Tag Archives: Super-Spicy

Written on Jan, 17, 2015 by in , , | 17 Comments.

Easiest Version (with enumerations):

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


Harder Version (without enumerations):

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


Insane Version (with vowelless clues):

Devil Cross PUZ button    Devil Cross PDF button    Devil-Cross-Spice-Rating-Inferno-Header


Devil-Cross-31-VowellessThis weekend is the time of MIT Mystery Hunt, a competition featuring what are surely some of the toughest puzzles in the world to crack. So in that vein, I’m offering something pretty challenging myself: a vowelless crossword. If you’re new to this, it’s a crossword where the answers have had their vowels removed. Thus, if you have the answer BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, you would enter it as BRCSPRNGSTN in the grid. Helpful hint: I’ve also removed Y as well. All 20 other consonants, however, are fair game. If you like vowelless puzzles, Peter Broda and Frank Longo have made a bunch of these which you can check out at the respective links.

I’m giving you three solving options today. One is the easiest version with enumerations for answer lengths, spaces, and hyphens indicated in the clues — for instance, the answer BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN would be enumerated in a clue as (5,11), and FULL-TIME JOB would be enumerated as (4-4,3). This version is also the one provided in the solving widget for this post. The second version is tougher: it’s the same puzzle but with no enumerations. Both of these two versions will be difficult no matter what, but again, the one with enumerations is the easier of the two. If, however, you are craving an extreme challenge, then feast your eyes on version three: it’s the same puzzle but the vowels have been removed from the clues as well. Feel free to try that one, but I expect that it’s insanely difficult, like a 5 or a 6 on my four-spice rating scale. In fact, I’m now debuting a new Devil Cross spice rating: Inferno! Don’t say that I didn’t warn you.

For those of you attempting the Insane version, here’s something else to keep in mind: there are some common words out there that have only vowels, like a, I, and you. But I wanted to retain the same number of words in the clues in all versions. Hence, if you run across an @ symbol, that’s an indication that there’s a vowel-only word in the clue at that particular spot.

Enjoy the puzzle. There will be a new one on January 24.

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Written on Oct, 26, 2014 by in | 17 Comments.

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


Devil-Cross-22-Movie-Monster-Mash


The picture above is part of a really bizarre set of Halloween postcards that I recently found from this old Buzzfeed article. I couldn’t tell if this one was a joke or an actual, unintentionally hilarious vintage postcard — I’m leaning towards the former — but either way, it’s going up here.

So, puzzle time! This one’s my first Super-Spicy themed offering. I have to give some credit to another constructor, but I don’t want to give too much away — in fact, I highly recommend that you stop reading now and go solve the puzzle first. I’ll give you one more sentence to warn you to stop reading now………finished??? Okay. I’ll just say that this puzzle is probably my most Blindaueresque one to date, and borrows a similar trick that Patrick used in a puzzle last year. Patrick, by the way, wrote this week’s meta suite for the New York Times. You probably knew that already. But if you haven’t gotten around to solving his meta challenge, you have until 6 pm ET tonight to do it and submit your answer to crossword@nytimes.com. Get on ‘er right quick!

Some final announcements:

1) There’s another indie crossword constructor in town. Chris King has a new website appropriately called Chris Words, where he publishes a new puzzle every Sunday. Unlike many indie puzzlemakers who break into the mainstream by getting a byline in a big paper like the New York Times and then building a website, Chris did it the other way by building his site first. Check out his latest puzzle here.

2) My first funding drive for Devil Cross is now complete. Thank you a million times to everyone who donated, blogged about it, spread the word, and solved the bonus puzzles. It means a lot to me.

Happy Halloween, and enjoy today’s puzzle. There will be a new one on November 8.

Update, 10/26/14 @ 2:15 pm ET: The link to the PUZ file was originally broken, but it should be fixed now.

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