Crosswords! Mostly themeless, no set schedule
One more Nediger-esque random puzzle to close out a month of funky grids! Once again I really encourage other folks to mess around with this idea - leads to a lot of fun. Purple blocks are the random blocks, yellow squares are the random letters.
Next month will be big grid month, plus potentially another surprise in store if I can get my act together soon enough.
Howdy! The month of funky grids continues - we're back with another more experimental grid shape. This is one I've lusted after for quite some time, with the "picture frame" around the edge. I'm a big sucker for pretty grids and this certainly fits the bill. It's got a couple more gluey entries than I normally prefer but I don't really care :) Hope you enjoy!
I also had two puzzles published yesterday! A guest puzzle on crosswords schmosswords called "picking up slack", and the WSJ called "Cleared for Takeoff". Go do them both!
I also wanted to talk briefly about the WSJ as they have an editorial practice I'm not a huge fan of. You don't get to see proofs or have any input between acceptance and publication, which is something that most other outlets do provide. Because of that & their not-exactly-sparkling record when it comes to including things I personally don't want to see in grids, I'm pretty picky about what themes I'll send there (someone asked me about submitting there at all & i honestly don't mind raising a giant stink if that happens). Anyways, that WSJ has a lively, diverse set of themers & I'm proud to see it run...but that NE corner is not mine. Not my favorite way to do that corner, so this is me raising a little stink about it. Anyways, go do both of those puzzles, and I'm done blabbering for now. Next week we'll have another Nediger-random grid.
This puzzle kicks off a month of somewhat bonkers grids (although this one is the tamest of the lot). Directly inspired by/stolen from Will Nediger, the rules for this grid are simple - randomly pick five squares to be blocked and five squares to get random letters in them, and build the grid around that. It was a fun exercise (and resulted in a grid I'd never build on my own) - so much fun that I did it twice! Purple blocks are the generated blocks, and yellow squares are the generated letters.
This is second one of these & I streamed the construction - you can still watch it on my occassionally-used Twitch channel (link starts you about 10 minutes in, which is when the construction actually starts). For those of you that already swung by the stream, I swapped the order around & am posting the streamed puzzle first, mostly because I think/hope some people will want to check out the stream after solving).
For the 18th, I've got a non-random-but-still-kinda-out-there grid, and then on the 28th we'll do the first random grid (which did not quite give me as kind of letters and blocks as this one...)