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

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

More Iconic Than The Bean (midi, with Emma Sloan)

 Yes, it's another crossword! From me! Not even that long after the last one! Hoping to have some full sized puzzles up here soon too, but today I have a midi puzzle that I made with my sister. (This is the first puzzle she's made!) We got the idea for this puzzle last winter after doing another puzzle about local news that we didn't like very much. We then spent nearly 6 months failing to clue this puzzle, because she had to have the true A Crossword Rose constructing experience.

Title comes from this (spoiler-y) Tweet.

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

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

Band Mates (with Dan Schwartz)

 Today's puzzle is a 21x that I made in collaboration with Dan Schwartz. You might know Dan from some of our earlier collaborations (like this one), from his own very good blog, from his Twitch stream, or from his incredible performances at crossword tournaments. Dan sent me the idea for this theme about a year ago, and we spent awhile going back and forth coming up with a set of themers and turning it into a 21x grid (not the easiest to fill!). I think the theme is great and the final puzzle also turned out pretty great, so please enjoy!

Crosshare | Puz

A.I. (with Alex Boisvert)

 Welcome back to A Crossword Rose, where this week's puzzle's cluing style is... a little different. Yes, that's right, Alex and I used some code he wrote for Tabula Rasa and some code I wrote in college top of the line AI to clue a crossword. I'm sure all the resulting clues are totally normal clues with no factual or grammatical errors.

In all seriousness, the answer to "can an AI given a clue database clue a crossword?" is, at this point, yes. While there's still plenty of debate to be had about how good current language models are, crossword clues are short enough (and the number of reasonable ways to clue most entries is small enough) that it's absolutely possible to train an AI to write clues. In fact, the very simple model I started with here (a bigram model with some extra code to prevent it from simply copying long clues from the database) mostly produced fairly coherent reasonable clues. Of course, an AI can't really find new angles or word things in particularly creative ways, so many of the clues were short and/or uninspired, but they were perfectly serviceable clues.

The model that produced the clues you'll see today is not that "perfectly serviceable" bigram model--or at least not exactly, since I've added some extra code to encourage longer clues and inject some extra randomness. I think the resulting clues are fun, though some are certainly more coherent than others! With the exception of the theme answers, 100% of the clues were written by our AI, and we used the AI's first output for almost all of them (though we had to regenerate two clues to avoid tricky crossings). Let me know what your favorite AI clues are--I think 31A is great, though I also love the world that 32D imagines.

Thanks to Norah for test solving!

iPuz | direct link

It's a Wild World (with Dan Schwartz)

 Today I have a collaboration with friend of the blog/excellent cryptic solver/amazing cat owner Dan Schwartz! We collaborated months ago on another puzzle that is very good and fun (in my totally unbiased opinion), and I hope you find this one very good and fun too! (And while you're at it, check out Dan's blog for more excellent puzzles.)

Dan came to me last spring and asked if we could use one this puzzle's themers somewhere. I spotted a theme it could belong to, and the rest of the puzzle came together from there. We initially tried to target this one for mainstream publication, so the clues may be a little less unhinged than usual (though still full of our personalities and interests). After a few rejections, we've decided it fits better as a blog puzzle, particularly since the themer that inspired the whole puzzle might be better known to blog audiences than newspaper audiences.

From Dan: "I had never seen 20-Across in a crossword before, and asked Rose if we could make a puzzle around it. She came up with this theme for it because, again, Rose is an incredible genius. I hope you enjoy this puzzle, we certainly enjoyed making it!"

Puz | Crosshare

Pleasant Company (with Shannon Rapp)

 Today I'm very excited to be posting a collab with my friend and frequent collaborator Shannon Rapp, who you might also know as Norah Sharpe, her alter ego on her blog Norah's Puzzles (a very good blog with very good puzzles). You may also know her from her work on Daily Crossword Links (which you should definitely be subscribed to), from her puzzles at Lil AVCX, or from one of our many previous collabs. The theme of this puzzle is very nostalgic for both of us, and I was super excited when we realized we could make a theme out of it! We made this puzzle a few months ago (so, no, I wasn't lying in my last post when I said I'm super busy in the near future), and I'm very happy to be sharing it now.

