Indie puzzle highlights

October 20: Pitch Perfect (Ben Zimmer, Defector)

October 21: Untitled (Ben Zimmer, Slate)

October 25: Puzzmo Mini Crossword #25 (Brooke Husic, Puzzmo)

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Pitch Perfect (Ben Zimmer)

Themes where letters have to be added or removed at the edges of the grid are not uncommon, but it's rare for such a theme to involve every entry on the sides of the grid. That's exactly what Ben's theme, with the revealer STRIKE OUT THE SIDE, does; for every Across entry that touches the left or right side of the grid, you have to ignore the letter on the edge for the clue to make sense. So for example, 1-Across is SNAP, but the clue is [Go out for a short bit?], for NAP.

Having the entries make sense both with or without the deleted letter is de rigueur at this point, but it's easy enough to satisfy this constraint by using choppy, sectioned-off grids with lots of short entries. This puzzle doesn't take the easy way out - there are four impressively long theme entries, all crossing the revealer (!): FINE LINE(N), (G)ASTRONOMY, PATTERSON(G), and (B)RAINWASH.

Untitled (Ben Zimmer)

Ben Zimmer has been on a roll lately! I particularly enjoy what he's been doing with his Slate midis, which is unlike what anybody else is doing in any of the main midi venues: elaborately intersecting mini-themes, often based on pop cultural current events. This is his most elaborate one yet, a tribute to DIANE KEATON, whose name is stacked with INTERIORS and ANNIE HALL in the center, intersecting RENATA ADLER (who inspired Diane Keaton's role in Interiors) and JAMES TAYLOR (singer of "You've Got a Friend," which Diane Keaton called the song of her life). I don't know that I've ever even seen such a tightly themed and tightly gridded intersection of this many entries in a 15x15, let alone in an 11x11, where it fits extremely snugly. Normally I don't care much about themes that don't involve any wordplay, but the intricate gridwork here provides more than enough wordy excitement for me.

Puzzmo Mini Crossword #25 (Brooke Husic)

Over at Puzzmo, Brooke has just wrapped up a 30-day series of minis designed to teach solvers the basics of crosswords. The use of minis, as opposed to midis, is a great way to introduce concepts in bite-sized packages that are friendly for begining solvers, and Brooke does an incredible job of fitting those concepts into those packages in the most efficient way possible. In each puzzle, the lesson feels like it's encapsulated perfectly by the 5x5ish grid that serves as its vehicle.

Case in point: the lesson on rebuses from puzzle #25. In a 6x5 grid, there are two rebus squares (the ADs in BAD EGG/RADAR and ROADIE/GLADE) plus a revealer (BALLAD, to be reparsed as BALLAD). In the solved grid, the entries that are part of the lesson are highlighted in red, and here there are a mere four letters that aren't highlighted!

I've often expressed that it's very difficult to get excited about a mini - it might be seeded around a great clue, but as a whole solving experience, it's rarely aesthetically satisfying; minis are generally popular because of the online incentives towards catering to short attention spans. In this series, Brooke has really made the case for the mini as an interesting format in itself.