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

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

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

Imagine the Pastabilities (Summer Puzzle 7, with Dob Olino)

 New collab this week, and it's with Dob Olino of Crossweird fame! Dob's a great friend, and we've been meaning to do a second collab for awhile, so I'm glad we finally were able to put something together for this blog project! Fair warning, we got pretty silly with it, so expect this to be a bit goofier than some of the other summer puzzles, but I think it's pretty fun! Also thanks to the answer to 72-Down for their special guest clue on 72-Down.

Dob says:

"I've been enjoying Rose's Summer Puzzles a lot, which Momes and I have been solving on our Crossweird Twitch channel (definitely the last shameless plug). I am always genuinely honored when Rose wants to collab with me, which we did once before on a genuinely really good blog puzzle. When I thought of this silly idea, I immediately knew Rose would be into it and all the themers came together almost immediately. It's super dumb in the most super fun way and I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for solving!"

In other A Crossword Rose news, for those of you who read last week's blog post/did last week's puzzle, please know that I finished watching the show, and now my soul has been shattered, life changed, etc. So take this as a strong endorsement to solve that puzzle and then watch the show (or just talk to me about it if you have watched it). The other Rose news is that I'll be traveling next weekend for Pride--going to try to get a puzzle up before then, but there's a small chance I'll be taking a week off.

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

Making Things Up (Summer Puzzle 4)

 I'm back with a hopefully relatively easy one this week. This puzzle has one of those themes that you may or may not be able to see depending on your background, which I think make for fun blog puzzles but are a little too niche to play anywhere else. Could I have come up with a version of this that has more than 3 themers? Probably, but I was traveling this week, and I struggle a lot with mirror symmetry as is, so I figured I'd keep this one simple.

Crosshare | Puz

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

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

What's Your Type?

 So I have a confession to make: I haven't really made any crosswords in the last 3 months or so. It turns out that the combination of moving to a brand new city, starting a brand new job, and trying to find hobbies that will actually let me meet people pretty much leaves me with no time or creative energy, so you probably won't see my byline many places in the near future. I hope to be back at it at some point in the nebulous future, but until life settles a bit, I'm on a bit of a construction break.

(That said, if you like seeing my byline on things, I have one of my Puzzmo puzzles from this past summer running in an actual physical book! How cool is that!)

Anyways, what I always have is puzzles I made a bit ago and never clued. Today's puzzle is a midi I made over the summer. I was on a road trip when I came up with this theme. I thought of the first two themers almost instantly and then went through every other possible combination (with my friend in the driver's seat listening to all of them). This did not result in many possible themers (which means this is a tight theme set!), but it did result in a lot of things that sounded like drug names or obscure music genres.

This was test solved by Amy, who is an expert on the theme of this puzzle. Go do my Chicago-themed collab with her if you haven't done it yet!

Puz | 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

Mini 4 (hurry up, it's time for slumber)

Yum, bubble wrap!

Happy summer! It's been a crazy one over here: been traveling a ton, somehow won a trophy at Westwords, and now frantically apartment hunting before school starts. (If anyone knows anything useful about Boston, hit me up.) As for this puzzle, it's just a 7x mini, based on an "apt pair" theme that I thought was cute. (Honestly, I love these types of minithemes, I just have trouble coming up with them!)

As for other crossword stuff, I had last Monday's Puzzmo (so go do it if you're a subscriber and haven't yet!), and last month, I had a fun collab with Will Eisenberg on his blog. Other than that, not much going on with me crossword-wise. I'd love to have more puzzles here, but my life never does seem to calm down.

Thank you to my friend Amy for test solving and also for the very good title! No puz file this time because there's one (1) emoji in the clues, but you should be able to download a puz directly from the Crosshare applet.

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

Sort It Out

I'm back today with a themed puzzle. Sometimes you come up with a theme idea that you really like and then realize that it will not make sense to the general public, and this is definitely one of those themes. If you've studied computer science, I think you'll love it. If not, the theme might not make sense, but the puzzle should be fun anyways.

For a bit of a look behind the curtain, this is one of the only puzzles I've made quickly--I sat down, spent some time gridding, and then wrote all the clues more or less in order. (This is definitely the only time I've done that last part; my cluing is usually a slow and chaotic process.) I did this partly because even though I've been editing for Lil AVC X and doing other crossword-y stuff, I really haven't been constructing all that much lately, since I've been busy with work (and with the much less necessary but very fun Baldur's Gate 3) and also facing a little bit of creative block. I figured just sitting down and Making A Puzzle that I could immediately share with the world would be a good way to shake myself out of it, and while time will tell if that's the case, at the very least, I have Made A Puzzle.

Puz file | 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

Beta Versions (midi)

 Hi, it's been a bit! I've been busy in the meantime, and I've had two mainstream puzzles out in the past month--the May 4 Universal and the May 28 LAT, both collabs with Shannon Rapp. The LAT (my first Sunday puzzle!) should still be available when I'm writing this, so go check it out! I've also been busy with non-crossword stuff, including officially graduating from grad school, so you can all call me Dr. A Crossword Rose now.

As for this puzzle, I wanted to celebrate one of my favorite times of the year. (Not Pride, surprisingly enough, though happy Pride, and I may or may not wind up with enough inspiration for a Pride puzzle later this month.) It's a 9x9, which I've called mini here in the past, but the crossword community at large seems to have mostly decided that 9x9s are midis, so I'll be sticking with that label in the future. This puzzle also has a few 2-letter words, and I'm sad to say there isn't a particular inspired reason for that, but it allowed me to get much cleaner fill than I otherwise could in a 9x9 with three themers. Also the puzzle developed a Disney's "Descendants" minitheme. That one I can't explain or excuse.

Crosshare | Puz

Season's Greetings

 I had the pleasure this year of helping run Crosscord's first secret snowflake holiday gift exchange! We had just over 30 participants, ranging from new constructors to some of the best in the biz. (We even got Et Tu Etui!) Overall, the exchange, was a huge success, and people made some really fantastic puzzles.

While I definitely didn't make one of the most impressive puzzles of the exchange, I've decided to share the puzzle I made for RandomSaucepan, who suggested he'd appreciate references to a certain TV show. I think the puzzle is fun and fairly easy, so I hope you give it a try and enjoy!

Puz | Crosshare