From Shannon:

"Hi friends! For me, this puzzle brings back memories (circa 1991) of sprawling out on the floor surrounded by catalogs and books, trying to imagine life in simpler, or at least different, times. I hope you enjoy it!

I think it's important to talk about rejections, and hopefully it's instructive for the construction-curious to hear a little of the backstory. We started making this puzzle in April. It got two rejections before we decided to post it today. It's a fun puzzle! And we think it's pretty good, but good and fun puzzles get rejected all the time for all sorts of reasons. And for this one, it was simply about the type of theme. I'll let you see what that means for yourself, no spoilers! 

In happier news, Rose and I have a joint scheduled to run in late September, so watch your inboxes and your Daily Crossword Links!"

Puz | Crosshare

E•MO•TION: Side B (with carly they themsen)

 O HELL YA

You ever find a perfect set of spanners for a puzzle? Well, not to brag, but Carly and I might just have done that. This puzzle is a bit of a spiritual successor (a B-side, even) to Carly and Kate's puzzle run away with me, and since I am all for the "put Carly Rae Jepsen songs in crosswords" movement, I was delighted to team up with Carly for this collab! The result is a super fun semi-themeless puzzle full of good music and chaotic energy.

I'll let Carly say the rest:

"hiiiiiiiiiiii thanks for clicking on this puzzle!

rose was so nice to invite me to work on this, and she edited a lot of my weirder clues to make them more palatable without breaking their spirit. thanks rose! [: 

 fun act about this puzzle, the spanners actually filled out like that on accident, they weren't seeded

just kidding! haha i pranked u xD 

enjoy!"

Puz file | Direct Crosshare link

Keep It Up! (with Dan Schwartz)

Today I'm very excited to post a collab with ACPT star, Twitch cryptic solver, and adorable cat owner Dan Schwartz. You may know him from his Twitch channel danandbabka, where he solves puzzles with his cat Babka. After seeing his Tabula Rasa clues and meeting him at ACPT, I knew I had to make a puzzle with Dan, and this experience did not disappoint! He came up with both of our 15s in the theme, and I think there's a ton of good stuff from both of us in this puzzle. (And a secret shout out to this Robyn Weintraub puzzle from 2014, which we more or less stole the grid shape from after a great deal of struggling to find a grid that worked.)

From Dan:

"I met Rose at ACPT and she said she'd like to collaborate on a puzzle if I had any ideas. I sent her something extremely dumb and she turned it into something great because Rose is a genius.  This puzzle was really fun to make and I  hope everyone enjoys it! Thank you again to Rose!!"

On a logistical note, if you can use the Crosshare applet (or print/download from the applet) instead of using the puz file, please do--we're including the puz for the sake of the bots, but we had to change a few clues that puz couldn't support. And thanks to Kate for test solving! Her blog just hit its one year anniversary, so if you inexplicably haven't done her puzzles, 1. how are you even here, and 2. please do them immediately.

Puz file | Direct Crosshare link

Tabula Rasa (Rose's Version)

 Hi all! I'm back with something a little different today! Recently, meatdaddy spearheaded a project where they built a crossword grid and invited everyone to clue it in their own voice. I love writing dumb voice-y clues, so obviously I to get in on the project. You can find the whole puzzle pack here (and I highly recommend checking out what everyone else did), but here's my version.

