I was working on a different puzzle when I happened to notice that EDWIN ALDRIN JR was the same length as NEIL ARMSTRONG. Of course, that meant I had a nice theme. I toyed with a bunch of connectors but WALKED ON THE MOON was the most natural phrase that was good for cluing, and it was a 15 to boot. I tried hard to get MICHAEL and COLLINS in there as well (both 7's) but I just couldn't without screwing up the grid.
One of the down entries was I-EIGHTY ONE. I had other choices, but I liked it because of the improbable beginning of IEIG. Will agreed, writing "the entry I EIGHTY-ONE is really 'out there,' since the highway name would never be spelled out this way. But it's amusing and sort of fun as a novelty." Fortunately, it didn't start a trend of long spelled-out highway numbers.
Will accepted this puzzle about nine months before it ran and we discussed a specific date for it to run, the following July 20th. About three weeks before it ran, I dropped Will an email about it. Good thing as he had inadvertently filed it with the regular puzzles. Had it been missed, I would have had to wait another year.
1 M | 2 I | 3 N | 4 T | 5 S | 6 F | 7 I | 8 C | 9 A | 10 K | 11 I | 12 L | 13 N |
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14 A | S | E | A | T | 15 A | D | A | M | 16 W | E | A | R |
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17 I | M | H | I | P | 18 R | O | S | A | 19 A | I | W | A |
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20 N | E | I | L | A | 21 R | M | S | T | R | 22 O | N | G | ||
23 B | U | Y | S | 24 A | A | R | 25 H | 26 S | 27 T |
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28 R | 29 E | 30 S | A | L | E | 31 A | N | N | A | 32 T | H | E |
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33 E | R | I | C | 34 B | R | E | T | T | 35 Y | O | N |
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36 W | A | L | K | 37 E | 38 D | O | N | T | H | E | 39 M | O | O | N |
40 A | S | H | 41 L | I | S | A | S | 42 A | N | T | I |
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43 R | E | O | 44 B | E | T | Z | 45 C | 46 A | R | E | S | S |
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47 D | R | U | 48 O | S | O | 49 B | A | E | Z | |||||
50 E | 51 D | W | I | N | 52 A | L | D | R | I | 53 N | 54 J | 55 R |
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56 S | 57 A | T | O | 58 R | I | L | E | 59 A | P | I | A | N |
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60 O | C | T | O | 61 A | V | O | N | 62 T | A | N | I | A |
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63 B | E | E | R | 64 E | Y | E | D | 65 E | N | O | L | S |
Answer summary:
4 unique to this puzzle, 2 unique to Modern Era but used previously.
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