Are you writing from the heart? (themeless)

 Remember how I said I was going to try to make more puzzles this summer and then I didn't publish anything? Well... here's a puzzle? This is a themeless puzzle that I gridded in about an hour and clued over the course of a month. As is often the way with my puzzles, there's a little bit of everything in here (but also multiple Captain Janeway references).

In other news, I did not manage to get this puzzle up before any of the various summer crossword tournaments, but I was in fact at both Boswords and Lollapuzzoola recently! If I talked to you at either/both of those, please know it was an absolute delight, and if I didn't, hopefully I'll catch you at a future tournament!

Thanks to Dan for test solving. Also, I'm trying out the Puzzmo workshop tool again, so please let me know if you have any issues with the interface!

Direct link

Can We Fix It?

 Hi. It's me. I'll be honest, I am very tired while writing this blog post, but I finished a puzzle, so hey. Have a themeless. This puzzle came about because I realized 16D and 46A were a fun pair of seeds, and somewhere along the line, I realized I wanted to clue this like a blog puzzle. I feel like I wrote a bunch more question mark clues than usual, and probably only half of them actually work, but hey, this is the blog! We just try stuff here!

Anyways, hope you're all doing well and hope to put out more puzzles in the coming year. No promises, though.

Trouble Brewing (Summer Puzzle 15)

 And here we have it, the 15th and final summer puzzle. Before I talk about this week's puzzle,  I want to say from the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone who has solved any of these summer puzzles, and double thank you to anyone who has commented on a puzzle, streamed a puzzle, said nice things to me at a tournament(!), or especially to anyone who collaborated with me on one of these summer puzzles. When I started this project, I was looking for a way to get myself to get back into puzzle-making after a busy school year, and I'd say I succeeded. Making each puzzle in under a week, following the themes and seeds I was feeling, and being unconstrained by the restrictions and schedules of published crosswords was a really great experience, and I'm proud of the work I did here. If you haven't been following along, I think a few highlights are puzzle 6, puzzle 7, and puzzle 13, but I really like all the summer puzzles!

Anyways, for this week's puzzles, I've shifted gears and made a puzzle about one of my other current favorite hobbies: Blood on the Clocktower. If you're not familiar with Blood on the Clocktower, it's a social deduction game that can basically be summarized as "what if Werewolf were way better?", as it keeps the same general "find the bad guys" style of gameplay but gives each player a unique ability (some of which can get pretty wild) and lets "dead" players continue to fully participate in the game. I started going to a local BOTC group last fall, and having a day to tell ridiculous lies, untangle complicated puzzles, and (usually) lose a bunch of games is always a highlight of my month.

So, for the puzzle itself, I've decided to make a game of Blood on the Clocktower into a crossword puzzle! Each of the 8 starred entries represents a player in the game, and the starred clues correspond to the roles those players are claiming to be, all good characters from Trouble Brewing. However, 2 of these players are lying about their roles–one is the DEMON and one is their loyal minion (a POISONER, SPY, BARON, or SCARLET WOMAN)–and it's up to you to find out who they are! Down clues will always match their true roles, but because the evil team is very devious, entering their true roles in the grid may require the use of rebus squares.

For the BOTC fans, yes, this is a legal 8-player TB set up. Also, I've tried to clue this on the easy side, so if you're BOTC player but not an avid crossword solver, this is hopefully still approachable. If you know nothing about BOTC, this should also be perfectly solvable, but you may want to glance over the character list linked above–none of the characters have nonsensical names, but a few are entries I probably wouldn't put in a normal grid.

Crosshare

Themeless: So Random (Summer Puzzle 14)

 For this week's penultimate summer puzzle, I was inspired by a Will Nediger blog puzzle where he randomly placed 5 black squares and 5 letters in the grid. Like Will, I randomized 10 squares this way (including rolling physical dice for the positions--though I used an online tool for picking the letters). Unlike Will, I did not get particularly unusual placement for my black squares (and also did not keep super close track of where they were), so this is a pretty standard 72-word themeless grid. The letters were a little more constraining, though--notably both the first and last letters of 18-across were randomized, which let me put a pretty fun short entry in that spot!

