puzzle ninety seven: having a lit time

this puzzle makes me feel 23-across!

puzzle ninety six: themeless, i think. i forget

i'm not gone yet! but this is so long! (see below for grid version)

puzzle ninety five: i have nothing to say

was not able to finish this puzzle on time but had to put it up anyway! #grindlife

puzzle ninety four: follow directions!

make sure to follow the directions closely! there are four of them.

puzzle ninety three: times-worthy

i sent this puzzle to the new york times and to the other times, and both of them rejected it. their loss!

puzzle ninety two: i'm so excited, queen!

this puzzle is going to make you go [quip]!

puzzle ninety one: googoo gaga - mason prendergast guest puzzle

guest puzzle from mason prendergast, who is now the youngest constructor ever! mason is only five months old! eat your heart out, guinness!

puzzle ninety - poppin' fresh

this mini is full and poppin' with all my favorite, freshest entries! 

puzzle eighty nine: hubba hubba

hubba hubba, it's a puzzle!

puzzle eighty eight - right on target

a nice and easy mini puzzle for you take aim at!

puzzle eighty seven - lights, camera, re-action - craig etui guest puzzle

after yesterday's puzzle, my brother craig (who i hate so much) sent me this puzzle and threatened to testify against me in my upcoming trial (even though i paid him off specifically not to do so) if i didn't run it today.

puzzle eighty six - lights, camera, re-action

thanks to will nediger for the inspiration! it was hard finding enough theme answers but i did it!

puzzle eighty five - behaving recklessly

paying tribute to brooke husic with the diagonal symmetry! here's the inspiration (that's crossword slang for "stealing the grid shape"). also, been working on my wordlist and curating juicy seed entries, and it really shows here! if only there was a way i could share the fruits of my labors! 🤔🤔🤔🤔

puzzle eighty four - themeless mini - paul bufano guest puzzle

guest puzzle today! more about the construction below!

I'm Paul Bufano!

Hi, I’m Paul Bufano and I’ve been a solver for years. I have never legally constructed for money. Until now. (Thanks for the $450, Et Tu!) This grid started as an idea and I’m excited to see it blossom into a small chicken, laying its eggs of knowledge into the minds of many. However, this puzzle did not merely appear from the ashes like a grave apparition, it was forged from steel and grit, and is a testament to the bucolic man.

I knew in my heart of hearts that this grid had to be 4 squares wide and 4 squares tall. I called Will Shortz to ask if he could make an exception to his 15 by 15 rule, to which he responded “It doesn't tickle me”.

I started this grid in Microsoft Excel. Initially I had everything typed out in one cell, before realizing it would be more effective to make use of the entire grid in the spreadsheet.

First draft of the puzzle

Jeff Chen and I had a deep discussion about the appropriate amount of boxes in a 4 by 4 grid. He argued that the “16% black squares” rule should stay in place, whereas I debated the possibility of utilizing four blocks (finding myself daunted by the grid size already). After trying several grid patterns with me and solidifying the black square placement, Jeff graciously allowed me to pay $200 for his word list and sent me on my way.

The decided block pattern

Rejected block patterns:

Oops! Unchecked square.

Too evocative.

Back-up plan.

Now onto the filling. I continued working on grid paper to free-write some potential fill ideas. Eventually, I was able to come up with this improvised grid:

I made sure to direct my focus to add sparkly entries into my grid. For example, AREA is a unit of measurement, whereas QAT is a word with a Q. There were some compromises in the fill, but I believed any trade-off could be redeemed with a clue.

After rigorous test-solving by a group of trained individuals, I was shot down like a kamikaze pilot in the Great War. The dupe AREA and AREA seemed to rub solvers the wrong way. After considering the possible Natick, I looked for other dupes in the grid. There may have been many others I was unawares of!

A part of me was wondering whether ARE and AREA were even too similar. I didn’t want to have to scrap my days of work, to pare my grid like some kind of ape. I debated cluing AREA as the partial “ARE A”, but after a lengthy personal phone call with my lawyers, I decided against it. In the words of Will Shortz: “Any dupe is a CLOM (crossword liability, omit mercilessly)”.

I added CLOM to my word list. [Sidenote: potential theme with CLAM? Now That's A POW.]

I devised an algorithm using machine learning, in which I googled onelook.com. The plan was to scrape Jeff’s word list and determine which words were suitable for the standard crossword puzzle. From there, I would need to calculate the clue ratio and BRAM score of each entry, and then using that, I would look over each entry in the word list in isolation and see which ones I liked. OneLook was imperative to this process.

Who knew constructing was such hard work!

After 1000s of OneLook searches, I was able to find entries that match the criteria I was trying to meet: solver-friendly and also fits inside of a grid and also clue ratio of 3. For example: POET, POEM, etc.

A work in progress!

I was at the home stretch, with my words carefully chosen and the grid determined. Then it was just trial and error, filling and unfilling and refilling and reunfilling, all while flipping through the collection of encyclopaedias sprawled on my desk/floor/etc. Then: huzzah! The grid was finished.

The completed grid

Crosswords are like golf: the higher the numbers the better

In stupefied glory, I landed on the carefully-chosen entries I have right now. Now onto the clues: each entry was clued with a deeper respect that connects with myself and hopefully solvers after hours of delicate research.

ALA clued as [Pie ___ mode]. 

AAA clued as [Small battery size]. 

LAVA clued as [something obscure].

Data for the developers

If new constructors can take away one lesson from all of this, it's that constructing is easier than you think. I think I read maybe once that perhaps Patrick Berry probably takes a full year to fill a standard 15 by 15 puzzle. 

puzzle eighty three - low word count themeless

i've been experimenting with low word count themeless grids lately, and I finally managed to crack thirty words in a 15x15 grid! it's all thanks to patrick berry's sage advice: "when choosing between adding dodgy entries and adding cheaters, always go for the cheaters." great advice!

puzzle eighty two - eef freef

my lawyers have confirmed that nothing in this puzzle is a copyright infringement! 

puzzle eighty one - cue laugh track

bonus points for solving this while listening to a ten hour loop of your favorite laugh track, hahahaha!

puzzle eighty - BREAKING

breaking: something very important has just gone down!

puzzle seventy nine - the real mccoy

this puzzle was inspired by tom mccoy's talk about linguistics in crosswords! i don't know what that means, but it's provocative! also this puzzle is almost consonantless!

puzzle seventy eight - oops! all dupes - will eisenberg guest puzzle

guest puzzle from will eisenberg, who says: "i was using the clue deduper when my house was struck by lightning. hopefully it's still solvable!" 

puzzle seventy seven - tight connections

making some very tight connections today! 

puzzle seventy six - a 4d experience

more fun, lawyer approved grid art today that i don't have to pay royalties to paolo pasco for! and even better, an immersive, 4d experience from start to finish! 

puzzle seventy five - pascos

thirteen of them! check and mate, paolo! (also the name comes from paolo pasco of notsidsgrids.com, who is known for using those shapes! when contacted for permission to use his name for this puzzle, he didn't respond.)

puzzle seventy four - portrait mode

fun fact: you can make the finished grid your iphone background! it fits perfectly!

puzzle seventy three - getting in shape

this puzzle was shaping up to be a nice midi, but then shape happened!

puzzle seventy two - digital art

let's get digital, digital! (but not in the same way that let's get digital got digital!)

puzzle seventy one - switch it up

this puzzle can't be displayed in puzzle me! but there is a puz file, so use this link!

puzzle seventy - word ladder

it's both a word ladder and a tribute puzzle to someone who really loves word ladders!

puzzle sixty nine - normal themeless

hey guys! posting a nice, normal themeless today! no gimmicks, no crazy clues, no weird fill! enjoy!

puzzle sixty eight - say

after say, say, say, say, say, say, say, say, say, say, say, say, say, say, and other puzzles, it's time for just say!

puzzle sixty seven - what?

what?