Puzzle 23: O Blow, My Bully Boys, Blow

If you’ve been on social media over the last two weeks, your doomscrolling has surely been interrupted at least once by a video that looks something like this.

In fact, you’re probably hearing the song in your head right now – which will make solving this puzzle really easy! If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then first I envy your ability to not spend all day staring at your phone; and second you should check out this video, or this article – or really just search for 11-Down or 34-Down and you’ll find everything you need to know.

Puzzle 22: Merry Christmas (guest puzzle by Dave Eckert)

I wasn’t planning to post another puzzle this year, but my friend Dave Eckert sent me this one yesterday, and it was so much fun that I immediately asked him if I could share it here. It’s very appropriate to the season (as you might guess from the name), so be sure to solve it before Friday.

Hope to see you all next year, both virtually (I promise to post puzzles a little more regularly in 2021) and in person (we should all have the vaccine in time for at least one tournament, right?).

Puzzle 21: Holiday Treats (with Laura Braunstein and the Homeschool Cooperative Class)

Laura and I taught another crossword construction class for Homeschool Cooperative 2020 this week, and we created another puzzle with them. And just like the last puzzle, it’s relevant to the season. (Unlike the last one it has no connection to any satirical article, but you can’t have everything.)

Hope all of you are enjoying lots of good [12-Across] or [26-Across] or whatever sweet treats you prefer, and that you have had/are having/are about to have a Happy Hanukkah/Christmas/Kwanzaa/Solstice/New Year.

Puzzle 20: Fall Guy (with Laura Braunstein and the Homeschool Cooperative Class)

Over the summer Laura and I started teaching an occasional intro to crosswords class with Homeschool Cooperative 2020. This week we decided to try something different, and conducted an intermediate class where we constructed a crossword from scratch with the help of the class. Given the time constraints, we went with a midi puzzle instead of a full-size grid. And given the season we decided to use this classic from The Onion as our theme (spoilers, obviously, so don’t click until you’ve finished solving). It’s a little more upbeat than last year’s fall-themed puzzle, but we kind of need that now.

Big thanks to everyone in the class for their help. If you’d like to join us for one of our future classes, we’ll be doing the intro again on November 17 and then an intermediate class where we’ll construct a new puzzle on December 15. You can also check out plenty of other free classes for kids and adults there, or even offer to teach one yourself.

That’s all for now. If you’re in the United States and are eligible, please take a few minutes to do the following three things. One, confirm you are registered to vote in next month’s elections (there are roughly 20 states where you can still register in person). Two, make sure you are prepared to vote — do you know your polling place location and timings (remember these are sometimes different for early voting), or the logistics for submitting a mail-in/absentee ballot? And three, urge everyone you know to do these three things.

Puzzle 19: I ♥︎ Lollapuzoola 13 (guest puzzle by Ken Stern)

Yesterday was Lollapuzoola 13, the greatest crossword tournament held on a Saturday in August – whether in-person or virtual. If you weren’t among the 1,200 people who participated – and why weren’t you???? – you can still get the full set of great puzzles by Brooke Husic, Sid Sivakumar, Rachel Fabi, Joon Pahk, Stella Zawistowski and Robyn Weintraub for a mere $10. In the meantime, here’s a nice free puzzle than Ken Stern constructed during the breaks in the tournament, based on a grid he tweeted out in the morning.

Puzzle 18: Grids For Good

Remember last time, when I said I’d love to be able to offer you some bonus puzzles in return for donating to charity, but that I didn’t have any extra puzzles? Well now I have one, as part of Grids For Good. Grids For Good is a collection of 42 original puzzles created by 44 different constructors to raise money for organizations providing coronavirus relief, as well as for groups fighting against institutional racism. You can get the whole package just by donating $10 to one of the charities on the site, or even to a related charity that’s not listed.

And one of those 42 puzzles is a meta that Laura Braunstein and I constructed. What’s a meta you ask? Nothing! What’s a meta with you? (Sorry). Anyway, a metapuzzle is a crossword where the completed grid gives you a hint towards a bonus answer. And if you find that bonus answer (or the bonus answer in the two other metas in the package, you can be entered into a drawing to win a swag bag from The Inkubator (including a tote bag, notebook, stickers, buttons, and erasers). Entries are due by July 18, so get solving!

Big thanks to Evan Birnholz for organizing Grids For Good, and to Jeremy Horwitz for some brilliant edits. That’s all for this week. Have a happy Fourth of July!