Anyways, not too much more to say about this one, but I'll be back next week for the final summer puzzle before my semester starts! I already have an idea for the puzzle, so if my gridding pays off, I'll see you all then!

Crosshare

On the Shelf (Summer Puzzle 13)

 So as I mentioned in my post for last week's puzzle, I'm starting to get busier as summer is winding down and fall course prep has begun in earnest. This meant that I didn't actually have time to make a puzzle this past week, but... I did have time to make a puzzle this morning! What this has resulted in is... a pretty normal, pretty straightforward themed puzzle that I think is pretty good? Definitely still got silly with some of the clues, but I think this will play sort of like an early week newspaper puzzle.

Anyways, hope you're all having a good summer, and I'll see you next week for the penultimate(!) summer puzzle.

Crosshare

Themeless: No Thoughts, Head Empty (Summer Puzzle 12, with Dan Schwartz)

 Sorry for the delay, but I'm here once again with a summer puzzle! We're starting to get towards the end of summer (already!), which means that I once again am starting to get a little busy, between preparing for the upcoming semester and traveling last week to NYC for Lollapuzzoola. That's basically all that delayed this puzzle, but I am going to still be trying to get 2-3 more of these out before the summer is actually over!

Speaking of Lollapuzzoola, this puzzle is a collab with Lolla express division runner up Dan Schwartz. Dan is a great friend, a common collaborator of mine, and also just so incredibly good and fast at solving puzzles. It was very fun to collab with him here, and I hope you like the puzzle.

Dan says:

"I had fun making this with you! Happy summer"

Crosshare

Combo Meal (Summer Puzzle 11)

 This week, I bring you a fairly straightforward themed puzzle, with a few themers I've been thinking about for a bit. Since there's only 3 themers, and some of them were on the shorter side, I tried to make this a slightly more open grid than I usually do, and I am of course always trying to find good fill/clues.

Anyways, not much more to say about this one, but if I don't get my next puzzle up before next Saturday, I should say that I will in fact be at Lollapuzzoola this year! I'm actually leaving tomorrow to spend some time in NYC with friends before the tournament, so... maybe Amtrak will inspire my next puzzle? Who knows, I don't really plan these in advance, but I will try to keep posting one per week!

Crosshare

A Couple of Items (Summer Puzzle 10)

 Yes, I'm still here and proud to present the 10th summer puzzle! I'll be keeping this going through August (and hopefully get back to a true weekly schedule soon), so there's more to go. This one is definitely another "I just put the media I'm consuming into a puzzle" puzzle, and the theme is a little looser, but as always, I hope you have fun!

Also! I will be at Boswords tomorrow! (Likely place for me to be, I know.) If you're there, please come say hi. I love talking to people at tournaments.

Crosshare

Themeless: Cool for the Summer (Summer Puzzle 9)

First off, sorry for the delay on this puzzle--I did say at the start of this project that I was likely to miss a week here and there, and I guess I made good on this project. Pretty shortly after the last puzzle I posted, I got sick (why I didn't post a puzzle last weekend), and then I wound up traveling for a multi-day bachelorette party (why this puzzle is late). I am, in fact, still traveling (driving back to Boston) and therefore very tired, but I should be home tomorrow, so that should get us back on track.

Anyways, for those of you who aren't here for my life updates, have a puzzle! This one's a themeless where IMO the vibes are 10% "hot girl summer" and 90% "I must be the hottest they/them at the bachelorette party." I also was completely exhausted during most of the cluing of this puzzle (due to the aforementioned travel), so the "no test solvers" vibe may be a little rougher than usual, but I like the grid a lot and think this should be fun!

