It's About Time

It has been a while, hasn't it? New freestyle for youse today because why not? Be careful with this one...

Freestyle #39
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PUZ

XTR, XTR! BRKNG NWS

A few news items and a new vowelless puzzle today:

1. My boy Evan Birnholz made his auspicious Washington Post debut yesterday: solve it here. Evan's new WP venture is the most exciting thing to happen in crosswords this year, imo. Show him some love.
2. The Indie 500 is happening again on June 4, 2016. If you're not too established, we want your puzzle for it. And no matter what, we want to hang with you in June. Seriously, I don't even care if you sign up for the tourney or not; just come to DC and drink cocktails with us.
3. Here's a new vowelless puzzle. It's like a regular crossword, except you only enter the consonants of a given answer. So if the clue were [Cute young cat] you would write KTTN, not KITTEN. Just so there's no confusion, the letter Y is not used at all. Also there are two versions: an easier one in which the enumerations (i.e.number of letters) of the full words are given, and a harder one in which they are not. An enumeration of (11) means that the full answer is a single 11-letter word, and an enumeration of (5, 6) means that the full answer is a two-word phrase where the words are 5 and 6 letters long, in that order (such as HEARS NOISES - but of course you would just enter HRS NSS). Got it? Good.

Easier version (with enumerations)
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PUZ

Harder version (no enumerations)
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PUZ

Solution (full answer list)
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Freely Styled

Whipped up this grid a few weeks ago just for yuks and finally got around to cluing it. Enjoy!

Freestyle #38
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Give Up?

The answer to last week's meta, Romantic Foreplay, is now posted on the Meta Solutions page. Also, remember that there was another meta, That's the Spirit!, posted a few days ago. The solution to that one will be up next Wednesday.

Surprise Puzzle!

I know I said that I wouldn't be back until Friday, but I was inspired by the puzzling atmosphere of the ACPT to cook up another puzzle. By the way, it was nice to see so many of you in Stamford. I managed to at least briefly catch up with most solvers and constructors that I had met at past tourneys as well as meet a whole schwack of wonderful puzzlers whom I had never had the pleasure to talk to before. Anyway, I'll still be back on Friday with the solution to Romantic Foreplay, but for now enjoy another meta called "That's the Spirit!" I'll post the solution to this one a week from this very minute (give or take a few hundred minutes).

The meta answer is something I used to make this puzzle

More words, crossed and otherwise, next week.

That's the Spirit! (PDF)

That's the Spirit! (PUZ)

Floor It!

It's been a while, and for that I apologize. Been busy working on the Indie 500 and running a weekly pub trivia and being a family man. Anyway, new meta puzzle for you today, called Romantic Foreplay. It's not a contest, but you can submit the answer to me if you'd like. Or just say hi or tell me that you didn't like the puzzle or whatever. Better yet, come up and do all of those things in person at the tourney. After much hemming and hawing I decided to attend for the fourth year in a row, and even though it's 5:30am and I'm sitting on the floor of Penn Station next to a power outlet writing this and I haven't slept since yesterday morning I'm so glad I decided to make the pilgrimage once again. Super stoked to see y'all there!

Oh, and I'll post the meta answer on the site next Friday. Nudge me if I forget.

The meta answer is something that's a no-no for Christians

More words, crossed and otherwise, this weekend in Stamford

Romantic Foreplay (PUZ)

Romantic Foreplay (PDF)

Trivial Matters

Been busy lately with a new sorta-puzzle-related project. A few friends and I will be hosting a pub trivia night, beginning this Sunday evening. If you're in the greater Regina area (extremely unlikely), come on out to The Lancaster at 19:00. Anyway, gotta get back to it, so that's all I'll say for now. Enjoy the latest freestyle; it was my submission for the final Post Puzzler themeless contest, but it wasn't picked. I'm reasonably happy with it, though, so I figured it wouldn't be nice to keep it all to myself.

More words, crossed and otherwise, whenever I feel like it.

