It’s the last night of Chanukah and final installment of Eight Cryptic Nights! It’s been an absolute pleasure making these puzzles for you and a great time interacting with folks along the way. I hope they’ve brightened your holiday (or just plain old) week. Thanks to everybody who’s supported this project and helped me promote it in the last month!
This one’s a little bigger and a little more involved than the others, but that’s how it should be — big full menorah, tummy stuffed with fried food, friends and family, and so on. You’ll notice the “nudges and solution” document at the bottom of this post. Please proceed carefully, because if you advance through it too quickly you’re going to see spoilers.
Now I’ll ask you one more time:
What makes the best-tasting latkes?
Take care and enjoy the puzzle.
This puzzle suite is best solved on paper — in fact it’s time to pull out all of the papers you’ve been solving it on. If you choose to solve online, you will also need to have a look at the pdf version in order to complete the meta puzzle. Please read the “nudges and solution” document carefully to avoided spoiling the puzzles for yourself.
Let’s get stuffed! I love a good sufganiyah on Chanukah. There’s a lot of stuffing going on in today’s puzzle too, which I hope is entertaining for you.
There’s one space left in the menorah and one puzzle left in the suite. Tomorrow night is bigger and trickier than the ones before it, and then there’s the meta to contend with as well, but I know you’ll be able to take it down just beautifully. I hope you’re keeping warm and eating plenty of fried stuff.
Hey, stop eating that Stove Top! Sufganiyot are supposed to be jelly donuts. Now that you mention it though, stuffing-stuffed donuts do sound nice. *Stuffity-stuff-stuff* *nom* *nom* *nom*. I’d say gravy on top is the way to go, but how about solving this thing first?
This puzzle suite is best solved on paper. If you choose to solve online, you will also need to have a look at the pdf version in order to complete the meta puzzle at the end. If you solve on paper, hang on to those completed puzzles until night eight!Hints and solutions will be available when the last puzzle drops.
So glad you’re still with me in the back half! So far this suite has been all “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel,” but today’s puzzle is themed to the real classic among Chanukah songs. “Ma’oz Tzur” is an all-time seasonal favorite, but there’s no need to learn it to solve!
Did you see the Easter egg, err… haminado in yesterday’s puzzle? There are a few more of those showing up in the next couple of days. I absolutely love haminados, but they’re not particularly Chanukah-ish. For that we’ll need something different tomorrow.
I see you googling haminado recipes over there, but that can wait — the puzzle is ready to consume right now! See you tomorrow with another foodie challenge.
This puzzle suite is best solved on paper. If you choose to solve online, you will also need to have a look at the pdf version in order to complete the meta puzzle at the end. If you solve on paper, hang on to those completed puzzles until night eight!Hints and solutions will be available when the last puzzle drops.
So nice to see you on a night a little shorter than the one before it. Shin is the worst spin you can get in dreidel, and it means you actually need to put something from your own personal reserve back into the pot. That means you’ll have one less chocolate coin, jelly doughnut, or Pokémon card than you did at the beginning of the turn.
As I write this, plenty of solvers are formulating their theories about what makes the best-tasting latkes. There’s already a longstanding debate about what is best on TOP of them, applesauce or sour cream. My brother recently told me about a place in his neck of the woods that does pastrami between two of them, in a sandwich configuration, but why gild the lily, I say? Let’s keep it cool. For me applesauce and sour cream work best when applied in tandem.
Hey, stop trying to find the pastrami-latke thing on DoorDash — it’s puzzle time! I’ll see you tomorrow night.
This puzzle suite is best solved on paper. If you choose to solve online, you will also need to have a look at the pdf version in order to complete the meta puzzle at the end. If you solve on paper, hang on to those completed puzzles until night eight!Hints and solutions will be available when the last puzzle drops.
With this puzzle, we reach the halfway point of the set. The menorah is half-full, and we’ve almost explored all the possibilities dreidel has to offer. This puzzle is also about doing things halfway — a hei means that you get only half of the pot, which means you have to leave behind as as many M&M’s, malt balls, or mini-chopped liver sandwiches as you take.
In other Chanukah puzzle news, I enjoyed another nicely-shaped midi over at Vox last night from Juliana Tringali Golden last night, if you’re looking to stay in the spirit between installments.
What am I, chopped liver? For this I made you a cryptic? Get solving! See you tomorrow night with the next one.
This puzzle suite is best solved on paper. If you choose to solve online, you will also need to have a look at the pdf version in order to complete the meta puzzle at the end. If you solve on paper, hang on to those completed puzzles until night eight!Hints and solutions will be available when the last puzzle drops.
It’s nice to see you again. Tonight we’ve got gimel on the dreidel. This is the best one, since you get to take everything in the pot (pennies, candies, Totino’s Pizza Rolls™, what have you) when you roll it. You’ve got to take stuff out of the answers in this puzzle too, but none of things I just mentioned.
Want some more holiday fun in between solves? Constructor Jesse Lansner is doing Chanukah-themed cryptic clues on Twitter for each night — go check them out!