Crosshare

Absolute Destiny Apocalypse (Summer Puzzle 6)

 A fun thing about posting a puzzle every week this summer is that this blog becomes a little bit of a record of my (not very eventful, tbh) summer. Anyways, at the end of May, I went on a little trip to Acadia National Park (which was lovely) and then sprained my ankle while hiking (which was not so lovely). This meant that I basically spent the first week of June sitting on my couch watching TV, and in particular, I spent a fair bit of time watching a certain anime, which inspired this puzzle!

Anyways, if you are familiar with the subject of this puzzle, please know that I have about 5 episodes left, I am having a GREAT time, and I have gone in spoiler-free and very much do not want to be spoiled. Also my description of it in this puzzle probably doesn't do it justice but I had to fit it into a parseable crossword clue.

Anyways, hope everyone who's been solving is having a good summer! Happy Pride! See you all again next week!

(Also, side note, unless I hear from someone that they really want the separate puz files, I'm going to start just linking the Crosshare for now! I started uploading separate puz files, because it played nicer with the Daily Crossword Links bot several years ago, but I think that's been resolved, and anyone else can download a puz directly from the Crosshare applet if you want to solve elsewhere.)

Direct Link

Take a Deep Breath (Summer Puzzle 5, with Norah Sharpe)

It's week 5, and the summer puzzles are still going strong! Today, we have another collab with friend of the blog Norah Sharpe! This puzzle was inspired by last week's Scripps National Spelling Bee, and for those of you who don't know the deep A Crossword Rose lore, I am a former spelling bee finalist! These day, I'm just a big spelling bee fan (...unless Scripps wants to hire me), but for the past few years, I've watched the bee with my friends in the Crossweird Discord server. This means that this is not my first bee-themed puzzle, and it's not even my first bee-themed collab with Norah, but I'm always happy to make another one!

Norah says:

"Watching the spelling bee with Rose has become a bit of a tradition in recent years, as has making a post-bee crossword. When I immediately noticed the crossword-friendly fact of (redacted) I said, “do you wanna make a crossword?” Rose of course said yes."

Unrelated to this puzzle, if you want more Rose crossword content, I have a collab with ACPT superstar and friend of the blog Dan Schwartz on his blog.

Puz | Crosshare

Themeless: Holy Malört (Summer Puzzle 3, with Norah Sharpe)

 It's a long weekend, so technically I am still keeping to my one puzzle per weekend schedule! I am also pleased to present the first collab of my summer puzzle project, with none other than Norah Sharpe. I'm always happy to collab with Norah, so I was delighted when she came to me with this grid. We clued it on the tough side--I expect this to play like a Boswords stormy.

Norah says:

“Four years or so ago I committed to a big blog project of my own and Rose was one of many people who stepped up to help me make it happen so donating this grid to this blog is a long overdue reciprocation. I seeded this grid with 13-A in Rose’s honor. Enjoy!”

Thanks to Will for test solving. (I'll probably be back to my test solver-less ways soon, but given the difficulty, it was really good to get another set of eyes on this one!)

Puz | Crosshare

Themeless: Best of the Year (Summer Puzzle 2)

 As I mentioned last week, I'm trying to post a puzzle every week this summer! Here's the second one. This one's a themeless. I seeded it initially with 12A (which I'm participating in this year!) and secondarily 24D, which I think are a fun pair for a themeless. To make it, I did what all good constructors do: spent several days failing to come up with a good grid, gave up, and then stole and slightly modified a Robyn Weintraub grid that filled beautifully. I also found cluing in a few days really difficult, and I think I leaned heavier on trivia clues than usual, but the puzzle is done, and I think it is still solvable!

