Beneath The Surface

PDF : puz : online : solution Hello again! This is the first full-sized cryptic I've made since last August. I decided not to wait until the usual date of the 13th of next month to share it because I'm pretty excited to get this one out there. I'm really pleased with how this one turned out and it was a lot of fun to come up with a number of the clues here. My personal favorites are 13A, 23A, 4D, 5D, and 16D. I hope you'll enjoy solving it and I would love to hear what you think of it in the comments!

  pdf  -  puz  -  online  -  solution Happy New Year! It's been several months since I wrote any kind of cryptic crossword, but the start of 2023 felt like a good time to get back into it. In comparison to 2021, when I managed to post at least one puzzle a month here, 2022 was a much more challenging year in terms of competing demands on construction time (namely, work and caring for a toddler). My resolution for 2023 is to try to be more on top of time management for construction as well as being flexible in terms of what I'm putting up here, so that I can post more regularly. That could mean more midi-sized puzzles like today's offering, but I'll try to get at least a few more full-sized cryptics up in the coming months. In the meantime, hope you enjoy this puzzle, and thank you for stopping by! 

  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!