puzzle 65: "total football (freestyle 64 with jenna lafleur)"

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incredibly proud to have a collaboration w/ jenna lafleur, solver, streamer, and constructor extraordinaire. unlike me, she's at boswords this weekend (with copies of both this puzzle and last week's), and i have full faith that she's going to kill it. and if you're there as well, maybe say hi to jenna, and good luck on all the puzzles—i'll be solving from home, but with the list of constructors, i can't see these being anything less than a bunch of excellent puzzles.

some more thoughts + background on this puzzle from jenna herself:

freestyle construction has always seemed like a pretty daunting task to me, but recently i figured i should try giving it a serious shot. i emailed chris with the seed entry and asked if he wanted to collab and/or give advice. he replied with some very helpful tips that helped me get a start on the grid, which we then filled in and clued via several different modes of communication—a google hangout, then twitter dms, and finally back to email. this puzzle has some clues in it that i'm really proud of—hope it's an enjoyable solve!

puzzle 64: "go to sleep (freestyle 54)"

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those of you that solve fireball crosswords might find this feels like a peter gordon themeless, in that it combines two of his trademarks: unusual marquee entries, and seed entries that have something superficial in common. no prize for guessing which two entries fill those roles in this puzzle, but it was interesting to build a grid around making sure the first of these entries was crossed fairly, and then trying to fill in the other half around a rather interesting pattern. i think this one ended up pretty decent; there's a few entries i don't completely care for, but given the constraints, i think they're worth the fill in this case (though i certainly don't plan on using them again anywhere in the near future).

in other news: i will not, as i had planned / hoped to, be at either boswords or lollapuzzoola this year, which is extremely disappointing for me for many reasons. i would still like to have a presence there, so if you can help with printing puzzles, it'd be greatly appreciated.

edit: the clue for 35A should properly read "like the valkyries"; the current files should be correct.

puzzle 63: "jailhouse rock"

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not much to say about this week's puzzle, except that jenna lafleur will be solving and livestreaming crosswords later, including this one. details at her twitter; you should watch (after solving, of course). and no worries if you can't watch it live: she puts up the recordings afterward.

puzzle 62: "in memory of"

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sorry for the (unplanned) absence of a puzzle last week, but hope y'all enjoyed the LAT + NYT puzzles i had in the meantime. quite a few of y'all emailed / tweeted / texted / carrier pigeoned / smoke signaled support, commentary, and feedback, and it's much appreciated, as always.

somewhat ironically, one of things i mentioned in my commentary on the NYT puzzle was that i always try to keep things as clean as possible. and yet, this puzzle has a few answers that i'm not particularly enamored with. but, it's a trade-off, and i can live with those in return for cramming in a few more quasi-theme entries and such, in much the same way that (as a solver) i can live with a bit of meh fill in service of a particularly exceptional theme or flashy freestyle, but don't care for it when it could (and, in my opinion, should) be easily improved.

in other news, i am (finally) including solutions to puzzles, and will add solutions to old puzzles in the near future.