Tag Archives: Variety

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 Dec, 27, 2014 by in , | 3 Comments.

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Solution Grid, in case you get really stuck


Devil Cross 28 Split Decisions


I’m ending 2014 with a variety Split Decisions puzzle. There’s no online solving option for this grid, so fire up your old Inkjet and print this sucker out. If this type of puzzle is all-new to you, never fear: the instructions are in the PDF.

This is my favorite type of variety puzzle to solve, though creating it…..that’s a different story. There are no clues like you’d find in standard crosswords, which you’d think would help save a lot of time — especially in my case, since cluing often takes me more time than filling the grid itself. But there isn’t any easy option for creating or exporting a Split Decisions puzzle from Crossword Compiler (I don’t think), so even after you get a workable grid, all that time you save from not having to write clues gets eaten up by typesetting and illustrating the bastard in Photoshop. You have to create a template for the split squares, copy and paste the template all over, rotate the template 90 degrees for the Down answers, enter the letters manually, and rinse and repeat until you’re done. Then you’ll probably want to create a solution grid. And if you’re like me, you might want to spend some extra time making sure the typed letters are aligned neatly rather than staggered haphazardly throughout the squares. Basically, it takes some dirty work to make a Split Decisions puzzle look like a Split Decisions puzzle. It’s not hard to do if you’ve got some Photoshop know-how, but it is a bit tedious.

I learned all of this the hard way last summer, when I created one of these grids for the first time (one that’s twice as big as today’s puzzle) and sent it off to WordPlay magazine, which they accepted. You’ll see that puzzle later in 2015. So that’s good news. Even more good news is that my wife Vicki (who’s far better at design and illustrative software than I) showed me a little shortcut for creating the solution grid, and that probably shaved off at least an hour or two of puzzle-editing time.

All of that leads me to what is really a long overdue note of gratitude for Vicki. She’s supported me this entire time I’ve been a neurotic puzzle nerd, even when I’ve been uncertain about a host of other things in the rest of my life. She’s listened to me bounce countless puzzle ideas off her even though she doesn’t care much about crosswords, and she’s even inspired a few puzzle themes of her own (remember my first meta puzzle, Tech Revolution? That was her idea). Oh, and she helped me in a big way build this website and make it look all shiny and stuff in the first place. And then there’s the whole being-an-awesome-wife thing that she does every day. Whatever happens with me and Devil Cross, I’m lucky as hell to be with her, and if I can be half as good a puzzlemaker as she is a spouse and friend, I’ll be in good shape.

Enjoy the puzzle, and here’s to a happy new year. The first Devil Cross puzzle of the new year will be on January 3, 2015.

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You now have 30 lives.
Use them wisely, my friend.

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