Tag Archives: Spicy

Written on Jun, 06, 2015 by in | 10 Comments.

Devil Cross PUZ button    Devil Cross PDF button    Devil Cross Spice Rating Spicy Header


Devil-Cross-50-Shades-of-Gray


Fifty puzzles! Never thought when I started this site last year that I would make it this far. But here we are. Just to clarify: I’ve never read the E. L. James book, never seen the movie, and don’t intend to do either — I’ve heard nothing but awful things about both. But the title works, so here’s hoping my puzzle’s better than the book.

In other news:

1. The Indie 500 Crossword Tournament came and went, and by most reports, it was a big success — at least I sure hope it was! We’re still keeping details about the tourney puzzles under wraps until June 15, so I won’t be writing about them just yet. But there was Pie, there were Puzzles, and there were People. Lots of People. More than 100 solvers registered and showed up to take on our puzzles in person, which is a pretty stunning turnout considering it was our inaugural tourney. Congrats to all of the winners and major thanks to everyone who came or supported us from afar.

As yet one more periodic reminder: you can purchase the puzzles for solving at home for just $10. But if you want to try on an easy warm-up Indie 500 puzzle for free, head on over to Neville Fogarty’s website and check out “Capital Letters.” It’s Neville’s first posting there in several months and has a fun pie-related video to boot, so you know it’ll be good.

2. As if the tourney wasn’t crazy enough, the next day Vicki and I joined a team of puzzlers for the Washington Post Hunt. Last year we struggled to finish and came away with terrible sunburns, but this year … hoo boy, this year was different. The two of us and our teammates Neville, Trip Payne, Erik Agard, Raina Zheng, Ken Levin, and Avram Gottschlich solved each of the five mini-puzzles, got the final clue, raced as fast as we could to the final destination ……. and finished in 2nd place! Out of several hundred teams, even! Here we are, simultaneously basking in the afterglow and celebrating with no sunburns.

Washington-Post-Hunt-2015-team


3. Finally: you remember last week’s variety Checkered Flag puzzle? Well, fellow puzzler Alex Boisvert has done something truly awesome: he’s designed some code so that you can solve the easiest version on your computer! Follow the following steps:

a) Right-click on this link and click Save Link As, then save it. It’s a JPZ file.
b) Download the program Crossword Solver.
c) In Crossword Solver, open up the JPZ and you’ll be good to go.

Alternatively, if you’d rather solve it without downloading software, repeat step A, then just head on over here. Again, it’s just the easiest version of the Checkered Flag. The two harder versions aren’t supported in the program because their clues are listed alphabetically.

That’s all for now. Enjoy today’s puzzle. There will be a new one on June 13.

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Written on May, 30, 2015 by in , , , | 3 Comments.

Easiest Version:

Devil Cross PDF button    Devil Cross Spice Rating Medium Header


Harder Version:

Devil Cross PDF button    Devil Cross Spice Rating Spicy Header


Hardest Version:

Devil Cross PDF button    Devil Cross Spice Rating Super Spicy Header


Solution, if you get really stuck

Indie-500-front-page-banner


Start your engines, everyone: today marks the inaugural Indie 500 Crossword Puzzle Tournament! So much time, preparation, blood, sweat, tears, and words have gone into this project over the past fourteen months, and it’s finally here. I’m stoked as all get-out.

I’m down here in Washington, DC with Vicki; my fellow tournament co-founders Erik, Peter, Neville, and Andy; and a bunch of nerd friends who seem to think puzzles are fun enough to jet on down to the nation’s capital and chill with us (and they’re right). I won’t be posting any immediate updates here — I’ll be too busy helping to run the show — but you can follow the standings on this sweet-looking Leaderboard. I’ll post some updates on Twitter every now and then using the #Indie500 hashtag, so be sure and keep an eye on that, and come follow me and say hi while you’re at it.

In honor of today, I’ve created a variety puzzle called a Checkered Flag. It’s sort of like a regular crossword mixed with a Rows Garden puzzle: the answers read either across or down, but they run in a zigzag formation instead of in neat horizontal and vertical rows and columns. The overall effect is that your “across” and “down” answers (or Zigs and Zags, as I call them) cross each other at two squares rather than one. The instructions are in the PDF files, and I’ve given you three versions of the same puzzle with varying difficulty. The Easiest version lists the Zig and Zag clues in the order they appear in the grid. The Harder version tells you if the answers are Zigs or Zags, but their clues are listed alphabetically. The Hardest version lists all clues alphabetically. If you take on the Hardest version but it’s proving too difficult, no problem — the other two versions should have you covered, and there’s a solution link above. There’s no online solving option for this, so you’ll need to print it out.

One more reminder: you can still order the Indie 500 tournament puzzles for solving them at home, and we’ve just launched our long-awaited meta suite, the Indie 500 Meta World Prix! You can order both of them here and we’ll e-mail them to you as soon as we can.

That’s all for now. Good luck to everyone competing today, and thank you to everyone for all your amazing support in helping us get this crazy brainchild of ours off the ground.

Update, 5/30/15 @ 8 am ET: I realized that in the Hardest version, the orientation of the solution can be written in two ways, where all of the Zigs can instead be Zags, and vice versa. I’ve marked the new PDF to say that the first listed clue in the Hardest version is a Zag answer to be read down. Solvers at home likely wouldn’t have noticed this issue, but the people at the tournament will notice that I printed out a bunch of copies without that qualifier, so …… adventures in puzzling!

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Use them wisely, my friend.

Konami Easter Egg by Adrian3.com