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!