Congratulations to Paolo Pasco, winner of the 2024 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, and to second- and third-place finishers David Plotkin and Will Nediger, as well as all other award winners. See full results here. Congratulations as well to Andrea Carla Michaels who received the annual Merl Reagle MEmoRiaL Award for lifetime achievement in crossword construction.
Next up on the tournament calendar: Westwords in the Bay Area in June. And, merch!
Boswords Summer Tournament is July 21 in Boston.
Lollapuzzoola 17 has been announced: August 24 in New York City. Registration is open now.
The Midwest Crossword Tournament will be held October 5, 2024 in Chicago. Registration is open now.
“Grids Just Wanna Have Fun” edited by Francis Heaney is available now. The follow up to 2023’s “New Grids on the Block” is filled with gnarly ’80s pop culture references.
“A-to-Gen Z Crosswords: 72 Puzzles That Hit Different” by Ada Nicolle is out May 7.
“Black Crossword: 100 Mini Puzzles Celebrating the African Diaspora” by Juliana Pache releases August 20, 2024. Available for preorders now.
A change in offerings from The New Yorker as they sunset the weekly cryptic and the Friday themed puzzle and reduce the number of themeless puzzles from four to three each week. New, trickyish midis Thursdays and easy mini Fridays.
New on the scene last week, Slate is now offering five midis and one full-sized puzzle each week. Edited by Quiara Vasquez, and constructed by Quiara as well as Chandi Deitmer, Hemant Mehta, Nancy Serrano-Wu, Sid Sivakumar, and Ben Zimmer.
While XWordInfo‘s future remains uncertain, the site has seemingly settled into an equilibrium, one that includes online and printable presentation of the New York Times variety puzzles, which are still produced for the weekly magazine but not posted online by the Times themselves. We’ve restored a link to XWordInfo’s NYT variety puzzle page on our Sunday posts. An XWI subscription is required to view the puzzles. Hayley Gold has also offered to help connect solvers to the Sunday puzzle page – contact her at kakumei@verizon.net for assistance there.
Matthew Stock is raising funds for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Email a copy of your donation receipt to matthew.stock@mellownet.com to receive a brand new variety puzzle.
These Puzzles Fund Abortion 4 has raised nearly $50,000. And now, merch.
Our publishing schedule didn’t quite line up with it, but Crossword Con was held Friday in New York, and featured talks from Liz Maynes-Aminzade, Ben Tausig, Rachel Fabi, Malaika Handa, Parker Higgins, and a speed-solving panel with Matthew Gritzmacher, Paolo Pasco, Tyler Hinman, and Stella Zawistowski. The entire event can be viewed here.
The Art of Crossword Puzzles was a recorded discussion at SXSW with host Robbie Kubala and panelists Kyle Mahowald, Adrienne Raphel, and Natan Last.
In sports, the Tampa Bay Rays shared their crossword solving routine.
The team at AVCX Cryptics is accepting submissions through April 30 from constructors who have never made a cryptic for them. Details.
The Puzzle Society is now accepting submissions for the Apple News+ crossword. Details.
The Midwest Crossword Tournament is accepting submissions through April 30 from Midwestern constructors for a place on the tournament roster. Details.
Ingrid, the crossword construction program by Ryan Fitzgerald has released a major update that includes features for browsing and editing wordlists. We here at DCL are big fans of Ingrid and highly recommend it as an option for new and veteran constructors.
The ACPT may be over but Variety Cryptic season never stops! Join us on April 19th at 9pm ET at twitch.tv/bewilderingly to get the news on and group solve all the hot variety cryptics, with special guests Mike Shenk, Evan Birnholz, and Derek Allen plus boring regulars Will Nediger, Al Sanders, and Hayley with 2 ys.
Congratulations to everyone who has made debuts since our last edition:
Los Angeles Times: Alan Levin (3/15), Mary Crane (3/18), Matthew Faiella (3/27), Rich Katz (4/4), Katy Steinmetz (4/4)
USA Today: Rachel Simon (3/12), Dob Olino (3/13), Marc Raila (3/17), Bill Thompson (3/19), Ryan Mathiason (3/23), Lynn K. Watson (3/29), Dennis Nullet (3/30), Joe Rodini (4/1), William Seeley (4/6)
New York Times: E.M. Capassakis (3/20), Mansi Kothari (3/22), Will Eisenberg (3/25), Laura Dershewitz (3/26), Jake Bunch (3/29)
You must be logged in to post a comment.