Puzzle 13: Mutant Squash (with Laura Braunstein)

You may have noticed I didn’t have a puzzle up here two weeks ago. I’d like to say that my lapse had something to do with the Jewish holidays, but really it was just me not getting around to finishing a puzzle. At least I already have something to atone for next year!

This puzzle started with a tweet from Chris Adams. (You’re all already subscribed to his puzzles, right?) I wasn’t going to actually construct it, since I didn’t really want to do another quote theme — especially not another one with “adult” language in it — but Laura insisted because the idea was so “baroque and demented”, which is apparently my brand (I think she meant that as a compliment). Anyway, it’s timely, and she offered to co-construct, so here it is. There’s not much else to say about it; you’re either ready to solve this freaky-assed puzzle or you’re not.

In other crossword news, I want to thank Will Nediger for picking JKL M ‘n’ O as one of his Indie Puzzle Highlights for September. Since there’s no official hierarchy of crossword awards, I’m just going to declare this the equivalent of winning an Oscar. Also, Queer Qrossword 2: 2 Queer 2 Qurious is now out. You can get this collection of 32 LGBTQ+-themed crosswords by simply donating $10 or more to LGBTQ+ charity. I’ve only had time to solve a handful of these so far, but they’ve all been great.

Puzzle 12: Split Squads

“Anyone who wants to know the heart and mind of America,” wrote Jacques Barzun, “had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game—and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams.” He was wrong on the larger point — his essay doesn’t provide any good evidence that baseball explains America any better than football or soccer or ballet or municipal zoning codes or anything else would — but he was right that the best way to watch the game is to find a small-town team, or at least a minor league team. Sure, the quality of the play isn’t as good as what you’ll find on even the worst major league team, but the tickets are cheaper, the views are better, and the experience is just all around more fun and relaxing.

I got the idea for this puzzle while at a [42-Across] game (still my favorite team, even though I’ve spend the last five years moving further and further away from the stadium) and figured there must be a whole bunch of potential themers out there, but it turned out these (plus two that had non-matching lengths) were the only ones that worked. But I have a bunch of great (to me) theme ideas where I can only come up with one valid entry, so I’m not complaining.

The major league season is winding down and the minor league season is already over, but thankfully it’s always crossword season.

Puzzle 11: JKL M ‘n’ O (with Ken Stern, featuring Laura Braunstein)

Here’s another puzzle we gave out at Lollapuzoola. The theme for this came when autocorrect garbled a message Laura sent to our metapuzzle group. I came up with a few more entries that could fit the theme, and then she tweeted the original out and a bunch of crossword twitter folks had a lot of fun coming up with many, many more themers, some of which were reasonable, and some of which were 26 letters long. Since Laura was responsible for the whole thing, I suggested we collaborate again, but she was too busy and recommended I team up with Ken instead.

But first I reached out to Nate Cardin, since he had used this exact theme in a puzzle back in January, to make sure he didn’t mind us duplicating his idea. (Nate is the organizer and editor of Queer Qrosswords, a pack of 22 really good puzzles that you can get by donating $10 or more to any LGBTQ+ charity. If you didn’t solve them last year, you should go get them now. If you did solve them, you should get Queer Qrosswords 2 as soon as it’s available.)

Ken and I settled on a set of themers, I set up a grid, and we proceeded to fill it with some really C-level entries. Luckily, by then Laura had some more free time, and between the three of us we managed to get most of the fill up to at least B-level and finished writing the clues a whole 16 hours before Lollapuzzola started.

This was truly a group effort, but I want to acknowledge that Ken came up with the awesome title, and Laura wrote the clue for 49-Across, since she’s always wanted to use that clue.

Puzzle 10: Flash Fiction (with Laura Braunstein)

This puzzle is late because I’m still recovering from Lollapuzzoola last Saturday. Or, more accurately, I’m still recovering from the flight delays that led to me not getting home until 3:00 am on Monday. The tournament itself was a lot of fun, and marks a great end to the 2019 crossword circuit. I finished all the puzzles cleanly, which I believe makes this the first year that I haven’t had a mistake in any tournament. I also finished 12th overall, after finishing 8th at both Boswords and Indie 500, and 24th (6th in the B division) at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

If you weren’t at Lollapuzzoola you can still get the puzzles and compete in the at-home division — or just solve them for fun. Also, you can do the puzzle below, which we handed out for free at the tournament. Laura Braunstein, who co-edits The Inkubator, came up with the theme, and then she and I roughly split filling the grid and writing the clues. Hope you enjoy it.

Puzzle 9: Tea Party

I was solving an Andrew Reis Rows Garden puzzle recently, and at one point the part of one row I had filled in spelled out the entry at 45-Across. I realized immediately that (1) this would make a great theme entry, (2) this was an obvious enough theme that it must have been done before (probably several times) and (3) it’s a theme with dozens of potential entries, so surely I could come up with a unique set. Since it’s hard to search for themes, I instead searched for my theme entries, and since I couldn’t find them used anywhere I went ahead and constructed the puzzle.

