Mental Judo: A Cryptic Blog (11)

I'm pleased as punch to share that I got to be a guest constructor at Out of Left Field , a source of great cryptics by Joshua Kosman and Henri Picciotto (many of which I have solved on stream !). Many thanks to them for their trust and editorial excellence, and thanks to their keen-eyed test solvers as well. They put out a new cryptic every week, and occasionally feature special guests (many of whom you might already recognize and enjoy), so if you have the few bucks a month to spare, I recommend throwing it their way for a great source of American cryptics. (You also get access to all previous posts/puzzles!) --- If you found your way here from Out of Left Field, welcome!  Here's an overview of what's on this blog: Cryptics 101 : A series of 7x7 puzzles meant for people brand new to cryptics; each one introduces (and is limited to) a single clue type.  Cryptic of the Year : A series wherein each puzzle has a set of answers related to a specific year. Where in the World : ...

Herzwesten and I got together to make another puzzle! I'll let him do the talking, but first we'd both like to thank juff for the very helpful test solve! "Hi folks! I was basically raised by text adventures, so I jumped at the chance to work with Joe on this puzzle. We went through a lot of iterations on how we could pull off such a theme, landing on something that was fun to write (and hopefully fun to solve). If you have played a lot of text adventures, feel free to give me a shout (at herzwesten on social media sites) to tell me some of your favorites! If you haven't, and want to dip your toe in the waters with games that also use wordplay (sometimes in a very cryptic crossword way), I can recommend two games. The first is an Infocom game called Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It, and though I'm not certain about whether you can play it online for free, a quick internet search will turn up something, I'm sure (wink).  The second is the more...

Content Warning: Death How’s that for the start to a puzzle blog post? But here we are. I love my mom, and her time with us is, unfortunately, coming to an end. I also love the online crossword community I’ve been lucky to be a part of in the last few years, and I want to share a bit of her with you, in a way I know how. So: this puzzle is a celebration of my mom’s life. She chose the highlighted entries, as they have personal significance for her. “You” in clues refers to my mom. The puzzle also holds a hidden message. Each clue needs a letter removed from one of its words to make it a valid clue. The words that have a letter removed are still words (or in one case, a single letter that isn’t a word), and the surface may no longer make sense. Taken in clue order (acrosses and then downs), the removed letters spell out an aphorism I heard often from my mom. If you solve this puzzle (and especially if you stream it), please let me know; it would mean a lot. [ online ] [ pdf ]

Hello, puzzlers! Juff and I agreed that we don’t generally enjoy alphabet jigsaws*... so we decided to make one for you! *An alphabet jigsaw has 26 answers, each starting with a different letter of the alphabet, and you must figure out where the answers fit in the grid. But wait! We made different versions so you can choose your difficulty level; these are roughly in increasing order of difficulty. If you just want to solve a regular cryptic (with enumerations and locations of the answers given as normal) that just so happens to have one answer per letter of the alphabet, click here ( pdf ). However, if you want to try an alphabet jigsaw that gives you… …the length and starting letter of each answer, click here ( pdf ). …the length of each answer, with clues alphabetized by their answer’s starting letter within each length, click here ( pdf ). (If you don't know which version to pick, this is the one we recommend.) …the starting letter of each answer (but not the length), click...

Hello, friends! I had the great fortune of working with Dan Feyer at The Browser  to construct a puzzle for that publication's weekly cryptic crossword , which is available with a subscription. (If you're not subscribed, there are free sample puzzles available.) Dan's excellent editing greatly improved the puzzle, as did help from The Browser's bevy of testers—my thanks to all of you! If you have the chance to solve the puzzle, I'd love to hear from you.

Herzwesten is back for another collaboration, this time with a relatively small and approachable variety cryptic. We hope you enjoy! Many thanks to skaldskaparmal and juff  (both excellent cryptic thinkers, solvers, and makers) for their helpful feedback! [ online ] [ pdf ]* *Instructions: The final answer to this puzzle must be entered in the barred box. The circled letters (reading by column: left to right, and then top to bottom), will give you the key to reading the final answer (in the same order as the circled letters). You will also need to enter more than one letter in some squares.

Eight of this puzzle's answers relate to a specific year—can you figure out which? Online solvers: the answer shows up when you complete the puzzle. Thanks to Dob (a fab puzzle maker and puzzle streamer [who has a new online puzzle solver !]), who picked the year for this cryptic via a channel-point redemption on my stream. As they have many times before, dadgumituh and jmsr525 of The Rackenfracker helped me improve this a great deal, so many thanks to them! Please let me know if you solve (joeadultman on Twitch   and Twitter ) , and thank you! [ fullscreen ]