Puzzle: Freestyle #37
Downloads:
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PUZ

Trigger Warning

Happy holidays everybody. I posted a pretty tough meta puzzle last week, and between then and yesterday morning 21 answers were submitted for the Anny Get Your Gun meta contest puzzle; 19 of them were correct. If you're wondering about the intended answer, head over to the Meta Solutions page.

I randomly selected one of the correct entries, and it turned out to belong to Dominick Talvacchio. You'll recall that I was offering a 2015 indie puzzle subscription as a prize; Dominick made a wise choice (I'm pretty there isn't an unwise one though) and opted for a subscription to Matt Gaffney's Weekly Crossword Contest. Congrats to Dominick and all solvers, and thanks to everyone for taking part! I'm working on another meta right now and I should have it up in the next week or so. Sorry, I work a lot slower now than I used to.

Present Arms

Contest time at the Cross Nerd. Get the meta answer in to me (peter.bananarchy at gmail) by Christmas morning (12:01am CST, Dec 25, 2014, specifically). Despite the timing, though, the meta and puzzle have nothing to do with the holiday season, and may even be downright un-christmas-y. I came up with the idea and wrote the puzzle a little while ago, but just now got around to finishing up the cluing and putting the finishing touches on it. Anyway, hope you have some fun with it. It's about a week 2.5 or 3 on the MGWCC scale, if that means anything to you, and the puzzle itself is probably in the range of a Thursday NYT.

Oh yeah, and the prizes. One randomly selected entrant with the correct answer will receive their choice of one 2015 indie crossword subscription. What would you like to solve? Tough-as-nails themed and themeless by top-tier constructors and edited by one of the brightest in the business? Get the Fireball. Clever and intricate and beautiful meta puzzles? Go with Matt Gaffney's Weekly Crossword Contest. Hip and sassy offerings of the highest quality with surprise after surprise (random contests, crazy variants, collabs with celebs, etc)? American Values is your jam. Easyish and approachable but nevertheless solid and lively? Dig AriesXWord. Or maybe you don't want a crossword at all. Then check out some of the most elegant and challenging Rows Gardens you'll see anywhere, also by Aries aka Andrew Ries. Am I missing anyone?

Good luck, and check back here on the 25th for the answer and announcement of the winner. And just fyi, I've got a few more metas in the works, so keep your eyes peeled in the new year.

Lastly, don't forget to consider submitting a puzzle for the Indie 500 if you haven't already. We've had a number of submissions thrown our way and we're having trouble resisting the urge to solve them all. The deadline is Jan 15; lots of time for you, but way too much time for us!

Oh, just one more thing, I swear. See that knock-out clue for 15-Across? All Erik Agard. Mofo's a cluing wizard.

More words, crossed and otherwise, on xmas.

Anny Get Your Gun
The meta answer is a firearms manufacturer.

Downloads:
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Show Us What Ya Got

We're now taking submissions for the Indie 500 tournament! The 5 organizers (Andy, Erik, Evan, Neville, and myself) will each write a puzzle, but the sixth one will be by one of you. We're open to pretty much anything, but the only caveat is that you must be suitably indie. Our idea of indie is explained in more detail over at the tournament site. Hit up the SUBMIT page for all the info. And be sure to drop us a line on the CONTACT page if you haven't already; we'll add your name to the mailing list and keep you up to date.

Got another vowelless for you today. As always, two versions are available: one with answer lengths given and one without. And Y is not a part of any answer. Enjoy!

More words, crossed and otherwise, whenever I get around to it.

PDF (with answer lengths)
PUZ (with answer lengths)
PDF (no hints)
PUZ (no hints)
Full Answers

I collaborated with Erik Agard on his latest freestyle puzzle. Before you go thinking that I somehow acquired a sense of humour since we last spoke, I should tell you that EA wrote all of the clues. Dude is a cluing savant. In fact, he filled most of the grid, too, which was surely no mean feat. I'm struggling to remember what I actually did on this puzzle. I can't even take credit for title. Anyway, enjoy!

Writing to you from beautiful and scenic Denver, Colorado, and I'm about to head out to sample the local libations so I'll keep this brief. Been a while since I've had a puzzle for you, but I figured I should throw something up here since I mentioned the site (and my "voice" or whatever) in my constructor's notes for the Sat NYT. Bit saucier, this one; I'll understand if we can't be friends anymore.

