101010102→16 10101010 10101010 10101010 in binary is equivalent to "AAAAAA" in hexadecimal.
3-Down Google phone released July ’22 The Pixel 6a was released in July 22. Stylized in this puzzle as "AAAAAA"
4-Down It’s five times better than that other steak sauce 5 times better than A1 steak sauce would be A5, stylized in this puzzle as "AAAAA".
5-Down ToHex(43690) The decimal number 43690 converted to hexadecimal is AAAA.
6-Down Freddie Mercury lyric from Under Pressure A drawn-out 'Aaaaahhhh' rising in pitch.
7-Down Full-size Audi luxury sedan Second of three Audi references. As mentioned previously, the A8 is their full-size luxury sedan.
8-Down Fast path through a multiple choice marketing survey The "fast path" is just to select the first option over and over again. Usually the options are labeled A, B, C, and D (or more) - choosing the first option for every question would be answering entirely with A's.
9-Down 12356631 in base 26 Randall is expressing base 26 using the letters of the alphabet with 1=A, in which case 1235663110 = AAAAAA26. (It's unclear how one would express the digit 026 this way.)
10-Down Viral Jimmy Barnes chorus A reference to the music video for Kirin J Callinan's song 'Big Enough', which features Jimmy Barnes in a cowboy hat screaming "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" while in the sky over mountain scenes.
11-Down Ruby Rhod catchphrase Ruby Rhod is a radio host in the film 'The Fifth Element'; he has a scene with a memorable scream.
12-Down badbeef + 9efcebbb In hexadecimal, badbeef and 9efcebbb add together to equal AAAAAAAA (195,935,983, 2,667,375,547, and 2,863,311,530 in decimal respectively).
13-Down In Wet Leg’s Ur Mum, what the singer has been practicing In the song "Ur Mum" by Wet Leg, the bridge starts with "Okay, I've been practicing my longest and loudest scream", which is apparently eight As long.
14-Down Refrain from Nora Reed bot The "Endless Scream" bot on social media, made by Nora Reed, posts "AAAAAAAAAAA" (with or without an h) at varying lengths.
20-Down Mario button presses to ascend Minas Tirith’s walls Minas Tirith. In Mario games you typically use the A button to jump. In games where you don't press a button to move (e.g. games with a joystick) then the button presses required to ascend a vertical structure would probably all be A. This clue might have been inspired by the A-button challenge / A Button Challenge, which tallies the amount of A presses needed to beat Super Mario 64. Additionally, Minas Tirith is a city with seven concentric rings, each with a wall around it and higher than the last ring. Presumably, it takes seven jumps to get to the highest area of the city, so the answer is "AAAAAAA".
24-Down Vermont historic route north from Bennington Vermont Route 7A, or AAAAAAA.
26-Down High-budget video game A high budget video game is usually referred to as a Triple-A game, or AAA.
28-Down Unorthodox Tic-Tac-Toe win Tic-Tac-Toe is usually won by getting either three Xs or three Os in a row, making XXX and OOO normal Tic-Tac-Toe wins. One could achieve a win of AAA by making the unorthodox choice of playing with the letter A instead of X or O.
29-Down String whose SHA-256 hash ends “…689510285e212385” echo -n AAAAAAAA | sha256sum outputs c34ab6abb7b2bb595bc25c3b388c872fd1d575819a8f55cc689510285e212385.
30-Down Arnold’s remark to the Predator A reference to this scene from 'Predator'.
31-Down The vowels in the fire salamander’s binomial name The vowels in Salamandra salamandra are aaaaaaaa.
32-Down Janet Leigh Psycho line The iconic scene in Psycho is the shower scene, in which Janet Leigh gives a long piercing scream as she is murdered, which can be written as 8 "As" if one wishes.
34-Down Seven 440Hz pulses A sound with a frequency of 440 Hz is a middle "A" note. Seven such pulses would be AAAAAAA.
37-Down Audi luxury sports sedan Third of three Audi references. The A6 is their executive car. Actually, the A7, their executive liftback sedan, would fit the prompt of "luxury sports sedan" better, but 37 Down only has room for six As.
38-Down A half-dozen eggs with reasonably firm yolks Eggs can be "graded on a variety of aspects", with grades B, A, or AA. Eggs with a reasonably firm yolk are graded A, so having half a dozen of them gives you AAAAAA eggs.
39-Down 2-2-2-2-2-2 on a multitap phone keypad A "multitap keyboard" is a text entry system for mobile phones. Most numbers are associated with three letters, and tapping the same number multiple times in rapid succession selects the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd number. 2 is "a", 22 is "b", 222 is "c", 3 is "d", etc. 2-2-2-2-2-2 translates to "aaaaaa".
40-Down .- .- .- .- .- .- .- is Morse Code for A. It reads out as AAAAAA.
42-Down Rating for China’s best tourist attractions China's Ministry of Culture and Tourism provides ratings for many tourist attractions in China on a scale from A to AAAAA, with AAAAA being the best. Examples of well-known tourist attractions with the AAAAA rating include the Forbidden City, sections of the Great Wall of China, and the Terracotta Army.
43-Down Standard drumstick size 5A is a common, middle-range size for drumsticks (the sticks used to play drums, not the drumsticks that get eaten). Here, it's written as AAAAA.
45-Down “The rain/in Spain/falls main-/ly on the plain” rhyme scheme An AAAA rhyme scheme means each of the four lines ends with the same sound.
Title text Term for someone with a competitive and high-achieving personality The clue's answer is "Type A". In the context of the title text, this answer is a hint that the entire puzzle can be completed in a crossword-solving app by typing the letter A repeatedly.

