Wednesday, January 26, 2022

#36: The Black and White Puzzle (Themeless #16) (ft. Kate Chin Park)

 


[PDF] [PUZ]
difficulty: medium-hard

Don'tcha love Kate Chin Park? Did you know that Kate is constructing a puzzle for Boswords' Winter Wondersolve? You should register for that, IMO. If you go to the Boswords website and register right now you can see a picture of Kate squirming in pain as she puts ketchup on a burrito.

Kate and I did this puzzle a couple months ago and I am posting it here now because, quote, "guesting on your blog really ups my cred." (Lies! But I'll take the compliment.) Anyway she's the best, this puzzle is very good, etc etc. Please enjoy; applet under the cut.

Thursday, January 20, 2022

#35 (Sweet Goodbyes): Exit West (by Parker Higgins) (Guest Post) (Grid Charlemagne)

 

(yes, i know not scoring this puzzle with the dan is blasphemy, but i don't want to spoil the grid)

difficulty: medium
[PDF] [PUZ]

You know a puzzle with four distinct parentheticals in the title is going to be a doozy. So here it is: a puzzle by everyone's favorite human, Parker "xor" Higgins. Among other things, Parker co-hosts the stream Cursewords Live with the equally attractive Ross Trudeau; runs a Twitter bot that posts train emoji every couple hours; and, most importantly for those of you keeping up with QVXwordz lore, has split mango mochi with me and Brooke Husic. What a king!

Parker notes:

It's an honor and a pleasure to have the opportunity to offer a contribution to the "Grid Charlemagne" movement. Thank you to Quiara for hosting me among her uniformly excellent puzzles, to Adam Aaronson for kicking off this whole Grid Charlemagne business, and to Walter and Donald for the music.

Well, that's it from me. I'll see you all next Monday with the... yes, I know I promised there'd be a Monday Mini *last* week. Please don't make a running gag out of this. Applet, as always, under the cut.

Thursday, January 13, 2022

#34b: Babysitting Dragons (Themeless #15)

 



[PDF] [PUZ]
difficulty: hard

Double Dragon pt. 2. Not a lot to say on this one, other than that you should check out the puzzle Ada Nicolle and Jenna LaFleur did together which I shamelessly stole the layout on this puzzle from. Thank you to the test solvers on this one and the previous one. Ajay, Kate, Will E., um, Noah I think, some other people? This past week was a blur. Our bathroom doesn't work, it's a whole thing. A whole smelly thing. I'm glad you can't smell me over Zoom. OK, bye, hope you likey, applet under the cut; mini next week, I pinky swear.

#34a: Chasing the Dragon

 



[PDF] [PUZ]
difficulty: hard-ish

I am holding a mystical sphere, etc etc. Not a "Grid Charlemagne," despite the associated tune (that's next week, hopefully). This is one half of a pair of puzzles I'm releasing together called "Double Dragon." They're not really connected beyond their titles, and a slight bit of Gamer Girl content in both. This is the themed one of the two; it might be a little niche, but it's fine, I bet. Have fun. Applet, as always, beneath the cut.

Saturday, January 1, 2022

QVXwordz returns for 2022!

 


Wow, is 2021 over? I can hardly believe it. Actually, I totally can believe it because 2021 was terrible. But after a month of inactivity on QVXwordz, my AAs are recharged and I am totally ready to get back to regularly posting here.

I should note that there were in fact many Q.V. x-words published in the past month, albeit not here; I had the December 19th 7xword, for instance, and earlier this week I did a 21-by-21 themeless for Crucinova (see the grid above) - a Crucinova subscription is, IMO, totally worth it, so consider getting a free trial there JUST for my puzzle, which will be eminently worth it. Oh, and speaking of subscription services that are eminently worth it, the AVCXpansion Kickstarter met its goal, so in a month or two AVCX subscribers will receive an additional themeless puzzle in their inbox every week, edited by the likes of me, Chris Adams (of arctanxwords fame), Max Carpenter (of donkey puzzle tree fame, and Sid Sivakumar (an esteemed constructor with no namesake URL). As a teaser for that additional weekly themeless, I did an AVCX+ sampler which you can download for free! Hell yeah.

So what's going to become of QVXwordz now that I have a weekly puzzle job? A lot of stuff! I'm going to go back to the stated schedule in the header. Every Thursday you'll get a full sized puzzle, probably; and every Monday you'll get a mini. Except that I will be retiring the "Mini Monday" name, or the "Monday Mini" name, or whatever it was called, and the rebranded mini will be appearing in a new and exciting format, cross-posted on social media. Very cool! Watch out for that on the third.

Also to be posted on QVX in the coming months? Well, I've wanted to write longform about puzzlemaking, and this feels like a good forum to do it. We'll start sometime this week with a round-up of my favorite clues from indie puzzles of 2021. And then, I dunno, maybe I'll give some pointers on how to do clues? Not entirely sure.

Anyway, hopefully you'll have 100+ puzzles posted on QVX in the coming year, and they'll all be awesome and great. What can you expect? I'll tell you what you can expect:

- a puzzle that is over 10% Qs (and no, it's not a 3x3, har har; is that even possible? probably)
- a guest puzzle by an esteemed crossword luminary and guy I've had dinner with
- a variety puzzle that, according to joon pahk, is "not a puzzle type that has existed yet (to my knowledge), but i have to say i like the idea!"
- a truly jaw-dropping masterwork of holiday grid art that will make Liz Gorski's "connect the circled letters to make a Christmas tree" puzzles look like amateur hour

...and many more! Huzzah! Not to mention, many puzzles at various other outlets, probably. Particularly at AVCX. Did I mention that if you spend $250 on the AVCXpansion kickstarter, you can still purchase a portrait by yours truly (see below), and/or a contestant slot in a special game of Only Connect written by our trivia team?? What a deal. You'd have to be a real fucking clod to NOT blow your wad (of cash) on this bonkers set of incentives. OK, you do that right fucking now, and I'll see you back here on Monday. Arrivederci! No applet under the cut, just good vibes for 2022.