Puzzle 129: Freestyle 98. It’ll make your head turn.

Last Friday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 72
Mean word length: 5.36

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The classic way of seeding — at least one in each corner and one in the middle — was the way it worked with this grid. No less than six entries from my seed list appear in this grid.

I’ve been wanting to work in a curling reference to one of my grids for the longest time, and I finally did it here! (New York Times Wordplay blogger Deb Amlen’s rather interesting account of her trying out curling after her — maybe — facetious suggestion that curling is a ridiculous activity is here.) It may sound ridiculous to some, but I watch curling whenever I see that it’s on TV. The combination of athleticism and strategy in that sport is fascinating.

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Puzzle 128: Freestyle 97. Giving you cause for optimism.

Last Tuesday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 68
Mean word length: 5.50

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I think I got a thing going with these 12-13-14 and 13-14-15 stack formations. It’s definitely easier to pull off these staggered stacks, obviously, because there is that much less number of letters that actually go one on top of another. (Or maybe it could be that I have some 12, 13, and 14-letter entries from the seed list that have been lingering on my seed list for a long time?) Obviously, also, the grid spanner in the center was a focal point of my construction. The staggered stacks made it easier for me to both stack and include the 15 in the center because there’s that much less of a link between the stacks and the center entry. The actual construction, however, started with the stack of 55-Across and 56-Across, both components of the seed list.

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Puzzle 127: Freestyle 96. Like a bolt from the blue.

Last Friday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 70
Mean word length: 5.54

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This grid started with 1-Across and 17-Across — but not in that configuration. My initial aim was to stack what’s now 17-Across on top of what’s now 1-Across in the 2nd and 3rd rows and see what would fit on top of them. I found several decent to good entries that stacked like that, but none of them that were good enough really panned out without making some serious compromises in my book. I did not even think about pairs of 11-letter entries (as in 20/57-Across) when I started working on the stack in the upper left, but, crazily enough, it actually worked out better — and I even got a seed list entry in there, at 57-Across. I had a rather different completed grid for this one at first, but it took until after I had started to even clue it that there were some head-slappingly obvious dupes thanks to the original upper right; one was a three-letter word (in 46-Down) and one was a 4-letter word (in 1-Down…!!!). I couldn’t believe it when I noticed them.

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Puzzle 126: Freestyle 95. Started from the bottom, now we here.

Last Tuesday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 72
Mean word length: 5.39

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As you might ascertain from the title that refers to a Drake hit song, I started building this grid at the bottom — 67-Across was my primary seed — and, well, now we’re here. I had one seed in each corner, actually — I got a grid rejected from the New York Times because of the seed entry in the lower left. (I can understand why, in retrospect.) It’s nice when I can build the corners  and everything else inside of the corners just works out and comes together without compromise.

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Puzzle 125: Freestyle 94. Totally tubular, man.

Last Friday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 68
Mean word length: 5.41

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You’ll notice it right away when you open up this grid; this was constructed starting with a block structure in mind as opposed to any particular seed entry. I wanted to make something unusual-looking that I’d never tried before. It didn’t allow a whole lot of flexibility for me around the edges of the grid, bit I didn’t need it anyway. After the block structure was established, my seeds were 33-Across and 44-Across. This is a common technique I use with stacks: my seeds for the stack are the top and bottom entry in the stack, and I see if anything fits in the middle.

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Puzzle 124: Freestyle 93. Brace yourself!

Last Tuesday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 70
Mean word length: 5.51

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The seed that got this grid started was 14-Across. Sometimes crossword constructors’ grids are influenced by their personal experiences, but this isn’t the case here. I was lucky — when I was a teenager, my dentist told me that I’d likely need braces. He didn’t know how I’d do it, though, because I had a tremendously bad gag reflex. But, by some miracle, my teeth somehow straightened out on their own.

59-Across was the seed in the lower right. I’d like to tell you that 62-Across stacked with it was the origin, but 62-Across just came with the natural process. It wasn’t my original intention to start with that specific entry (or any particular one, for that matter) in that spot, but it was some happy residue from the construction process.

As for 10-Across… yes, I am on Words With Friends, and I do play it quite a bit. I have had quite a friendly rivalry going with fellow crosswordiste Alex Vratsanos… well, actually, he beats my butt most of the time, so it’s not much of a rivalry.

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

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Puzzle 123: Freestyle 92. Going off the beaten path.

Last Friday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 72
Mean word length: 5.44

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The stack of 64/67 Across and the entry at 14-Across started this grid on its way. I built the northwest and southeast corners first, then fell the southwest, and the northeast was last. Once I got the first three letters of 30-Across, I knew immediately what entry was going to go there — I’m glad it worked out that I could also include 13-Down. Quite a few things in this grid just… worked out, I guess you could say.

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Puzzle 122: Freestyle 91. It’s a free-for-all!

Last Tuesday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 72
Mean word length: 5.36

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Usually, with a grid like this, you’d think that the 15-letter entry would be the seed. Alas, no… I wasn’t even planning on having a 15-letter entry in this one, but it just happened. Nor was I planning to have the ten-letter entries at 7- and 30-Down either. The seed was actually the stack between 1-Across and 13-Across. 68-Across I had wanted to get into a grid for a while, so I’m glad that one just found its way into this grid.

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Puzzle 121: Freestyle 90. Don’t settle for less!

Last Friday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 70
Mean word length: 5.37

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I got lucky in parts of this grid. Sometimes I’ll stretch a corner of the grid in such a way to make a few entries work together (like I did in the upper left with 1-Across, 15-Across, and 8-Down), but then I realize, “Oh yeah… I’ve gotta do this for the other corner, too.” That’s what happened in this grid — I got to the bottom right, with a seed at 39-Across that I really wanted to include, then I realized that it would be rather difficult to intersect a triple stack of 7s and a quad stack of 6s with a triple stack of 10s with the seed entry already constraining that corner. Pure luck befell me when I started with the vertical stack at 40/41/42-Down and found that the stack of 10s and, in turn, the vertical stack of 6s was actually very flexible. I didn’t want to settle for mediocre fill in that corner, and it didn’t take me long to find the fill that I wasn’t just settling for.

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Puzzle 120: Freestyle 89. Covering all the hard-to-reach places.

Last Tuesday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 68
Mean word length: 5.59

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This may or may not be a minor spoiler, but I made a compromise that I didn’t think I would ever make in a grid on this site — a partial phrase. It took me 89 grids to include one, and it probably will be at least that many until I put another one in. It was too good of a stack for me to abandon the whole thing because of it. Partial phrases are, as you know, the bane of my existence.

The three seeds were the genesis of the two stacks: 15-, 61-, and 62-Across. 61- and 62-Across stacked so well that I had a LOT of choices to make 58-Across work. Again, the oft-ignored 12, 13, and 14-letter entries get their chance to shine!

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

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