Puzzle Ninety-Four: The Limits of My Language (18x15 themeless)

My wife challenged me to construct a puzzle with 40-Across as a seed entry. 2 years later, it's here.

.puz / PDF

Apologies for the lack of a January contest meta, and for the delay in posting answers for Thanks I Hate It from October and the Super Secret Contest Meta, whose deadline was December 31. I have been dealing with a whole lot since December and where I have a number of non-meta puzzles already in the queue, I haven't had the mental energy to create a contest meta in a couple of months. I hope to bring it back, but for now the meta contest has to go on hiatus. 

I have a Universal puzzle set to run on February 18. I posted a few new PuzzGrids (Connections / Only Connect-style puzzles) this fall. And if you're a National Puzzle League member, I debuted as a contributor to The Enigma last issue with two flats.

Puzzle Eighty-Nine: Well Would You Look at the Time (themeless)

 

I used to collect watches and still have a drawerful of Casios. These are the classic Casio AE 1200, probably the best, and best-looking, watch you can buy for around $20. Photo from the estimable watch blog The Time Bum.

Hey, it's another themeless. 68 words.

The Super Secret Meta Contest continues.

.puz / PDF

Created by Richard D. Allen using crossword creator by Amuse Labs

Puzzle Eighty-Seven: List of Peasant Revolts (themeless)

 

New themeless with an unexpectedly literary bent. 

.puz / PDF

I have a new collection of 10 themelesses with easier clues on the Redstone Crosswords app, with another one on the way. Search for "Richard Allen" on the app to locate.

Look for a Universal puzzle from me in August. 

I'm working on a meta for next week with a multimedia component. I'm excited to see how it works out. Stay tuned. 

Puzzle Eighty-Six: This One's For All the Marbles (25x9 themeless)

Like a 15x15 grid, a 25x9 grid has 225 squares. Unlike a 15x15 grid, it can accommodate a 25-letter seed entry.

You'll have a better online solving experience in the app.

.puz / PDF

Puzzle Eighty-Four: Take a Cue (themeless) + Midi Controller No. 2

Hopefully smooth-solving 66-word themeless today from a forthcoming pack of 10 themelesses on the Crossword app from Redstone Games.

And speaking of puzzle packs, the second issue of the Lexicon Devil midi crossword zine, Midi Controller, is here! It's fifteen 9x9 midis with a little Easter egg tying them all together. Your download will include a PDF of the zine that you can print out and staple yourself, as well as .puz files and individual PDFs. It's pay what you wish, but a little financial contribution always helps. 

Puzzle Seventy-Nine: Old Flames (themeless)

perennially relevant image

It's the beginning of a new year... or at least it was a month ago. To all the solvers out there, especially the meta solvers, thank you for solving last year's puzzles and for your kind comments. As for 2024, I'm in the position of having a real backlog of finished puzzles, but my life being so complex at the moment -- not in a good way, frankly -- that it's hard even to find the time to upload them and write brief blog posts. I really do want to get them out into the world eventually, though. 

A huge thanks to everyone who sent proof of a charitable donation in order to get my 2023 Puzzle Pack -- I received around $500 in receipts, which is great. Another benefit puzzle pack, for the most important cause imaginable at the moment, launched recently: Puzzles for Palestine. It's available with proof of a donation to one of the four charities identified on their site. 

As the editors note, however:

Your donations are truly appreciated, but right now, monetary support is NOT the most effective way to help Palestine. If you want your donation to have the maximum impact, we first need a permanent ceasefire and end to the bombing to ensure adequate material support can enter Gaza and unfettered access to all parts of the Strip can be provided to effectively distribute humanitarian aid. To that end, we encourage you all to write an email, send a fax, or place a phone call to your local and national Representatives and Senators, urging them to demand a ceasefire in Gaza now. 

Registration, limited to 150 slots, is now open for the inaugural Westwords Crossword Tournament in Berkeley, CA.on June 23. I'd love to attend in person, but that's a long way from North Carolina, so if my pair of Bay Area friends can't put me up, I'll be competing online (were it not for online tournaments, I wouldn't have gotten into competing in them at all).

I spent a lot of time during the last week of December trying to finish solving the book-length puzzle Cain's Jawbone in time to submit my answer by December 31st, the publisher's final deadline -- no prizes anymore, but correct answers get a confirmation email at the end of January. It's January 30 as I type this... and no email yet. I'm certain I know the right answer, and may just have introduced a typo filling out the form. Then again, if you so much as get two pages reversed -- which would be easy to do -- you're out of luck on the email. Maybe a lot of other people threw the same New Year's Eve Hail Mary as I did...

