Free Themeless Puzzle #8
Hi, all,
December themeless is here — I’ll accept a little handslap for dearth of seasonal content and for a hostile crossing here and there. But overall I thought the puzzle turned out nicely. Hope you enjoy! As usual, print out your choice of “smooth” (midweek) clues or “crunchy” (Saturday) clues — or both, to give yourself the out of a little peek at the smooth set.
Across Lite files available by e-mailing Bradley.Wilber [at symbol] houghton.edu.
I hope everyone has wonderful holidays! Blessings to you.
Brad
Free Themeless Puzzle #8 smooth clues — look #1
Free Themeless puzzle #8 smooth clues — look #2
Free Themeless Puzzle #8 crunchy clues — look #1
Free Themeless Puzzle #7
Happy Thanksgiving, all!
My blogged themeless puzzle for November is a co-construction with my friend and most frequent collaborator, Doug Peterson. You may notice that at first glance, we look absent from the byline. But put your anagram skills to work and you’ll quickly figure it out. The pseudonym was born out of space constraints at Newsday, and if you’re a regular solver of that puzzle, you’ll notice that Lars is also responsible for the 11/26/11 Saturday Stumper. Doug and I thought it would be nice to do a blogged puzzle together to add an extra punch to the arrival of our alter ego. We’re hoping you enjoy both the Stumper and this one!
As usual, you can choose because a weekend solving experience (the crunchy clues) and a midweek difficulty level (smooth), or print out both and sneak a peek at the smooth clues if things grind to a halt during your crunchy progress. And for Across Lite files for online solving, e-mail me. Bradley.Wilber [at symbol] houghton.edu. Cheers!
Brad and Doug
see stanxwords.com for online access to the Newsday puzzle.
Free Themeless Puzzle #7 (smooth clues, layout #1)
Free Themeless Puzzle #7 (smooth clues, layout #2)
Free Themeless Puzzle #7 (crunchy clues, layout #1)
Free Themeless Puzzle #6
Hi, all,
Yes, I might call this puzzle “raced into production,” but I’m determined to continue the streak of one puzzle per month, and, of course, today is my last chance to make October.
As usual, the double set of clues is meant to give you the option to choose a midweek solving experience (smooth clue set), a Friday Saturday solving experience (crunchy clue set), or a scenario where you print both clue sets out and tackle the crunchy but allow yourself peeks at the smooth.
And, also as usual, if you’d like clue sets to solve on your computer in Across Lite, e-mail me: Bradley.Wilber [at symbol] houghton.edu.
Free Themeless Puzzle No. 6 (October 2011) — Smooth clue set
Free Themeless Puzzle #5
Hi, all,
So far the plan to furnish a blog puzzle every month is on track. Yes, it’s only three consecutive months, but I’m thinking positive.
I have been asked what makes a good candidate for a seed entry in a blogged puzzle. Many great puzzlemaking colleagues have preceded me into the arena of free puzzles online, so I won’t speak for them, only myself:
1) an entry that might lose currency in the time lag until publication, or one that I suspect solvers might have fun with but that an editor might see as overexertion in an attempt to be au courant.
2) an entry that might skate close to the breakfast test boundaries.
3) an entry that I fear an editor might find too “specific” — this puzzle 5 has one. So did number 4. Hopefully not too many solvers will be undone by them.
4) an entry paired with a clue that I like but which my gut tells me will end up on the cutting room floor. (For this reason, you may see seed entries from earlier published puzzles reappear…eventually!)
Anyway, just so you know, you’re not getting editors’ rejects here. If you see underwhelming fill somewhere, don’t read too much into it; I’ll just try and keep striving for high quality with each month!
As usual, you can choose between a “smooth” version of the clues and a “crunchy” version for those who want a really thorny late-week solve. Or, print out both versions and peek at the smooth clues if you get stuck amid the crunchies. This time I’m offering PDFs in two different styles. And, if you’d like to solve online, e-mail me at Bradley.Wilber [at symbol] houghton.edu for Across Lite files.
Blog Puzzle #5 Smooth clue set (PDF style #1)
Blog Puzzle #5 Smooth clue set (PDF style #2)
Blog Puzzle #5 Crunchy clue set (PDF style #1)
Free Themeless Puzzle #4
Hi, everyone,
I wish everyone safety and calm as we await the wrath of Irene in the East.
I’m hoping to be able to post one free puzzle a month if I can keep the groove going. Here’s the latest. Enjoy! Remember to choose the Smooth clue set if you are not feeling like a major workout — and Crunchy if you’re really confident in your NYT-late-week solving chops.
Across Lite files available by request — just pop me an e-mail at Bradley.Wilber [at symbol] houghton.edu.
Blog Puzzle #4 Smooth clue set
Free Themeless Puzzle #3
Hi, everyone –
I’m so sorry it’s been almost a year since I furnished a puzzle here, but I have one for you now and another coming shortly. I’m hopeful that you’ll see puzzles and perhaps other thoughts here on a more regular basis.
PDF files for printing are here — plus a solution grid. WordPress does not Across Lite files, but if you’d like one for download/online solving, just e-mail me at Bradley.Wilber [at symbol] houghton.edu.
Remember, I have two sets of clues available, a la Games Magazine’s “World’s Most Ornery.” Choose the “Smooth” file for a slightly gentler experience, choose the “Crunchy” file for a weekend New York Times-styled experience. Or, start with Crunchy and dip into Smooth at the end if you need to do it to finish.
Enjoy!
