Seedy Business

 

This puzzle is a birthday present for my dad, who wrote a paper on this subject in 2016. Happy birthday and happy solving!

DNA is kinda based

 

I saw this comic a few months ago, and naturally I had to write my own DNA-Palooza at some point! Don't worry, though, no actual codons are involved, and there are other letters in the puzzle than A, T, C, and G. (There are only so many CATs and TAGs and TACTs you can use.)

In other news, I started constructing puzzles for my university newspaper this fall! I can't link to online versions because there are no online versions, but I usually take a picture of the print version and post it on Twitter/X and Bluesky. If you can solve with online images, give them a try!

Entangled

Happy fall, everyone! Between creating Words on Fire and embarking on a few other crossword adventures (guess who made and submitted his first themeless grid??), it's been a while since I put an actual puzzle up on the blog. I hope to resume the every-few-weeks norm this year, but full disclosure, my time is now split between this and weekly midis for my university newspaper.

It's also (roughly) Cruciverbology's first birthday! To celebrate, I redid one of the first puzzles I published on this blog-- now with fresh fill and clues, plus some updates to the original themeset. If you weren't around back in 2022, have fun solving this puzzle for the first time! If you were, um... feign surprise when you figure out the revealer. (Me from the future here; I did not bother uploading the original to the new site.)

After this, I promise that's it for the redos. Fresh themes loading in coming weeks :)

Words on Fire

 

(Me from 2026 here. This puzzle pack raised $340 for the March, plus $150 for Maui fire relief. Yay! Thanks to everyone who donated. Sorry fossil fuels still haven't been ended.)

Hi everyone!! It's been a long time, and of course part of that is because it's summer, but it's also because I've been working on something...

That something is a small-ish puzzle pack called Words on Fire. Like your favorite charity packs (TPFA, Grids for Kids, etc), Words on Fire is available after providing proof of donation (in this case, to the March to End Fossil Fuels). However, unlike other charity packs, Words on Fire contains only puzzles by me. Not because I'm a narcissist-- I'm just a bit afraid of the logistics involved in coordinating and editing submissions. Maybe some other time.

Why this cause, why now, you ask? Despite the very vocal and unfortunately rich minority, most of the world agrees that we need to stop burning fossil fuels if we want a livable future for everyone. We need to make our voices heard at the highest levels if we want politicians to understand the urgency of the situation– this is about more than just oil barons donating to Congress campaigns. This is about the long-term survival of humanity. If I sound like an annoying PAC email, that’s because I am a large AI language model– just kidding. I know all this stuff is cliche, but what else is there to say? We have to keep saying this stuff until people listen.

The March to End Fossil Fuels (endfossilfuels.us) is taking place in September in New York City, and it's designed to be at the same place and time as the UN Climate Ambition Summit. The more people who show up, the better, and to get people to show up, the march organizers need money. Ergo this charity pack.

Words on Fire consists of 4 brand-new puzzles, plus 2 climate-themed puzzles from the Cruciverbology archive! The old ones will be updated with new fill and clues for 2023. By the way, a seventh exclusive puzzle can also be yours if you solve Car-dinal Sins, which is a meta. Email me the answer and I will email you the puzzle!

The preview puzzle is Save Your Energy, one of the archive-updated puzzles. (I didn't bother putting the original on the new site.) About 80% of the fill is new, and about 90% of the clues.

Happy solving!

False Outcomes

 

I replaced my very old Mac with a PC recently, and so far Bing has very much lived up to the memes. I typed the theme of today's puzzle into Bing Search, looking for my usual blog image, and this cursed pregnancy example (annotated by me from the future) was one of the first results I got. Naturally, I had to use it. I'm 100% a Bing convert.

(I mean to be fair, the lady on the right looks more like she has a watermelon under her shirt than like she's pregnant. Maybe the test was accurate after all.)

Anyway... I'm back with a rare midweek post after a couple months of submitting puzzles and coming up with more ideas for later on. This one was a recent reject (we love the new impersonal NYT feedback), but I'm really proud of it, so it's all yours!

How did it end up like this???

