I’m feeling festive. Let’s eat! Pull up a chair and dig into this week’s themed puzzle. It should bring a little challenge and a lot of fun, or so I hope.
Thanks the great response to last weekend’s variety cryptic! That one was a pleasure to make and see the community enjoy. Speaking of community, I’m feeling grateful today for Brooke Husic and Will Eisenberg who not only make great puzzles but give great advice. Thanks for test-driving this one!
Next week’s themeless is a bit different from its predecessors as it feels like sort of a BIG thing to close out this puzzling year of 2020. I hope you’ll stay tuned for that! In the meantime, take care of yourselves, happy holidays, and have fun with the solve!
For this week’s themed offering I’m thrilled to offer a joint effort with the one and only Brooke Husic! Brooke is a great friend and an inspiring collaborator in crossworld. It’s always a treat (and learning experience) to make something together. For those of you who have been paying attention she’s been on an excellent puzzle-a-day streak since last Friday—you can find her Friday and Tuesday USA Today Puzzles on their website, and three “demi” puzzles on her must-solve blog—so it’s very cool to get to share in a bit of the fun!
Here’s Brooke: What a privilege to collaborate with Steve! The revealer is relevant to recent changes in my life, so while I was running around, Steve did the heavy lifting on setting up this 72-word (!) grid. Steve’s constructing skills and cluing ingenuity aren’t new to me, but I’m always happy to be impressed again and again! On a personal note, it’s so cool to have made such a great friend, especially in current times, and I’m certainly a better and more thoughtful person for knowing Steve.
Only time will tell the true duration and splendor of Brooke’s puzzle streak, but I can say for sure that tomorrow she will be making her Inkubator debut, in which she will unleash her trademarkdiagonalsymmetry on a host of unsuspecting subscribers. I recommend signing up if you haven’t tried their innovative puzzles yet!
Enjoy the puzzle and let us know what you think! I’ll see you folks next week with your regularly scheduled themeless and perhaps a variety cryptic as well sometime soon!
This week’s offering is a love letter to the worst crosswords have to offer. I seldom reference puzzles in puzzles, but I feel it’s fitting at some point to pay homage to the collective pain we’ve endured as solvers. I hope it’s more fun to look at from this angle.
I quick shout out to the crossword constructor community. I’ve really been enjoying test-solving some terrific puzzles lately, and greatly appreciate all the folks who have been able to spare a moment to help out with my own. This week’s thanks go to Will Eisenberg, who began his own puzzle blog with a really fun themeless last week!
It’s puzzle time. I hope it hurts in a good way! Be safe, enjoy, and I’ll see you in a week for themeless Wednesday!
Thanks for stopping by! I’ve got a nostalgic puzzle for you which, should it land correctly, will unfortunately allow you to deduce my age — but no matter, there’s something for everybody in this one.
I’m feeling very grateful today for the independent crossword scene which has been so supportive and also given me an endless supply of solving entertainment. Each time I think it can’t get any better, another talented constructor comes out of the woodwork with a fun puzzle to tackle. Thanks this week to Will and Richard for test solving my grid!
Enjoy the journey, be careful out there, and I hope to see you next week for a themeless adventure and a little bit of variety too!
This week’s themed puzzle is wholly autobiographical, though there’s not much about me in there — it’s really all about the nature show. We’re heading into a stressful period in a lot of ways right now, so I hope this one serves as a good opportunity to pause and enjoy a moment with a grid.
Thanks very much to the wonderful Brooke Husic for the test solve! In case you missed it, we made this themeless together a while back, but I highly recommend you take a look at what she just made right here.
I’m back with a themeless next Wednesday, which I can only imagine we’ll tackle with bleary eyes. Take care, enjoy, and I’ll see you on the other side!
Note, this puzzle looks MUCH prettier in the Solve Online mode.
If you like cats, big cats, puns or big puns, this one is likely for you. It comes to us from my archive of summer puzzles that never went anywhere. It wasn’t quite right for the publisher I originally had in mind, but as a cat lover and silly person, I felt it needed to see the light of day. In blog form I got to get a bit extra eccentric with it. I hope we’re on the same wavelength today!
Speaking of whimsy, I’m offering a bonus puzzle this coming Saturday. I’ve never done this exact format, though it’s cryptic-adjunct. Since the September monthly cryptic ended up being so punishing, it’s going to be very much on the easier side. If the last one didn’t make you feel welcome, I hope this one does the opposite. If none of that funny business with the clues is your bag, I’ve got a crisp, autumnal themeless landing for you next Wednesday.
That’s that! Enjoy the cat-thing, take care out there, and I’ll see you on Saturday with something different.
It’s themed week here at Square Pursuit and I’ve got something for the bookworms this time around. It’s a mildly challenging romp which I hope succeeds to divert. I managed to get one of my favorite authors into the grid today too — seeing her in puzzles is always a good time, in my book.
This being the end of a month, I’m up with a cryptic as well this week, which will hit on Saturday. I’ve really been enjoying tackling cryptics from crossword friends lately, as well as regularly having my nose in the British papers to try some of the elegant puzzles from their motherland. I hope to see you back here to give mine a try this weekend.
That’s all from me this time. Thanks for solving! I’ll be back in a few with the October cryptic and again next Wednesday with a themeless crossword.
That’s right, it’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and Square Pursuit has got you covered with a bonus grid. This being a Saturday, and a puzzle about pirates, it’s fitting that there would be a bit of extra sting in the tail, and while it’s not as rough as the ones published in the papers today, it should give you a bit of a workout.
For those of you who came looking for the Rosh Hashanah puzzle, it’s here. I realized yesterday that those of you (and there were many) who chose “Solve Online” got a puzzle that was missing the 54 circles that make the theme explicit. My apologies! It’s all fixed now, so if you want another look, it should make a bit more sense. No circles in today’s grid though — this one’s just serving up cannonballs and plank-walking, baby!
Take care, enjoy, and see you on Wednesday with your regularly-scheduled themeless offering!
It’s a holiday puzzle for you this week! If you’re like me and celebrate Rosh Hashanah, you might be finding it hard to ring in 5781 in the usual ways this year. I hope this one makes things a bit more festive for you. If this holiday’s not yours, never fear! You don’t need to know anything about Rosh Hashanah to solve and enjoy, so I hope you have a blast! Besides, I’ve got another puzzle coming on Saturday for a different holiday that I’m pretty sure everyone in the world will be celebrating.
Speaking of holidays, today is Mexico’s Independence Day, and puzzle friend Enrique Henestroza Anguiano has got an amazing pack of Mexico-themed midi puzzles available over at Datalexic with a donation to a worthy cause — relief for farm workers and their families. This is an awesome set of puzzles, and I hope you’ll head over there and give them a try.
Take care and enjoy! Back on Saturday with a bonus themed crossword for yet another great holiday!
Today’s offering features a corny take on something I find a hundred times more horrifying than the lovely characters pictured above, but as Joan Didion wrote, “we make ourselves silly puzzles in order to live.” Wait, that’s not it…
Thanks for dropping by and giving this tricky one a try. I recommend a paper solve from the .pdf for the best experience this time. If you go electronic, it should still be fun but will require a small stretch of the imagination. In other news, this Saturday is the monthly cryptic day at Square Pursuit and somebody’s birthday as well, apparently. It’s going to be appropriately themed, so I hope to see you there!
Take care and enjoy! Back in three days with the monthly cryptic, and in one week with another fun themeless!
Square Pursuit 