Puzzle #22: If I Could Turn Back Time I thought of doing something with this title a while ago, but my initial idea was to take titles with a month in them and shift it back one month, so BORNONTHEFOURTHOFJULY would ... Read More

Puzzle #21: State Your Business This puzzle was inspired by a recent NYT offering by Paula Gamache, but I tried to tighten things up by giving my abbreviations more cohesion (in this case, two-letter postal abbrs.) and putting the removed letters ... Read More

Puzzle #20: Musical Comedy This puzzle grew out of my love for musical theatre, which is still a big part of my non-puzzle life. It was fun to come up with theme answers, and I tried to balance the male/female ratio, ... Read More

Puzzle #19: Grow Up The early spring we're having got me thinking about things that AGE or grow, so this is an example of a crossword staple: the add-some-letters theme. I tried to find examples in which the word changes the ... Read More

Puzzle #18: Alliterature This theme came out of a private crossword lesson, which I used to illustrate how a theme comes together. First, I looked at a giant list of famous books, culling those with an alliterative property. Luckily, there were ... Read More

Puzzle #17: Famous Last Words I thought of this theme a few weeks ago, but my wife wisely suggested I hold it until President's Day, so here we are. The word HOME is repeated, but hopefully that didn't diminish your enjoyment. ... Read More

Puzzle #16: For Fudd's Sake This puzzle's theme answers feature an R->W substitution, the speech impediment shared by Elmer Fudd and myself as a kid. It's a bad one to have when your name's Patrick, believe me! Luckily, I had a ... Read More

Puzzle #15: Agitate, Agitate, Agitate! This puzzle commemorates Black History Month and was inspired by the recent newsworthy mentions of the late, great Frederick Douglass. The title also refers to a quote by Douglass, which was his reply to a ... Read More

Puzzle #14: March Women This puzzle was inspired by the Women's March, which took place all over the world on January 21, 2017. March is the surname of the 4 main characters in "Little Women," so it seemed an apt way ... Read More

Puzzle #13: Continental Divide This puzzle was inspired by Joe Krozel's NYT puz from 1/12/17, which had a line of black squares cutting the grid in half as well as 3 answers "hopping" over the divide. I wanted to do something ... Read More