Transcript

Ambox notice.png This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.
[A crossword puzzle image, with the following clues:]
Across
1. Famous Pvt. Wilhelm quote
11. IPv6 address record
15. "CIPHERTEXT" decrypted with Vigenère key "CIPHERTEXT"
16. 8mm diameter battery
17. "Warthog" attack aircraft
18. Every third letter in the word for "inability to visualize"
19. An acrostic hidden on the first page of the dictionary
21. Default paper size in Europe
22. First four unary strings
23. Lysine codon
24. 40 CFR Part 63 subpart concerning asphalt pollution
25. Top bond credit rating
26. Audi coupe
27. A pair of small remote batteries, when inserted
29. Unofficial Howard Dean slogan
32. A 4.0 report card
33. The "Harlem Globetrotters of baseball" (vowels only)
34. 2018 Kiefer song
35. Top Minor League tier
36. Reply elicited by a dentist
38. ANAA's airport
41. Macaulay Culkin's review of aftershave
43. Marketing agency trade grp.
44. Soaring climax of Linda Eder's Man of La Mancha
46. Military flight community org.
47. Iconic line from Tarzan
48. Every other letter of Jimmy Wales's birth state
49. Warthog's postscript after "They call me mister pig!"
50. Message to Elsa in Frozen 2
51. Lola, when betting it all on Black 20 in Run Lola Run
Down
1. Game featuring "a reckless disregard for gravity"
2. 1010101010101010101010102->16
3. Google phone released July '22
4. It's five times better than that other steak sauce
5. ToHex(43690)
6. Freddie Mercury lyric from Under Pressure
7. Full-size Audi luxury sedan
8. Fast path through a multiple choice marketing survey
9. 12356631 in base 26
10. Viral Jimmy Barnes chorus
11. Ruby Rhod catchphrase
12. badbeef + 9efcebbb
13. In Wet Let's Ur Mum, what the singer has been practicing
14. Refrain from Nora Reed bot
20. Mario button presses to ascend Minas Tirith's walls
24. Vermont historic route north from Bennington
26. High-budget video game
28. Unorthodox Tic-Tac-Toe win
29. String whose SHA-256 hash ends "...689510285e212385"
30. Arnold's remark to the Predator
31. The vowels in the fire salamander's binomial name
32. Janet Leigh Psycho line
34. Seven 440Hz pulses
37. Audi luxury sports sedan
38. A half-dozen eggs with reasonably firm yolks
39. 2-2-2-2-2-2 on a multitap phone keypad
40. .- .- .- .- .- .-
42. Rating for China's best tourist attractions
43. Standard drumstick size
45. "The rain/in Spain/falls main-/ly on the plain" rhyme scheme


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Discussion

compare https://www.buttersafe.com/2011/02/17/crosswords/ --162.158.158.236 20:50, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

randall has now updated the header for this comic to "Today's comic accidentally inspired by this Buttersafe comic from 2011!" and i feel bad for having spotted the similarity and commented on it within 1 minute of this page's creation --162.158.62.248 03:48, 11 July 2024 (UTC) (same anon as above)
I have made this trivia about it and updated the Header text with this comics new one. This will ave to be updated after Fridays comic comes out. --Kynde (talk) 12:06, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

it's *A* crossword puzzle for a reason ;) -- 21:05, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