Puz | Crosshare

After Midnight (Summer Puzzle 1)

So those of you paying attention probably noticed that I didn't really make any crossword puzzles (here or anywhere else) in the past year. Those of you paying closer attention probably noticed I vaguely alluded to new puzzles coming. The backstory behind this all is that last August, I both moved to Boston and started a new job, which left me with relatively little time and energy for puzzle making. But, as is the way with academic jobs, I have minimal work commitments during the summer, so now is the time for me to get back into making puzzles. And the best way to get back into making puzzles is surely just to... make a bunch of puzzles.

So here's the plan: every weekend between now and Labor Day, I will post one new full-sized puzzle to this blog. That's it, that's the plan. I realize this is not a crazy large number of puzzles, but since I've spent literal years making some puzzles, I really want to see what I can do in one week! This plan does of course come with caveats:

• I am going to try very hard to make this all full-sized puzzles (15x or similar), but otherwise I'm putting no restrictions on what these are. I'm trying to see what I can do with a tight (for me) time limit, so these may trend towards simpler themes or themelesses.
• If I miss a week, we're all going to be cool and normal about it--I think I should have time to keep this schedule this summer, but this is not in fact a job, and I am traveling a bit this summer. Also, if hypothetically I like one of these puzzles enough to submit it to an actual publication, I may go ahead and submit it and skip out on the weekly blog puzzle if I don't have the energy to make a second puzzle this week. The flip side of this is that since I'm not counting older unclued grids/stuff currently submitted towards this project, you may get two puzzles a week if one of those puzzles is bloggable this summer!
• This is very much a "throw spaghetti at the wall" situation and also very much a "no test solvers, we die like men" situation. Come along for the ride.
• I would absolutely love to do the occasional collab here, if anyone wants to do a puzzle with a one week time limit!

Okay, now that I've talked too much, onto the first puzzle! Is this the last puzzle that will be themed around a Chappell Roan song? Probably not!

Puz | Crosshare

You Would Have Done The Same (contest puzzle, with Alex Boisvert)

Today I have a puzzle for you. This puzzle is two very exciting things: a meta crossword and a collab with the wonderful Alex Boisvert of Crossword Nexus! I always love working with Alex, and I love that he brought me this theme. As for the meta side of things, this is in fact a contest puzzle! You can submit your meta answer on Crosshare (so no puz file this time), and if you put in your email with the answer, that should enter you into the contest. (Please let me know if there are technical issues here, I haven't done this before.)

For the long time followers of this blog, I know this is my first puzzle here in quite awhile--life got busy! As my semester winds down, I'm hoping to start posting here much more, so stay tuned!

Crosshare

Training Montage (with Amy Giacomucci)

Hello, friends! It's been a bit since I've posted a puzzle here (or... anywhere else), because in the past two months, I have both moved to Boston and started a new job, which has left me with very little crossword time. But even when I am not doing crossword stuff, the rest of the world is. In particular, the Midwest Crossword Tournament is happening this weekend in the beautiful city of Chicago, a city that is near and dear to my heart. I won't be there in person on account of not living in Chicago and having a busy job, but I will be playing along online, and I believe sign ups are still open for the online tournament.

In honor of the tournament, I figured this would be a good time to release a Chicago-themed puzzle. And to make this more legitimate, I enlisted the help of my friend and current Chicago resident Amy! We started with a pretty straightforward theme, but as is the way when Amy and I make a blog puzzle, we got a little silly with it, especially on the cluing end. I've tried to check everything for standard crossword grammar stuff, but this puzzle is very much a "no test solvers, we die like men" situation, so please let me know if you spot any obvious typos or such.

Amy would like to add that she really liked when I rejected a clue of hers (that will NOT be appearing in this puzzle) because the wording "felt bad on a visceral level" and that she's actually only middle of the road when it comes to spice tolerance.

Puz and Crosshare are linked below, but as a heads up, there is one clue with an emoji that is broken in the puz file. The clue (and puzzle) should still be completely solvable with the emoji missing, but the puzzle will lose some (or, in this case, exactly one) character.

