Puzzle 65 - Themeless #50

No May 8 puzzle: Howdy, both the boys tested positive for COVID earlier this week. Everyone is healthy & recovered, and both my wife & I are vaccinated, but we are in the middle of two weeks of quarantining two preschoolers + working remote. Anyways, I don't have the time nor energy to clue (although the grid is rad) so just taking this time off. Be back on the 18th!

Please get your shot.

I'm delighted to bring you a puzzle that I streamed the construction of (well, 2/3 of the grid). It looks like Twitch only stores videos for a couple weeks, so the video is gone - but I had a great time & will try to do it again. Swing by my Twitch page next time (no idea when that will be, I'd love to do it like...once every couple months). And if you were hanging out w/ me in the stream, fear not, for I have rebuilt the NW, and the SE was left blank, so you'll get like 1/2 of of an unspoiled puzzle.

I did not ACPT - tough on everyone to not be parenting for a whole weekend - but I hope everyone had a great time! One of these years Morgan and I are gonna do a NYC/DC vacation around an in-person tournament - spend a week or so exploring one of the cities and get to meet puzzle folks in person. Anyways, big congrats to Tyler Hinman, who streams a couple times a week on Twitch as well - check it out & be awed.

Speaking of the puzzle, I think this one will be fairly tough - it's a little proper-heavy. Everything's fairly crossed and all that jazz, and there's plenty of non-proper fun. I also recommend either the PDF or the PuzzleMe applet on this one - bonus points if you print out the PDF & solve in the tiny grid as well :)

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Puzzle 64 - Themeless #49

This is a very old grid that I just never was able to make the NW/SE work very well. Finally decided to plop the pair of blocks at the ends of 1D/38D. Probably am too hesitant to drop extra blocks in when needed - this grid's a handy self-reminder of the value in doing just that.

Next puzzle should be the streamed one, FYI. Anyhoo...

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Puzzle 63 - Themeless #48

Whoops, ended up with a half clued grid on the night of the 7th and I chose sleep. No regrets whatsoever.

I am delighted to share that I have today's 7xword - go do that!

Also delighted to share that a few nights ago, I streamed a couple hours of construction! We ended up making about 3/4 of a grid (could have been 100% but grrr dupes). Go check that out here (spoiler warning - I will finish the grid, clue it, and post it here before too long).

Planning on streaming again sometime in the next few weeks - so if you can make it swing by! Likely will be at a similar time ~8 PM on the west coast, after the kiddos go to bed.

Onto this one - I so so badly wanted to fill this grid without the block at the bottom of 7-Down (with some helpers in the NW/SE corner if necessary). It looks so pretty that way - but I just couldn't make it work nicely. Ah well. Anyways, enough blabbering, here's the puz!

(cross-referenced clues numbers all fixed)

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