It's a brilliant, maddening, and entirely unique puzzle. I have some unresolved questions about the literary merit of the revealed novel, putting me in the unique position of having almost no one with whom I can discuss them without showing them the answer first, which would completely at odds with my own reading experience, as well as a serious faux pas given the publisher's request that successful solvers keep the answer secret. So if you too have finished it (or at least come within shouting distance of doing so) and want to chat about it in more detail, feel free to drop me an email. 

New themeless below -- one I'm very fond of. It's also probably very hard. Sometimes you gotta make a hard puzzle, live up to your blog's name and such (why did I give the blog a name that implies all the puzzles are really hard? They're not all really hard. I hope.)

.puz / PDF

Puzzle Sixty-Nine: Sticks Up For Birds (freestyle) (Enigmarch Day 2) + Bonus Puzzle: Enigmarch Day 1

Enigmarch begins again. Today's freestyle is for Day 2 and the prompt... Well, I put the prompt in the puzzle as an entry. You can figure it out pretty easily. 

.puz / PDF

(Yes, I know today is March 3rd. I ran out of time to post this yesterday.)

I'm going to be posting my #Enigmarch puzzles in this thread on XWordMuggles. 

Scroll down once you're done for my Day 1 mini-meta puzzle - for the prompt KEY. 

Puzzle Sixty-Six: We Off That (freestyle)

 Freestyle clued on the easier side this week. 

Watch this space during the rest of December - the 21st in particular - for some special end-of-year announcements and opportunities.

.puz / PDF

Puzzle Sixty-Four: Joined at the Hip (freestyle)

Great drawing by /r/RustyPieter on Reddit

Friday freestyle fun (one hopes). 

.puz / PDF

Puzzle Sixty: I'm Going Already! (freestyle)

 This themeless was described as "a bit morbid" by one commentator. As if that's a bad thing!

.puz / PDF

Puzzle Fifty-Five: Drama-Free (freestyle)

A more gently-clued 72-entry freestyle this week, and hopefully a smooth solve for you. Thanks to kateschmate for test-solving (go solve her puzzles if for some reason you're not doing that already).

.puz / PDF

Puzzle Forty-Six: Luck of the Draw, Part Three

(PDF and .puz available from within the Crosshare applet below.)

Puzzle Thirty-Six: Deep Concentration (freestyle)

I've been waiting to drop this one. Hope you enjoy. 

PDF / PUZ

Solving music: Dilated Peoples' "DJ Babu in Deep Concentration," a tribute to Gang Starr's classic "DJ Premier in Deep Concentration" 

Puzzles Thirty-Three and Thirty-Four: Luck of the Draw, Parts One and Two

A few months ago I challenged myself to construct a themeless puzzle incorporating the first five words produced by an online random word generator. Part 1 below is the second such grid and the first full puzzle I've produced using this approach. You'll find out what the words are as you go.

More recently, at the end of July, Will Nediger (independently) concocted an even tougher random construction challenge: incorporate five letters selected at random at points in the grid selected at random, and five black squares whose locations would also be selected at random. I took on that challenge as well, and Part 2 is the outcome. The random letters and their locations are highlighted in yellow and the five mandatory "black" squares, the location of which made this a true challenge, are highlighted in pink.

Other constructors who entered the Nediger Aleatory Thunderdome and emerged with solvable puzzles include:

Trent Evans, Grid Therapy: "Random Association 1"
Brian Thomas, Puzzles That Need a Home: "Themeless #57" and the new "Themeless #59"

Thanks to Quiara for test-solving both of these. And to the 00s UK grime sensation Lady Sovereign for the solving music below (it got stuck in my head while constructing, okay?).

META UPDATE: Though I haven't posted one in six weeks, the contest meta puzzles will return soon. I simply hit an idea drought at the same time as I also ran short on time to do the extra tasks related to the metas, like catching up on mailing out stickers to past winners, making spreadsheets, writing clues, sending draft puzzles out to be test-solved, and so forth.

 

Puzzle Twenty-Nine: California Roll (freestyle)

Bonus puzzle today outside of the standard biweekly schedule. This past week saw the publication of a number of themelesses (see, e.g., Trent's and Quiara's) with equally rounded-off corners, what some call "cookie grids" and I privately think of as "sushi grids." I had been meaning to post this puzzle on a future date and figured I would bump it up. A slightly easier version has already appeared in Volume 2 of my puzzles in Redstone Games's Crossword Puzzle Free iPhone and Android app (there's also a paid version). 