***
Blog Puzzle #3 “Smooth” clue set
Free Themeless Puzzle #2
Hi, everybody–
Sorry I’ve been away for so long! The new semester starts on Monday, so I’m relieved to have this ready to go before the student onslaught arrives. I’ve been constructing and cluing this week through a bout of back pain, so this was a fun way to take my mind off how hard it was to find a comfortable position…..
Thanks to Doug Peterson, who quick-tested it this afternoon. Hope you enjoy it, whether you use hard clues, gentler ones, or a combination of both. Let me know how you make out, and I promise to get new material on here with more regularity.
Blog puzzle #2 Smooth clue set
Blog puzzle #2 Crunchy clue set
If you want me to send you an Across Lite file, please e-mail me by using Bradley.Wilber [at sign] houghton . edu
Free Themeless Puzzle #1
Hi, everybody. Here is the first free themeless puzzle. Keep in mind that for now I’m a web-publishing dunce, so for the moment I’ve only got PDFs and no bells and whistles on the site overall. But I’ll see what I can do about getting Across Lite files up, along with other niceties. For now, themeless devotees who need a fix enough to print something out can have what I’ve got. As per the initial post below, you can choose to use CRUNCHY clues (hard) or SMOOTH (easier), or a combo.
Blog puzzle #1 Smooth clue set
Here goes!
It’s no accident that I’m launching this blog around June 1. My library colleagues and I have picked up and dusted off projects that fell under the wheels of the runaway stagecoach known as semester-in-session. We’ve engaged in our annual April-May shopping spree for the collection, as we claimed eleventh-hour purchase power on unspent remnants of department-specific library allotments. The lights have basically gone out on the academic year AND the fiscal year. So what next?
Outdoor rocker and pile of unread books? Check. Sun tea jug? Check. Community garden? Check. Prospect of several church barbecues with pastor as grillmaster? Check. Devoted friends with projects to discuss and jaw-droppingly precocious children to cherish and fawn over? Check. Yankees chugging along? Check. New subscription to HBO and Showtime and Tennis Channel in time for the summer Grand Slams? Check. Netflix plan drastically downgraded to assuage guilt of acquiescing to outrageous cable prices? Check. And, oh, yeah, there’s the whole puzzle thing.
Even as I use this space for dispatches from a country librarian, talking about things I’ve read, seen, heard, done….it won’t be hard for me to frame the anecdotes and commentary for all my fellow puzzlers out there. I mean, do you know how many times a day I cull a phrase from conversation and mentally total up the number of letters? As information and discourse surge and ebb daily, I’m left with tide pools to inspect for lively vocabulary possibilities. Darting silver fish, bristling ruddy crabs, and spiny sea urchins—all at the service of my next cruciverbal bouillabaisse. (I hope for the high-end, anyway, knowing that sometimes, depending on the solver, the verdict is canned chowder).
I don’t know exactly where this will go. Maybe some posts will not mention crosswords at all, but of course crosswords are a big part of my life and crossword people represent a sort of built-in audience. So it seems very likely that I’ll have some musings about the craft or about curiosities of language. I’m prone to grousing and ranting about laziness in usage (completely apart from puzzles), so I won’t promise this will be a pedant-free zone. But I have a feeling once I get a few pet peeves off my chest in that area I’ll quiet down and learn something from all you laid-back descriptive grammarians out there.
Yes, there will be free puzzles, although there’s no way BEW can match BEQ’s output. I’m hoping to settle into a regular schedule, but I’m reluctant to commit right away. I will say this: I’ve always wanted to try an homage to the World’s Most Ornery Crossword puzzle, so each puzzle will have two sets of clues and you can choose Smooth or Extra Crunchy based on your preferred degree of difficulty. Or, download both and start off Crunchy but peek at a Smooth clue or two if you get stuck. (Hmmm…I need a Nutter-Butter.)
If you stopped here looking for Brad Wilber’s Metropolitan Opera Futures forecast, you’ve got the right guy: see tab/link above. But opera is not always a completely separate endeavor from puzzles, as you all know. Maybe with some posts I’ll tack on capsule backstories of principal characters and arias for the crossword set. Deposit them in the memory bank over time, and I promise you that opera appearances in puzzles will hold fewer terrors for you.
OK, so my last item before signing off: I am gearing up to read Justin Cronin’s highly touted vampire-dystopia epic The Passage, the beach read that you’ll not want to carry in beach bag because it’s 800 bloomin’ pages. Now, I’m as hostile to the (apparent) genre as they come. Many of you know that creature-features are decidedly NOT my thing. I’ve never read anything by Stephen King; already comparisons between The Passage and The Stand are flowering like dandelions. I spent most of my time in the Twilight movies counting the number of times Kristen Stewart refuses to make eye contact with her scene partner (it’s a lot; she must find chins and sternal notches fascinating), and I
only made it through season 2 of True Blood because I couldn’t stand to miss anything uttered by Michelle Forbes.
But I feel I must support Cronin in this huge project because I so deeply respect his earlier novels Mary & O’Neil and The Summer Guest—just sublimely lyrical and well-observed pieces of domestic fiction. I had a few bad moments when I heard that not only was Cronin writing a huge novel about vampires, but he was committed to a trilogy. I’m hoping that his supreme skill can transcend all the fang-fiction tropes that are a turn-off to me. In the meantime, do get hold of Mary & O’Neil and pray that Cronin can carve out some time in the next 7 years to write something for those who fell in love with it like I did.