 

I honestly don't know how I managed to produce a puzzle this week, but here it is!! I don't often say this, but I'm proud of the fill on this one. There are some ehhh spots (looking at you, bottom center downs) but I covered the bases in terms of cultural references, from 2023 to *checks notes* 1777? Ok, maybe that one isn't so great...

Me from the future here: I originally had this puzzle available diagramless, but looking back I think the puzzle is a bit too hard to warrant that. I do want to make some interesting diagramless puzzles though. (And I'm NOT just being lazy about editing the name on the old PDFs!!!)

The World Turned Upside Down

 

I had an amazing time at ACPT last weekend!!! I had no idea so many people had heard about this blog, and I was glad I got the chance to tell a few more people about it! Also, if you didn't hear on Twitter, I happen to be the Schenectady, NY champion ;)

One of my favorite things I learned was that Dan and Babka did my Polar Plunge puzzle on Twitch!!!! It's actually two stream recordings cause Babka ate a power cord (spoiler alert) but I was so happy and honored to see Dan solve my puzzle :) (and this channel is gonna really help me with my nonexistent cryptic skills!)

Also, I'm totally using Ingrid for my next puzzle. As a longtime Crossfire user, I was gobsmacked to find that you can change the symmetry??? Also apparently you can CHANGE THE SIZE OF THE GRID MID-CONSTRUCTION! Haven't tried that but I will let you know...

Finally, before we get into today's puzzle, some puzzles I've really enjoyed recently: Rebecca Goldstein's "Race for the Cure" Universal puzzle, Evan Birnholz's "ID Numbers" Washington Post Sunday, and both of Lila Goldenberg's Lil AVCX puzzles so far! (Doing Lil AVCX puzzles have made me realize I really need to up my clue game. Let me know how I did with this set of clues!)

Ok, finally onto today's puzzle. Not much to say about this one, except that we're back to online-compatible grids! Have fun and talk to you again in a few weeks.

Polar Plunge

 

Happy weekend-after-Pi-Day, everyone! Hope you all are recovering from a week of (no doubt) partying hard in celebration of our favorite irrational number.

For this week, I'm extending the party another day with a pi-themed puzzle! I don't know why I keep doing this to myself, but it's PDF only.

In other news...

I'm chopping my way through the Boswords spring themeless league! It's certainly an assault on the solving ego, but I know I'm competing against the best in the world. (Or, the best in the world who didn't want to compete in the Stormy division.)

New recommendation alert! Malaika Handa's March 2 NYT debut was a great puzzle with a STEM theme (in more ways than one...)

Doing this puzzle reminded me that I'm subscribed to Malaika's google group, Girlbosswords, and I found a couple more STEM puzzles in the google group archives. Coincidentally, both are collaborations with Brooke Husic. I enjoyed them both very much!

I will be at ACPT in two weeks-- maybe I'll put a puzzle up that weekend, maybe I won't, I'll have to see. Very much looking forward to it :))

PDF; solution

To Infinity And Beyond

via GIPHY

This puzzle is just about the closest thing to a themeless you'll ever get from me-- which is to say, it has a theme, but the theme is just "here's a cool grid!" Everything is explained in the PDF file, but basically all you need to know is that two grids interlock to create an infinite loop.

Is this what constructors see while on 71-Down, I wonder?

PDF; solution 1 (grid 1 first); solution 2 (grid 2 first)

Looking forward to the next Dune movie?

 

Science fiction falls under the umbrella of this blog, right? I think it does. This puzzle was my tribute to the new Dune franchise (you've probably seen the 2021 movie, and as I alluded to in the cryptic-ish post title, part 2 is being released late this year), but I'll always accept the 6 original Frank Herbert books as the authority on Dune things. In other words, after doing this puzzle, you should read the books.

In other news, make sure to do the NYT puzzle this Thursday! Very excited to see my name in print...

(Note: this puzzle is solvable online, but you do need to look at the PDF version for the final across and down clues.)

The Itsy-Bitsy Meta

 

After a break for the holidays, here's a brand-new New Year's puzzle (first time typing "2023" for the copyright!) It's also my first meta, though the answer is fairly straightforward. If you think you know the answer, send a message or a comment if you don't mind other people seeing your thought process. I'll post the solution in two weeks with the next puzzle!

Side note: I was really excited to use 4-Down, especially this week :D