Indie puzzle highlights

July 25: themeless no. 36 (crosstina aquafina & erik agard, crosstina aquafina)

July 29: the symphony series: movement twenty-seven (owen bergstein, Dissonant Grids)

July 31: Extra Toppings (bob weisz, Puzzmo)

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themeless no. 36 (crosstina aquafina & erik agard)

This puzzle marks the return of the greatest byline yet discovered (their last blog collaboration won an Orca for puzzle of the year, and with good reason). Obviously, if you take two great constructors and combine them, you're probably going to get a great puzzle, but this particular byline is a very specific pairing of sensibilities that works like gangbusters. I associate Kelsey with wonderfully wordy-yet-precise, often autobiographically inspired, references in the clues - things like [make a last-minute, winning ebay bid on a vintage 90s nike charles barkley 1993 mvp single-stitch t-shirt, for example] for SNIPE or [fandom creation that might have a "felonious gru/minions", "bisexual mary magdalene", or "reichenbach falls coffeeshop au" tag] for FIC. And I associate Erik with wonderfully terse, creative wordplay clues - things like [prince fandom?] for SATAN WORSHIP or [defeat on points?] for OUTARGUE. (I have no idea who wrote those specific clues, of course - especially since I find that, when I collaborate, I tend to accommodate my style to that of the person I'm collabing with.)

The 1-Across clue is a perfect illustration of how beautifully those two sensibilities are married in this puzzle. [STOP! ..... hammer type] for BALL-PEEN both has the zaniness that I associate with Kelsey's byline and the ear for wordplay that associate with Erik's. I also like that there are clues with disguised capital letters that would only work in the all-lowercase house style of Crosstina Aquafina: [someone who's unmatched on bumble?] for OAF and [where u at?] for CAMPUS. And I like that ALLITERATIVE (clued as [like big bags bussin' out the bentley bentayga]) is stacked on two entries that are (quasi-)rhyming, the exact counterpart of alliteration (DIVINE NINE and TEXT NECK). I guess this writeup has just devolved into listing various things I like about this puzzle, so I'll also mention the colorfulness of the long fill: TWO CHEEKS OF THE SAME ASS, YOU HAD ONE JOB, A WORLD Of HURT, UNFUCKWITHABLE, I PLEAD THE FIFTH. Anyway, all this is to say that this might be the puzzle of the year so far, and I wouldn't be surprised if Kelsey and Erik repeat at the Orcas next year.

the symphony series: movement twenty-seven (owen bergstein)

Last month, Dissonant Grids featured the "symphony series," in which Owen Bergstein posted a puzzle a day for 31 days. The series is framed as a sort of cruciverbal symphony, though that analogy didn't really ring true for me. A symphony, at least on the classical model, has a tightly-linked large-scale structure connecting its movements, whereas I had no idea what to expect from day to day in Owen's series. A more revealing comparison for me would be to something like Luciano Berio's Sequenza, a series of 14 compositions for solo instruments or voice, incorporating a wide range of extended techniques and oddities (perhaps most notoriously the moment in Sequenza V in which the soloist turns to the audience and asks "Why?"). Owen's series is similarly an exercise in experimentation, encompassing many different approaches to grid design and cluing, many of which wouldn't fly in mainstream venues.

For me, the most productive of the experiments was in movement twenty-seven, in which the cluing is extremely difficult in a deliberately unfair way, and in which the solver is forbidden from using the check or reveal functions in the applet. With vague clues like [Name that's an anagram of another] and [There are about 90 million worldwide], there's practically no way to solve this puzzle without assistance, but Owen has provided optional hints to accompany each clue. Forcing the solver to eschew check and reveal, and decide exactly which hints they want to make use of, makes the solver into an active participant in the construction (or maybe more appropriately the editing) of the puzzle, choosing which clues need to be made easier to provide footholds. You could simply use all the hints, making it into a standard easy puzzle, or you could try to strategically use as few hints as possible, or you could do anything in between. To make another analogy to the avant-garde music of the mid-20th century, I'm reminded of George Brecht's Event Scores, which push the notion of the musical score by providing brief, open-ended instructions that ordinary people can carry out in everyday life. I think there's great potential in this kind of reimagining of the relationship between the constructor and the solver, and I'm excited to see what else can be done with it.

Extra Toppings (bob weisz)

When I make themed crosswords, I have a tendency to try to overcomplicate things, to put a hat on a hat, as they say. So I love to see a puzzle that puts a hat on a hat but does so for a good reason, and mildly ribs itself for doing so. Unusually, this puzzle has two unconnected sections, each shaped like a different kind of a hat, and each with its own revealer. The top section's revealer at 10-Across is PUT A LID ON IT, clued as ["I've heard enough!" ... and what the constructor did to the bottom part of this grid], while the bottom section's revealer is PUT A HAT ON A HAT, clued as [Oversell a joke... and 10-Across twice... and do what this entire grid does... oh god, even this clue is doing it...]. It's a delightfully weird and meta theme and I'm not sure I have anything else to say about it; it kind of speaks for itself!