Author: Matt Gritzmacher

Two new books on the scene from the team at Vox: Pop Culture Crosswords and Mega Book of Mini Crosswords. Puzzles by Patrick Blindauer, Juliana Tringali Golden, Adesina O. Koiki, Will Nediger, and Andrew J. Ries.

Two new books from Eric Berlin’s Puzzlesnacks series are available now. Eric also recently shared a reflection on the puzzle formats he’s pioneered.

Puzzmo is a new website offering a daily midi crossword alongside other games and puzzles. Most daily puzzles are free; a paid subscription ($40 per year) grants access to the backlog and to bonus and beta puzzles. Crosswords are supplied and edited by Lil AVC X with Lil AVC X reruns on weekends and Puzzmo-exclusive midis on weekdays. A limited number of new players get access every day by completing a daily game that drops at a random time. Get yours here.

The Defector crossword has fully launched. The first couple puzzles of the weekly offerings by Ben Zimmer followed by Matthew Stock have impressed. Puzzles will run every Monday and most will be subscriber-exclusive. Submissions are open.

Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon’s output has slowed over the last year or so — they’ve stepped back from The Hub Crosswords, their cryptics no longer run in the Canadian National Post, and they stopped providing the New York Times Acrostics earlier this year. After rumblings here and there that they planned to create their own site, and in recent weeks CoxRathvon.com has popped up, containing the full collection of the pair’s monthly variety cryptics from the Wall Street Journal and Atlantic dating back forty-five years. It’s an utter treasure trove.

Correction: A reader has informed us that we have Lukas Karlsson to thank for working with Hex (as Cox and Rathvon are known when co-creating puzzles) and compiling this complete archive. Many thanks to Lukas!

While Evan Birnholz is on leave, a series of guest constructors are filling in at Washington Post. Evan shared the full list in a tweet. We’re happy that the guest constructors are providing interviews about their puzzles. Up first, Paolo Pasco.

Congratulations to the newly announced members of the 2024 Lil AVC X editing team: Amie Walker, Brian Callahan, Darby Ratliff, Jess Shulman, Matthew Luter, Shannon Rapp, Matthew Gritzmacher, and Sara Cantor.

The application for constructors to join the 2024 Lil AVC X roster is open through November 13.

Applications are also open through November 10 for the New York Times Diverse Crossword Constructor Fellowship.

Wyna Liu, writing for The New York Times, discusses her work on Connections. Christina Iverson, also writing for the Times, is soliciting questions to answer in her weekly Easy Mode newsletter. Submit your question here.

Dan Feyer appeared on the Good Morning America website this week where he shared some strategies for solving and discussed his appearance on Jeopardy!.

Los Angeles-area puzzlers may be interested in an evening with Spelling Bee Editor Sam Ezersky, hosted by Writers Bloc Presents. The program may become available on YouTube at a later date.

Congratulations to everyone who has made constructing debuts since our last issue!

Los Angeles Times: Ruth Bloomfield Margolin (10/6), Jenna LaFleur (10/7), Kate Luo (10/17), Josh Goodman (10/18), Seth Weitberg (10/19), Sala Wanetick (10/26), Emily Beigas (10/26), Glenn Cook (10/30), Catherine Lammersen (11/1), Matthew Luter (11/2), Daniel Okulitch (11/4), Michèle Govier (11/7)

USA Today: Robyn Weintraub (11/8)

New York Times: John Nagamichi Cho (10/12), Dominic Grillo (10/17), Kelly Morenus (10/21), John Donegan (10/26), Kenneth Cortes (10/30), Erik Piepenburg (10/31), Steve Weyer (11/1), Desirée Penner (11/6), Jeff Sinnock (11/6), Kevin Curry (11/7), Daniel Hrynick (11/8)

We are long overdue for one of these, so this is both quite long and a bit less in the way of commentary.

Rebecca Goldstein, Kate Chin Park, and Stan Park appeared on Boswords alongside John Lieb this week to share the announcement of the new Westwords crossword tournament scheduled for June 23, 2024 in Berkeley CA. They are seeking responses to an interest poll and promise to share more info soon.

The Boswords Fall 2023 Fall Themeless League is underway! Congratulations to Richard D. Allen, whose puzzle was chosen from the open submission process to join the constructor roster that also includes Catherine Cetta, Jill Denny & Jeff Chen, Sam Ezersky, May Huang, Tom Pepper, Ross Trudeau, Amie Walker, and Grace & Greg Warrington. Registration is still open. Boswords T-shirts are also now available at the link above.

Congratulations to Glen Ryan, the winner of the 2023 Bryant Park Tournament and to 2nd and 3rd place finishers Dan Schwartz and Ken Stern.

Congratulations to the winners of Lollapuzzoola 16: Express Division winner Will Nediger and 2nd and 3rd place finalists Dan Schwartz and Jenna LaFleur; Local Division winner Simon Henriques and 2nd and 3rd place finalists Reuben Henriques and Will Eisenberg; Pairs winners Pete & Claire Rimkus and 2nd and 3rd place pairs Madison Clague & Sam Ezersky and Scott Koenig & Peter Aquino. The solve-at-home pdf puzzle pack is still available for $20 at the link above.

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The Apple News Crossword is live. Ross Trudeau, Puzzles Editor, promises a modern approach to crosswords that is more welcoming to newcomers. Puzzles are edited by Erik Agard, Kelsey Dixon, and Anna Gundlach and constructed by some of our favorite puzzlemakers in the business. Apple News+ subscribers can read the full release here and access the puzzles here.

Matt Gaffney has a new weekly crossword feature appearing at Merriam-Webster’s website. It’s a puzzle type called “The Missing Letter” created especially for the site: 25 entries in the grid are defined using their M-W dictionary definitions, and these each begin with a different letter of the alphabet. The only one not represented each week is “The Missing Letter,” and solvers can enter it for a chance to win a $25 gift certificate at their site.