Puz | Crosshare

Anime-niacs (with Amy Giacomucci)

 What's up, Internet? I am absolutely delighted to share a puzzle I made with my friend Amy. This is her first ever puzzle, and she is imo already very good at making them. This theme came about when we were complaining that trivia games ask too much about The Simpsons and not enough about anime. We started with a more general pun theme but then narrowed in on a few themers that fit a specific pattern (some of which were GREAT but sadly did not make it into the puzzle for length reasons). As for the rest of the puzzle, we did the grid together, but Amy wrote the majority of the clues, so if you like them, tell her to make more puzzles! Also tell her songs where the singer is so obsessed with someone that it just sounds gay. (She's making a playlist.)

Amy says:

"Hello visitors of Rose’s crossword blog! Did you know that it’s fun to solve and create crossword puzzles? Has anyone heard about this?

I had a blast making this puzzle with Rose, and I hope it comes through. I got to engage with new ways to frame familiar concepts, bend over backwards to rearrange the grid to include the too-on-the-nose-to-not-use answers, and get hit with aha! moments for clues at work/the grocery store - it was like I was constantly thinking, okay, I had this epiphany, so now let’s make the epiphany viable for the general conventions of the humble crossword. Rose helped me indulge my beginners’ whims in many of the clues, including letting me use a character from a Nintendo DS game that you can only buy on iOS/apps at this time in a clue, and then making that clue solvable for people who don’t have my specific interests. It’s a real skill to indulge silliness without sacrificing practicality, imo. Try something new with your friends! And for real, feel empowered to add to the playlist. Please."

Many thanks to evieshmeeps and akatookey for test solving!

Puz | Crosshare

Epic Highs and Lows

 Oh look, it's another blog puzzle! I know I have not been making a ton of puzzles in the past few months due to life stuff, but I made this one to ease back into things, and I'm hoping to keep the momentum going. As for this puzzle, it's just a meme-y puzzle I made that wound up with a surprising number of math-related clues (not sure how that happened), and I hope you enjoy solving it.

Crosshare | Puz

Get With the Program

 Can you believe it's been over three months since my last puzzle here? Honestly, I can, because I've been very busy and will continue to be very busy for awhile, but I'm here today with a new puzzle, hot off the rejection pile. This is a theme that's definitely been done before, and this is a pretty straightforward puzzle, but I quite like this theme set, and I hope you do too.

As for other crossword things, I've had a few puzzles come out in the past three months like my first AVCX Classic with Shannon Rapp and this midi for Gin & Grapefruit. It's entirely possible I've had other puzzles and forgotten about them, but those two are definitely good, and you should go solve them.

Puz file | Direct link

Do You Like Scary Movies? (with Norah Sharpe)

Happy spooky season everyone! Today, I have a seasonally appropriate collaboration with friend of the blog and frequent collaborator Norah Sharpe. Norah had the idea for this one last winter, and we agreed that October would be the perfect time to post this.

In other puzzle news, yesterday Puzzmo (a site offering a digital puzzle page) opened to the public, and they'll be running a midi crossword everyday: a mix of Lil AVC X reruns and (starting in a week and a half) brand new puzzles edited by the Lil team. As you all probably know, I've been a part of the Lil team for the past year, so I'm very excited for you all to check out all the new puzzles we have for you! One of my own Lil AVC X puzzles will also be running on Puzzmo in the next few weeks, so if you're not an AVCX subscriber, this is a chance for you to solve a new Rose puzzle! And for those of you who are AVCX subscribers, keep your eye on your inbox over the next few weeks...

From Norah:

"Happy spooky season! It's always a pleasure to share a byline with Rose and I hope you find this timely offering fun and breezy, just like fall should be. If you like this puzzle, you might also like the one I wrote with Will Eisenberg for Fill Me In. It's a contest puzzle open to October 29 - solve and enter here: https://bemoresmarter.libsyn.com/fill-me-in-413-irreversible-binomials"

Puz | Crosshare