#37: Hey, it's Q Vasquez

 

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difficulty: easy-ish (Tuesday)

Lots of exciting personal news: first of all, me and Kaybart won the pairs division at the Boswords Winter Wondersolve, which was great - both our unexpected victory and the four puzzles themselves which were unsurprisingly brilliant. (But how could they not be, with a line-up like Kate Chin Park, Christina Iverson, Ade Koiko, and Matthew Stock!?!?) Registration is now open for the Boswords Spring Themeless League, which will be similarly great.

Even more exciting: after a successful Kickstarter, the AVCX's expansion is kicking off tomorrow, so for the low cost of $30 a year you will be getting daily-ish content from some of the best people in the crossword game. Including myself, both as a constructor and as an editor of various themeless puzzles. So yes - two midis, a themed puzzle, a themeless, a cryptic, and a trivia game! Every week, more or less. For $30. If you aren't subscribed, you're missing out!

Anyway - here's a slightly belated puzzle. It's the best sort of puzzle: a puzzle where you'll either not get the theme at all or get the theme and *hate* it. Hope you like it despite that. Applet under the cut.

Crossworld Monthly Roundup, January 2022

Why should Will Nediger have all the fun with these end-of-month roundups? I solved 225 puzzles in January - about 70/30 mainstream/indies (although that "mainstream" count includes things like Vox and Vulture so it's really more like 50/50) - and I had many, many thoughts about them. So much so that I think these roundups are going to replace the first Thursday puzzle of each month. Most of these thoughts will go under a "read more," but let's take a minute to appreciate my favorite above the fold:

My Favorite Puzzle Of January 2022 was... 2 x 22 by Brendan Emmett Quigley! Let's take ten while you solve it. (I will be fairly liberal in spoiling puzzle themes and clues here - consider this your warning.)

You're back? Good. So, rebus puzzles are fun[citation needed], but they usually don't play well with online interfaces. This puzzle hits on a fairly elegant solution for that: have the CHI rebii in the grid represented by the letter X. (I admit that until I sat down to write this grid out, I didn't realize that the "22" in the title is referring to chi being the 22nd letter of the Greek alphabet.)

Now, having the letter X sub in for other letters/bigrams/words is pretty well-trod ground: just this month there was the 1/18 Universal by David Alan van Houten, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Matthew Stock's NYT debut from Jan. 7 of last year. What makes this grid awesome is, first of all, the sheer quantity of theme content: the puzzle's five themers, with their 10 [CHI]s, make up over 30% of this grid's squares (57/187 - yes, I counted). And these are pretty great themers too: who could hate [CHI]CKEN [CHI]MICHANGAS and PIT[CHI]NG MA[CHI]NE? But what really makes this grid shine - and I know this is not a common opinion - is just how much cross-referencing is going on here. Four of the Xs going down in this grid are keyed to other entries in the grid, which goes a long way in making stuff like TEX/MEX and TO A/HUGE EXTENT cool, and they make everything in the grid feel super connected. And despite the 11 Xs here, Brendan still makes room for Ben GAZZARA in the grid! Just a masterclass in grid architecture.

More highlights (and nadirs) under the cut...