More words, crossed and otherwise, sometime later on...

Puzzle: Freestyle #36

Downloads:

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So you may have noticed that nothing's been happening here. I really should have posted something sooner, but then I just didn't. Anyway, I've been busy lately with a lot of stuff that I'm really excited about, but unfortunately writing puzzles for this blog is not one of them. It's something I still enjoy doing, but I've got a lot of other priorities at the moment and just can't justify busting my ass to stick to the regular schedule. I really don't like to rush and cut corners on these puzzles either. I've decided to continue the Cross Nerd puzzles on an aperiodic when-I-feel-like-it schedule a la Todd McClary's Unthemely series. I was working on a large freestyle several weeks ago that I'll post soon, once I find some time to write the rest of the clues. Sign up for the Google Group to have the puzzles emailed to you whenever they're ready. Otherwise, check back now and again and there may be something new here. Ciao for now!

Slipping and Sliding

A thousand apologies, but no puzzle this week. I'll try to get one up by the weekend, but no guarantees. Reasons include: surprise road trip to the twin cities over the weekend, crazy week at work, gig on Friday, long weekend and possible camping this weekend, and summer in general. Luckily, my man Erik Agard has you covered with a three-puzzle meta suite.

Thanks to the Minnesota puzzle crew for a very enjoyable Sunday afternoon nerd-out and tournament, and special thanks to the wonderful Andrew Ries for putting us up and putting up with us after a long day's drive on Friday night. The puzzles at the tournament were all top-notch, and the people were even better. I particularly enjoyed the one by Andy Kravis and the final themeless punisher by Victor Barocas. You can purchase all 7 puzzles for only $5 here: https://thefriends.thankyou4caring.org/events/event-registration-mn-crossword-tournament.

Since the schedule here is so unpredictable, you might want to consider joining the Google group by clicking on the link in the menu to the right. That way you'll never miss a puzzle.

More words soon...

Puff Puff? Pass

I didn't quite finish the puzzle last night, so I'm posting this on my lunch break. I'll try to keep it brief.

I was almost completely finished this puzzle a few days early this week, actually, save for a few clues. A few entries in each puzzle always scream out for a bit of devious wordplay, and I like to let those simmer a bit in the old brainpan to minimize the chances of missing a perfect cluing opportunity. In the end, I didn't come up with anything too terribly clever for this puzzle, but I'm still glad I didn't rush it and overall I suppose I'm happy with how it turned out.

Also, I've been smoke-free for one week and I couldn't be happier about it. 10/10, would recommend. I'd like to say I was motivated by health concerns, or financial concerns, or even aromatic concerns, but, while these were certainly concerns of mine, it was a new romantic interest that finally pushed me past the tipping point. Ladies love the buttless chaps, after all.

Oh, and lastly this looks cool so I think I'll attend and you should too. Still need to finalize plans with my travel companion, but the outlook is very good.

More words, crossed and otherwise, two weeks hence.

Puzzle: Freestyle #35
Downloads:
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Here, There Be Giants

Been a while since I've posted a vowelless, so here's a vowelless for you. For whatever reason, I'm in a mood to talk shop, so here's how this one was made:

