You may notice that this puzzle is harder than many we’ve published lately. (My primary tester threatened me with death 4 times, which has to be counted as a success.) Part of that is simply inspiration during the clue-writing process — once you’ve found a brilliantly sadistic clue it’s hard to pass it up — but part of it is because the grid itself was a particularly ambitious construction process. You see, in addition to the obvious themes — four long answers and one explanatory item — there are also three extra hidden items related to this week’s theme. It’s not necessary to go looking for them to enjoy the puzzle, but feel free to enjoy the extra scavenger hunt if you want a bit of extra challenge.

Title: Vegas Odds
Difficulty: Friday
Download: Across Lite or printable PNG (w/ solution)

This puzzle goes out to all the misunderstood night creatures waiting impatiently for Halloween. We know it’s not easy being a ghost, ghoul, vampire, werewolf, or other monster-American minority, but remember — you got your special day long before the secretaries, left-handers, and pirates got theirs. So don’t be afraid to go out and shine (or skulk, howl, or manifest, if that’s more comfortable for your particular ethnicity).

Title: What Kind of Monster….
Difficulty: Thursday
Download: Across Lite or printable PNG (w/ solution)

As I’ve noted before, the really difficult part of creating a good puzzle is coming up with a decent theme. Cluing requires time and a twisted mind. Building and filling the grid requires good software and persistence. A good theme requires remembering what you’ve done in the previous puzzle and what others have done in various syndicated publications in hopes of not repeating an old stand-by; coming up with something which is clever, enjoyable, and can be fit into the rather rigid constrains of a standard grid style; and making sure that it doesn’t result in a puzzle that is too hard or too easy for the target audience. In this case, you can thank -M- for listening to my original theme idea, pointing out that it was pretty lame, and suggesting a workable alternative. (Better yet, all this happened before I built the grid, so that I didn’t have to rip it all out and start anew.)

Title: Adam and Eve
Difficulty: Thursday
Download: Across Lite or printable PNG (w/ solution)

Sometimes puzzles take on a life of their own. I knew the title of this one for the last week, but assumed that it meant something completely different. When I started fleshing out the theme, it fought back and insisted on adopting the form you see now. Don’t get me wrong: it’s a better theme than I expected — it just came as a surprise to me.

Title: Shifty Characters
Difficulty: Wednesday
Download: Across Lite or printable PNG (w/ solution)

Crossword connoisseurs may notice that this grid is rather oddly shaped. That’s because the theme entries are a combination of lengths that no sane constructor would put into a puzzle. Luckily, sanity is not a requirement for this particular vocation, so we applied a shoehorn and some grease, sat on the words to compress them a bit, and finally got them all into the grid. The result, oddly enough, makes for a somewhat easier puzzle than usual because the important entries couldn’t be squeezed in without dividing up the rest of the squares to make shorter-than-normal entries. Don’t let that discourage you, though. We’ve still got a pretty lively fill, with some uncommon words and phrases, some annoyingly misleading clues, and a bit of general sadism thrown in for the fun of it. Happy solving!

Title: Contract Negotiations
Difficulty: Wednesday
Download: Across Lite or printable PNG (w/ solution)

Sad to say, I have nothing to say about this puzzle.

Title: Sad to Say
Difficulty: Wednesday
Download: Across Lite or printable PNG (w/ solution)

Ahoy, mateys. In case ye be forgettin’, September 19th be International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Like always, we beekeepers bee celebratin’ with the rest of the scurvy crew, by givin’ ye a special pirate themed crossword puzzle. Now, if ye be sailin’ in from foreign ports, ye should take heed — this be no lily-livered classroom puzzle. This be a fearsome barrage of crossed words such as ye’d find in yer favorite newspaper, if’n ye weren’t using it to line yer parrot’s cage. So take a plunge in to the sea of piratical puzzling and see if ye have what it takes to swim with the sharks.

If ye be hankering to sample our other forays into these treacherous waters, chart yer course to “Talk Like a Pirate” and “The Pirate’s Revenge”.

Title: A View to a Keel: The Pirate Puzzle, Episode III
Difficulty: Wednesday
Download: Across Lite or printable PNG (w/ solution)

Occasionally people ask how long it takes to make one of these puzzles, and I’m never quite sure because I build them gradually over the course of several days. This time around, I went ahead and timed myself. The rough numbers are as follows:

• Generate theme concept: 3 days (not full time)
• Turn theme concept into a set of theme phrases: 30 minutes
• Generate grid and fill around those theme phrases: 1 hour
• Write clues: 4 hours

Total: 5 1/2 hours plus a few days thinking about theme possibilities. I could have grabbed a ready-made grid from a library somewhere and used any one of several programs to automatically fill it in half a second, but the results would reflect the lack of human effort and judgment. I could also churn out clues in 5 minutes by using a library of canned clues, or 1 hour by simply being less creative, but much of the art of a good puzzle is keeping the clues fresh and original. (Opinions may vary on how well I succeed at this.) Some puzzles definitely take longer: I always allow at least 8 hours just in case. And, of course, a really complicated theme can get arbitrarily difficult to develop and/or fill.

Title: The Good Earth
Difficulty: Wednesday
Download: Across Lite or printable PNG (w/ solution)

This puzzle proved to be rather more difficult to finish than I expected. You see, most crossword constructors maintain large lists of potential fill words that they’ve gleaned from all over, often prioritized by quality and “liveliness”. And, inevitably, some words creep in that aren’t actually words at all. This is typically no problem — since you are carefully choosing which words to put in the grid, you just notice that bad word in your list and get rid of it. What you don’t want to do is discover this dud after you’ve already written clues for 3/4 of the puzzle. In extreme cases, you can sometimes fudge it (i.e. “flys” isn’t a normal word, but there is a band called “The Flys”). However, the right thing to do is to laboriously rip out 2…7…15 words — however many are required — and replace them with alternates that actually produce a proper valid fill. You then quietly weep over all of the lovely clues you crafted for all of the lovely words that are no longer in the puzzle.

So it goes….

Title: Craving Chicken
Difficulty: Thursday
Download: Across Lite or printable PNG (w/ solution)

When you are trying to come up with themes on a regular basis, you’ll take your ideas anywhere that you can get them. This one was very straightforward. I spotted a much-repeated topical phrase in the news which was exactly 15 letters long. Perfect! All I needed was three more phrases that were somehow similar, 68 other interesting words and 36 black squares to fill in the rest of the white space in the grid, and I was set. Really, once you have the first 15 letters, it’s all clean sailing from there. Well, in actually, the two of similar phrases ended up being thirteen letters long, which meant that the black squares didn’t fall into place as neatly as they should; the third similar phrase started playing hide-and-seek for a while; and then all the other words started getting uppity — so it was more like clear sailing through a piranha infested swamp. But still, in principle it was all nice and easy. And principles are important.

Title: All of the Above
Difficulty: Thursday
Download: Across Lite or printable PNG (w/ solution)