RYAN'S PUZZLES

About time I posted something....

So, two things:

1. I'm in for one rough spring semester.

2. While I'm trying to come up with new themes, I hope to put out some themeless crosswords in between. The thing about themelesses, however, is that you need to use as few black squares as possible. And doing that is... a bit trickier than I realized.

So that being said, you might not see a full-sized crossword on here every week like clockwork - but I will be keeping this page updated with all sorts of other little brain-busters every two or three days. I've been meaning to do that anyway; variety is the spice of life, after all.

In the meantime, I'm gonna be sharpening my crossing skills, as well as working on my word list. Today's puzzle is a nice, solid 5x6 that I was able to make using just the words I have right now. My list is at 8600 words and counting; the amount of white space that I'm able to auto-fill is growing. I see some great puzzles in the near future.

Monday puzzle

PDF version (solution is on the second page)

Across Lite version

Back when I did most of my constructing on paper, I would start with a word or two, and then try to work out from there which empty boxes needed consonants and which needed vowels. Say for example that I had the word LUNCH across the top left corner, and I wanted to stick another 5-letter word under that. Not many words start with L followed by another consonant, so it's best that this second word start with a vowel. Similarly the 3rd and 5th letters should be vowels. The 4th letter could be an H or an R or something like that. So we're looking at a v-c-v-c-v pattern. A word like ADORE might work, or even AMAZE, and we could cross that Z with CZAR or CZECH, and cross the M with UMA or UM NO. Etc.

This strategy has served me well in the past, so over the past week, I have been compiling a database of every 3-letter, 4-letter, and 5-letter word I could think of, and organizing them based on consonant/vowel pattern. I'm up to 3900 words right now. Obsessive? A little bit, yes.

Anyways, come back and see me Monday. I'll have a new puzzle ready for you.

A Year of Reflection

PDF version

Across Lite version

This puzzle is an overhaul on a theme I did for New Year's 2017. The theme answers are the same as they were then; only the "filling" has changed. So, you know, spoiler alert, if you want to see what the 2017 grid looked like.

Back then I would only consult a word database if I got stuck filling in a grid. I was pretty proud of working in MEME, TMI, CAMO, and SHINBONES (which I clued as [They come below the knees?]), but there's still just so much awkwardness with words like IONS, CASTE, ESSE, and HULLED.

What a difference a year makes, huh?

Happy 2018!

"I like the way you think!" [DIFFICULTY: Easy]

Some comments about today's crossword (SPOILERS! Contains information about the solution):

This puzzle is dedicated to a very close friend of mine whose birthday is today. If you look closely at the answer, you’ll notice that the letters that run diagonally across the puzzle, from top left to bottom right, spell out HAPPY BDAY DUDE, which, understandably, made this puzzle very tricky to construct. But it was worth it. The fill may be a little clunky, but I did come up with a few really nice entries (if I may say so), such as CADBURY, SUDSY, and GOOD IDEA.

The idea came from an episode of "The Simpsons", where Homer hides a message for Lisa (in the same way I did) in the New York Times crossword.

By the way, if you have no idea what I'm talking about at 48-Across:

Are these not the cutest pills you've ever seen?

Friday puzzle! [DIFFICULTY: Hard]

Some afterthoughts about this puzzle: I don't think I did a horrible job, but it was pretty much impossible to come up with tricky clues for some of the words, and looking back, I probably could have changed the grid fill to have some more "playful" vocabulary.

If it's alright, I think I'll call it a day. Talk to you all tomorrow!

Ohhhh, an ENVELOPE! [DIFFICULTY: Hard (maybe)]

I could write volumes on the subject of hard crosswords, and I'll save most of my spiel for tomorrow. For today, let me just say this: Crosswords should be hard not because of their answers but because of their clues.

A casual crossword solver won't be able to finish a crossword that's loaded with esoteric words like ULU (a special knife used by the Aleuts), ECU (an old French coin), or ANOA (a species of water buffalo found in Indonesia). But he/she still deserves a challenging (and solvable) puzzle if he/she seeks one out. So what most modern crossword constructors do is fill the puzzle with everyday words, but clue them in roundabout or playful ways. Solving these crosswords is a lot like figuring out the answer to a clever riddle: "What starts with E, ends in E, and only has one letter? ... Ohhhh, an ENVELOPE!" You know what an envelope is, but you wouldn't think of it as being the answer unless you think of the riddle in a different way.

Anyway, today's puzzle should have plenty of these "riddles" for you. I don't have much experience with constructing harder puzzles though, so do let me know in the comments if this puzzle was too easy or too hard, or any other questions or comments you have.

Mmmmm. Lava cake. [DIFFICULTY: Medium]

I like the idea of imparting a little bit of trivia into these puzzles, like with today's 11-Across, which is where I started constructing this puzzle. I was reading an old article about these types of trees and I thought to myself, "I bet that'd be a hard word to work into a crossword." Naturally, I tried it.

"Out of This World (in More Ways Than One)" [DIFFICULTY: Medium]

Good morning! Here is a cute little bite-size crossword for you. I will have one posted every day this week, with each day harder than the day before it. This is mainly an excuse for me to work on my cluing.

Enjoy!

"It's Just a Test"

Hey there! Hope you all had a fantastic Easter weekend. I know I sure did.

Here is this week's Monday crossword. For those of you who are not familiar with crossword jargon, "Monday" is synonymous with "easy". It's the beginning of the work week, and people need an easy crossword to help get them going. Hopefully I've made this puzzle easy enough, but not so easy that it's boring.

A good tip for those of you who are still a bit inexperienced in crossword solving: Try starting with the fill-in-the-blank clues, as they tend to be the easiest to figure out. And remember, just because you don't know the answer to a clue right away, doesn't mean you can't figure it out with a few letters. Once you have some answers filled in, look at the crossing words and see if you can figure them out with the letters you've got.

Have a great week, everyone!