In these last few weeks I’ve been able to take lots of walks in the woods behind the house with my family. We’ve been watching nature day by day, and the changes are beautifully apparent. Up here in New England, magnolias are starting to bloom, the blue jays are flocking, the robins are singing, and the spring peepers are peeping from every vernal pool.
In honor of this fine, rainy month, I happily offer you a mildly tricky little holiday crossword. I hope it makes you smile!
Back with a themeless next week. Stay safe, keep in touch, and puzzle on!
Hello, everybody! It’s theme week again at Square Pursuit, and this time around I made something special for the people headed to the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Which got canceled for obvious reasons. What do you do?
You post it anyway! A whole bunch of people have been practicing speed solving (that’s going as fast as possible on these puzzles while making no errors) in order to have a shot at glory in Stamford, CT. That glory awaits us in September, when the tournament’s been rescheduled, and I will most certainly be there.
This Saturday, however, I’m going to be on my couch doing this: http://www.crosswordtournamentfromyourcouch.org/. It’s not the same, of course, but I’m here to tell you that the puzzles involved are all made by really good constructors and that the people running it are crossword veterans. In addition to the fun and camaraderie, it helps raise money for those who need it to fight COVID-19 and the other harm it’s inflicting.
This week’s puzzle takes a moment to honor all speed solvers, but in particular to highlight the work of a couple notable ones from times gone by. These two were solving before I was old enough to even make it through a New York Times Monday! As always, I hope you folks enjoy it. Take care out there and I’ll see you with a fresh themeless next week!
As a person in jazz, I often roll my eyes at the way the genre is represented in puzzle grids. Usually we get ELLA Fitzgerald (jazz legend, good letters), ETTA James (great non-jazz singer who dabbled in the style in later years) and maybe Al HIRT (easy-listening trumpeter who had a great sound and played little serious jazz).
A couple of weeks ago, I solved an excellent puzzle by Will Nediger that contained more real jazz legends in one grid than I’ve seen in years of solving crosswords. It’s witty and fun on multiple levels. I hope you’ll pause here and consider solving that one. OK, we’re back!
Now it’s Women’s History Month and thanks to the advocacy of constructor and feminist Rebecca Falcon, solvers get to experience an exciting run of exclusively female constructors in most major crossword outlets! Please consider pausing and checking out these fresh voices and excellent puzzles. OK, we’re back!
Rebecca and Will’s work got me thinking about that near, dear field in which women do amazing work that is ridiculously overlooked. Today we have a puzzle containing the names of four important artists that many people may not know. With that in mind I’ve tried to keep this one pretty straightforward, but if you’re stumped, I hope you’ll consider doing some googling followed by some listening. I promise you’re going to hear something you like!
Square Pursuit 