PUZZLE 14 - HANDS OFF! (themeless)

[ACROSS LITE | PDF]

Solving Music: Aesop Rock - Tetra (Instrumental)

(The instrumental alone is great, but take a listen to the full song if you have a chance.)

Real niche puzzle today; I've tagged it as hard, but it might not be if your pop culture game is strong. This was made in about four hours' time total, which is bizarre to me. I was up very late last night, and was expecting to get this started yesterday and finished today, but the puzzle just kinda happened. As an impulse puzzle (and one finished in such a short timeframe) the fill isn't the cleanest or the most colorful, but I'm satisfied enough with it to post it.

I've been wanting to put 57A in a blog puzzle for a while, and when I realized that the English translation of it (1A) is the same length, I knew I had to use those as seeds in opposite slots. 57A is a really good anime that everyone should watch. <SPOILER> As the clue references, it's an anime about three girls that decide to make anime, and it goes into super interesting details on the art of animation while still being really dynamic and visually interesting. Also, the female characters are actually drawn more realistically instead of being sexualized like in a lot of anime, and their voices are average, which is such a breath of fresh air. </SPOILER> You can watch it on Crunchyroll for free (albeit with ads and being unable to watch the newest episode till the next week).

Oh yeah, there's a crossword in this blog post too. Hope y'all enjoy it!

SOLUTION:

Join the crossword Discord Server, where we talk about puzzle solving and construction!

PUZZLE 13 - DROPPING BOMBS

[ACROSS LITE | PDF]

Solving Music: Vaudeville Revival - Without Your Knowing

 

Sunday size puzzles are back, y'all. This puzzle happened because I realized the wordplay in 113-Across was possible, and it was so cursed I needed to curse all of you with it. Glad I found a revealer to tie it all together. Since I went into this knowing I wasn't submitting this anywhere, I decided to really niche up the theme answers, which paid off really well imo. I kinda rushed the fill in some places, so there are some rough patches, but I'm ultimately happy with being able to pull together a 21x in twoish days, given that I have 21x puzzles sitting in my puzzle folder that are killing me to finish. Kinda wish my luck for the blog puzzles would carry over to my regular venue submissions, but eh.

Btw, the solving music today is by Vaudeville Revival, the band of a friend of mine. Go check out their album "Free Dirt" on Spotify; it's pretty good stuff.

SOLUTION:

Join the crossword Discord Server, where we talk about puzzle solving and construction!

PUZZLE 12 - HEWWO! (themeless)

[ACROSS LITE | PDF]

Solving Music: Bridal Party - Fruitless

Putting a title on this one was considerably difficult since for once in my life I decided to not do a themeless with any big entries in the center. I ended up referencing one of my favorite entries in this puzzle, even if it is a short one. I really wish that entry was viable in mainstream crosswords, but editors would never allow it. Cowards.

The seeds for this one were 44 and 47-Across; 44 in particular was one I really wanted to include. I will always associate it with this bit from Snapcube's Real-Time Fandub of the PS4 Spider-Man game (spoilers for PS4 Spider-Man and obviously this puzzle at that link). All of the Real-Time Fandubs are fantastic, and I highly recommend them.

Enjoy the puzzle!

SOLUTION:

Join the crossword Discord Server, where we talk about puzzle solving and construction!

VARIETY PUZZLE 2 - SNAKE PIT #1

[PDF]

Solving Music: Professor Kliq - Mouth Money

Apologies for the lack of puzzles lately; I've been jumping around making a few puzzles for submitting, and a large chunk of my time recently went toward preparing a group cosplay to wear to the Sonic movie (movie was pretty dang good, btw). I've been kinda burned out on crosswords the past week or so, but I wanted to make sure this hiatus didn't last forever, so I worked up a new style of variety puzzle.

I hope the rules aren't too confusing on this one; the concept is pretty simple, but very hard to put into words. While the solve is probably a pretty fast one, this is definitely a format I want to explore more; lots of fun phrases can be used as snakes, and the missing-letters phrase ties things together pretty well. Hope you enjoy it!

SOLUTION:

Join us in the Crossword Server on Discord, where we talk about crossword solving and construction!

PUZZLE 11 - WHAT'S THE POINT

[ACROSS LITE | PDF]

Solving Music: Quok - Atariwave

Not a long break between puzzles this time; I had the idea for this one this morning and pretty much spent my day constructing. This was a relatively simple construction, though the theme created really interesting challenges that introduced some rare letter combos.

The theme itself may be a bit weird (at least, half of it might), but hopefully writing it as it appears in the answer will be satisfying enough. Enjoy it (or don't, I guess; it's a free country I think).

SOLUTION:

Join us in the Crossword Server on Discord, where we talk about crossword solving and construction!

PUZZLE 10 - OOOOOOOOOOH! (themeless)

[ACROSS LITE | PDF]

Solving Music: Amherst - Pop Rocks

If this puzzle looks like it was made the same way the last themeless was, it's because this puzzle was made the same way the last themeless was. This time, all three entries in the stair-stack were pulled from my personal list of themeless seeds, so I'm pretty happy with that stack as a whole. This format seems to be working fairly decently while still allowing for colorful answers elsewhere in the puzzle.

I'm looking to maybe get this blog on a consistent upload schedule (once a week, probably) sometime soon, but I'll need to figure out the best time to post. I'll probably do something like get everything written up and scheduled the night before, and then manually do all my social media sharing when I wake up (I get up extremely late :P). We'll see. Enjoy the puzzle!
(also let's forget about the four-letter word crossing itself in two entries I'd like to forget I did that thank you)

SOLUTION:

Join the crossword Discord Server, where we talk about puzzle solving and construction!

VARIETY PUZZLE 1 [NOW YOU SEE IT] - GO FOR IT!

[PDF]

Solving Music: WEDNESDAY CAMPANELLA - Shakushain

VARIETY PUZZLE! I'm not sure how often these will be coming around, but I hope you guys enjoy them as a departure from the usual.

This puzzle is called Now You See It, named after the bygone game show of the same name (I recommend it; it's pretty entertaining. I think they had a reboot of it recently? Not sure how well that one did; hopefully well). It's all explained in the puzzle page, but the rules are simple; find the answer words (all reading left-to-right) in the grid. I added the leftover letters element to give it the depth it didn't need as a game show, but needs as a puzzle.

The fun of this format construction-wise is in finding words with unique overlaps (BACARDI/CARDINAL, e.g.), and words containing other words (the Norse god in Grid 2 being where it is, e.g.). It's already giving me some ideas for crossword themes.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. Also, come join the crossword Discord server for solvers and constructors! (Probably gonna start plugging this in each post now, in lieu of a YouTube channel to ask you to like, comment, and subscribe to :/ )

SOLUTION: