PUZZLE #83: Entry-Level Stuff

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SOLUTION to the last puzzle

Happy Saturday! Gonna get right into a disclaimer:

This puzzle is best solved on the blog post applet (after the break), but there are .pdf and .puz files available if that's not an option for you. And, special thanks to Ada Nicolle for test-solving this week's puzzle!

Hope you enjoy,
Paolo

PUZZLE #82: Themeless 22

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SOLUTION to the last puzzle

Happy 2021! Late for the first post of the year, but I got caught up with the Mystery Hunt (fun! great!) and registering for classes (meh). Some notes:

• Check out the new crossword feature at The Browser if cryptics are your vibe! I'm lucky enough to be one of the contributors, and the puzzles that have already come out are setting a high bar. 
• The 7xwords project is underway, and all the puzzles so far have been bangers. I'd be remiss not to point out this one and this one, which were especially fun
• Contribute to this form to help diversify wordlists!

Back to normal-sized themelesses; hope you enjoy the puzzle!

Paolo

PUZZLE #81: Themeless 21

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SOLUTION to the last puzzle

It's Themeless 21, and the last puzzle before 2021, so why not make it a 21x? I wrote a few versions of a 2020 recap for this post, but they all boiled down to "if you're a solver, constructor, streamer, tournament runner, or any combination of those, thanks for making the crossword community the way it is." So I'm just going to say that.

As far as this puzzle goes, shoutout to Ada Nicolle, Sid Sivakumar/Brooke Husic, Ricky Cruz, and Evan Birnholz for their excellent work on 21x themelesses, which very much paved the way for this one.

Also, the pdf has a new look—many thanks to Nam Jin Yoon's excellent new puz-to-PDF tool for the new layout! 

See you in 2021,

Paolo

PUZZLE #80: Malaika's Midi (by Malaika Handa!)

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SOLUTION to the last puzzle

Hello! Excited to be posting this guest puzzle by Malaika Handa, a rockstar constructor who recently started her own site (which just launched recently, but is already providing incredible content). Many thanks to her for sending it my way—you can see below that our interests and voices overlap in a lot of ways, and I'm honored to have this puzzle on the site! A few words from Malaika:

It is so exciting to be featured on Grids These Days! I love the chaotic-good energy of this site / Paolo and hope this puzzle channels some of it. Speaking of chaotic ideas, for some reason I thought it would be fun to cobble together a collection of every mathematically possible 7x7 crossword. (A pretty hefty project given that I've only been constructing for three months... But it's good to aim high, right?) If you're interested in contributing one, email me at handamalaika at gmail dot com!

I for one am excited to see the 7x7 project develop, so be sure to check out the link. If it's anything like this puzzle, the project is going to be bangers only.

Hope you enjoy the puzzle!

[UPDATE: Thanks Steve Mossberg for pointing out the download links led to the wrong puzzle! Fixed now]

PUZZLE #79: "Like Trying to Solve a Crossword and Realizing..."

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SOLUTION to the last puzzle

Quick post, timely puzzle, hope you enjoy!

-Paolo

PUZZLE #78: Themeless 20

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SOLUTION to the last puzzle

Writing this in the seven hours before my math final paper is due, so this is gonna be quick (unrelated, if you know a lot about the Petersen graph please comment below).

Boswords Fall Themeless League just wrapped up, and it was a great time with a great set of puzzles. The puzzles are still here for purchase, and with such a stacked constructor lineup, there's no reason not to snatch them up.

Anyway, tried for a low word count grid today—hope you enjoy!

-Paolo

PUZZLE #77: "And the Bartender Says, 'Why the Long Puzzle?'"

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Then the bartender says "Why the short posts?" and I say "School, mostly." 

Major shoutout to Chris King for letting me bite his style for the pdf version of this puzzle (semi-spoilers in the link). And, unrelated shoutout to Chris King for writing one of the coolest metas I've ever seen.

Also I haven't tested this with other solving programs, but do know that Black Ink will almost definitely crash if you try to open this puzzle. If you run into that with your program, the applet should be workable (if a little jumpy).

Hope you enjoy!
Paolo

[5:07 Pacific Time: UPDATED to fix a misspelling in the grid!]