Beneath The Surface

  PDF  -  puz  -  online  -  solution Feeling a little proud of myself for managing to be on the ball with a new blog cryptic this month, amidst family/work/other life obligations (as well as keeping up with my American crosswords). This puzzle has a couple clues that I feel might be just on the edge of acceptable grammar, though of course where one draws the line on "acceptable" depends a lot on whom you ask. Let's just say, I like the clues and I think they give a fair and entertaining route to their solutions. Enjoy!

  PDF  -  puz  -  online  -  Solution PDF First post in a while, and it's nice to be back with a new cryptic. Hope you enjoy it!

  PDF  -  puz  -  online  -  solution Last puzzle of 2023. I started off intending to make this a midi but quickly it turned into a full-size grid. 1A's clue was fun to come up with and I hope it will click with solvers. I struggled with 14D for a while, but I like what I came up with for a surface, and in any event it's an entry that has a lot of personal meaning to me.  It's been a year with lots of creative highs and lows in cryptic construction for me. At times I've felt like I've really come a long way with my clue composition skills; other times I feel like I can't write a clue to save my life. Balancing lively fill with clueable fill also continues to be something of a guessing game, though I think my personal philosophy generally remains on the side of taking the liveliest fill I can get and the clues will figure themselves out eventually.  Enjoy the puzzle! And thanks again for checking out my work. Happy holidays to those of you celebrating, and I hope

  PDF  - puz  - online  -  solution PDF I got writer's block in the middle of cluing this one and had to step away from it for several weeks. I finally came back to it this weekend and finished the clues in two sittings. I'm actually really happy with how this turned out and hope you enjoy it!

  pdf  -  puz  -  online  -  solution pdf I began work on this puzzle around mid-June, completed the grid and about 80% of the clues by July 4th, then needed two weeks to grind out the remainder (mainly a handful of short clues whose surfaces were giving me fits). Hope you'll enjoy the end product!

  PDF  -  puz  -  online  -  solution Here's a fresh midi cryptic for the month of June. Apologies for radio silence to any regular visitors wondering why there was no May puzzle: it was an unusually busy month on top of the regular schedule of work/parenting. I've also been working on multiple crossword projects, including a long-overdue rescoring of large sections of my wordlist, which means cryptic construction time is further limited. In the future, I'll try to post in advance if I'm going to miss a month. Anyway, regarding this puzzle, 7A was the seed (it seemed apt for a certain type of clue), and 15A was the toughest to come up with.  Hope you enjoy it! As always, comments welcome.

  PDF  -  puz  -  jpz  -  online  -  solution It's a full-size cryptic this month, and I hope you'll enjoy it. Thanks to Evan Jenkins for test-solving. The 20D clue has italics that don't carry through into Across Lite, so I'm also offering a JPZ version, which you can solve using  Crossword Nexus  or similar platforms. 27A was the toughest clue to write; feedback on my first version (with a very different surface) suggested it was too vague, and it took me a long time to find another angle that read sensibly while also obeying cryptic grammar rules. I hope the final product provides a nice "aha!" moment. If you fancy having a go at coming up with an alternative clue, leave a message in the comments. See you again next month!