The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance

by Ellen Ross and George Barany

This timely tribute puzzle, with a Thursday-ish trick (or two or three), was released hours before the 2015 Academy Awards, and took on added significance upon conclusion of the show (pictorial hint to the right). The puzzle includes the following "meta" — This puzzle has multiple possible solutions, depending on your choices for 38- and 55-Across. After completing the puzzle, read the circled letters from left to right to get a bonus answer about our theme.

After completing the puzzle (spoiler), learn more about its construction, background, and answers by clicking here for our "midrash." 

Click here to view or download the puzzle in PDF format; here for the solution. For technical reasons, there is no way this particular puzzle can be solved on-line, nor are we able to provide a puz file. We thank Martin Ashwood-Smith, Tracy Bennett, John Child, Michael Hanko, Brent Hartzell, Martin Herbach, and Peter Leopold for beta testing the puzzle and telling us that they thought it just might fly.

If you want to tell others about this particular page, refer them to
http://tinyurl.com/unexpectedpuz

More puzzles here (all), here (music), here (current events), and here (tributes).

E-mail barany@umn.edu to be added to a bcc distribution list.