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

Move It On Over

Yikes, only one puzzle left after today!  I'm of course hoping to make it extra special, but then I don't really have any good ideas as to how I'm going to do that yet.  Plus, I'll be moving into my new apartment next weekend, so time will be tight.  Super stoked on that; I've been living in houses with roommates for the last 4+ years, so it will be nice to have my own space for a change.

Just another freestyle this week.  Quite tough, if you ask me.

Parting words, crossed and otherwise, next Tuesday.


Puzzle: Freestyle #23
Rating: XW-PG
Difficulty: Quite tough
Downloads:
PUZ
PDF