From meat:

"One of my favorite things about crossword puzzles is seeing the many ways that different constructors will clue a single word - for just a moment, you get to peer inside the mind of someone else and at the expense of sounding cheesy, it's a lovely, intimate moment. Not only that, but I also frequently find myself thinking "man, I wish I would have thought of that cluing angle!" and it's a testament to the diverse skill sets and talent in our lil' community. The main goal of Tabula Rasa was to pick everyone's brains by sending them a silly grid with fun fill and words with a handful of different cluing angles. I also wanted to get new constructors involved - building your own grid for the first time is not only intimidating, but can also be cost prohibitive during *gestures at world events*. I wanted this to be an approachable opportunity for new constructors to get their foot in the door, and I'm very pleased to say that I think it was successful in that. Ultimately, at the end of the day, I just hope everyone had a lot of fun doing this and I'm really grateful for everyone's enthusiasm about the project!"

All that being said, I do want to give a quick warning that if, somehow, you're encountering my take on this puzzle before seeing any of the rest, first of all, I very much appreciate you for reading my blog, and second, this has not been test solved. Looking back over the clues, I do think it's reasonably approachable, but expect a handful more references to things that only I like or just dumb silly clues than normal.

Anyways, that's all for now! I'm hoping to be back later this week with a more standard puzzle, and I'll definitely be at ACPT this weekend, so come say hi!

Direct Crosshare link | Puz for the bot

Where There Never Was A Puzzle (collab with Norah Sharpe)

Hey, remember that 15x themed puzzle I promised? It's here! And it's another collab with Very Good Crossword Person Norah Sharpe.

Stephen Sondheim was hugely influential in the theater world--and, it turns out, the cryptic crossword world (see Ben Zimmer's article). Therefore, it's no surprise this isn't the first tribute puzzle (see puzzles by Francis Heaney, Brian Cimmet, No-Feet McGee, and Andrew Ries), but as a musical geek and a proponent of the "holy shit! two cakes!" school of creativity, I had to have a go at it. The news of his death (and the realization that our revealer was 15 letters long) hit shortly before I had a long car ride and little to do but ponder theme ideas. That weekend, Norah mentioned listening to Sondheim while making the last of her NaCroWriMo puzzles (which you should 100% check out--I'm still impressed), and since our last collaboration went so well, we decided to work together on this one. Overall, we tried to make the puzzle a love letter to Sondheim and to musical theater in general. Enjoy!

From Norah:

Look we made a puzzle! Where there never was a puzzle! Rose and I started talking about this project just as I was wrapping up my NaCroWriMo series. (Yes, I might have just broken my promise not to touch crossfire on day one...) Because this puzzle was meant as a timely homage to someone whose work has touched so many, I'm so grateful to Rose for being patient with me while I got my groove back. I love Rose's fresh and fun take on cluing, and there's no one else I could have done this with. This is our second collab (see Eleven here), but definitely not our last!

Thanks to Will for providing valuable feedback when test solving that definitely made this a better puzzle.

Puz for the bots | Direct Crosshare link

Eleven (collab with Norah Sharpe)

Here's a new puzzle, and this time, it's a collab with Norah Sharpe, who is an excellent constructor and also probably one of the most supportive people on the crossword Internet. She's doing NaCroWriMo, a challenge where you try to construct one puzzle per day in November (which wow), which was a great impetus to finish up this collab. Kudos to Norah for finding an excellent grid spanner (and general grid set up) based on one of my dumb tweets, and I think the resulting puzzle is pretty great!

From Norah:

We're calling this "Eleven" because it's #11 in my NaCroWriMo series (see more here). Rose is another one of those folks that you know is gonna be great right from the jump. After I solved her demi with Brooke (on Ada's site here), I knew I wanted to collab. And the opportunity presented itself just a few days later by way of this totally-spoilery tweet, which as soon as I saw I sent Rose a message and said, "how about a 15x themeless banger?" because of course I did. I took a few runs at a grid until we found one we both liked enough, and this is it. I love Rose's fresh and fun cluing style, and I hope you have as much fun solving as we did making it. 💜

Puz file for our bot friends (and humans too) | Direct crosshare link