Words: 28 (9×9)
Average Length: 5.07
The title of this puzzle relates to the seed, 4 Down/5 Down. The songs mentioned in the clues for 16 Across and 16 Down are quite good. Follow the links if you don’t know them and are curious. Just before I hit “save” on the puzzle for the final time, it occurred to me that there’s another possible answer to 9 Across – it would be interesting to see which one came to mind first for most solvers.
Words: 28 (9×9)
Average Length: 4.93
Today’s midi came together fortuitously. My three original seeds proved difficult to fill around, no matter how I placed them. But in the course of trying, I came up with the answer/clue at 5 Down and decided to use that as a seed instead. Then came 4 Down, and voila – the rest of the fill came smoothly.
If anyone’s interested, I posted a poem a couple of days ago – A Literal Lyric Poem – where each of the 26 lines is an excerpt from a song lyric. For line 1, the artist begins with A, for line 2 with B, and so on until for line 26, the artists starts with Z. After the poem, there’s a list of the artists and songs, but you may want to try annotating the poem to see how many of the songs/artists you can get without looking at the list.
Words: 14 (7×7)
Average Length: 5.29
2 Down was the seed for this puzzle. When I filled the rest of the grid, I put in 4 Across and immediately thought of the song in the clue – a couple of hours before the news broke of Tim Curry’s death. Doo-doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo (that’s Twilight Zone music).
Words: 43 (11×11)
Average Length: 4.79
The idea for this puzzle came from a book I just finished, Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead, by Dennis McNally. There’s a particular song (8 Down) that the Dead covered in live performances more than 500 times, and I thought the title of the song lent itself to a midi grid.
Alas, the only way I could make the concept work was for the first seed entry (1 Across) to be an obscure French artist. I’d never heard of him, and I’d guess that very few of you have either. But the crosses should help with 1 Across, and once the concept becomes apparent, the answer should fall into place easily. (To help the concept become apparent, the online version includes some shaded cells, but the circles should work just as well, if less colorfully.)
There’s an additional hint in the solving note, which references my original entry at 1 Across – a very similar word that’s a bit more widely known but spoiled the purity of the concept.
Words: 40 (11×11)
Average Length: 5.05
The seeds for today’s puzzle were 1 Across and 6 Across, after which I had fun playing around with different uses of “scale.” I’m also happy to include my one of my very favorite female rock singers at 14 Across. Here’s a video of her singing a great John Prine song, “Angel from Montgomery.”
Words: 40 (11×11)
Average Length: 4.65
Today’s puzzle is my entry into the Crosshare monthly midi contest for April, whose theme is “cryptozoology.” Warnings: Dad jokes ahead and some assembly required.
Words: 42 (11×11)
Average Length: 5.00
A few weeks ago, I wrote that I’d clued a certain flower cryptically because I was tired of seeing it clued as “daisy relative.” Then came my granddaughter’s fixation with a certain cartoon mouse and her best friend. A cruciverbalist’s mind is never at rest, so while I was pretending to be 1A for my granddaughter’s amusement – my impression isn’t exactly spot-on, but it does the trick – I decided the 1A/4D combination would be a good seed for today’s midi.
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