Hey, put down that Pizza Roll™– it’s solving time! Enjoy and I’ll see you tomorrow.
This puzzle suite is best solved on paper. If you choose to solve online, you will also need to have a look at the pdf version in order to complete the meta puzzle at the end. If you solve on paper, hang on to those completed puzzles until night eight!Hints and solutions will be available when the last puzzle drops.
Back for more? Glad to hear it. We’ll keep playing dreidel for a few more puzzles, now that we’ve done our initial spin. Weak effort, though, if I’m being honest! Nun is not awesome. It means that the player gets nothing from the pot. In my house the pot is full of almonds, but you could fill it with chocolate, raisins, gelt, actual money (high stakes dreidel) or anything else you want.
When you finish this one, why not check out another Chanukah crossword? Rebecca Goldstein has awesome ones up at My Jewish Learning and USA Today (edited by Jewish food expert and all-around cool crossword person Amanda Rafkin). There’s also this gorgeously shaped little one by Madeline Kaplan (edited by also-super-cool crossword person Chris Piuma) over at Lil AVC X, where I’m very excited to be doing some editing myself in 2023.
Quit opening that pair of dreidel socks and get solving, why dontcha? See you tomorrow night with the next episode.
This puzzle suite is best solved on paper. If you choose to solve online, you will also need to have a look at the pdf version in order to complete the meta puzzle at the end. If you solve on paper, hang on to those completed puzzles until night eight!Hints and solutions will be available when the last puzzle drops.
And we’re off! I’m so excited to be doing Eight Cryptic Nights with you. These medium-sized variety cryptics are linked as a suite with an overarching metapuzzle, and will be dropping every night at 5:00 PM ET, right around when my family and I will be lighting the menorah.
This project was a real labor of love for me, and I couldn’t have done it without the feedback of a bunch generous puzzle friends. Some checked the vibes, others checked the Hebrew, and others found jagged edges for me to smooth out. My deepest thanks go to Nate Cardin, David Gold, Hayley Gold, Rebecca Goldstein, Will Nediger, Will Eisenberg, and Brendan Emmett Quigley.
Puzzle #1 – Sov (Spin) is dreidel-themed. I hope you’ll enjoy giving it a whirl. See you tomorrow evening with the next one!
This puzzle suite is best solved on paper. If you choose to solve online, you will also need to have a look at the pdf version in order to complete the meta puzzle at the end. If you solve on paper, hang on to those completed puzzles until night eight!Hints and solutions will be available when the last puzzle drops.
*UPDATE* clue number typo is fixed in the .pdf version! Thanks for the catch, Jess!
This final quiptic marks the end of an era. When I made the first of these, the cryptic crossword landscape in North America looked fairly different than it does today. I started the series to give folks a chance to sharpen up their skills so they could begin tackling the British puzzles I like so much. We now have a much stronger solver base here than we did before, and more in the way of quality cryptic options as well.
In truth, my taste still leans towards the British crossword, and I think that’s what makes this bunch of 39 puzzles unique. Always straightforward, never a pushover, and constructed in the spirit of the clue writers I admire most. 39 quiptics on the site should be a good amount for anybody looking to run the gauntlet on their way to whichever puzzling destination they’d like.
I’d like to give my appreciation to Will Eisenberg, who somehow managed to test solve every single one of these things. He’s a thoughtful constructor and crossword theorist, and the sort of person I’d trust 100% with one of my puzzles in his hands.
With this last quiptic, Square Pursuit is going to become a “puzzles will appear whenever I’ve got something cool to share” project. Thanks to the folks who have come by on the regular in the past. Though the schedule won’t be static, I’d love to use this space for some cryptic collaborations and variety puzzles next year, and am especially excited to be bringing you “Eight Cryptic Nights,” a midi variety cryptic meta suite with an installment dropping each night of Chanukah in December.
Aside from Square Pursuit, I invite you to give my Patreon variety cryptic service Square Chase a try. I’m bowled over by how big it’s become in its first year and am endeavoring to make each puzzle as good as I can. The volume of solvers engaged with these puzzles is not lost on me, so I’m really pushing. And yes, it will continue through 2023 as well.
You’ll also be able to see me in the Browser, where I continue to offer tough 15x non-variety cryptics. You can find my non-cryptics in the Newsday Saturday Stumper once a month. More of both kinds of puzzles should be popping up in other places too. I’m looking forward to stretching out next year — maybe I’ll even have a crack at the UK papers someday!
Take care and enjoy the puzzle, stay tuned for “Eight Cryptic Nights,” and look out for me in the wild tomorrow. Big cryptic day.
I hope you’re doing well wherever you are. I’m always excited to post a quiptic, and this one’s no exception. It’s got one device per clue, which you can see ahead of time in the “helpers” version, if you’re into that sort of thing. My guess is this one is on the harder side for what it is, but you never know! Thanks to Willfor test solving.
Take care and enjoy the puzzle! Larger, harder cryptics coming soon.
Square Pursuit 