Short Circuit

Hello and welcome to Cruciverbology 2 Electric Boogaloo! I've spent the past couple of weeks slowly moving blog posts over from the old Wix site to the new Blogger site, which I am obviously not finished with, but I figured it was time for a new blog puzzle anyway. When you're done with this one, check out the archive-- I've updated two years' worth of broken embed links (rip Crosswordr) and also some clues in the Mini Tic Tac Toe puzzles for distribution at the Boswords summer tournament!

This puzzle was based on an idea that's sat in my ideas spreadsheet since second year, when I had to take a hardware class and use a ton of Logisim Evolution (see picture). The theme is pretty cool I think (and could serve as inspiration for my next variety puzzle!), but I'm extra proud of the clues. Ingrid really fills so much better than Crossfire and I simply have to up my clue game to do this fill justice.

Or solve on this PDF with some bad illustrations. Use the embedded puzzle above for solutions.

Edit: Thanks to juxtaquoize on crosscord for catching an error in the revealer :)

Clanker Free Zone (midi) + updates

 

Hello again! Now that it's summer (well, it's been summer for a month and a half...) I have a few ideas for new blog puzzles that I'm starting to work on, but first here's a quick, hopefully fun midi.

I recently opened PuzzleMe for the first time in a while to generate a link for a custom commissioned puzzle, and I discovered two things: one, they don't let you upload puzzles on their free account anymore, and two, they've gone full AI agent. I noticed this a few months too late for the drama, but the crossword blog world is abandoning PuzzleMe in droves, and good riddance. I'll be switching to Crossword Nexus's embed software, so here's a ~protest midi~ to test out the UI (and for me to check if I need to paste a link above the embedding like I used to with PuzzleMe). I originally wrote this for a tech ethics magazine at my university, but unfortunately the magazine leadership seems to have dissolved, so now you all get to have it with revamped fill and clues!

Enough talking, here's the puzzle, with some more general site updates below.

More general site updates:

I host this site on Wix. I know, what kind of programmer am I? Well, not a very good one when I started this blog, so I outsourced all the programming. Anyway, Wix has been descending into AI slop too over the last couple years, so I'm realizing I should start hosting Cruciverbology on Google Sites or Blogger or something-- let me know of any platforms that don't try to AI-generate blog post titles for you, and maybe I'll try to make the switch this summer. (If you're reading this, I have successfully moved my site to Blogger! Yay.)

Speaking of making switches, hi, I'm Fabian now, I use he/him pronouns, and my email address is almost the same but with an f instead of an e. Not much else to say about that except please let me know if my old name shows up in email campaigns because Wix's labyrinthine blog software makes you change it multiple times in multiple places and I'm not sure I've found them all.

Finally, I'm formalizing my custom commissions process! (And upping my rate a bit since multiple people have told me I'm undercharging.) You can find more info about that in the new "Custom Puzzles" tab.

More updates soon, for real, I promise!

Interval Train-ing

It's been forever! Summer courses ended in mid-August, and then I had exactly a week before the next courses started, which I spent a long way away from my laptop. So this is my first break in a while where I get to make some puzzles! Here is a variety puzzle about trains, which was in fact written on a train (the Via Rail/Amtrak Maple Leaf).

I've made a few variety-puzzle-ish grids for this blog before, but this is the first one conceived as a variety puzzle from the start! Its connection to the theme of this blog is a little dubious, but I guess trains fall under engineering, which is of course the E in STEM. (Also, what high school math student hasn't had to calculate whether two trains will crash or not?)

Happy solving, and hopefully I'll be able to write and publish more puzzles in 2026!

PDF (solution included)

The Amazing Spiders Man (feat. Lila and Quiara)

 

Sorry for the long hiatus, it's been a busy summer. But since Boswords' summer in-person tournament is coming up, and I will be there, I thought it would be a good time to run my first collab for the blog! It's been in the works for a while, so I'm very excited to finally publish it :)

This puzzle was constructed with Lila Goldenberg and Quiara Vasquez, and we will have paper copies at the Boswords tournament!

Mini tic tac toe

 

It's summer in the strange schedule of university, so you know what that means: it's time for another experimental mini! Or should I say... twelve minis? This is an unfortunate departure from the usual theme of this blog-- my apologies, we'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming soon. I try to get my non-science puzzles published in outlets where possible, but I truly had no idea where to publish this.

This puzzle, or I guess these puzzles, are best done on paper, but if you don't have access to a printer, I recommend writing the grids down on paper once you've filled them. Finding someone else to do this with is not optional, though. Make a friend.

One last administrative thing: My subscriber emails haven't been working for the last few months, and I'm trying to fix it. Please let me know if you have signed up for email updates but did not receive an email about this puzzle.

PDF (solution included)