puzzle #75: january stumper

for max a.k.a. hameltion
test-solved by paolo pasco and adam aaronson

PUZ / PDF / SOLUTION

Surprise!! That’s right, I can write very hard puzzles. I do it twice a year for the Believer magazine, and I want to do it monthly on this blog! It’s something I’ve really taken to in the past few months.

This puzzle was written for Max a.k.a. Hameltion of Crosscord, as part of its gift exchange Secret Snowflake. Max asked for a very-hard-but-fair puzzle, and I’d like to think I delivered. (Related: check out this puzzle I received for Secret Snowflake by the lovely calmdowntime!! It’s so cute!!)

This puzzle, to no one’s surprise, is inspired by Tim Croce’s crosswords. The middle 12/15/12 stack is a classic Croce staple, and a lot of the clue-writing tricks in this were things I learned from obsessively solving his puzzles. (There was a period late last year when I was adjusting back onto my OCD meds, and to pass the time I would go through his huge catalogue and solve like 10 puzzles a day in order to take my mind off of the initial effects of the medication. I sent Croce an email as a thank you.)

If you like this puzzle, comment below or tweet me @luckyxwords 🙂

Also, I’ve opened up my Luckystreak Discord! Tonight (January 10th, 7pm-ish ET) I’m going to be hanging out in there and going over the puzzles I made in December for a Patreon post, breaking down the production of this puzzle, and maybe cluing a puzzle or two.

Enjoy the puz!
– Ada