I suspect that that reason is that someone will inevitably compare the information content of solving this crossword puzzle to the information content of narrating 1190. 172.70.35.21 01:25, 11 July 2024 (UTC) I didn't sign. Was that rude? I'm new here, is it ok if I just ask questions?

i’m trying to table-ify it but i keep getting edit conflicted. 172.71.30.93 21:24, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Surprised something like "Jagged and loose Hawaiian lava flow (2)" couldn't be fit in (unless I've missed it). Maybe because there were no two-letter answers at all, of course. (I think... Again, maybe I'm missing them.) 172.70.86.38 21:30, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

In most standard American crossword puzzles, two-letter answers are not allowed; the minimum answer length is 3. However, judging from the quality of the fill in this grid, Randall might have considered an answer such as "Two jagged and loose Hawaiian lava flows next to each other (4)" for AAAA. --172.69.58.128 03:04, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

unfortunate that "antepenultimate track of They Might Be Giants' Glean" did not make it in --172.70.230.200 21:35, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

And where is "Fonzie's catch-phrase"? Or does that end with a Y? Barmar (talk) 23:02, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Did I use the calculator wrong, or 12356631 in base 26 equals 111111, not AAAAAA? 172.69.90.180 22:33, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

anyone using base 26 is probably likely to be using all 26 letters, instead of ten numbers and sixteen letters. contextless, i would usually assume any base has standard decimal digits, but liberties have already been taken here so why not (please sign)
I wasn’t sure enough to comment, but it looks like he miscalculated. 26^5 + 26^4 + 26^3 + 26^2 + 26^1 + 26^0 = 12355631 = 111111 in base 26. To be AAAAAA it would have to be 123556310. Of course, maybe he’s using A through Z instead of the expected 0 through 9 followed by letters A through P, the way hexadecimal is. 172.70.210.52 23:16, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
If he’s using the letters A through Z as the ‘digits’ for base 26, then he’s still wrong, because A would be 0, Z would be 25 and 12355631 decimal would be BBBBBB in that base 26. 172.70.210.235 00:54, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
I've often seen the digits for base 10 expressed as 1234567890 - perhaps he did similar in his system and Z is 0. 172.71.194.44 (talk) 17:27, 15 July 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
It's possibly just a typo and the clue was meant to be 123556310. TimeLurker (talk) 15:21, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
The "Qalculate" program has a number base setting called "Bijective base 26", which outputs the answer as "AAAAAAB26. Fabian42 (talk) 01:23, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm surprised he didn't make this interactive, so you could type into all the cells to fill out the crossword. Barmar (talk) 23:02, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

I made and discarded various theories what the joke might be while I read through the questions, including all numbers, at least two possible solutions for the entire puzzle (I think that happened once in a newspaper), unknowable answers, … Only when I got to the "disregard for gravity" thing did I suspect the right answer and only because I once saw a meta gaming Stack exchange question about its tag. Otherwise it might have taken me until the Morse code question. This was really well hidden! Fabian42 (talk) 01:23, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

i dare not think about how long this took to make. youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk 01:31, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

In all honesty, this is probably easier to make than a regular crossword puzzle. 172.69.3.146 05:48, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

https://crosshare.org/crosswords/2YcIAgtQCMBK6clsrNK4/mini-39-literally-screaming 172.71.146.4 02:29, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

It's traditionally doctors that ask you to "say AAAAAAA" when they examine your throat. I'm pretty sure 36 across is supposed to be a joke about how dentists make smalltalk with their fingers in your mouth. 172.70.126.10 04:24, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I filled in the answers. Can someone add the solved image? I don't have file upload permissions. https://i.imgur.com/AlDIT1p.png --Elfakyn (talk) 06:47, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

We need someone to make a picture where it has been solved... :-) --Kynde (talk) 10:15, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
It seems useful (and funny) to supply the answer(s). Should we show the completed puzzle (which raises questions of font choice) or add a column to the table? My preference would be adding the column. -- Dtgriscom (talk) 11:01, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
The two above comments was made after Elfakyn's post. I have moved them both here. And then I have downloaded the image and added it to the trivia segment of the explanation. Thanks Elfakyn. I will credit you, please change the credit if you wish to be credited otherwise or not at all. --Kynde (talk) 12:13, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

bro tried to nerd-snipe us 😭 172.69.194.96 07:30, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

