Beneath The Surface

PDF - puz - online - solution Two reasons this puzzle is very special: It's my first cryptic meta-puzzle ...well, you'll have to solve it to find out. Big thanks to Evan Jenkins for test-solving. I hope this brings you as much joy to solve as it brought me to make.

pdf  -  jpz  -  solution pdf Excited to share my latest Printer's Devilry with you! I've had the itch to write a new one for a while. This 8x8 midi has 18 entries, compared to my last midi in the same size which had 24 (including 16 4-letter words). I wanted to explore the possibilities of using longer entries (6-8 letters) and generally I'm very happy with how things turned out. It was a really good practice at strategic filling; much like in cryptics, the choice of PD entries has a significant impact at the clue-writing stage. Furthermore, fewer entries allows more letters to be checked in both directions and improves grid flow; and of course there are fewer clues to write so it helped me with time management! :-) Barred grid again, hence Across Lite puz format is not supported. I've provided a jpz file for digital solving via Crossword Nexus's web interface , or an app such as XWord . Happy solving!

 I've added some new links to the "Solver Resources" page--worth checking out if you enjoy reading about cryptics, are looking for more puzzles to solve, and/or thinking about making your own puzzles! Puzzle critic Aaron Riccio offers thoughtful takes on what makes cryptic clues work well at his blog, The Crossword Scholar . I've enjoyed reading Riccio's commentary (including on my own work) since he turned nearly full-time to cryptics about 9 months ago. He also writes about cryptics on Twitter ( @thatcrypticguy ) and regularly streams cryptic solving sessions on Twitch . George Ho, who constructs cryptics under the pseudonym Loplop, has compiled a database of over a half million cryptic clues from numerous UK and US sources. Cryptipedia is a wiki for solvers and setters, containing numerous lists of indicators and other material used to create cryptic clues. I've been using it frequently when writing clues for my own puzzles. Are there other resources for ...

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...