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!
Inspiration for a grid or an entry can strike pretty much anywhere. This one came when I was vacuuming! (This isn’t giving anything away, so don’t worry.) Yes, 17-Across was the seed entry for the grid. Well, that and 1-Across combined… I was happy to find something good that fit in between those two entries.
I originally had a black square in the dead center of the grid, but the construction of the grid evolved such that there were four 3’s running straight down the center of the grid. I don’t like having four 3’s across or down the center of the grid, so out went that black square and in went a pair of squares elsewhere in the grid to compensate… and thus the grid spanner emerged.
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!
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!
I don’t usually construct grids with “pockets” in them like this, but this one has them in all four sections. The reason I don’t is because, with this style of grid, there’s more of a chance for a solver to get stuck and spin their wheels in a section if there’s only one way out of it. I will say, though, that it is a bit easier to construct 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!
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!
A very unusual structure for me — it looks like a normal themed grid structure minus a couple of pairs of blocks, upon first glance. The tricky part was twofold — first, to get the interlock of the six 11+-long entries, and, second, to get the vertical stacks in the middle of the top and bottom to intersect with the stacked horizontal pairs of said long answers. The top center was more luck than anything in that it just happened to work out on my first stab at it; the bottom was a little more work, but I got it to work to my liking without having to change my initial framework of long answers.
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!
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 benefits of test solving strike again. Two separate people commented on the iffiness of an entry. I thought it was okay as Internet slang, but that’s why I have test solvers — to provide a new perspective. So I took it out. I had to change and reclue seven entries, which isn’t too bad considering it was a five-letter entry that was removed (it was at 27-Across), but I feel a little better about that section now that it’s gone.
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!
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 about this one, really. Never quite had to use a zigzag block pattern in the middle of a grid like I did here… obviously, I had to do some crazy things to get the upper left corner to work without having to rely on some ugly stuff. Eh, whatever makes it work, I don’t care.
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!
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!
Welcome to Friday! This is a case of real life manifesting itself in the crossword grid yet again. At a family Easter party, several of my family, including my wife, discovered (trust me, this isn’t spoiling anything in the grid) the entry at 12-Down and became extremely entertained by them. So, isn’t it obvious what I was going to do when that was going on? Put it in a grid, of course. Believe it or not (well, believe it… what, do you think I’d lie to you?), it actually wasn’t the starting point of the grid — 16-Across was. But I was going to find a spot for 12-Down in this grid no matter what.
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!
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!
I had an 11-letter entry that I wanted to use as a seed, but I didn’t want yet another 11-stack-in-the-corners grid. Solution? Stagger some 11s stairstep-style in the middle. 30-Across was the seed, but I was pleasantly surprised that 33-Across, my secondary seed, actually worked stacked underneath it. Usually when you get two entries that you’re surprised can stack, the third entry below it ends up blah, but that wasn’t the case either.
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!
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!
I admit I got pretty lucky in a little section of this grid. After I did the lower left, which was where I started to construct, I had the 8-stack in the upper left formed and had continued around to the upper right corner when I had an “uh-oh” moment. I typically get all the stacks done in formations like this grid before I descend upon the middle, but I realized that, with the first four letters of 29-Across fixed, I didn’t have a fill that worked for the left-center section! A moment of panic ensued where I thought I might have had to rework the whole upper half I’d just redone when I uncovered another entry that fit that pattern and, thankfully, worked in context. Relief suddenly washed over me. (Maybe I take things too seriously sometimes around 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 Tuesday!
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!
I don’t usually do this type of thing on this site, but an entry in one of last week’s New York Times crosswords — at 1-Across — reminded me of something I want to talk about. Namely, the entry was “man up”. Right off the bat, I want to make it clear that I’m not saying that this entry shouldn’t be in the New York Times grid, or any other publicly published grid, or any independent grid; I’m just telling you why it’s not in my word list and why you’ll never see it in any of my grids.
I honestly cringe whenever I read it or hear anyone say “man up!” Men are dying earlier than women on average, much earlier, and no small part of that is that societal attitude summed up in the motto “man up”. It equates being a man with growing thick skin, putting up a “tough” exterior and dealing with pain — any kind of pain — stoically, without complaint. But that attitude does more harm than good. For physical pain, men are not going to the doctor as much because of that “man up” attitude; thus, their ailments tend to go undetected before it’s too late and (a) they die from those ailments, or (b) those ailments debilitate them to the point where their quality of life is considerably less than average. You see it all the time in sports… it took how long before concussions were taken seriously in pro sports? “Just shake it off! This is a man’s game!”
The mental pain is an equally serious concern, though. Men die by suicide three (or more, depending on in what area) times as often as women in the western world, even though women, by all accounts, have suicidal thoughts more than men do. Why? Because “man up” means that you’ve got to be tough, you’ve got to power through, it’s “unmanly” to show any weakness or vulnerability of emotion. Getting help for mental illness, when you constantly hear “man up”, belies that image, whether that’s the intention or not. It’s “weak” to seek mental help, because that would be admitting that your emotional state isn’t up to where it should be. Mental health issues aren’t a matter of pride. And that’s all unfortunate and very, very wrong. Don’t ever feel that it’s not okay to seek help, don’t ever feel too proud to ask for help, because it could save your life.
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!
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!
This is another great example of the great benefit of test solving. I was wishy-washy about an original entry at 33-Across but was willing to keep it. A couple of comments from the test solvers, however, gently nudged me over the edge to change it. It ended up changing 17 entries in the grid in all, but it was worth it to me. That entry, which will go unnamed, has also been expunged from the word list. I ended up feeling a lot better that that entry was gone from the grid.
Happy Easter to all who celebrate!
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!
By Tim Croce ||| Original freestyle crossword puzzles on Tuesdays at 6pm Eastern ||| Original puzzles (sometimes more freestyles, sometimes variety puzzles or even themed puzzles) on Fridays at 6pm Eastern
Club 72 