ANSWERS: Mixed Doubles

It's been two weeks since I've posted my "Mixed Doubles" puzzle, so now it's time for me to reveal the answers, as well as a list of people who have solved it:

• Eric Maddy ****
• Paolo Pasco ****
• Grant Fikes ****
• Adam Weaver ****
• Lynn Sweeney (no stars)
• Tyler Hinman ****
• Christian H.P. ****
• Mom **
• Sam Levitin ****
• Giovanni Pagano (no stars, but only because he sent in his answers after this post went up)

Now just head below the break for the answers! There are also some comments for you to read, as well as a video and... well, that's about it. This puzzle didn't exactly give me enough material for pictures to go along with the comments...

And here are all the correct number combinations:

ACROSS: 1/15, 2/25, 3/22, 4/18, 5/14, 6/11, 7/13, 8/23, 9/28, 10/20, 11/6, 12/24, 13/7, 14/5, 15/1, 16/26, 17/27, 18/4, 19/21, 20/10, 21/19, 22/3, 23/8, 24/12, 25/2, 26/16, 27/17, 28/9

DOWN: 1/25, 2/16, 3/26, 4/8, 5/10, 6/22, 7/17, 8/4, 9/21, 10/5, 11/24, 12/29, 13/23, 14/19, 15/28, 16/2, 17/7, 18/20, 19/14, 20/18, 21/9, 22/6, 23/13, 24/11, 25/1, 26/3, 28/15, 29/12

The two leftover clues are 29-Across and 27-Down, and the answer to those clues (which you can also get by scrambling the letters in the pink squares) is WATCHMEN: this puzzle's FINAL ANSWER!

Solver Eric Maddy noticed that "FWIW, there's a brute-force method to pick out the odd clues without solving any of the other clues..." If you want to know what they are, highlight the space between the following quotation marks: "Just add the sums of all the down entries, which comes out to 408. Subtract that from the sum of all #s from 1-29, which is 435, and the odd down clue is #27. Same for the acrosses."

It turns out Eric wasn't the only one to figure out the two leftover clues early, as solver Grant Fikes had this to say: "If my calculations are correct, [29-Across and 27-Down] are the unused ones I'm looking for. But I can't think of the answer offhand, so I'll see if I can solve the crossword unassisted and anagram the letters to get something that makes sense." Nine minutes later, he had "C, M, N... oh, WATCHMEN, I remember that now."

Meanwhile, solver Tyler Hinman opted not to use that shortcut, saying that it was "Possible to short-circuit this one, but I didn't, really, so no big."

Solver Adam Weaver said that this was a "nice puzzle. [O]ne of my favorites that you've done."

Solver and mom... er, Mom, said that she "did pretty good with the down clues, so I used the filled-in spaces to get the answers for the across clues. I didn't know what Watchmen is, so I unscrambled the letters 'til it made sense"

Solver Giovanni Pagano noticed that "The clues were a bit more general knowledge than in some of your other puzzles, but that makes sense given the potentially wider audience of this puzzle. I solved it with the Across clues only TBH, but I can go back and revisit the downs"