Indie puzzle highlights

February 21: Seeking Joy (Rebecca Goldstein, AVCX+)

March 1: Let Me Be Perfectly Queer ... (Rafa Musa, These Puzzles Fund Abortion 5)

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Seeking Joy (Rebecca Goldstein)

Rebecca is one of the few true triple threats in puzzledom, in the top tier of constructors in theming, gridding, and cluing. I always think of her primarily as a great constructor of themed puzzles, so the fact that she can also construct themelesses like this one really cements her as one of the most versatile constructors around. The grid pattern here is very smartly designed, featuring an interlacing of long slots interspersed with regions of short fill that make the marquee entries easier to fill around without compromising the grid's overall flow. And those long slots are really well used, with entries like BOSS BATTLE, SHABBAT SHALOM, LET'S DIG IN, SHANGRI-LA, and NERDSPLAIN. The cluing shines, too: [Sock drawer?] for PUNCHABLE FACE is an all-timer, but there are clever clues around every corner, including [Activity with more than just a couple of participants?] for THREESOME, [Gas lighting?] for AURORAS, [Over head?] for UBER, [Supreme court figure, maybe] for ALL-STAR, and [Box checking activity?] for PAP SMEAR.

Let Me Be Perfectly Queer ... (Rafa Musa)

Now that These Puzzles Fund Abortion is in its fifth year, I have to imagine it's hard for the editors to produce a full slate of puzzles with relevant themes. They've been incorporating more cryptics and variety puzzles, lately, which helps (including a stellar variety puzzle by Sid Sivakumar which I'm not highlighting here only because I already highlighted one of Sid's variety puzzles very recently), but of course another route is to include themelesses. Personally, when I write for TPFA, I always pitch themed puzzles, because there's an art to writing a "themeless" for this sort of puzzle pack. I put "themeless" in scare quotes because it really has to have a significant amount of marquee content that feels topical, so from a construction point of view, it's not entirely unlike making a themed puzzle. There's a balancing act between including enough topical content, and making sure that it doesn't feel forced and that it still plays like a themeless.

In this puzzle, Rafa threads that needle adeptly. There are the obvious marquee answers (TRANS JOY, GAY SEX, TRIAMORY, SAPPHO, SHANTAY, SHE/THEY), plus shorter stuff like HRT and other queer-related clues like THREE for [Number of colors in the bisexual pride flag], REAL ME for [Post-coming out self, maybe], and [School periods in which I was stressed about being clumsy and unathletic and not at all about who was using what changing room] for PE CLASSES. None of these feel shoehorned in, nor do the reproduce rights content like [Feeling upon learning Roe v. Wade was overturned] for IRE, [Place to host someone seeking reproductive healthcare] for SPARE ROOM, or RESISTS for [Fights for reproductive rights in an unfavorable political climate, for example]. It's a perfect themeless for TPFA, but it's also just a delightful themeless in its own right; I particularly like the pairing of AESTHETE and HAS TASTE (which share a letter bank!).