In 2004, a close friend of mine ran to be a delegate for the Democratic convention. Howard Dean was still in the race, and we were energized by his vision of what a social democracy should provide for its people. But at the tiny "election" in an LA school gym where would-be delegates gave their speeches to an audience of about five (including me), my friend didn't talk much about Dean's policies. Instead, he talked about being angry. Nearly three years had passed since 9/11, but outside of leftist activist groups and antiwar protests, there was still an inexplicable hesitancy among most elected Democrats to be mad in public. But as my friend (to whom I'm now married) said in his speech, "I am mad. And I'm tired of being quiet about it."
Few of us are quiet about being mad now, obviously, but many of us, I suspect, try not to engage with it too excessively, because of the harm it can do to our mental health. It's one of the prevalent features of our current dystopia (though nothing new to oppressed peoples) - millions upon millions of us trying to tamp down a fountainhead of rage, or at least to channel it into a force for change, and in the meantime striving not to let it drown us. Occasionally, though, you just get mad and let it take over for a minute. And that happened to me late at night this week while reading the recent Azmat Khan investigative pieces in the NYT, detailing the unimaginable cruelty and complete impunity of America's unmanned airstrikes. It's not the numbers that got to me - it's important, but unsurprising, to see the systematic undercounting of casualties - but how vividly was made clear the imperviousness of the program, and the people behind the program, to accountability. As long as they are incentivized to see a "large, heavy object" instead of a child, a "convoy" instead of a group of people fleeing violence, the system will validate that conclusion and excuse them from any of its "unforeseen" consequences. The technology to attack from a desk isn't a way to minimize loss of life; it's a way to make sure none of the lost lives are the ones that, to the US, matter. It's unbelievable that anyone can still believe in a thing like "progress." Over and over again, we see that technological "innovations" exist primarily to make the wealthy comfortable at the expense of unseen others. Whether it's Americans smugly indifferent to death and destruction in Syria or Afghanistan or Palestine, or white-collar workers annoyed that they can't get a product delivered to their door within 72 hours, or people who see the stock market as an even marginal approximation of the health of the economy and the people in it, we are plagued by the deleterious effects of "progress." And I realize that this is far from new ground, but it's just one of those weeks, I guess, because I'm mad about it. I'm mad at the finance bros, the tech bros, the political bros. Elon Musk. Mark Zuckerberg. People who use their intelligence to make it easier to make the world worse, and then say "fuck you" to anyone who disagrees. Well, fuck you too. Burn it down. Here's a puzzle.
Themed puzzle tonight that I basically made on a whim after having an idea in the shower. (Which only BARELY separates it from any of the other puzzles I've ever made.) I more or less leaned into a bunch of proper nouns relating to things that interest me personally, but the wonderful Chris Adams did a test solve and pushed me to make a couple things more fair, so hopefully the result is reasonably smooth. Puz and applet solve after the break. Enjoy!
New puzzle day! I *love* some of the clues in here, and very much hope you enjoy. Feel free to let me know what you think!
Many thanks to puzzle bestie Rafa for test solving.
I've been stalling out on a couple of in-progress themed puzzles that I have high hopes for, so for a change of pace I tucked into a challenging themeless - 11x so that I could turn it out a bit more quickly - and really enjoyed the process. I hope it makes for a fun solve! Feedback welcome.
Thanks to Alex Boisvert for being a wonderful test-solver and making this puzzle better!
Gonna be a busy Saturday over here in the house of schmate. Please enjoy this silly little puzzle :)
Thank you to Kim Vu and Abigail Noy for test-solving!
This collaboration began with a tweet:
Mike replied with a friendly explanation, a link to more info, a DM with even MORE info, and an invitation to collab on a midi, which when you consider that this literally came out of me saying I didn't even know what a p&a puzzle WAS, was pretty generous. If you're new to this puzzle form, I'll refer you to Mike's tweets for a sincere explanation. Since I am no expert, I will simply say that they are half anagram clues where you don't have to look for Pre-Approved Anagram Indicators, and half the type of "bad" pun that in a regular crossword I would follow with about five question marks (i.e., one of my favorite types of clues). Mike was a total and complete joy to work with throughout this process, and I'm super-duper happy with the puzzle we put together - really fun with a definite indie vibe. Enjoy! More from Mike: What Kate describes as an act of generosity was mostly just me being really excited about the possibility of collaborating with her. Her extremely good clue-writing for standard puzzles unsurprisingly translated into extremely good clue-writing for p&a puzzles, and I really love the result - enjoy!
Crossworld achievement unlocked this week via collaboration with Christopher Adams! Christopher is brilliant in a way that makes me want to lie about, e.g., having just this summer realized that "Adam Ant" = "adamant," or the fact that I *barely* get the clue he wrote for 20-Down. (Please don't tell him. I want him to think that I am smart.) The timing of this is fortuitous, because Christopher just released a puzzle SUITE (OOOoooOOO) which you can purchase on his site! (Humblebrag: I totally understand the meaning of the suite's title. #math)
The idea for (and our collaboration on) this puzzle was born in the chat of one of Chris Piuma's Twitch streams, which Christopher followed up with a cute little 12x14 grid that we've managed to shove about a zillion words of cluing into. I think the resulting puzzle might be fairly hard, depending on your cultural knowledge base, but/and there are some FIRE clues in there, so I hope you persevere and enjoy! Christopher says: I don't have much to add to that! This has been absolutely fun, Kate was exceptionally wonderful to work with, and all the best clues are hers (Ed. note: agree to disagree). Happy solving!
Phew, it's been a minute since I made a solo puzzle. But I've gotten to work on a ton of fantastic collaborative efforts! To wit:
A themed puzzle with the brilliant and lovely Alex Boisvert (extremely fun theme was all Alex, I loved working on it with him) A themeless with the inimitable Norah Sharpe, hosted by the very good folks over at Crossweird (Norah churned out that grid in like an hour and sent it over and I was like YES) A themeless with Brian Thomas as part of the incredible These Puzzles Fund Abortion effort spearheaded by Rachel Fabi (I clued this in some sort of highly enjoyable fugue state) A themed puzzle with Rachel Fabi herself (Longer side note here: any and all compliments for this little number belong to Rachel, along with my deep, deep gratitude for inviting me to work with her back in April when I had absolutely NO construction experience. If she hadn't been such a mensch when I asked her to look at my first-ever puzzle, would I ever have created another one?!) If you solved any of these, I hope you enjoyed them! So without further ado, here is my latest! It's a themeless 66-worder anchored around a couple of 14s, and it's a smidge on the hard side. Many thanks to Will Nediger and Alex Boisvert for test-solving and providing much thoughtful feedback. I truly love this one, and hope you do, too!
Well color me delighted, Brian Thomas of Puzzles That Need a Home made a puzzle that needed a home! Brian and I grew up in the same hometown, so it feels cosmically appropriate to be crossword buddies. I'm chuffed he let me adopt this this puzzle, which is SUCH A HOOT. Enjoy!
Brian's constructor notes: constructor notes are for squares |