Hello, puzzle people!

Today is a fifth Wednesday, so it felt like a chance to push myself to make something new and different! I’ve always liked spiral puzzles. They’re a good deal more straightforward than crosswords of course, but they have a nice elegance about them. I definitely had to think in some fresh ways while making this one, and it hurt my head a little, but I had a great time. I hope you have as much fun solving as I did constructing.

A few quick shout outs for test solving: my wonderful wife Arielle, who tackled this in its roughest version, Will Eisenberg, whose puzzles need no introduction (go solve them), and Jacob Cohen, who is a seasoned constructor of spirals and other variety types. He provides weekly sheets of puzzles for charity on his site.

Thanks for stopping by! Take care and enjoy the spiral. I’ll be back in 7 days with a themed crossword and 14 days with a blocked cryptic.

pdf / pdf SOLUTION

Hi all, I’m quickly popping in with a Monday special! Sid Sivakumar, the excellent constructor behind Sid’s Grids, came up with a new puzzle concept last month. In his Pangram Midi, solvers get an 8×8 grid in which every letter of the alphabet is used at least once, along with a set of unnumbered clues. It’s the solver’s job to figure out which answer goes where. It’s an elegant form that I absolutely had to try making myself. I did so, and with Sid’s encouragement, I’ve decided to post the result here. Before solving mine, I hope you’ll go try the ones on his site, linked above.

Below you can find my stab at an 8×8 Pangram Midi in .pdf format. Page 1 is the hard version with no letters in the grid. Page 2 has a few free squares filled in to get you going, and page 3 is the solution. Enjoy! Back with a regularly scheduled themeless on Wednesday!

.pdf (Hard, Easy, Solution)