Words: 8 (4×4)
Average Length: 4.00
When I posted the first To and Fro puzzle a couple of weeks ago, I kvetched at length about what a construction challenge it was. Then my second attempt came together pretty quickly, though I did spend an hour or so trying to improve 1D – to no avail, as you’ll see. Perhaps 4D will make up for it.
Words: 8 (4×4)
Average Length: 3.75
On an hours-per-square basis, this must have been the most time-consuming puzzle I’ve ever constructed. Its lineage stretches back for months. Early last winter, I decided it’d be cool to design a puzzle where each entry formed a different, valid word either forward and backward or up and down, as relevant.
I began by trying to make a 5×5 grid work, but got nowhere slowly. Then I set my sights at a 4×4 puzzle. Because I expected this to be a trivial exercise, I took on certain constraints: no foreign words, no acronyms, no abbreviations. One by one, I dropped each of these and decided a 4×4 grid with no black squares would be fine.
That limitation, too, turned out to be effectively insurmountable. I did come up with a draft that worked, except that one of the down entries, when read in the upward direction, was just too obscure to include. And so, many months later, I give you this puzzle, black square and all.
Before finally giving you the links, I need to thank Jeanne Breen, fellow cruciverbalist and baseball fanatic who took my unintentionally opaque attempt at an explanatory note and turned it into readily understandable prose. If you enjoy creative, varied, entertaining word games, you owe it to yourself to follow Jeanne’s blog, In Pursuit of Puzzles.
Words: 16 (7×7)
Average Length: 4.88
I constructed this one as an exercise: I wanted to make a mini puzzle starting with 1D and ending with 12D. As exercises go, it turned out to be of the not-exactly-breaking-a-sweat variety: to my surprise, filling the grid only took a half hour or so after I’d settled on a grid shape.
Words: 16
Average Length: 5.00
The seeds for this puzzle were the title clue (used in 5D), which came to me out of the blue the other day, and 8A, which I learned from a Norwegian gentleman a few weeks ago. The title clue is cryptic. If you solve the online version, there’s a conventional clue you can reveal. Otherwise, here’s the conventional clue in retrograde: rotcelloc niar.
Words: 10 (5×5)
Average Length: 5.00
I haven’t published a mini in quite a while. This one was seeded by 1A and 1D. I already had the clue ready for 1A, then put in 1D after coming up with a clever-ish clue. 8A has a cryptic clue – “can be” indicates an anagram – because I’m tired of seeing the answer clued as “fall bloomer” or “daisy relative.”
Words: 16 (7×6)
Average Length: 4.88
I learned about the seeds of this puzzle, 1A and 3D, while reading a remarkable book called The Arrogant Ape, by Christine Webb. The book’s subtitle, “The Myth of Human Exceptionalism and Why It Matters,” captures the thought-provoking, insightful, often maddening contents perfectly. It impressed me so much that another word I learned from the book is the seed of a themeless puzzle I’ll post in late March, so if you finish the book by then you’ll have a guaranteed correct answer off the bat!
Words: 10 (5×5)
Average Length: 4.40
I constructed a cryptic mini and, when I finished it, decided to provide a version with American-style clues as well. (Each version has the same answers.) So solve either, both, or mix and match.
If you like the idea of parallel cryptic and American-style minis, let me know. It’s a good exercise for me as a constructor and may help solvers who are cryptic neophytes. Plus it gives me twice as many chances to mess with your minds and funny bones!
There’s only one online link because I combined both sets of clues into a single puzzle on Crosshare. Each set is blacked out, so you just need to click on either the first clue (cryptic) or the second (American-style) for each entry.
online | cryptic puz | cryptic pdf | American-style puz | American-style pdf | solution
Words: 14 (7×7)
Average Length: 5.29
2 Down and 8 Across were the seeds. Apologies that 6 Across will leave you with an earworm, assuming you know the commercials (consider yourself fortunate if you don’t).
Jeff's Puzzles