Beneath The Surface

  PDF  - puz  - online  - solution Hope you're enjoying the final days of summer. This puzzle is a bit on the easier side, almost a 'quiptic' but I think a couple answers have mechanisms that are a bit more complex than quiptics usually permit. I used a grid pattern with a higher quantity of short answers than I would normally go for, and challenged myself to use as many different mechanisms as possible for these. The entry at 24D was used in a Stella Zawistowski cryptic clue contest a while back; my submission then had a similar surface sense, but the mechanism was perhaps too complex (I was aiming for an &lit). Which is another way of saying, I like the clue here better. Happy solving!

  PDF  -  puz  -  online  -  solution I'm excited and not a little relieved to finally return to my blog puzzle series with a new cryptic. Since my last post five months ago, I've spent relatively little time making any crosswords, cryptic or otherwise--simply put, life has been very busy and I've been needing to prioritize my focus away from my hobby. This cryptic has taken me nearly two months to write, on and off. I'm trying to figure out how to keep up more regular posts on Beneath The Surface for the foreseeable future, while also leaving time for other crossword projects I'd like to do--for instance, maybe more of a focus on midi puzzles rather than trying to create a full-size puzzle from scratch every month. In other crossword news, I made my AVCX cryptic debut last month (if you're not an AVCX subscriber, you can purchase the puzzle for $1 here ). It was a lot of fun working with Stella Zawistowski, who served as my editor, and the process gav...

  PDF  -  puz  -  online  -  Solution Bonus offering this month with another midi cryptic, this time 11x11 (blocked grid). Hope you enjoy it! See you next month with a new full-size cryptic!

[ PDF ] [ puz ] [ online ] [ Solution ] Every Tuesday on Twitter, constructor Stella Zawistowski (@stellaphone) runs a cryptic clue contest, where folks are invited to create and vote on clues for words from her #crypticclueaday tutorial series. Last year I submitted entries for 25 contests, and when it came time to construct this month's blog cryptic, I felt the timing was ideal to look back at my creations and select a handful of my favorites* to seed a grid. Contest clues are indicated by date. (NB: the dates don't play any role in solving the clues) Thanks once again to Evan Jenkins for testing this month's puzzle. Hope you enjoy it. Happy New Year! *Incidentally, the clue for 25 tied for first place in the contest that week. My outright favorite of the group in this puzzle is 16A, with 10 close behind.

  PDF  -  puz  -  online  -  Solution Thanks to Evan Jenkins for test-solving this month's cryptic. Hope you enjoy it!

  PDF  /  puz  /  online  /  Solution PDF Hot off the press with this month's cryptic. Thanks to Evan Jenkins for test solving and providing feedback to tidy up a couple clues. Like some of my earlier cryptics, this one began with the four longest entries in the middle of the puzzle. 16A allowed the use of a rarer cryptic mechanism that I hope provides a nice "aha moment". Happy solving!

 [ PDF ] [ Online ] [ Solution ] It's been a few months since my last puzzle in the PD genre, and what better time time than Halloween to have some devilish  wordplay fun? After writing two minis earlier this year, I wanted to see what I could make work in a slightly larger grid. Most PDs I've seen are 12x12 barred grids with the longest entries being 9-10 letters long, such as this Azed grid which includes THUNDER GOD, INTERSTATE, ORCHESTRAL, etc. As a start I settled on an 8x8 grid with the longest answers being 6 or 7 letters. As mentioned in the instructions, the undeviled passage at 15-Down reconstitutes two proper nouns. There was a debate in my mind about whether this mechanism would be fair play; but in the end I went with it for several reasons, chiefly that I spent a long time investigating alternatives and could not come up with anything better! Besides, the undeviled passage makes sense, the two propers should be recognizable, and the solver has crossings for all ...