These Puzzles Fund Abortion 4 is available for presale. The largest suite yet in a series that has raised over $200,000 for abortion funds and women’s health care, TPFA 4 includes 2 midi crosswords, 15 standard American crosswords, 1 midi cryptic, 2 full-sized cryptics, 1 full-sized variety puzzle, 1 acrostic, and a mini variety puzzle meta suite.
Make a donation here by March 15 to receive the pack on its release day. A sample puzzle from TPFA3 is available for free, while previous packs are still available for donations.
The jam-packed constructing team features past contributors and some new ones, while Steve Mossberg, Nate Cardin, Michael Sharp, Ben Tausig and Hoang-Kim Vu join Rachel Fabi, Brooke Husic, and Claire Rimkus on the editing team.
Puzzles for Palestine has added to their offerings, in an effort to support UNRWA following many countries’ decision to withhold support for the 75 year-old humanitarian agency. Members of the team are offering custom-made puzzles for donations to UNRWA. More info here.
Hayley Gold’s next cryptic stream on Twitch is this coming Friday (2/16) at 9 pm Eastern, featuring guests Kieran Boyd, JoeAdultman, and Howard Barkin. The group will be solving original cryptics by the guests and “maybe a surprise.” As always, tune in at twitch.tv/bewilderingly.
In our last edition, we spoke a bit about the rapidly-filling ACPT, which is still seven weeks away but feels right around the corner. There’s no new news since then, except that the team at AmuseLabs helpfully reminded us that regardless of the Mariott’s capacity, anyone can participate in the Virtual Tournament, held concurrently and presenting the same puzzles as solvers in Stamford receive. Very much an option and recommended if you can’t make it in-person for whatever reason.
We’ve gotten away lately from highlighting new sites added to our daily emails. Some quick links to new puzzles added since the start of the year:
Crossword Flow, an iPad-exclusive app that uses handwriting recognition | Kachwords | The Walrus | The Varsity | Rogue Puzzles | Crossword Scholar (Cryptics) | seaon’s puzzles | TV Crossword | Enigmatology | crucidrama (Spanish)
Boswords held its annual Winter Wondersolve tournament a few weekends ago. Congrats to Blizzard division champion Tyler Hinman and runners-up Glen Ryan and Matthew Luter, as well as to other podium finishers:
Flurry: Alicia Lux, Keane Tzong, and Richard Allen
Blizzard Pairs: Jesse Lansner & Laura Braunstein, John Harrington & Jeffrey Fung, Andy and Emily Langowitz
Flurry Pairs: Tori Zopf & Philip Cleary, Kristy and Wendy Gardner, Tim Pierce & Ellen Seebacher
The Winter Wondersolve puzzles (and many past Boswords grids) are available for purchase at boswords.org
A few news links: Grid Love: The Walrus Is Excited to Bring Back the Crossword | A review of Zach Sherwin’s “The Crossword Show”, which recently had a showing at SF Sketchfest | A profile of Juliana Tringali Golden, whose book Pause for Puzzles: Easy Crosswords for Relaxation is available now
Congrats to constructors who have made debuts (in the short window) since our last edition!
Los Angeles Times: Grace and Greg Warrington (2/3), Aidan Brand (2/5), Jon Daly (2/8), Caroline Hand (2/9)
New York Times: Ryan Judge (2/2), Carolyn Davies Lynch (2/3)