HOLD ON HOPE: [ ACROSS LITE][ PDF]
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Can I talk cryptics for a moment? For the dozens of you who are already on board, y’all know the U.S. market is basically non-existent. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Hardly anybody solves them, so hardly anybody makes them. And I think I speak for a lot of us cryptic heads here: with just a few hours of praying, three handfuls of fairy dust, and an unhealthy miasma of unicorn farts, maybe, just maybe, a whole new generation of cryptic addicts will suddenly just appear out of whole cloth. We will welcome them, because, hey, it’s a cult. And we need more of us. But let’s face it. This is just wishcasting. Until we have outlets of good quality and (crucially) accessible cryptics, they shall remain elusive to the average solver.
With that preamble, I would like to say that if y’all aren’t doing the bimonthly Aries cryptic, you’re missing out. With any luck, these are going to be the gateway drugs for cryptic-mania. They’re ably written by my man Andrew Ries. I know this guy. He’s okay. Tell him I sent you. So yeah, Andrew’s doing the Lord’s work, and now you should be doing his.
Share the puzzle. New one on Monday.
That link to Aries is either bad or this link has swamped them. When I click on it I get an error that ariespuzzles.com unexpectedly closed the connection. Anyone else having this issue?
I get a “Can’t connect securely to this page” error, which is fine by me when it comes to cryptics.
Yep. Same here (on link).
Just change https to http in the link and you’ll connect just fine.
Remove the “/2018/10/introducing-aries-cryptic.html” from the link leaving “www.ariespuzzles.com” and you should have no problem.
I think my favorite themed puzzles are the ones where I don’t get the theme until the last themed clue. Even 61A didn’t turn on the lightbulb until I figured out 51A. Nice puzzle!
A possible variation on SCRABBLE. Instead of tiles, you have 6-sided blocks. On each side of this block (similarly configured like a die), there’s a letter, black spot to represent the basic black box in a grid, empty space for any letter you choose, etc.? i Think i got some possible seed of an idea here but something’s bound to come up thru SERENDIPITY.
You can talk Cryptics but please do this in code.
Can you help a sister out?? I’ve finished and still don’t get it, duh … thanks. 🙂
The first word of each themed answer is bracketed by “AG”, the atomic symbol for silver.
Thank you …