PUZZLE 56 (feat. Brooke Husic): FOR STARTERS... (themeless)

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Solving Music: Frankie Cosmos - Sappho

Another collab today! Brooke Husic reached out to me after the reveal trailer for the new Pokémon games dropped recently, asking if I wanted to collab on a demi seeded with 17-Across; she sent me a half-filled grid and I obviously had to help out with the rest. Brooke's ability to write ridiculously good tough clues is always amazing to me, and I think some of that energy spread into my own clues for this grid; this was a hella fun collab, and hopefully we can make some more puzzles for y'all in the future. Hope you guys enjoy!

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PUZZLE 55 (feat. Allie): OVERHERE

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Solving Music: samfree - Luka Luka★Night Fever

It's a themed puzzle! This puzzle is a collab with my roommate Allie, who wanted to try out some crossword construction. It's easier than my themeless puzzles, so you guys also finally get a break from the usual brutality of niche obscurity here. Hope you enjoy!

Oh, also! People who follow me on Twitter are already aware, but Cruzzles has a mascot now! 

Very silly announcement: Cruzzles now has a mascot! This is Kimi; I make no promises to be more consistent in posting to my blog but I will try to do a little Kimi doodle whenever I do post a new puzzle :)
Will try to post a puzzle today but if not it'll be out sometime this week pic.twitter.com/4WpQL8bxBs

— Ricky Cruz (@rickycruzart) January 16, 2022

Tweet pretty much explains, but there'll be art of Kimi whenever I drop a puzzle now; here's the art for the previous puzzle, along with Allie's drawing of Kimi for this one:

It's been a while; I offer you a Cruzzle in these trying times

It's a themeless called "They Do Tables", and you can solve it over on the blog: https://t.co/yQFAKjZRw4 pic.twitter.com/fzeKtOjA3M

— Ricky Cruz (@rickycruzart) January 17, 2022

(Allie has no online presence for me to share with y'all, but any good vibes you can send their way are appreciated!)

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PUZZLE 54: THEY DO TABLES (themeless)

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Solving Music: Broken Bells - The High Road

Okay, lesson learned: never promise any kind of consistency ever, lest I take another three months to post a new puzzle.

Pretty glad to finally be done with this one; I very much put off writing clues for this, so having this be over with is a good weight off my shoulders, even if I'm a little salty that my favorite entry in this puzzle got sniped by Sam Ezersky in Saturday's NYT :)

Enjoy the puzzle!

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PUZZLE 53: L (themeless)

[PUZ | PDF]

(PDF for this one was made using Nam Jin Yoon's PDF editor: https://njyoon.github.io/pdf)

Solving Music: ROUND TABLE featuring Nino - Groovin' Magic

Hahahahaha yeah so I haven't posted a puzzle since August I guess? Whoops! Hopefully this puzzle is so good that it makes it look like I spent the last 2 months making it. Not that I'd be posting very often otherwise, but I recently got a new job that is taking a good chunk of my time away, so crosswords may be a little scarcer here, but I'll make an effort to keep putting stuff out, even if it's this sporadic.

Pretty happy with this one; it's got more than a few glimpses into my rapidly eroding psyche (read: obscenely long clues), so I hope y'all enjoy it.

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PUZZLE 52: SWEET MUSIC (themeless)

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Solving Music: Snail's House - Cocoa

It's another puzzle! I can't remember the last time I had two puzzles drop this close to each other; this might be the first time that's happened since the first week of the blog. This one's just a regular themeless; I seeded with 34-Across, which I have a feeling may have been used before, but this was a cluing angle I desperately wanted to use. This is a 72-worder, but hopefully the interlocking 15s make up for the lack of longer fill. Hope you guys enjoy!

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PUZZLE 51 (CRYPTIC): OUT OF ORDER

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Solving Music: Macross 82-99 - Cool Soda

It's another Cruzzles cryptic! This one's got a very funky theme; I normally wouldn't choose to use 3-letter words in a cryptic, but it should be pretty apparent why they're there as you solve. Not much else to say about this one; hope it's fun.

Small plug: I made a sudoku puzzle called Stitches that was solved a few days ago on Cracking the Cryptic; go check it out! (There's a solve link in the video description if you want to take a crack at it before you watch).

Enjoy the puzzle!

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PUZZLE 50: OKAY BUT WHAT IF (themeless)

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Solving Music: Ricky Cruz - RHYthm (Full EP)

Long time no puzzle! Here's a themeless idea I've had floating around for a while, and finally made happen this week. (Little disclaimer: this is another one of those "basically a themeless but there's a gimmicky thing going on" puzzles; you'll see.)

Solving music for this week's post is my newly released mashup EP, RHYthm! It's been in the works for a few months now (and is a big reason for the delay between puzzles on the blog this time). It's available for free over on Bandcamp as well; there's a link in the description of the YouTube video embedded above.

Enjoy the puzzle, and good luck to everyone participating in Lollapuzzoola tomorrow! We'll probably be arranging some fun and games over in Crosscord after the tournament tomorrow; link below if you want to join the server. Hope to see you there!

Join Crosscord, the Discord server where we talk about puzzle solving and construction!