It was only when I got to cluing that I discovered that Merl Reagle had used 56-Across when he constructed a puzzle with the same theme. In fact, Merl used it twice — first in 2006, and again in 2012 when he republished the 2006 puzzle with a completely new set of clues. I decided to leave the entry in, partly because I didn’t relish the idea of redoing the whole bottom third of the grid, but mostly because it’s a fun entry and 2012 was far enough back that nobody’s enjoyment of the puzzle will be ruined by seeing the entry again.

Also I wanted to get this done in time for Boswords, since if you squint hard enough, the theme is kind of Boston related. If you weren’t there, you can still order all the puzzles for a mere $5. You also can still sign up for Lollapuzoola 12 on August 17, the greatest crossword tournament ever held on a Saturday in August. Hurry, as all the tables are already full, and I’m sure they’ll soon start running out of “clipboard seats” (you get a chair but no table). If you’re going to be at the tournament and want to join a bunch of crossword folks for a drink on Friday and/or Saturday night, shoot me a message and I’ll send you the details.

Puzzle 8: Send in the Clones

I’m always on the lookout for good Schrödinger puzzle ideas, but somehow it took me a long time to realize that this theme would be perfect for a Schrödinger. I also realized at the same time that it would be way too stressful to try to make that work, and I was far enough along in the construction that I just kept this as a regular puzzle.

The other reason I didn’t turn this into a Schrödinger puzzle is that doing so would have made much of the puzzle impossible for people who aren’t familiar with the TV show that the theme is centered around. As it is, I ended up with a lot more proper names in the grid than usual, but that’s what Google is for. Also, if you’re not familiar with the show, you should watch it. I missed the final season when it aired, but I’m binging it now. (By binging I mean “watching one or two episodes a week during the few minutes I have after the kids go to bed and before I start to fall asleep on the couch”.)

This Sunday is the Boswords Crossword Tournament. Registration is still open, so you should definitely sign up if you haven’t yet. As always, I’ll be the guy there doing puzzles.

Puzzle 7: Golden Women

I’m not a huge fan of quote puzzles, but when I realized the quote in this puzzle would fit perfectly into a grid I just had to use it. But first I had to wait until Sunday afternoon to start constructing (for obvious reasons), and I wanted to get it up as quickly as possible (also for obvious reasons), and then I decided to add a few more theme entires, so some of the fill is a bit bad, which I apologize for. Also there’s a major profanity in the quote, which I don’t apologize for, so if that sort of thing bothers you, you’ve now been warned.

Puzzle 6: A Crossword Puzzle Walks Into a Bar

The inspiration for this puzzle came from a tweet by Helen Rosner:

This was in relation to her article accompanying a video chat between New Yorker crossword editor Liz Maynes-Aminzade and New Yorker (and other venues) constructor Natan Last, which also supplied one of the theme entries for this puzzle. Spoilers, obviously, so wait until after you solve the puzzle to read it. Or don’t — most of you probably know all these punchlines already.

Not surprisingly, this theme has been done before (“Served With a Twist”, Patrick Jordan, Los Angeles Times, Sunday, November 7, 2004) but I figured there were enough jokes out there to justify my own version — even though Patrick had already used the first punchline I thought of (“Why the long face?”). I also had to leave out my daughter’s favorite joke, so I’m including it here instead.

What do you call a fish with no eyes?

A FSSSH!

Puzzle 5: #banCars

This puzzle is sort of a response to Brendan Emmett Quigley’s It’s A Lot, but really, as anyone who follows me on Twitter knows, it’s the puzzle I was born to construct. I was somewhat surprised at how few potential answers there were for this theme, but I think in the end I came up with a pretty good set — though once again I found myself forced to use some questionable fill in order to fit everything in.

Thanks to my test solvers, Evan, Guan and Kim, for flagging a few clues that needed improvement. They also noticed that questionable fill I mentioned above, but I had no good way of getting rid of those entries. Sorry, guys!

Scheduling note: For a variety or reasons, I’m going to switch this blog to bi-weekly puzzles for a while (that’s a new puzzle every two weeks, not two new puzzles every week) — though if I start to assemble enough of a backlog I’ll go back to weekly. The best way to make sure you don’t miss any of these puzzles is to sign up for my newsletter, which I promise I will never convert into a multi-level marketing scheme.

Puzzle 0: Fudge Factor (with Chris Adams)

I spent too much time hanging out with crossword friends in DC over the weekend to finish the puzzle I was working on, so I’m offering up a rerun instead. (Yes, technically we were all also competing/volunteering at the Indie 500, but we spent a lot more time at restaurants and bars than we did at the tournament.) This puzzle was a collaboration with Chris Adams that originally ran on his website last year. I’m reposting in here for anyone who doesn’t solve his puzzles, but really, you all should be solving his puzzles. They’re good and they’re free.

Speaking of crossword friends, my friend Rich O’Malley’s new book, One Lucky Fan, was released yesterday and you should all go buy it. Rich is a good guy and a good writer, and you should all support him, even if he is a Yankees fan.

New puzzle next week. Promise.