The inspiration for this puzzle veritably fell out of the sky and bopped us on the heads. I don't want to say more and spoil it!
What I will say is that this puzzle was a much-sought-after collaboration with Rebecca Goldstein! With respect to the many hyper-talented theme specialists out there, I think Rebecca may be my favorite constructor of themed puzzles out there right now. Her recent Inkubator puzzle, "It's a Rap," and her guest puzzle on Just Gridding, "I Could Go Either Way," are two fab ones that come to mind, and she also has the USA Today crossword today. Rebecca is the genius who wrestled this puzzle's constraints into a fun, clean grid (I can say that because it wasn't my work). She was SO much fun to work with. More from Rebecca: Super grateful to Kate for 1) inviting me to collaborate, 2) the existence of her blog so that puzzles like this can exist, and 3) accidentally (?) coming up with the idea for this puzzle. I had an absolute blast working on this grid with her and hope you enjoy solving! Puzzle (and puz) after the jump, as well a little spoilery postscript you can check out after solving, if you're interested in the origin story :) Thank you to the inimitable Rachel Fabi for test-solving! My friends Abigail and Simon created this rows garden puzzle a year ago as part of a puzzle suite I curated for my partner's birthday. I came across it again recently, and thought to myself that more people should have a chance to enjoy it, so I got their permission to post it here!
This puzzle is a meta, and there is a very rudimentary answer checker here. And when I say "rudimentary," I mean it: it's just a Google form. Type in your answer, hit Submit, and then click the View Accuracy button to see whether it's correct. Enjoy!! And be sure to tell me if you like it so that I can pass on your feedback. (I'm including the image of the puzzle so you can see it at a glance, but you'll probably want to download and print (or solve on tablet) the PDF linked below.)
It's been awhile (cue Staind), but I am excited to have something to post again. So grab your favorite tropical drink and enjoy this puzzle in celebration of hot vax summer.
Thanks to the great Alex Boisvert for test solving!
This lucky duck got to collaborate with @rafaxword!! Rafa made his publication debut at Universal last month and has followed it up with two simply killer themelesses at Happy Little Puzzles and 7xwords. He also just today put out a #crosswift midi collab. Check out all his work! And follow him on Twitter, where he is one of my favorite xword presences :)
Rafa created this [open mouth emoji open mouth emoji open mouth emoji] grid with 8 (!!!) spanners and did me the incredible honor of inviting me to work on the cluing. He has been an absolute delight to work with and I hope this is the first of many collaborations! Enjoy!
I didn't think I'd have anything to post this week, but some happenings this evening prompted me to dash off a little tribute. Enjoy!
A themed puzzle for your Sunday night / Monday morning! I ended up having a lot of fun with this one, despite feeling like a clue robot when I started it. I hope you enjoy! Leave a comment or find me on Twitter if you have feedback; would love to hear from you.
Many thanks to Alex Boisvert, Kim Vu, and Norah Sharpe for test-solving.
Somewhat easier version of yesterday's puzzle, for anyone who prefers a breezier experience!
A puzzle where the title matters! I think this is a fun one. Much gratitude to Stan and Parker for test-solving. Enjoy!
Themed puzzle today, whose title you could think of as a sort of meta (or maybe dad-joke punchline is more accurate).
I had a lot of revisions on this one, so I'm grateful to the small army of people who tried it out at various stages. Hope you like it!
Welp, I achieved a crossword-constructing milestone. That's right: I stole a grid from Patrick Berry. (Classic misdirect.) Caveat: I removed two black squares from the original grid and placed two new ones, so if you hate this grid design, blame me, not him.
I was beyond lucky to get two amazing test-solvers for this puzzle: Will Nediger (with whom I had a collab with a couple weeks back and therefore felt bold enough to go crawling back to for more - and good thing, because he caught a massive problem that meant I had to re-do practically the entire grid!) and Nate Cardin (who reached out via Twitter recently to volunteer, as did a few other folks whose work I love! what an amazingly supportive community this is!). Nate also, helpfully, shares my love of several cultural references in this puzzle - so, you know, woe betide any solvers who underappreciate Fiona Apple. As ever. Anyway, the point is: thank you a million times to both Will and Nate! Including a puz file this time, as well as the PuzzleMe, but a quick technical heads up: a few of the clues are, uh, indulgently long. So depending on what program/device you're solving on, they might get truncated. I hope you enjoy this puzzle! Happy to receive feedback in comments or tweets. |