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

Four Cups

 Chag sameach! If you're reading this within a few hours of when I'm posting it, I am currently at my family's seder (or doing the mountain of dishes produced by my family's seder). Passover is one of the biggest holidays in my family, and since this is the first Passover since I started constructing, I had to make a puzzle for it. This also means that I had the brilliant idea to make my first oversized puzzle in about a day while traveling home for Passover. That said, I'm pretty happy with how this turned out, and given that most of this was clued while waiting out a flight delay, hopefully you'll forgive (or even appreciate?) the two Crazy Ex-Girlfriend clues.

Puz file | Direct link

It's All Falling Apart!

 

Yes, this sock I made did require 16 different strands of yarn

Welcome back to A Crossword Rose, where I have something special today--my first ever NYT submission, which, as is so often the case, became my first ever NYT rejection. I shopped it around a little bit and got some really great feedback from editors, but it's been long enough that I think it's time to post this one.

I made this puzzle last August, based on a theme I had over a year ago (before I even started constructing) when I was knitting a ton of socks (see photo). I've updated and livened up a small handful of clues, but otherwise, this is pretty much what I sent in then, so the clues probably are much closer to a mainstream style than this blog's normal absolute nonsense quality content. You may also notice that this grid was made before I learned to make a grid with an "appropriate" number of black squares or 3-letter entries, but honestly, I love the fill enough that I don't think that matters.

Puz file | Direct Crosshare Link

Magical Realism

And welcome back to something that, despite today's date, is much more conventional than my post from a few days ago! In fact, this one is conventional enough that it was the first theme idea I ever tried to make--by which I mean I spent about 15 minutes in February 2020 fumbling around with the trial version of Crossfire and a much worse version of this theme before I decided that this whole construction thing was just too hard. Two years later, I present you with what I hope is an actually fun version of the puzzle--it's lightly themed and hopefully not too tricky but still with plenty of my own personality in the clues. (You all know your Rent lyrics, right?)

Anyways, the real reason I'm posting this puzzle now is that I'm headed out to ACPT in a few hours! For those of you reading this before ACPT who will be attending, come say hi! I promise not to be too awkward. (Note: I may or may not be able to keep this promise.) And if any of you found this blog because you were introduced to it/indie puzzles in general at ACPT, welcome! I think this puzzle is a pretty good encapsulation of what I try to do here, so if you like it, please check out the rest of this blog or my "other puzzles" page, which has links to my published puzzles and some absolutely top notch off-blog collabs.

Thanks to Kelsey for test solving!

Direct Crosshare link | Puz file

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

Does It Quack?

Today's puzzle is a themeless 13x. Why 13x? Because I found two seeds that played well together, and they were both 13 letters long, and I did not want to try to fit a 15x grid around them. Other than that, not a whole lot to say about this one.

In broader news, I recently did a collab with Norah Sharpe on bewilderingly. As is so often the case with my collabs, it is probably much better than the puzzle in this post, and you should definitely do it if you haven't already! (And in all seriousness, I really loved building that puzzle--one of the most interesting things I've done as a constructor thus far.) Beyond that, keep your eyes peeled--I may have another puzzle dropping in the not too distant future.

Puz file | Direct Crosshare link