We’re happy to share Enigmatology, a newsletter from puzzlemaker and magician David Kwong. Issues contain crossword puzzles, cryptic clue contests, and more.

Mark Halpin’s annual Labor Day pack, “Two on the Isle,” the theme of which is “elemental forces at work in the Hawaiian islands” is a collection of 13 puzzles leading to a meta puzzle and solution. While the puzzle pack is free, any donations are split between the Trevor Project and the Maui Strong Fund.

Chriswords is a new weekly column from Chris King published in Questionist by Geeks Who Drink. In each edition, Chris shares some of his favorite clues from across the puzzle landscape and bits of news about other happenings in crossworld.

Thanks to Will Nediger, we’ve learned that Crossword Club will begin offering weekly crosswords with mini themes. Puzzles are written by Kate Chin Park and will be released Wednesday afternoons.

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The New York Times is accepting applications for the next class of the Diverse Crossword Constructor Fellowship through November 10.

Defector, a worker cooperative website focused on sports and culture, has begun offering crosswords through a collaboration with AVCX. The first puzzle by Paolo Pasco was quite well-received. Puzzles are edited by Hoang-Kim Vu and Maitreyi Anantharaman and open for submissions.

Amuselabs now supports Schrodinger puzzles. We’ve seen this in action a few times: a fantastic New Yorker from Andy Kravis, as well as Rich Iurilli’s blog, Morning Brew, and Xtra.

In a tweet, Amanda Rafkin shared that USA Today now has an open submission period for the first seven days of each month. All constructors may submit up to two puzzles during each period.

Brooke Husic and Enrique Henestroza Anguiano have released another update to Spread the Wordlist. The list now stands at 296,625 words. This is one of the best resources in all of crossworld; we continue to appreciate Brooke and Enrique for their work.

Congratulations to the team of constructors chosen to lead Lil AVC X in 2024: Rafael Musa, Olivia Mitra Framke, Will Eisenberg, and Sally Hoelscher. We are looking forward to the people and puzzles to be developed under their guidance. We hear the call for constructors will be coming soon! Follow them on twitter and bluesky for more.

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In September, Jeff Chen and Jim Horne announced the pending closure of XWord Info. We at DCL want to express our appreciation Jeff and Jim’s many years of dedication to XWI as well as all of those who have contributed to the many tools and features. Jim shared a few details in this blog post about what will stay and what will go, and he appeared on episode 407 of Fill Me In where he told the story of how we got here, including a rundown on how dealings with NYT fell apart.

In an interview for In the Studio from BBC News, Robyn Weintraub walks through her process for constructing an a crossword for The New York Times.

Rachel Fabi, writing for the October 2023 issue of Games World of Puzzles, interviewed Stella Zawistowski about her work editing, constructing, and speed solving. The issue includes a puzzle from Stella’s book, “Tough as Nails Crosswords.”

Harper’s Magazine published an audio interview with long-time cryptic constructor Richard Maltby Jr. in which he discusses the history of the puzzle, the decline in the use of dictionaries, and rise in word puzzle fascination.

Linguistic researchers Scott AnderBois, Kyle Mahowald, and Nicholas Tomlin wrote on the grammar of crosswords for The Atlantic.

New York Times editors Tracy Bennett and Sam Ezersky appeared on a recent episode of Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen. The episode from October 1 is available on Peacock – Sam and Tracy appear a few times throughout at the beginning of each segment.

Tracy and I had an absolute BLAST repping @NYTGames on tonight’s episode of @BravoWWHL !!

(Tracy deftly answered the important Q’s while I slurped my manhattan — we make a good team.)

Thanks for having us @Andy , and keep up all the puzzlin’ 💪🔥 pic.twitter.com/1Y7DUoxSok

— Sam Ezersky (@thegridkid) October 2, 2023

In books, Anna Shechtman’s “Riddles of the Sphinx: Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle” is available for pre-order. We also learned of Francis Heaney’s pair of throwback books: “New Grids on the Block: Hella ’90s Crosswords” coming in November and “Grids Just Wanna Have Fun: Awesome ’80s Crosswords” due out in March.

Congratulations to everyone who has made debuts since our last issue!

Los Angeles Times: Landon Horton (8/11), Amanda Cook (8/29), Jimmy Peniston (9/2), Marin Wells (9/4), Andrew Kingsley (9/4), Meghan Morris (9/10), Jay Silverman (9/11), Brynn Diehl (9/16), Zach Moore (9/19), Jess Rucks (9/30)

USA Today: Alice Liang (8/8), Sally Hoelscher (8/14), Tooky Kavanagh (8/16), Darby Ratliff (8/24), Amie Walker (8/31), Emma Lawson (9/7), Jess Shulman (9/13), Taylor Johnson (9/14), Emily Carroll (9/15), Jasmeet Arora (9/18), Adam H. Mack (9/21), Natasha Isloor (9/29)

New York Times: John Kugelman (7/30), David Litman (7/31), Alissa Revness (8/7), Manaal Mohammed (8/13), David P. Williams (8/19), Jay Silverman (8/22), Brian Callahan (8/28), Michèle Govier (8/29), Robert S. Gard (9/9), David A. Rubin (9/15), Lee Demertzis (9/15), Jill Rafaloff (9/17), Michelle Sontarp (9/17), Gina Turner (9/20), Robert Charlton (9/23), Shannon Rapp (9/26), Scott Koenig (9/27), Ahmed Bayoumi (9/30), Jeffrey Lease (10/1), Alexandria Mason (10/2) Troy Laedtke (10/3)