Puzzle 39: Yellow Stockings

It’s been a hectic few weeks here, but it’s finally time for another op’nin of another show. This time, Rochester Community Players is presenting Twelfth Night, Shakespeare’s greatest comedy about twins who have been separated by a shipwreck and are now constantly being mistaken for each other. The show opens tonight, so if you’re in the Rochester area – and aren’t scared off by the wind and cold – come on by. (Performances continue until Saturday, February 11, just in case you are scared off by the wind and cold.)

Constructing a crossword puzzle for each Shakespeare play seemed like it would be fairly easy when I first came up with the idea, but this one turned out to be a lot harder than I’d expected. I settled on the revealer for this early in the process, but then went through a bunch of failed attempts to fit a theme around it. And once I worked that part out, building a grid around it was another challenge. In the end, the only way to make this work was to include more 3-letter entries than I’d like (the ideal number is as close to zero as possible, because otherwise the puzzle ends up filled with acronyms and foreign words that it’s impossible to write interesting clues for), but I think on the whole I think it worked out well. Thanks to Helen Rosner, Matt Gritzmacher and Evan Jenkins for test-solving.

In non-Shakespeare-related crossword news, Laura and I co-constructed a puzzle for Grids For Kids, a charity pack of puzzles for all ages, created by parents, to benefit children in need. This is a great pack of 25 puzzles (including six kid-friendly ones) by a bunch of awesome constructors (and also me), and you can get them all by donating at little as $10 to a youth-focused not-for-profit of your choice. You can check out a free sample puzzle now, and order the whole package starting this weekend.

• PUZ File
• PDF File
• Solution