puzzle #120: care to elaborate? (themed) + no-skips recap

no-skips november day 30!!!

In 2021, I attempted to post a new crossword everyday in an event I dubbed “NaCroWriMo.” Unfortunately, I was not able to complete this event and, as a result, I have carried that shame ever since. That is until this month.

For every day in November this year, I’m posting a new crossword puzzle in an endeavour I’m now calling “No-Skips November.” Some of these puzzles are themeless, some are themed, some were even constructed before November, but it doesn’t matter: I’m not skipping a single day on this blog. I’m posting a new crossword. Every day. For a month.

This is also an effort to drive subscriptions to my Patreon, which is the best way to support me directly! My Patreon ensures that I’m able to sustain myself financially during months with less puzzle work, so I can spend more time making the puzzles you enjoy. Subscribers get a new themeless puzzle every week, and Inner Circle members typically get an extra 3-4 puzzles per month.

It’s NO-SKIPS NOVEMBER #30, meaning I’ve completed the challenge I set for myself this month! Thank you to everybody who solved the puzzles. I know a few people are planning to livestream solving all the puzzles from this month consecutively, and I can’t wait to see it!

If you’ve solved all the puzzles and want to see some insight into how I put this month together, I’m going to be streaming tonight for Inner Circle Patreon members. You should check it out!

In the meantime, here are some basic stats about the puzzles this month:

Of the 30 puzzles published this month, 10 were published at the library

Imagine how hard I rolled my eyes when, after only three days of No-Skips November, my laptop became absolutely unusable.

It turns out, the water damage that cause me to have to replace my laptop screen earlier this year affected more than just my screen. When the Apple Store told me I couldn’t repair my laptop, I realized I would have to start going to the public library if I wanted to public these puzzles on time. There are four resources that made this possible:

Crosserville: While I had already scheduled many No-Skips grids in a Notion workspace, I only imported the files to the solution grids and not the .puz files themselves. Crosservile allowed me to import grids, write clues, and export .puz files for download on this blog. This month would not have been possible without it!
Nam Jin Yoon’s Crossword PDF Editor: I use this all the time anyway, but I can’t recommend it enough.
Crosswordr: In hindsight, I might have been able to log into my PuzzleMe account, but I just really wanted to try out Crosswordr’s new embed feature. The team there is incredibly nice, and they’ve cultivated a nice community of puzzle solvers! While I think I might end up switching back to PuzzleMe, I definitely won’t stop publishing my blog puzzles to Crosswordr. I highly recommend other blogs do the same.
MS Paint / JSPaint.app: I discovered a new way to add some colour to the blog with these thumbnails, and I want to continue doing that :3

Thank you to the Toronto Public Library for all the computer guest passes. I’m lucky enough that I was able to get another MacBook, but I still have to pay out of pocket for data recovery. (Thank you to the people who have donated to help me out with that!) In the meantime, I’m working with old word lists from 2022. My old laptop is in the shop right now, so here’s hoping I get some good news this week.

Of the 30 puzzles published this month, 14 were themed

For this stat, I’m counting mini-themes like Strong Start (#14) and Change for a Five (#21).

If you’ve known me for a few years now, you’d know that I’m not usually a themed puzzle constructor. Themeless puzzles are my favourite puzzles to write, and have become the thing I’m most known for. I have a book full of them! However, this year I’ve been really pushing myself to become more comfortable writing themed puzzles. I think the fact that almost half of the puzzles published this month were themed is a testament to that.

My favourite themes that I came up with this month are Letters of Employment (#7) and Wicked (#23), and strong recommend those to anybody just tuning in. Also, we can’t forget the Carbuckets (#28) collab with the incredible Frisco.

Of the 30 puzzles published this month, 5 of them were not square

The way this blog was initially set up was so that every post thumbnail could be an image of the grid. I’ve always found it frustrating when I can remember the shape of a blog puzzle but not the title, and thought this would be useful for finding old puzzles. Unfortunately, because this blog’s thumbnails are square, this means non-square grids are always going to be cut off in some way.

However, because of my new thumbnail style, I don’t have to worry about that anymore! While I only had five non-square grids this month, I’m going to keep writing them without worrying about the blog’s aesthetic.

My favourite non-square grid this month was Side to Side (with Jenna LaFleur) (#8), but I also have to shout out Pick It Up (#20).

This month was busy

Okay, this isn’t a stat, but it’s true! A lot of stuff has happened in my life since the beginning of November:

I got a cat, sorta! If you’ve been following from the beginning, you’d know that I’ve befriended a lovely neighbourhood cat named Maverick, initially known as Stan. He comes over all the time now! I was hanging out with him last night, and I’m expecting him to show up sometime while I’m writing this blog post. (Update: he did.) He’s such a loveable baby! He’s two years old, absolutely loves attention, and loves playing with cables and toes, which I need to be careful about. While he is not my son, he is still kind of my son.
I had an article of mine published in Toronto newspaper The Grind. That’s right, it’s actually an *article* instead of a crossword. I was asked to write a piece on being trans in Toronto comedy, and I’m really happy with how it turned out! I’m still waiting for it to be published online, but here’s the link for when it does go up.
I got a DM from WikiHow!? Turns out, I’m going to be a co-author on their “How to Make Crossword Puzzles” page! Expect to see that in the coming weeks.

That’s as much as I can muster for a blog post today, but please check out tonight’s stream where I’ll be going more in-depth about a bunch of things to do with this month. I hope to see you there!