puzzle 115: "colorful characters (freestyle 114)"

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apologies for being late on this; have been busy sleeping at incredibly odd hours, debating what exactly a martini is, and finishing up a bunch of time-sensitive revisions for custom puzzles (and non-time-sensitive revisions for deadtree media). next weekend's puzzle should, however, actually be on the weekend.

also: many thanks to brian herrick for testing this and providing some nice cluing suggestions; brian also makes puzzles for current, including one that dropped today, and is worth solving. speaking of puzzles that dropped today, i wrote today's universal puzzle, which is themed. i also wrote this saturday's la times puzzle, which is a freestyle.

puzzle 114: "us open"

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absolutely no points for guessing what i've been watching all weekend as i've been making this puzzle. thought i'd have some fun by opening it up; turns out that's like preparing a course for the us open, in that that makes it a lot harder. still, a lot of good long answers, and i hope you enjoy this.

finally got around to figuring out the winner of the meta from last month; amusingly, there were 36 correct entries for a meta titled "squarefree". of those, christopher sparks was the lucky recipient of a copy of the squarefree suite, which can still be purchased at the preceding link. many thanks to everybody who's already purchased, as well as those who submitted an answer (right or wrong) for the meta. (in case you're curious, the solution is now posted on the original puzzle's page; commentary is included with the solution, but suffice it to say that the next meta will be a little nicer and will have a better "click" at the end.)

puzzle 113: "will they or won't they (freestyle 113)"

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freestyle this week; it should be absolutely no surprise what the seed entry was, though finding the other fifteen was a bit serendipitous. still, i like how all of these corners turned out; there's a good number of entries that i was pleased to work in without sacrificing fill quality. some pretty good clues too, i think.

also, still one day left to solve the meta and enter the contest for a free copy of the squarefree suite. and, again, many thanks to everybody who's already submitted a meta answer and/or purchased the suite.

puzzle 112: "mini marching bands 1-4"

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i've recently started making mini marching bands by hand in my spare time. they're usually not too hard to finish, and i'm sure this will be good practice for when i start making full-size marching bands.

if you haven't solved them before, instructions are at the bottom of the pdf. for those of you who like to solve on your computer, you can solve the jpz files via this site.

finally, one week left to solve the meta and enter the contest for a free copy of the squarefree suite. and, again, many thanks to everybody who's already submitted a meta answer and/or purchased the suite.