As you may know, I'm a fan of classic video games. I've recently gotten back into the Mario series (started working on my Super Mario World speedrunning strats just this week), and I was inspired by world 4, "Big Island" (or "Giant World" as we used to call it), from Super Mario Bros. 3. The gimmick there was that the enemies and objects in the environment were doubled in size. As far as I can tell, they simply took the sprites for the koopas, blocks, pipes, clouds, etc. and blew them up so that each pixel became a 2x2 block of pixels. I thought that that would be cool to do in a crossword, so I started playing around and sketching out typical arrangements of black squares using 2x2 blocks where there would normally be single blocks. Well, it turns out that your standard 15x15 grid (or 16x16 grid, in the case of this week's puzzle) doesn't allow for too many different arrangements in that style. Either there's too much white space or 2-letter entries are forced. However, one particular layout seemed like it would be fillable as a vowelless at least: a 2x4 "finger" jutting out perpendicular to each edge, each with a diagonally offset 2x2 block on the end. I liked the look of it, so I went to work on the fill. After a proof-of-concept fill or two (I always throw a couple seeds in and hit autofill at first just to make sure that the thing is fillable at all) I went to work finding eight good entries, or at least promising stubs, for the central region, since that was the most constrained area and I knew I wouldn't be able to change much in there once I had a couple of corners filled. Playing around with more proof-of-concept fills for each corner in turn, I noticed that pretty much any pair of long entries I had running into them allowed for at least a few possibilities even without the thick fingers of black squares. So, I said to hell with the "Giant World" idea and slimmed down those bands of black squares (turning the already fearsome 4x10 corners into 4x10+an 8). From there, finding the optimal fills for the corners was academic (i.e. I brainstormed/searched possibilities for entries based on stubs, threw a few in as seeds and threw the rest into my wordlist, examined all fills available given my list, and picked the ones I liked the best, occasionally noticing and filling in absences in my wordlist. Sorry to take all the magic out of it).

My first seed was 8-down (well, it was ?-across but I flipped the grid halfway through to fill what were the vertical corners. The hardest part of constructing vowelless grids is figuring out and remembering what the hell each crazy string of consonants actually represents, and having the longest entries read horizontal makes it a bit easier, I find. I also wrote a handy script that maps the vowelless entries -which may include wildcards- to any corresponding full entries, but it's faster if I can do it by sight). It's not only something that interests me, but also an example of one of my favourite types of vowelless entry: while the phrase itself may be unfamiliar to most solvers, the thing it refers to will be familiar to most, and it can be parsed out one word at a time with the right clue. And plus, it might be kind of cool to learn that that thing with which you probably have some experience is indeed a capital-T Thing with an accepted name and everything. Trivia clues are a cornerstone of crosswords, but they generally don't work as well in vowellesses, at least in their traditional form of [Some interesting bit of trivia that nobody knows] cluing THE SUBJECT OF THE TRIVIA. In my experience of solving vowellesses, an unknown entry is actually easier to figure out than a known entry with an obtuse clue, so I prefer the reverse trivia clue, which has the form [A description of something that you're familiar with but hadn't thought much about] cluing THE ACTUAL NAME FOR THAT THING WHICH YOU PROBABLY DIDN'T KNOW BUT IS MADE UP OF COMMON AND GUESSABLE WORDS.

All of that said, I hope you find the puzzle enjoyable and not too unsolvable, because otherwise it will be eminently obvious that I'm out to lunch here.

More words, crossed and otherwise, in two weeks.

Oh, and as usual, Y is not a part of any answer.

Puzzle: Vowelless #11
Downloads: 
PDF (with full answer enumerations - EASIER)
PUZ (with full answer enumerations - EASIER)
PDF (without enumerations - HARDER)
PUZ (without enumerations - HARDER)

Full Answers

I Am The Walrus?

New puzzle day!

...however, I've decided to scale back operations a bit here. Beginning this week, I'll be posting puzzles fortnightly rather than weekly. Join the Google Group if you'd like to have the puzzles mailed out to you. Link to the right, or right here, I guess. I hope you don't mind. I've simply got too many things on the go at the moment, and summer is fast approaching to boot. I'm raising my standards for these puzzles all the time, and consequently it takes me a lot longer to write them. Well, it takes a little longer, but I agonize over picky little details, the validity of certain answers, whether or not I've gone too far with a clue, etc. In the end I'm still rarely completely happy with the puzzles, but I then probably never would be. Point is, this all adds up to more time than I generally have/want to devote to constructing as of late, so fortnightly it is.

This weekend, a long one for us, I'll be attending my first ever Lebowski Fest. It'll likely be a small one, but should be a hoot. Plus, looking at list of attendees on the Facebook event, it turns out I have more Achievers in my circle of friends than I realized, so I should be in good company. Sadly, though, two of my closest Lebowski-loving compadres, Drew and, believe it or not, Donnie, are out of town. Anyway, I just heard about it and I need to whip up a costume toot suite. I've got the hair and the build for Jesus, but no purple leisure suit, alas. Maybe Smokey? Who else has long hair in the movie? If I didn't have hair at all I'd definitely have to go as Knox Harrington, the video artist.

