Restless Pen Syndrome

[dougo]

There's a TV commercial for Requip, a drug to treat Restless Leg Syndrome, that features a woman doing a crossword puzzle. Apparently the drug has some weird side effects:

Comments

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

I don't understand.

By the way, the drug is a fucking miracle.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

The filled-in answers have nothing to do with the clues. I guess the real answers weren't telegenic enough? But they're not totally random, like Patrick Bateman filling the grid with MEAT and BONE in American Psycho; they're all plausible crossword answers. Weird.

I've suffered from Restless Leg Syndrome, so I know better than to make fun of it (though it's a goofy name). But it hasn't been often enough that I would feel the need to medicate. How often did you get it?

[rosminah.livejournal.com]

I think I get that restless leg thing occasionally. I hate the feeling. How did you deal with it? I usually end up stomping my feet against my tiled floor, or if I'm sitting, I punch the underside of my feet, or ask someone else to do it.
I guess if they're going to feel that bad, they better be hurting.

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

For me it manifests not so much as an urge to move the limbs (I get it in my arms too sometimes) as severe, and rather peculiar, pain that is relieved briefly by movement. Been getting it worse and worse for I dunno how many years, but last year I was getting it basically every night for hours. Spent more than one night not sleeping at all, lying in bed flinging my arms back and forth and crying.

If my former shrink hadn't identified it correctly, I might have killed myself by now.

[devjoe.livejournal.com]

Not only do the answers not match the clues, but the black squares in the grid have been altered, introducing two-letter words and asymmetry. 1, 5, and 10 across match the spaces at the top of the grid, as well as 14, 15, and 16 across for the next row (and 14A Runner's assignment is LANE). But then the answer to 17 across "I am not a doctor, but I play one on TV" e.g. should be DISCLAIMER running through where they have inserted a black square, and then the next across answer is 19 because 18 is used for a down clue at the L in disclaimer.

Unfortunately this screen capture does not show many down clues, making this nearly impossible to reconstruct. The commercial appears on youtube (alternate version, different magazine name on the screen with the crossword closeup), but I could not get any non-blurred freeze-frames of the crossword from this.

That said, I think some clues have also been altered. It seems too much of a coincidence to have a messed-up crossword like this and have 1A: Relaxed, 20A More relaxed than ever, 35A Relax, and 1D Deep sleep all among the clues. Not to mention that there are two 44 across clues in a row, which put an end to my attempt to reconstruct the grid as if it was a diagramless.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Ha, I didn't even notice the two-letter word and the asymmetry. So they altered both the grid and the clues? WTF? Hm, I wonder if they were trying to avoid copyright issues.

[xartofnothingx.livejournal.com]

if you're interested. you might get a better chance at seeing the commercial online. they use webmd a lot (well they did in the past) to advertise and usually revamp the commercials they air on TV for online use. those also tend to have a higher quality video than youtube.. (i used to do the online advertising for GSK)

[mattsnaps.livejournal.com]

Maybe they modified it for copyright reasons, but then hey, if they're modifying it, why not put in RELAX and RELAXING and DIDWEMENTIONRELAXALREADY while they were in there?

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Mainly what I'd be interested in is asking the ad agency why they messed with the crossword at all.

[twistjusty.livejournal.com]

Maybe another company or brand was an entry in the crossword. I once had to redo a screencast for a certain company because (gasp!) the Google Toolbar could be seen in the browser window.

[lunchboy.livejournal.com]

Also note that Gandhi is spelled "Ghandi" in the clue for 23-Across.

[devjoe.livejournal.com]

A couple things today made me think about this crossword again, and think of another way of trying to identify it - by searching for clues that look like they haven't been modified and trying to find the crossword elsewhere. But no dice. The phrase "Sky spirit of Hopi Indians" (clue at 43 across) appears nowhere on the web. I couldn't find the story to the right of the puzzle, either.

Then I noticed the ads above the crossword. Looks like the format of some crosswords and ads I've seen, but look at that telephone number in the white box above the "word" in "Today's Crossword": 1-800-555-7648. Those 555s are just as unused in 800 numbers as other area codes. The ad on the right looks like it says "Angelica's Expert Dry Cleaners" across the top, but I could not find any trace of a business using this name. The phone number here is hard to make out, but my best effort is 1-800-555-2345.

So, in short, they modified or manufactured as a mockup the entire page.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

The season premiere of "Big Love" on HBO had a close-up of a crossword, and this time it looked like most of the answers had been filled in correctly. I forgot to take a picture, though.