It's about a year old at this point and contains three or four entries I might not use now, but I'm still fond of the long entries and one crossing in particular, though I can't say which without spoiling things. Hope you enjoy. 64 words / 43 blocks / 5/69 avg. length. 

puz / PDF

Puzzle Twenty-Seven: Shades of Red (freestyle)

Memorial to 32-Down in Zwickau, Saxony

Another freestyle on the hard side. 68 words.  Average word length 5.5 letters. Thanks to Quiara V. of QVXwordz for test-solving. She's got a new themeless up today so go solve that one too. 

TW: communism.

PUZ / PDF

Puzzle Twenty-One: Ay Yi Yi! (freestyle)

details, details *sigh*

The genesis of this puzzle lies in some very fun themelesses in recent months from other indie constructors created with the goal of using only one repeating black-square pattern in the grid:

Brooke Husic and Sid Sivakumar, "Puzzle 35 - Themeless #25"
Brooke Husic and Brian Thomas, "Puzzle #40: Themeless"
Matthew Stock, "Puzzle No. 28: Themeless"
Mollie Cowger, "Themeless 1"

I completed a version of this one a while back but back-burnered it after discovering that Roland Huget's March 7, 2020 Los Angeles Times Saturday themeless used the same pair of mini-theme entries before I had ever hit upon them. Upon reflection, I decided it was still a good puzzle and a cool-looking grid. Enjoy!

68 words / 41 blocks

PUZ / PDF

Puzzle Eighteen: Washington Gridlock (meta)

The meta returns after an unscheduled two-week break. I was rushing to post this puzzle on the morning of January 21 when I spotted a factual error in a clue. At that point I still hadn't written a blog post to go with the puzzle, found a header image, set up an answer spreadsheet... So I set it aside for the day, despite preferring not to post meta puzzles on Fridays because the WSJ and MGWCC metas are posted on Fridays. Then, on Friday morning, I decided I didn't like the title, and I still hadn't fixed the factual error. So I punted again. And then I was busy with other responsibilities for another week and a half. 

I had originally intended to post puzzles bimonthly. Then I got on a roll and wound up posting them weekly, which has been fun, but also a ton of work on a very short self-imposed deadline. In particular, it doesn't budget in enough time for test-solving, which helps a great deal in ironing out issues with the metas. I'm happy with most of the metas I've posted so far, but I intend the ones I have planned for the near future to be even better, and that's going to require a different approach. So this is a heads-up both that I will be returning to my original biweekly plan and that if you enjoy solving the metas, you should sign up for the Lexicon Devil mailing list, because I will be distributing the metas by email before putting them on the site to ensure they go out at a consistent day and time. More on that later – just sign up for the list now. 

The answer to this week's meta is a former US president. The puzzle itself, though, at 70 entries and a four-star-plus difficulty level, is another meta/themeless hybrid, so you should feel free to treat it like a themeless and ignore the meta aspect if that's not your bag. 

Submit your answer by clicking HERE. 

Submissions are due by Monday, February 8, 2021 at 12:00 PM EST. 

The January 7 meta "Miles to Go" proved more of a fun run for many solvers – read more on the solutions page HERE.

If you have any issues submitting your answer, just put it in an email to lexicondevillive at outlook dot com with your name, preferred screen name / ID and email address and I'll add you in manually. 

Two winners – the first person to submit a correct answer and another person selected at random from the correct entries – will receive a Lexicon Devil sticker as well as the respect of their puzzling peers.  

If you're enjoying these puzzles – especially the metas, which are time-consuming to construct and oversee – please consider making a small contribution via the tip jar: 

PUZ / PDF

Puzzle Fifteen: Hunting High and Low (freestyle)

Winners of last week's meta challenge were gppasco and Megarrific. 

Another new freestyle. Enjoy! Thanks to Quiara Vasquez of QVXwordz for test-solving. 

PUZ / PDF

Puzzle Thirteen: We Have Snacks (freestyle)

Photo by Jeremy Noble.

Another freestyle. Note the "bad-puns" and "Canadian-clue" tags.

Also, if you're enjoying these puzzles, please consider making a small contribution via the newly added tip jar: 

PUZ / PDF