Puzzle 17: Words on the Street (with Laura Braunstein)

Crossword puzzles can feel frivolous even in the best of times. I get a few hours of enjoyment (and frustration) from creating them, and I hope all of you get at least a few minutes of enjoyment from solving them, but we’re not exactly changing the world. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people around the world are out there protesting and are changing the world, and the least we can do is help them out. And while this puzzle offers moral support to Black Lives Matter, it can’t offer any concrete support. For that, I encourage you to join protests (while wearing a mask and keeping six feet away from your fellow marchers), lobby your officials, and, especially, donate money.

I’d love to be able to offer you some bonus puzzles in return for donating, but that would require me to actually have more puzzles available, and if that were the case I wouldn’t have gone six months without posting a puzzle here. Luckily, a bunch of other people do have extra puzzles to send you in return for your donations:

I’ve solved some of these puzzles already, and so far they’re all great.

I don’t have much else to say about today’s puzzle, since I think it speaks for itself. Big thanks to Laura Braunstein for co-constructing with me. The two of us will be teaching a free online class on crossword construction next Tuesday, June 23, and we’d love to see some of you there. We don’t exactly know what we’re doing teaching-wise, but we’ve taught some classes to kids so far, so I can guarantee that this will at least be fun and you’ll probably even learn something.

Puzzle 16: That Extra Push Over the Cliff

I’m back! Did you guys miss me? (Don’t answer that.) I assume you’ve all been so busy solving all the puzzles that Matt sends out in his Daily Crossword Links email that you didn’t even notice that I haven’t published a new puzzle here in *checks calendar* SIX MONTHS???? Wow, that’s embarrassing.

Anyway, here’s a new puzzle. It’s a theme idea I’ve had for a while but never got around to constructing, because of work, kids, the complete collapse of society, etc. Obviously this theme has been done before – so far I’ve found at least a half-dozen puzzles that used it – but I think my themers (or, at least two of them), plus the revealer justify doing the theme again. Also those puzzles were all 5-20 years old, so I figured it was ripe for a reboot.

Hope you enjoy this. New puzzle in two weeks. I (almost) promise.

Puzzle 15: Crossword Tournament From Your Couch

As many of you know, this American Crossword Puzzle Tournament was supposed to be starting today. Obviously, it’s not happening now, but to make sure that solvers can still get their tournament fix, Finn Vigeland and Kevin Dur have created the Crossword Tournament From Your Couch, which will take palace tomorrow, Saturday, March 21, from 1:00 – 5:00 pm Eastern Time. And one of the puzzles in there is a collaboration by me and Laura Braunstein! The others are by Patrick Blindauer, Rachel Fabi, Joel Fagliano, Finn Vigeland and Byron Walden, with a warm-up puzzle by Robyn Weintraub, and honestly seeing my name alongside those guys still feels surreal.

Anyway, I can’t tell you any more about the puzzles, except to say that they’re all really good and you should definitely sign up for the tournament, especially since participation is free.

In other puzzle news, I’ve added “crossword construction” to our attempts at homeschooling, and so far my daughter and I have made two puzzles. For now I’ve just been posting them to Twitter, but if we ever get up to constructing something closer to a full-size puzzle I’ll definitely post it here. In the meantime, here are images of the first two puzzles. See if you can guess what books we’ve been reading for the last year!

5x5 Crossword puzzle
7x7 Crossword Puzzle

Puzzle 14: These Two So Like

Crazy at it may seem, I do have interests outside of crossword puzzles, and one of those interests is the works of William Shakespeare (you may have heard of him). Somehow, this interest has led me to become part of the Rochester Community Players Shakespeare Program, even though I’m not at all a theater person. My acting career – such as it was – peaked when I played Max in my fifth grade class’s production of The Sound of Music, which is about as far as one can go with no actual talent other than an ability to remember one’s lines. (As befits a fifth-grade production, this version of Max was a lot less of a Nazi collaborator than the Max of the original musical/movie.)

Our production of Comedy of Errors opens tonight, so I thought I’d construct a twinlet puzzle to go with it. For those who are unfamiliar with the format, a twinlet puzzle is two identical grids with the clues all mixed together. For those who are unfamiliar with Comedy of Errors, it’s Shakespeare’s second greatest comedy about twins who have been separated by a shipwreck and are now constantly being mistaken for each other – and you might want to take a quick look at the names of the characters, since that will make the puzzle a lot easier. And if you’re in the Rochester area, please come to the show.

Finally, since there’s no way to solve a twinlet puzzle on a computer, this puzzle is only available as a PDF.