Anyway, today's puzzle is tough as nails. Tried to go Newsday Stumper hard on this one; see how you make out. I was having some fun with the cluing...maybe too much fun in some cases. Hope it's at least fair.

More words, crossed and otherwise, in two weeks.

Puzzle: Freestyle #34

Downloads:

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It's All Been Done

Well, I've had a full two weeks, and what do I have to show for it? Nothing. At least on the crossword front. Been very busy, in fact, with a number of other undertakings, large and small. Unfortunately, I can't really talk about the puzzle-related ones just yet, but all will be revealed soon. Anyway, it all adds up to no new puzzle this week, but instead of just leaving you with resounding disappointment and a short tease of a write-up I figured I'd dig one out of the archives for you. I know that many of you weren't around for the first incarnation of The Cross Nerd, back in 2011/2012, so I feel reasonably fine running an oldie but a goodie for y'all. Actually, this one was near the end of that first run. I was too embarrassed to post some of the earlier ones, but this one is stylistically and technically similar to my current offerings.

Oh, and speaking of back in the day, shout-outs to scientist, Facebook trivia guru, and Cross Nerd OG Brandon Hensley for a delightful and kooky Thursday NYT puzzle last week (and his NYT debut!). Keep it up, Brandon!

I'll definitely be back next week with a new puzzle (I had one about half-done for this week, but don't have a lot of time to complete and polish it up), although I am giving some serious thought to ramping down to a fortnightly schedule over the summer. What do you think?

More words, crossed and otherwise, next week.

Puzzle: Freestyle #21
Downloads:
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Testing, testing

Busy times here at Cross Nerd HQ. Final exam on Monday for which I'm woefully under-prepared, a gig with a new band on Friday for which we're woefully under-prepared, and moving day on Wednesday for which... well, you get the idea. Luckily some of my old crap is still in boxes from the last time I moved. My new crap maybe I'll just throw out. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I probably won't be posting a puzzle next week. You might have noticed that these posts having been getting farther and farther from their original Tuesday morning timeslot with every passing week. Hopefully I can catch up with this short break. Actually, I'm fine with posting sometime around the middle of the week and not worrying too much about a fixed schedule, but I do worry about the quality suffering. Last week's puzzle contained a few grievous errors and I may have missed the mark a bit with the cluing. A few very fine solvers found it tougher than usual and a little lackluster so I've got to up my game.

But not this week! A few unfortunate crossings and some substandard fill in this one, I'm afraid, although I think there's some fun stuff in there too. Plus, there's a bit of a mini theme going on. I wanted to flesh it out into a full theme, but I couldn't think of two more tight answers (had one that kind of worked, though). Anyway, see what you think.

More words, crossed and otherwise, in two weeks.

Puzzle: Freestyle #33
Downloads:
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PUZ

Watch Rick and Morty

...it's a darn good show, I've recently learned. Concluded binge-watching the 11-episode run while making the grid for this puzzle. Funny stuff and it starts to wade in some heavier and darker waters later in the season. Highly recommended.

Just another vowelless this week. Trying to make the clues more fair and straight-forward and the grid more diabolical and deceptive than the last as always. Inspired by all the sci-fi cartoons, I was thinking of trying out some alternate dimensions for this puzzle. However, I remembered that Erik Agard has been approaching his goal of a sub-10 solve on these (ridic!) and I'd hate to mess with his progress. So 15x15 it is. Regular symmetry because I'm lazy.

You know the drill: no Y in any answer.

More words, crossed and otherwise, next week.

UPDATE: the original files I posted had a few errors. They've since been corrected and reposted. Carry on.

Puzzle: Vowelless #10
Downloads:
PDF (no hints)
PUZ (no hints)
PDF (with lengths - easier)
PUZ (with lengths - easier)

Full Answers