Norah and I were chatting (during one of Brian Thomas’s construction streams) about a recent controversy at the New York Times Spelling Bee that has rocked the crossworld to its core. I decided to raise a little awareness through the only means we have at our disposal: letters (to the editor) in polygons.
Enjoy my silly puzzle. (And look forward to a puzzle for a much serious cause in the near future!)
On Friday nights, some of my podcasting friends and I gather together to play games on our Twitch channel. Sometimes we play a home version of a popular game show where people are surveyed and then contestants — perhaps from competing families — have to guess the results of the surveys. Anyway, if that sounds like fun, you should join us sometimes (Fridays at 8pm Eastern). And you might enjoy this puzzle.
Thanks to Norah for looking this one over, and if you like it / stream it / see an error / etc., let me know.
Happy Pride! I had a long rambly paragraph of stuff to put here, but maybe I’ll let the puzzle speak for itself.
Thanks to Nate Cardin (of Queer Qrosswords fame) and Christopher Adams (of arctan(x)words) for test solving!
Over on Will’s puzzle blog Half-Baked Puzzles we’ve got a freshly baked treat for you. (Well, actually, it’s been in the oven for months, but sometimes you want to cook for a long time at low heat. Anyway.) A fun puzzle with a wild grid. We each constructed half the grid, and then clued the other person’s side—see if you can guess who did what!
More puzzles soon, including some Pride puzzles. For whatever reason (pandemic exhaustion? things are still locked up here in Ontario…) I’ve been very slow to construct puzzles lately, which doesn’t mean I haven’t been working on them! But hey, shout out to the outlets (like Universal and USA Today and Inkubator and… am I forgetting anyone?) who have been highlighting queer constructors this month. Rah! (Oh, and of course go do more of Will’s puzzles, if you aren’t already.)
Hi friends! Yes, it’s been a month since I’ve posted a puzzle. No, I have not stopped working on puzzles. But sometimes it’s good to take a break and reflect. And also, there are so many excellent puzzles and puzzle-makers these days! Like Adam Nicolle and Brooke Husic, two of my favourite constructors, who made this grid and then… well, I’ll let them explain:
Remember that thing we did in the 13th month of March 2020 when we got on Twitch and livestreamed our clue writing? Here it is ready to solve, for both people who don’t know what we’re talking about, people who do know what we’re talking about but didn’t attend the stream, and people who attended but totally forgot what went down (and, I guess, people who remember everything but want to ~relive the experience~)!
A big thank you is in order to everyone who participated in the livestream, especially the incomparable Chris Piuma for moderating on somewhat last minute notice and Will Eisenberg for test solving. About half the clues were written by the following constructors whose work you should check out:
Adam: 6D, 8D, 50D
Antinermal: 39D
Avram: 55D
Brendan: 32D
Brian: 11D, 33D
Jac: 21D, 54D
Kormad: 51D
Lyle: 38A
Malaika: 9D, 22D, 35D, 36D
Max: 28D
Norah: 7D, 26D
Paolo: 53A, 59A
Quiara: 4D, 10D
Rachel: 46A
Ria: 5D
Ricky: 13D, 25D, 43D, 48D
Saswat: 3D, 12D
Yeah, I agree, you should check all those cool people out. Anyhoo, the puzzle came out great. Thanks to Adam and Brooke for inviting me to moderate the event, and for letting me share the puzzle with you all. Enjoy!
