puzzle 144: "bubbles"

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very simple theme, inspired by me figuring out what to get for new year's eve...only to realize that, as a crossword constructor, there's only one option. anyway, happy new year to all of you; i'm incredibly grateful that you all continue to solve my puzzles, and i hope you continue to do so. and i'll keep doing my best to make good puzzles, both here and wherever else they may be published.

puzzle 143: "down and out"

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despite the similar title, not at all related to the recent "over and out" puzzle. for starters, this one actually has across clues. but, if you want a nice challenge, do this one downs only (converter here). either way, enjoy!

(update: the original clue for 22-down should have read "plan (for)"; the files linked above are now correct. thanks to charles montpetit for alerting me to this error, and my apologies for any confusion this may have caused.)

puzzle 142: "snowfall"

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if this puzzle strikes you as similar to a puzzle i had with universal six months ago, you're not wrong; this is what i originally submitted to david steinberg, more or less. thankfully, he had the (much better) idea to modify the theme slightly, which led to making a completely new puzzle from scratch; still, i think this one holds up, and is quite appropriate this time of year anyhow.

also: paolo pasco just dropped a new freestyle; it's been way too long since i've solved a paolo puzzle, but i thoroughly enjoyed it. also in the "quality over quantity" group of crossword constructors: chris king, whose book makes a great christmas present, and who just dropped a four part meta suite that i'm going to dig into once i finish posting this. and, speaking of metas: evan birnholz has a wonderful meta this weekend for the washington post.

puzzle 141: "over and out"

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if you follow me on twitter, you'll know that i apologized in advance for this, and there's a few good reasons for that. one is that it's a quip puzzle. as a solver, i almost never enjoy these types of puzzles, but this one came to me pretty much fully formed and out of nowhere, and i just had to share it. i almost made it a tweet, but i couldn't pass up the opportunity to intersect form and content, which leads to reason number two: there are no across clues. don't worry, though; i tried to keep answers (and especially the acrosses) straightforward enough (with one or two exceptions) that it should still be solvable, even if you're out of your comfort zone. and, if you're the type of person who likes solving on paper, you'll be even more out of your comfort zone: there's no pdf for this puzzle either. i mean, if you want to, i guess you can convert the puzzle to a pdf yourself and print it out, but i highly recommend not doing that. (if you don't want to download any new software to solve it, this site should work for solving just fine.)

anyway: have fun?

puzzle 140: "winter airs (freestyle 129)"

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i certainly didn't plan to have this low of a word count in this week's puzzle; it started with building the northwest corner and then branching out from there with a pair of long downs that largely dictated the rest of the puzzle's layout. could perhaps have extended the blocks going into the northeast / southwest corners one more column each, but that felt like too much, and i'm pleased with how they came out (14-down aside, especially since it's almost (but not quite) an anagram of 39-down, which would have been a much more helpful hint). still, as always, enjoy!

puzzle 139: "big break"

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apologies for the delay in posting; after eating turkey and watching football all day thursday, friday, saturday, and most of saturday night (gotta love the hawaii rainbow warriors!), and then driving most of sunday, i just forgot to post this, even thought it was already finished. my bad. anyway, here's a puzzle about one of my favorite sports (and no, despite what i did all weekend, this puzzle isn't about football). as always, enjoy!