Monday, February 14, 2022

PUZZLE #374: Brick By Brick 9

PUZZLE #374
BRICK BY BRICK 9

Happy Valentine's Day! Apologies in advance that I wasn't able to make a fully-appropriate puzzle involving hearts or anything like that; all I could manage was a thematically-adjacent Final Answer to go with it. But I'm sure you'll like it despite that!
 

Place the 2x3 bricks into the grid below so that a crossword puzzle with rotational symmetry is formed. Each of the Across and Down clues hint at answers that appear in that row or column, all of which are in order. Be careful with the rows marked with a 7, 8, and 9, as the bricks that are placed in those rows will be split in half by a blue line, which you can see in the diagram above. Also, the letters that go in the blue line's squares will complete one answer in every Down column, though you'll have to figure out what those letters are.

This week's FINAL ANSWER is the name of a romantic comedy movie


ACROSS
1) 50%
    Remove a disc from an Xbox Series X, say
    Trade this for that
2) Inventor's inspiration
    Florida birthplace of rapper Pitbull
    1,000-page book, for one
3) Bengay target
    Playwright Chekhov
    Rutabaga or radish
4) With "The", 1999 film that introduced "bullet time"
    Bellybuttons
5) Felt under the weather
    Murder, _____ Wrote
6) Jeans brand sometimes spelled with a question mark
    Rec room
    March 17 honoree, for short
7) Dissimilar
    Porcine target in Angry Birds
    Last letter in "IPA"
8) THE FINAL ANSWER
9) Strive (for)
    San Diego Comic-_____
    Art Institute of Chicago, e.g.
10) Bewildered on the briny?
      A bit out of the ordinary
      Cherry parts that can be knotted
11) Konami arcade game where you stomp on arrows to the beat, for short
      African-American 3-year-old from Rugrats
12) Opening line of Green Eggs and Ham
      Deodorant once advertised as being "Strong enough for a woman"
13) Six, in Japanese (or a streaming media device)
      Pumpkin Spice _____ (Starbucks favorite)
      First name of Drago from Rocky IV
14) Dipper or Mabel from Gravity Falls (HINT: They share the same birthday)
      Tartan pattern
      Like two prime numbers six digits apart (NON-MATHY CLUE: Seductive)
15) Grains in a golf trap
      Horse & donkey's offspring
      Furrow one's brow

DOWN
1) Love & _____ Hop: Atlanta (VH1 reality series)
    Mexican fruit used as an ingredient in Hawaiian Punch
    Some QB protectors
2) Naked man on the Sistine Chapel ceiling
    Not illuminated
    Slipknot's second album (or the corn-growing state that they hail from)
3) Kylo Ren's mother
    Cary who played the title role in Robin Hood: Men in Tights
    Comparable (to)
4) Disney film where Mickey Mouse shakes hands with Leopold
    "The Wreck of the _____ Fitzgerald" (Gordon Lightfoot hit)
5) Like tightrope walking without a harness
    Unskippable annoyances for users of Peacock's free tier
6) Spam folder filler
    Keyboard key usually placed to the left of F1
    Director Bakshi who pioneered adult animated films
7) Doomed with bad luck
    Bashful ghost playable in Super Mario Party
    Country located east of Mauritania
8) Devour vindaloo, say
    "Perhaps... perhaps not"
    Spray-on _____
9) "Hurry up!"
    Strategic game where players remove matchsticks
    Stranger Things character with a lisp
10) Turner and Fey
      Phys ed class
      Like a poorly-maintained hotel
11) Format that beat out Betamax
      It "makes the people come together", according to a Madonna song
12) Word following "Wall" or "Sesame"
      Star sometimes used instead of a bullet point
13) Lamb Chop's coat
      Check endorser
      High School Prodigies Have It Easy _____ in Another World (anime series)
14) Bible book before Obadiah
      Underworld's 1992–2012 The Anthology, for one
      70s/80s sitcom starring Danny DeVito
15) Dino, to the Flintstones
      Is overflowing (with)
      "The Gray Lady" of newspapers, briefly

Once you believe you've figured out the FINAL ANSWER, send it to either redhead64@chartermi.net or itsredhead64@gmail.com (though I'm more likely to check the second one) and I'll put your name on a solvers list once I post the answers in about two weeks. You can also use those email addresses to give me some comments and feedback (or even ask for a hint, though you'll be marked as having used one if you do so) or send me the answer to last week's puzzle, if you haven't already figured it out. If you have a printer and want to solve this puzzle on paper, just head below the break for a link to a .PDF version which you can print out!

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