(Photo credit: Scott London)
The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is upon us! I’m up here in tropical Stamford, Connecticut, chilling with puzzle friends, maybe playing some Cards Against Humanity, and almost certainly getting my ass kicked by whoever made this year’s sadistic Puzzle #5 — or I might be trying to kick their ass when I’m done getting tortured by it. I’m also distributing hard copies of today’s Devil Cross puzzle and information about the Indie 500 Crossword Tournament at one of the tables outside the main ballroom. If you’re at the ACPT, you have a sworn duty to come say hi to me. If you’re at home, you can follow the proceedings of the tournament at the ACPT website or on Twitter at the #ACPT hashtag. I may or may not be tweeting during the weekend; even after finishing the puzzles, I likely won’t be able to say much about them except to give myself a virtual high-five or a grunt of despair, depending on how tough they are. Oh well. Here’s hoping I do better than I did last year.
I’ve posted today’s puzzle a little earlier than normal so people at the ACPT can maybe check it out before Puzzle #1 drops. Without giving too much away, let’s just say that it’s kinda appropriate for my website. Kinda really appropriate.
Finally, in case you missed the big news, BuzzFeed has a new puzzle editor! I wrote about that here.
Enjoy the puzzle, and good luck to everyone at the ACPT. There will be a new puzzle on April 4.
Continue Reading...
Man. In the last three days I think I started and stopped maybe ten drafts of various puzzles that I had considered for today’s offering before settling on this one, several of which had completely different gimmicks. In fact, even before I could fill the puzzle and clue it (which obviously take a while too), just getting theme entries that I liked and a grid shape that I could work with were major struggles. I’ve got incomplete drafts of grids with 15×15, 17×17, 19×19, 15×17, and 12×19 (?!) dimensions still open on my computer. The final product has 79 words and is 16×15 in shape, in part because 12-letter answers can be a massive pain in the ass in normal-sized grids. Besides, it’s my house, so I’ll do whatever I want here.
When you’re done solving, feel free to add some similar potential theme entries of your own — there are some good ones I had to scrap, and there are almost certainly several fun ones that I missed entirely.
In other news, the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is coming up in just two weekends. I will be in attendance, so come say hi to me there. I’ll also be handing out some materials about the Indie 500 Crossword Tournament for anyone who wants more information. Speaking of which, have you signed up for said awesome inaugural tourney run by a five-man indie puzzle conglomerate yet? Go do it here. If you’re still on the fence, allow me to submit Exhibit A for why you should go: There Will Be Pie. Yup, those four words oughta get you all excited, just like the words There Will Be Pi make math nerds everywhere salivate, especially today…..or maybe they’re salivating over actual pie. Probably both.
(Hat-tip to Matt Gaffney for his fine shout-out about the Indie 500 yesterday.)
Enjoy today’s puzzle. There will be a new one on March 21.
Continue Reading...
Recent Comments