Wishing you all a year of peace. (Flame of Peace, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, Japan (Mar. 2025))
Words: 78
Average Length: 4.69
1 Across-6 Across-9 Across, everyone!
I posted 107 puzzles in 2025, with nearly 8000 visitors from 62 countries, accounting for more than 18,000 views. Thank you all – I wish each of you a year filled with health, happiness, meaning, and lots of “aha” solving moments.
If you’re interested, I’ve compiled a list of my favorite books that I read during 2025. I love to read and would enjoy getting book recommendations from all of you brilliant and worldly solvers. You can put them in the comments or email me at Jeffspuzzles@gmail.com.
Not a turkey. Painting from a tomb in the Valley of the Queens, with original colors from 4000 years ago (Nov. 2025)
Words: 74
Average Length: 5.16
Several years ago, I posted a Thanksgiving puzzle (“I’ll Never Be Your Feast of Burden”) that was chock-full of Thanksgiving-related entries. (I’ve slightly updated that puzzle, but it still shows my relative construction inexperience back then, particularly with so many 3- letter answers.)
This year, I wanted to try something different. Today’s grid has nothing related to the holiday in it – but if you read down the first letters of the Across clues, you’ll see my heartfelt expression of gratitude to everyone who solves my puzzles.
Speaking of gratitude, I need to single out fellow constructor Jeanne Breen for special thanks. Because of the constraints imposed by the Across cluing, some of those clues were a bit clunky as first drafted, to put it kindly. Moreover, the original version of the SE corner was drecky, which isn’t a word but should be. I asked Jeanne if she had any ideas, and she not only greatly improved the most troublesome clues, but came up with a whole new SE corner that is leagues better than the original.
Jeanne is a talented constructor of all manner of word puzzles, which you can – and should! – match wits with on her site, In Pursuit of Puzzles. Follow her, and while you’re at it, follow me if you’re not already doing so! The more followers we constructors have, the more visible our puzzle sites are in search results.
Of all the overseas places I’ve visited – 99 and counting – Ireland is the friendliest. Although I don’t have a bit of Irish blood, I’ve never felt so at home anywhere else. The people are warm, quick to laugh, and hospitable beyond belief, and the scenery’s not too shabby either. And then there’s the literature: on an island of barely over 7 million people, seemingly every tenth person is a prize-winning author, poet, or playwright. (Given that books are my crack, I’ve crammed several Irish writers into this grid and clues, including several of my all-time favorites (Roddy Doyle, Kevin Barry, Maggie O’Farrell).)
Nothing to do with the puzzle – just some photogenic soapstone dogs I saw earlier this month at the Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne, Australia
Words: 78
Average Length: 4.64
I wish you all a New Year filled with 38 Across. I thank all 6.1 thousand of you who have solved my puzzles in the past year. You come from 55 different countries and generated nearly 15 thousand views. I hope you’ll be back for more in 2025!
If you ever have any questions or suggestions, or if you might be interested in co-constructing, shoot me an email at jeffspuzzles@gmail.com. Thanks, and all the best for 2025!
Nothing to do with the puzzles – this was a wonderful, festive musical performance I saw on Vanuatu ten days ago, shortly before the devastating earthquake that leveled parts of this beautiful country.
For the first time I can remember, Chanukah begins this year on Christmas Day. I figured I’d commemorate the occasion with a puzzle for each holiday. Whatever holiday you do (or don’t) celebrate – Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Festivus, whatever – I wish you all the best this holiday season!
View from the Port Erin train station, 28 Across (photo taken July 2022)
Words: 72
Average Length: 5.25
As the title suggests, today’s grid offers my heartfelt New Year’s wishes to those of you who take the time to solve my puzzles. I really appreciate it, and I look forward to tossing another 100 or so puzzles your way in 2024. Please feel free to comment or email me (jeffspuzzles@gmail.com) if you ever have a question, suggestion, reaction, correction, whatever.
If you’re thinking of traveling in the new year, check out my travel blog, PuffinlessTravel.com. In 2023, I added several posts about France and Spain (visiting caves with paleolithic art), Luxembourg, Andorra, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Hungary. Next week I’ll be traveling to Australia and New Zealand and will be adding lots of posts and pix from that experience.
You might also enjoy my poetry blog, It-Could-Be-Verse.com.
“You don’t need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows” – Bob Dylan, “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” May the breeze be at your back in 2023!
Words: 74
Average Length: 5.05
Thank you all! I’m grateful to everyone who takes the time to solve my puzzles – the site received 10,000 views in 2022, up 60% from 2021, and solvers in 45 countries tackled my grids this year.
This puzzle contains my New Year’s wish for you. I hope you enjoy it. Keep solving, please share my puzzles with abandon (I’d love to double my views this coming year), and most of all, have a healthy, happy, fun and fulfilling 2023!!!
Difficulty: More moderate than the temperature outside, that’s for sure
Street art – East Side Gallery, Berlin (see 19 Across)
July 4 was a big deal to some of our Founding Fathers, just not in the way you think. Solve and find out what I mean.
I’m taking a short break from posting while I spend a few days hiking in Wales and then exploring the Isle of Man. I’ll have a new puzzle up on July 13. Stay cool!
Difficulty: Gentle, kind, empathetic, funny, generous, open-minded, fun-loving … Oh, wait, that was my Mom. This puzzle shares some of those characteristics.
Happy Mothers’ Day to all you mothers out there! I hope your day (and life) is filled with love, joy, and appreciation.
Mom in Jutenheimen National Park, Norway, June 2017
I constructed this puzzle in February. In March, one week shy of her 88th birthday, my Mom passed away. She lived a wonderful life, traveling all over the world, dancing at the slightest provocation (including with a tribal elder in Ghana as part of a ritual ceremony), giving generously of her time, spirit, and resources, and appreciating the dignity and value of everyone she met. I miss her terribly, but my grief is made bearable by joyous memories of trips, holidays, stupid jokes, her fantastic arroz con pollo (back in my meat-eating days), and a lifetime of wise and heartfelt support.
Thanks to my Mom and Dad, I think I was born interested in crosswords. Much of my childhood is a blur, but I vividly recall my parents passing the NYT Sunday puzzle back and forth, praising/questioning/correcting one another’s entries, and occasionally emitting a satisfied or chagrined “oh”. Solving the Sunday NYT remained a weekly habit for my Mom and Dad until my father died six years ago. Mom continued to solve puzzles, in both English and Spanish, until she passed.
Mom, wherever you are, 41 Across, a thousand thousand times, and Happy Mothers’ Day! I hope there are puzzles galore for you to enjoy!
Jeff's Puzzles 