People without aphantasia can visualize words in front of them to solve puzzles like 18-across? That's quite impressive, I have to painstakingly count the letters in my head! Maplestrip (talk) 08:05, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Some people. It's not an all-or-nothing - you can have access to some sorts of visualisation but not others, and it may be clearer or vaguer from person to person.141.101.98.118 07:45, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Every third letter in 'aphantasia' is 'hti'.172.70.162.18 08:17, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

The clue is written like EveR... to give that hint, that it starts on the first letter. Also if you need 4 letters startign on the first and ending on the last is the only way to get a 4 letter answer out of it. --Lupo (talk) 12:12, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
What?172.69.195.230 15:02, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
Oh - now I'm looking at the comic itself I see what you mean. I was just looking at the explanation before, which was lacking the emphasis - I've put it in now. Still a bit lame as a clue IMO though.172.70.163.120 15:08, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

The Ruby Rhod one is misleading; his actual catchphrase in the movie is "green", which fits perfectly in the given space. -Nyerguds (talk) 09:22, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

SHA256 can be cracked much faster than 100 tries/sec. See this performance discussion from 10 years ago, which found that a single thread could do 9068K hashes per second. Recalculating the time for [A-Z]{8}, we find that it would take around 6.4 hours to crack. Still a while, but a far cry from 66 years. Using any form of parallelism (GPU, multicore CPU) would reduce the time further. --199.111.224.109 16:37, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

As nobody is doing it this, it's an entirely theoretical speed. And you can rather envisage something happening at a rate of "a hundred a second" for years better than "more than nine million a second" for hours, and thus what it would mean to do something at this rate for this long (or as long as necessary). Though, traditionally, it would perhaps be "one a second" for approximately 6,600 years, I think I rather like the '66 years' value, aesthetically, so one full test every hundredth of a second seems to be nicely demonstrative.
And going, needlessly, through them at the rate which 'solves' the problem in 6.5 hours doesn't so much impress upon you the difficulty of the task as much as it does the speed one can attempt such a classicly time-consuming problem. Even if you then add the overhead needed to check/collate all the collisions you get along the way. Every time you hit a 'possible', you'd probably do at least a disk-IO to keep a record of it, as you couldn't be sure that you won't have untold number of right-looking but incorrect results and at some poine you probably need to sanity-check and rank what you have in order of most to least likely. 172.70.90.122 17:34, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I haven't thought about Dejobaan Games in a very, very long time. Such a shame Drop That Beat Like an Ugly Baby never finished, the whole "play rhythm games to your own music" niche never seemed to have gotten off the ground. Still, what a throwback. --172.69.22.57 19:32, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Randall should know that a 1.5V storage device is a cell, not a battery. HughNo (talk) 19:46, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

It's a battery consisting of a single cell.141.101.98.225 07:50, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

There are multiple opportunities for a rebus in here. Are we sure the answers are correct? I believe the first cell of 8D could be a rebus of great length...--172.70.100.92 21:35, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm really tempted to write a program to find out if there's another answer to "string whose SHA-256 hash ends '…689510285e212385'". —megan talk/contribs 03:36, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

For bonus nerd-points, also find out all the other alternate answers that slot across that different answer (and down over the alternate acrosses, and...). For all we know, the whole grid might have a valid entirely different solution, but we're feeling so smug for solving it all the 'wrong' way, diverted by fiendishly multivalent clues... ;) 172.70.90.98 11:03, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Eh? 172.70.90.129 (talk) 07:37, 12 July 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)


I wonder if the black squares could be a pattern for Conway's Game of life... —Potirontalk 08:58, 12 July 2024(UTC)

It doesn't look interesting. - CipherGuide (talk) 12:38, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

There are exactly 60 clues, by the way, although I’m not sure where it would be useful to include that information. Usb-rave (talk) 14:53, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

If there had been 65 (or U+0041) clues, that would have been worth mentioning it. Do you know any character encoding where A is encoded as the number 60? 162.158.203.68 (talk) 20:30, 23 July 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Spoiler alert: The title of 1001 already hints to this comic. --172.68.110.172 18:00, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

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