Puzzle #7 (February 20th, 2023)
Hello my lovely people. First things first: I’m allowed to put the word "fuck” (or, more specifically “fuckton”, see 5-Down) in my puzzles. That’s one of the perks of publishing these on my own for free rather than sending them out to a real newspaper or magazine to be published nationally. Since there are only about fifty of you guys and most of y’all are people I know personally, I doubt that anyone will be too offended by this.
Anyways, I hope you are all having a good President’s Day (which is a fake-ass holiday, but congrats to all of the people who have work off today). Digital solvers, click here to get solving!
I’ve got a fun themeless puzzle for you guys this week. As a solver, I actually prefer themeless puzzles to themed ones. Don’t get me wrong, solving a clever and well thought out themed puzzle can be so much fun, especially when you’re struggling to figure out the theme and then all of a sudden it finally clicks–that’s a feeling I live for. But a great themeless puzzle, with lots of long, cleverly-clued entries stacked on top of one another or side by side is a beautiful thing in and of itself.
When I opted for a themeless puzzle this week I had a few goals in mind. Firstly, I wanted to use as few three letter words as possible (there are only 8 in this grid). Secondly, I wanted to minimize the amount of blocks–black squares–in the puzzle. This puzzle features 28 blocks. For comparison, the average Monday NYT puzzle (easiest) features about 37, and the average Saturday (hardest) features about 30. Fewer blocks means longer answers, which makes both constructing and solving more challenging and exciting.
Hope you all enjoy. Happy solving!
-Joey