Puzzle 218: Freestyle 183. Like Jesus to a child.

Last Tuesday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 70
Mean word length: 5.49

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 have to mention this right off the bat (spoiler alert… highlight the following blank space after you’ve solved the puzzle!)… I swear to you that I wrote the clue for 35-Across before the tragic death of George Michael. (OK, end spoiler space)

I hope that all who celebrate had a wonderful Christmas, and I hope that all to whom you gave were brightened by your acts of giving.

I was lucky enough to be able to extend what’s now 20-Across and 55-Across into their respective corners. I had everything except for the corners in the upper right and lower left filled in when I realized that I could take out the pair of blocks and extend those answers — since it benefited the flow of the grid greatly (there were now two ways into each of those corners, not one), it improved those two answers itself, and it didn’t harm my ability to fill those corners, it was a win-win-win for me to open up that corner.

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 217: Freestyle 182. Tread carefully! (and happy birthday Mom!)

Last Friday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 70
Mean word length: 5.43

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 really do mean it in the title — the date of this post’s publication is my mother’s birthday. Happy Birthday Mom!

Oh hey look — another Seinfeld reference in the grid… well, it is Festivus…

I think I’ve learned my lesson — if I want to stack 11s, it’ll usually come out much better if I stack them in pairs rather than triplets. In this case, it even allowed me to go a little more wide open (I know, 70 instead of 72 — watch out, folks, he’s really stepping out on a limb now!) than usual. Every now and again (wait, when did “again” become a noun? Language nerd epiphany!), as I talk about in these posts, something happens unexpectedly in a grid, and this time it was the ability to throw in the bonus pair of 11s at 10-Down and 24-Down — see, you can take away two 11s from their normal places but you can’t repress them completely!

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 Tuesday!

Puzzle 216: Freestyle 181. I am not throwing away my shot!

Last Tuesday’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!

The seed for this grid (23-Across) came out of a coworker’s mouth and found its way into this grid within the same day. This is the value of listening in on conversations — mind you, these aren’t private conversations I’m listening in on — because the stuff you hear in casual conversation is a goldmine for good entries in grids. It’s funny, I’m constantly running through my head the conversational phrases I hear to calculate their lengths. Keep that in mind the next time you have a conversation with me — keep the interesting phrases to 15 letters or less!

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!

Puzzle 215: Freestyle 180. Don’t even think about it!

Last Friday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 70
Mean word length: 5.37

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 grid was filled with lucky breaks in all four corners. For example, a change of one letter in the northwest section of the grid changed two so-so entries into two much more interesting ones. Removing one pair of blocks that had split both what’s now 21-Across and now 42-Across each into two enabled me to include two much more colorful entries in the bottom center; luckily, I was able to do that because, even though I’d already built the top right and top center, that top section was flexible enough for me to move blocks around.

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 Tuesday!

Puzzle 214: Freestyle 179. It’s more than just okay.

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!

Remember what I said a while back about how an unusual shape means that the constructor was reeeally trying to make a stack they love work? Same applies here. Luckily, I didn’t have to force anything. Originally, the single block pair in the top left/lower right was four blocks lower/higher than you see it. That means that those two corners originally only had one way in (at where 6D/24A and 41A/42D now intersect), but, when I realized I could extend what were five-letter answers into the corners and make them more colorful, I jumped at the chance.

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!

Puzzle 213: Freestyle 178. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Last Friday’s freestyle solution

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Get the PUZ here!

Word count: 72
Mean word length: 5.39

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!

Now, I don’t do pot at all. I won’t light up a spliff. I won’t bogart that joint. I wouldn’t smoke ’em if I got ’em. But, man, that entry I came across that I put at 18-Across was just too beautiful to me NOT to use as a seed entry for an entire grid. My 8-letter seed list was getting short (mostly because I was using them more than any other length on the seed list), but, when I came across this beauty, I was smitten as only a crossword constructor could me.

In other news, the entry at 1-Down has been a long time coming: it was literally one of the first entries I put into my seed list as I started this venture two years ago (two years!). I still have a few others like that, believe it or not.

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 (heh heh)! New puzzle on Tuesday!

Puzzle 212: Freestyle 177. Lay down for a spell.

Last Tuesday’s freestyle solution

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Get the PUZ here!

Word count: 72
Mean word length: 5.42

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!

Before I say anything else, I’d like to draw your attention to a new independent puzzle site from Will Nediger. He’s got a new grid every Monday, so you better go over and check it out! He promises never to include the entry EMAG in his grids, which is a good thing and (I think) more than I can say about myself. Good to see you in the indie puzz-o-sphere, Will!

Another grid with a grid spanner that doesn’t go through the end of a stack. Usually, when I build a grid with intersecting grid spanners, as I’ve said before, it ends up being all 8-stacks, because I like grid spanners starting/ending their intersecting stacks, for some odd reason. I’m not gonna tell you which clue it was, but I actually cackled after writing one of the clues. (Seriously, it was a legit full-on cackle… ask my wife. When she hears a strange laugh now, she doesn’t even ask anymore, she knows why.)  I don’t usually talk about cluing in this space, but I feel like I was at my most devious with that particular clue.

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!

Puzzle 211: Freestyle 176. Less talk, more action.

Last Friday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 72
Mean word length: 5.31

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!

When you see 14-letter entries in a grid, you can almost know for certain that the constructor started out with them. As I’ve stated before, and as has been well-documented, they do some weird stuff to a grid. That’s why my seed list is much longer in the 14s as in the 15s — because I can’t use them nearly as fast as I note them. The part of the grid that caused me the most agita was the lower left through the middle, honestly (a helper square is usually a telltale sign that a constructor had trouble with a section of the grid).

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 Tuesday!

Puzzle 210: Freestyle 175. Nailed it!

Last Tuesday’s freestyle solution

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Word count: 70
Mean word length: 5.46

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 grid has an unusual shape to it, and, whenever you see an unusual shape for a freestyle grid, you can be sure that the constructor really, really wanted to make a stack work. This was no exception. I had to have more long answers than usual intersecting the main stack, and I was pretty fortunate that those down answers worked out that way. Sometimes, you get to a point where it looks like the intersecting answers are all coalescing perfectly, until you get to one snag that causes you to rip up the whole grid around the stack and start again. Not so this time.

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!

Puzzle 209: Freestyle 174. Gobble up this grid with your leftovers.

Last Friday’s freestyle solution

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Get the PUZ here!

Word count: 70
Mean word length: 5.49

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 hope all you American folks had a happy Thanksgiving! I trust you have awoken sufficiently enough from your food comas (fun fact: your sleepiness after T-day dinner is not caused by tryptophan — turkey doesn’t really contain that much different amounts of it than other common meats, it’s simply the quantity of food and the influx of heavy carbs) and recovered enough from the body blows you were dealt (or the body blows you delivered) on Black Friday to coherently solve this grid. I don’t usually like to create grids-within-a-grid here (that is, sections of the grid that could be completely shut off with the addition of one black square), but the sections in the upper left and lower right eventually would demand that I do it.

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 Tuesday!