Puzzle 149: Freestyle 117. Going at the current rate.

Last Friday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 72
Mean word length: 5.44

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Back to the old 6-letter/8-letter format that seems to fit me like an old glove. 18-Across was my ultimate seed entry for this grid. I don’t often talk about cluing on these posts, but it seems like the time is right because it’s particularly prominent here. You may notice, not just on this grid but on others that I’ve made, that the lengths of the clues go in waves from time to time. It’s not a subconscious thing at all; if I notice that I’ve written a string of long clues, the next couple of clues I will try to make short if at all possible. It’s my effort to maintain some rhythm — sometimes I have to go long with a clue to be more explanatory when I have to — but no one wants to read an essay while they’re just solving a grid.

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Puzzle 148: Freestyle 116. Creating a buzz.

Last Tuesday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 70
Mean word length: 5.34

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This grid features a central staggered stack of three 13-letter entries. The bottom two of those three were seed list entries that I discovered could stack like this. The advantage of a staggered stack, as opposed to a stack with answers directly one on top of the other, is that you have two less letters that have to directly touch each other; it doesn’t sound like much, but that makes it a whole lot easier.

I had the central stack from the start, but I made a LOT of changes to the block structure to make this work. About the only thing that stayed the same from my original plan to now was the vertical stacking in the upper right and the lower left. The rest of the grid went through, I’d say, at least two dozen different block structures before I could find something that worked to my liking. It was even starting to get a little frustrating at points. I had to treat it as I would treat a grid that was a really difficult solve — I put it down and came back to it hours later. That actually happened a couple of times with this construction. Of course, a little luck was involved that some of the down entries were able to work next to each other.

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Puzzle 147: Freestyle 115. Is this all there is?

Last Friday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 72
Mean word length: 5.44

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Another grid where I built four long stacks pinwheel-style. This time, I was able to fit in no less than six seed-list entries into those stacks: 15-, 18-, 62-, and 64-Across and 1- and 3-Down. That’s not to say that I neglected the bottom right, though. The existence of 60-Across and 63-Across as phrases saved my bacon in that corner. Most of the trouble I encountered constructing that corner was not making the 8-letter entries stack but, believe it or not, getting the bitty 5-letter entries to work with that stack… I don’t know why. It was getting really annoying at points because every permutation of the 8-stacks wasn’t just quite working because of those stupid 5s. I was about to make a serious concession in that corner when I realized the existence of 60- and 63-Across, which made everything miraculously work out in my favor.

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Puzzle 146: Freestyle 114. What’ll you make of this?

Last Tuesday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 72
Mean word length: 5.36

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I definitely try to avoid closed-off sections in grids, i.e. areas that you could completely isolate by adding a single black square. Unfortunately, there are two corner sections of this grid where that’s the case. I started with the two center 13-letter entries, of course, then went to the upper right to begin constructing in earnest. With the stack I formed there, I must have tried at least a dozen different block arrangements before relenting and settling on the arrangement you see here. I shouldn’t exactly say “relenting”, because the block arrangement I settled on gave me the best opportunity for the best fill. The up side of closed-off sections is that you have a whole swath of grid that’s rather isolated, and thus much easier to construct (and easier to put some sparkle in the section), but the down side is that solvers like you don’t have any “outs” if you get stuck in that section. I was very careful not to put any hard-to-infer proper names or obscure words in those two sections because of that.

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Puzzle 145: Freestyle 113. It’s all in the shading.

Last Friday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 70
Mean word length: 5.49

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Sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking of the short fill as just something to toss in to get that grid filled 100%. I never want to get into the habit of spending too little time on any amount of fill, though. This was the case with the upper left and lower right in this puzzle. Those corners are just measly 6 letter words stacked three with a four-letter word. However, if you can believe it, those corners are where I spent the most time in constructing this grid; the major stacks fell into place pretty well. The short, isolated fill in a grid is sorta like adding shading to a realistic painting. It may not bother the most cursory observers, but to people who really take in paintings in detail, as well as the artists themselves, it can make or break a work of art if the shading isn’t quite right.

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Puzzle 144: Freestyle 112. I’ve got nothing to hide.

Last Tuesday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 72
Mean word length: 5.33

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Back to “normal” with 72 words after the craziness of 66 words last time. It was anarchy, I tell you… anarchy! 68-Across was the single genesis of this grid. This is one of the rare times that I had an entry AND a clue before constructing any other part of a grid. The structure of this grid did allow me to fit a few more seed list entries comfortably into this grid (1-, 16-, 33-, and 38-Across, 12-, 39-, and 40-Down).

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Puzzle 143: Freestyle 111. I’ve got your back.

Last Friday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 66
Mean word length: 5.70

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I couldn’t believe my luck when I discovered that three of my seed list entries — the ones you’ll find on 51-, 55-, and 56-Across in this grid — stacked onto each other. The grid that developed from that stack turned out to have 66 words — yeah, I almost feel like I owe an apology every time I go below 68 because I’m pretty much breaking a promise I made in my About My Puzzles page. I think I’ve only done it twice, and it’s done with the best of intentions — any extra block(s) I put in the middle of this grid just to add word count to a grid would look silly anyway. I wouldn’t do a grid if it necessitated lots of “glue” entries or were not feasible to do by hand, and this grid falls under neither of those conditions.

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Puzzle 142: Freestyle 110. We’re born again, there’s new grass on the field.

Last Tuesday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 72
Mean word length: 5.36

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This is a happy time of year for me. The NHL playoffs are at hand and baseball is getting under way. That’s why I was glad to insert a couple of baseball references, in a Silkesque manner, into this grid. Mind you, they were not intentional, more like happy accidents borne of necessity, but they’re in there and the timing could not have been better. As for the rest of the grid, you can probably tell I had some seed list entries I wanted to get into the grid. 1-Across, obviously, was the primary seed, followed closely by 65-Across (you could have probably guessed that, if you know me by now). I was glad to get some of my shorter seed list entries in there as well (not by accident) at 27-Across and 41-Across.

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Puzzle 141: Freestyle 109. No foolin’!

Last Friday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 70
Mean word length: 5.51

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This grid started life with two 8-9-9 stacks in the corners (6-Across/15-Across was the origin). I don’t normally do what I did in this grid, which was to extend the pair of entries in the third/13th rows to 15 instead of keeping the stack “confined”. Like with all the changes I make to the block structure of my grid, I did it because it actually helped me make construction easier. Also, speaking of making construction easier, in my ever-living quest to drive home the point that aesthetics don’t matter, I incorporated no less than SIX helper squares (some may call them “cheater squares”) to make my grid work the best that it could. It’s my grid, and I’ll do what I want!

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Puzzle 140: Freestyle 108. Let’s see some action!

Last Tuesday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 72
Mean word length: 5.31

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I usually don’t go for the “pinwheel” style stacks when I’m constructing, and I don’t know why. It certainly allows for more opportunity for sparkle in the fill without impacting the difficulty of the construction. By “pinwheel” I mean four major stacks instead of two — one in each corner. I still maintained ample connectivity between the sections of the grid, and I was able to include more longer answers while maintaining the reasonable word count.

As always, I’d like to know, folks… comment is welcome! Come say hello! What did you like? What could I do better?

As always, share this link! Pass it around! New puzzle on Friday!