Puzzle 270: Freestyle 235. Enough clowning around!

Last Tuesday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 70
Mean word length: 5.54

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If you’re not a fan of helper squares, look away. (Well, open the grid first… then brace yourself and look away if you feel the need.) It started as a triple stack of 11-letter entries, but I liked the two 11s that I stacked so much (both were in the seed list, so there’s that) that I added not one, but two helpers to find a good entry to stack on top of them.

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

Thanks as always to the test solvers for their input.

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Puzzle 269: Freestyle 234. C’mon, join the party!

Last Friday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 72
Mean word length: 5.31

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My test solvers really came through for me on this one. The upper right corner… I have to put it this way, but I kinda settled. I liked the original stack at 10/11 Down, but everything else was sorta shoehorned in there. I mean, it wasn’t bad, but there were a few borderline icky short connecting entries. But it bothered me enough, due to the apprehensions raised in the test solve, that I completely excised that corner and redid it. I’m very satisfied with it now.

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

Thanks as always to the test solvers for their input.

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

Puzzle 268: Freestyle 233. We’re just scratching the surface.

Last Tuesday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 72
Mean word length: 5.33

Have something you wanna say? Got a question? Want to do a guest freestyle? Want to collaborate on a freestyle? Want to just say hello? Hit me up by email!

Nothing much to say on this one except to say that 57A, which was one of the seeds, is a sport whose competitors have a death wish. To whomever came up with it, it was a brilliant idea, mind you, but you’re just asking for trouble if you devote any significant portion of your life to this activity. Just check out some YouTube videos about this and see for yourself!

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

Thanks as always to the test solvers for their input.

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

Puzzle 267: Freestyle 232. Don’t quote me on this.

Last Friday’s freestyle solution

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Get the PUZ here!

Word count: 72
Mean word length: 5.28

Have something you wanna say? Got a question? Want to do a guest freestyle? Want to collaborate on a freestyle? Want to just say hello? Hit me up by email!

Thank you copiously to Jim Quinlan, who put together this really neat write-up of me and my work on this site at Amy Reynaldo’s Crossword Fiend website! Great work!

My seed answer — I won’t tell you where it is right now, but you’ll wonder why I put it there, and not somewhere else. You’ll know what I mean after you solve it, but I won’t say any more because that might be a bit of a spoiler. I did include another entry that I can talk about, at 12-Down because it’s a sort of running joke between my wife and me to call each other that. No real reason, it just started organically that way.

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

Thanks as always to the test solvers for their input.

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

Puzzle 266: Freestyle 231. You heard me right.

Last Tuesday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 66
Mean word length: 5.70

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I know it’s 66 words today, but dual 12-13-14 stacks pretty much guarantee that you’ll have to lower the word count like that. Otherwise, there’ll be an awful lot of clutter with an awful lot of short entries in the middle of the grid, and that’s just not very fun. So, as 66-word grids go, this wasn’t too bad to construct once the stacks were in place. In fact, it was pretty fun to work on this one.

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

Thanks as always to the test solvers for their input.

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

Puzzle 265: Freestyle 230. Throwing some shade.

Last Friday’s freestyle solution

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Get the PUZ here!

Word count: 72
Mean word length: 5.33

Have something you wanna say? Got a question? Want to do a guest freestyle? Want to collaborate on a freestyle? Want to just say hello? Hit me up by email!

You’ll know what I mean when you solve this grid, but… I had to. I’m sorry, but I really did have to. I had a complete grid… I’d even made a good dent in cluing the grid… and then came pure gold to a freestyle crossword constructor. I decided right then that it warranted ripping out an entire corner of the grid to use it. I couldn’t not do it. I’m just glad I had an appropriate grid formation to do that fairly easily.

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

Thanks as always to the test solvers for their input.

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

Puzzle 264: Freestyle 229. It’s coming through in waves.

Last Tuesday’s freestyle solution

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Get the PUZ here!

Word count: 70
Mean word length: 5.40

Have something you wanna say? Got a question? Want to do a guest freestyle? Want to collaborate on a freestyle? Want to just say hello? Hit me up by email!

The common enough technique of intersecting two marquee grid-spanners at the center square is back again. It was going to be triple-stacked with 8s in the upper right and lower left originally, but it worked better to un-split what’s now 10-Down and 20-Down and split what are now the pairs of 13/26-Down and 38/55-Down. I don’t normally like splitting 7-letter entries into two 3-letter entries, but it worked out better to do so here.

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

Thanks as always to the test solvers for their input.

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