It's time again for a rundown of some of my favorite puzzles from the past month!
April 3: Year 2 Puzzle 14 (Andrew Ries, Aries Freestyle)
It's always tough to pick out an Andrew Ries puzzle because he's prolific but also consistent - he seemingly never puts out a bad puzzle, which makes it harder for specific ones to stand out from the pack. This one stood out for me because of a pair of brilliant clues: [Band saw?] for SAFETY IN NUMBERS and [Java-derived app] for SATAY. Lots of fun fill too, including LIFE IS GOOD, FINGERS CROSSED, and ELIZA DOOLITTLE.
April 7: I'm Gone (Paolo Pasco, Grids These Days)
Really creative theme here (no surprise from Paolo). The grid was a representation of the Bermuda Triangle (in the form of BER, MU, and DA rebus squares in the shape of a triangle). Inside the triangle there were three words (BOAT, SHIP, and LINER) which had mysteriously vanished from the grid. In an elegant touch, the new entries created by the disappearance of those letters were also legit words.
April 9: Year 4 Rows Garden 31 (Joon Pahk, Outside the Box)
Joon's Rows Garden subscription is another one of those rock-solid consistent services where it's pretty much always good, so again it's hard to choose a standout. This one's just got a lot of lively fill: the topical LORI LIGHTFOOT, CLEAN GETAWAY, CRIMSON TIDE, CASE DISMISSED, CRUMPLED UP, and ON THE SAME PAGE are the highlights.
April 22: Rumble at the Clone Factory (Paolo Pasco, Grids These Days)
Paolo again? Yeah, I know, but this one's so fun there's no way I could omit it. This puzzle's got an Us-inspired theme in which three phrases are reinterpreted to be about people fighting clones of themselves: FIGHTING CHANCES (Chance the Rapper), WAR OF THE ROSES (Rose Kennedy), and HOPE AGAINST HOPE (Hope Solo). Only three themers, but the fill more than makes up for it: FAIL UP, SWIPE LEFT, MUCH-LOVED, WORMHOLE, plus fun clues for staples like BRA, LEO, and TETES.
April 24: Rows Garden #1 (Erik Agard, Glutton for Pun)
Is this the first Rows Garden that Erik has ever constructed? If so, he's (unsurprisingly) got chops. BEYCHELLA in the top row evokes Queen Bey's incredible new live album/documentary Homecoming, and we've got some great Agardesque clues for OM NOM NOM ([Eating one's words]) and SOLAR BATTERY ([Sunny D, perhaps?]).
April 27: Short Waves (Chris Adams, arctan(x)words)
If you didn't realize that Chris is a math guy based on February's "Winding Numbers," this one should tip you off. This puzzle brings you back to your high school trig classes: there are a bunch of occurrences of SIN directly on top of COS, and since sin/cos = tan, the relevant letters are replaced with TAN in the down entries. What boggles the mind about this one is the theme density, especially in the center where (SIN)K(S IN) sits atop (COS)T(COS). But Chris still manages to sneak SARLACC, TOGA PARTY, and ANITA HILL in to spice up the fill.
A couple new additions to my solving rotation this month: PGWCC, Peter Washington's Gaffney-inspired meta site, and Ada Nicolle's "luckystreak xwords."
Peter's already posted some beautiful and intricate metas, but in each case so far there's just been too much iffy fill for any of them to make my list. That said, I know some solvers care much more about the meta mechanism itself than the fill that's required to make it work, so if you're in that camp, do check the puzzles out.
Ada's themelesses are definitely up my alley, since they're generally packed with fresh fill, even in the shorter entries. So far, each of them has had one piece of short fill that's disqualifying for me in a themeless, but that's just because I'm being really picky. Just paying attention to the good stuff, these puzzles can rival any other themelesses out there, so I fully expect to see some on my list in the future.
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