Tim Croce – Jeff’s Puzzles

Golbac Fortress (in the country referenced in 1 Across), photo taken July 2023

Words: 68

Average Length: 5.68

A terrific constructor, Tim Croce (club72.wordpress.com), often creates grids around a 12-15-12 stack in the middle. It’s not a trivial undertaking, as I learned in trying his architecture here. He also includes lot of common-but-not-too-common expressions in his grids, so I figured I’d up the constructing challenge by making all three answers in the middle stack “in the language” phrases.

Enjoy, share, and please check out Club 72; you’re in for a treat. (I don’t know Tim, and I’m sure he has no idea who I am. I just like pointing solvers to other constructors whom they might appreciate.)

online | puz | pdf | solution

Themeless 25

Words: 68

Average Length: 5.38

Difficulty: Yes

Chain Bridge with Buda Castle (Budapest) in the background. See 22 Across.

In constructing this puzzle, I wanted most of my grid-spanners to be phrases. That’s one thing I love about Tim Croce’s Club 72 puzzles; many of his long answers are conversational. (Check out his puzzles here. He posts challenging themeless puzzles every Tuesday and themeless or variety puzzles every Friday.)

puz | pdf | solution

A couple of other notes: I’m particularly (yet inexplicably) fond of the punny clues for 29 and 52 Down, and I’m always happy to include 41 Down in a grid; she’s one of the very greatest singer-songwriters ever.

Enjoy, share, follow, etc. Next up (1/16) will be a puzzle with tips for where to eat in Motown.