Yearly Recap

 Hi everyone! It's almost the end of the year, and since I started making puzzles summer of 2021, 2022 is the first full year I've spent as a crossword constructor! I've made a bunch of puzzles this year. All were some form of indie, most of them were on this blog, and all of them were great in my totally unbiased opinion. I figured this post is a good excuse to talk about my favorite puzzles I've made this year, as well as a handful of my favorite clues. It was hard to narrow it down (and in particular I left out a lot of really great collabs with really great people), but I've decided to highlight (in no particular order) 5 puzzles from this blog, 3 other puzzles of mine, and 10 clues.

See you all with more puzzles in 2023!

A Crossword Rose Puzzles

Does It Quack?: I made two 13xs this year because, idk, I'm a rebel. This puzzle definitely came about because I am Too Online and realized the two spanners would work great together, but overall, I just think that I had some great stacks in this grid and some clues.

Magical Realism: This was a theme idea I had ages ago (well before I started constructing!), and while it's a fairly simple theme, I feel like the theme and the overall vibe of the puzzle are just delightfully geeky. This was also the puzzle I brought for the puzzle table at ACPT. I'm not sure if that brought anyone to this blog, but if it did, hi!

Now You See Me...: This was my Pride puzzle and another theme I had the basic idea for ages ago. (I swear I had the themer SURF TENSION in my head for a full year.) This is the sort of puzzle that makes me really happy I have a blog, because a puzzle that does silly wordplay about erasure of certain queer identities is definitely something that's not going to play great to mainstream audiences (and not necessarily something I'd want to give to an editor), but I really liked being able to make it.

Pleasant Company: This was one of my four(!) collabs with Shannon Rapp this year. I really love the theme of this one, and obviously I love working with Shannon! While this one didn't quite work out in the venues we submitted it to, I liked getting to have it on my blog.

soft piano music: This is one of my favorite themeless grids I've ever made! Another one where I tried to shop it around and couldn't find a non-blog home for it, but I love this puzzle regardless and was glad that people could solve it on the blog.

Off Blog Puzzles

Well Kept Secrets: This is another collab with Shannon Rapp, this time hosted on Will Nediger's blog Bewilderingly. I think this was a really fun and clever theme concept, and it was interesting to work on a grid with unusual constraints (and I think we pulled it off really well).

Themeless #32: This a themeless I made for Inkubator, and I strongly believe this is the best puzzle I've made to date. I started with a seed entry I loved, and the rest of the grid just came together cleanly and with a bunch of entries I loved. I also feel like my voice is really all over these clues, so many thanks to Stella and the editing team for letting me keep my clues about pickles or Pretty Pretty Princess in the edit!

invisible string: This was a collab with Lila Goldenberg, and we had so much fun making it! The clues throughout this one are just really fun and voice-y (and if a little minitheme of Taylor Swift's folklore appeared, what else did you expect of us, really?). Lila's going to be on the Lil AVCX roster in the coming year (which I'll be editing for!), and I can confidently say you should keep an eye out for her--she's a rising star.

Selected Clues (highlight to see entries!)

[Back together?] for CROWDFUND

[Ones who want us to tell you that this puzzle is brought to you by some trendy millennial brand that dared to ask what if this thing you can normally buy at a store was available online, using a subscription model, and more expensive] for SPONSORS

[Top gear?] for STRAP ON

[Accessory that might be placed on an ear to denote a female teddy bear and a neck to denote a male teddy bear, because apparently even teddy bears are subject to the gender binary] for BOW

[Paddington, e.g., when he was young and pure and not yet tweeting royalist propaganda] for CUB

[Remote working needs??] for AAS

["Hello, Reddit, I (31M) behaved like a complete monster, and then my girlfriend (22F) got upset and said something kind of mean, and I just can't tell who was in the wrong. ____?"] for AITA

[Reacted to with a rushing pulse, reeling head, and flushing face, according to "Wicked"] for LOATHED

[Hubbubs, which might be about nothing, and might be about the fact that your friends are coming up with elaborate schemes to hook you up with the guy you keep fighting/flirting with and also that your cousin's fiance just slutshamed her and left her at the altar, which doesn't quite seem like nothing, you know?] for ADOS

[What, according to the NYT, keeps a watch on you, proving them to be pocket watch haters] for STRAP