Trading Halt

by brooke

• Play it ↗
• Difficulty: actually impossible

Oh no dude, it's the revenge of the HUNDOP. Do people actually say this? Please don't tell me people actually say this. This word needs to be eliminated from every constructor's word list, ASAP.

This is not a crossword for mortals. I'm scratching my head trying to figure out what kind of person can solve this thing without hints, is it someone who knows the trivia by heart? Or someone who can improv an 11-spanning wordplay misdirection? Either way, I fit neither of these descriptions.

I spent ten minutes or so futzing around before I gave up and hinted the long acrosses. Even with 6 hints I was getting nowhere. After another 10 minutes of circling the grid I simply gave up and revealed the rest of the squares. Since I effectively DNF'd this grid I don't think it's necessarily fair for me to comment on it, so I'll keep it short.

I'm a little disappointed by "#bada55 or #defec8, e.g." My answer was RGB since each 2-number hex component corresponds to one of red, green, blue, in that order. Once that was revealed to be wrong (TUSHIES at the cross) I slotted HEX. Nope. Instead the answer is the boring HUE. What can you do?

My feeling with this single clue was rather emblematic for the whole grid, hence the DNF.

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