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!!!)