Monthly Archives: March 2014

Archive of posts published in the specified Month

Written on Mar, 29, 2014 by in | 16 Comments.

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(Photo credit: http://taxcredits.net/)

Again, my apologies for the late posting today. But, there’s some exciting news out there in CrossWorld:

Patrick Blindauer has released his newest Puzzlefest, called Xword University. This will be my first time tackling one of Patrick’s metapuzzle suites, but he’s one of the most devilishly clever constructors out there, so I strongly recommend ordering yourself a copy.

In addition to his fun biweekly Rows Garden puzzles, Andrew Ries is now expanding his puzzle operation to include a weekly 15×15 crossword. It’s only $5 for a year’s worth of puzzles, so that’s a great deal.

And as for me, I have some exciting news as well: The Quest, the student newspaper of Reed College, will be publishing Devil Cross puzzles in their print edition! I’m very excited to expand my puzzle to a college audience.

Enjoy today’s puzzle — this one has a mix of oldschool and newschool. I aimed for real tough again, but considering how several people told me my last Super Spicy puzzle was actually relatively easy, I may need to get a new Spice Meter. There will be a new crossword on April 12.

Update #1, 3/29/14 @ 7:00 pm: The original clue for 27-Across had a typo (well, more than a typo — I didn’t have a finished clue). I’ve since fixed it.

Update #2, 3/31/14 @ 11:00 pm: The commenter Abby points out that I had another error in one of my clues. The original clue for 17-Across had the wrong first name. I’ve corrected that as well. My fault on both mistakes, everyone (fingers crossed that I don’t have another….)

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Written on Mar, 15, 2014 by in | 3 Comments.

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Last week’s American Crossword Puzzle Tournament at the Brooklyn Marriott was great, as always. I brought a whole stack of printed Devil Cross puzzles and put them on one of the tables in the hotel lobby in between one of the rounds, and much to my amazement, they were all gone when I came back. I figured that either other solvers took them to solve, or some Marriott employee found them lying around and threw them away. Here’s hoping it was the former.

As for the tourney itself, I finished in 187th place out of nearly 600, which is my best finish thus far. Just a little more practice — say, solving 100,000 more puzzles and learning how to upload directly to my head Matrix-style the answers and clues to every single crossword ever — and I should be at the top with five-time reigning ACPT champ Dan Feyer. Congrats, Dan! Of course, the best part of the ACPT is just hanging out and chatting with friends who are just as into this whole puzzle business as I am. There are too many to name here, so I’ll just say good show, everyone! Let’s do it again sometime.

Oh, and here’s some other exciting news which I carelessly forgot to mention two weeks ago: Devil Cross puzzles are now available for download on the Android app Words With Crosses! Thanks a bunch to Adam Rosenfield for making that possible.

Enjoy today’s puzzle. There will be a new one on March 29.

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