ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
Spent the entire weekend cluing puzzles. I don’t recommend that to anybody as I think my brain has turned into mush. Yikes.
But can I get an “amen” for Google? We’ve already covered that I worship at the altar of Google, but seriously, that website’s made cluing a helluvalot easier. (Two other no-brainers are Wikipedia and OneLook.) It’s astonishing! I can’t even imagine how puzzles were clued before it. Oh, wait, I can. I used to make puzzles before Google. And let me tell you: it sucked, and therefore my cluing sucked. I was only as good as my rudimentary library, which meant my puzzles were rudimentary.
That reminds me, I meant to mention this in my post about the M.I.T. Hunt from last week. There was a pretty impressive amount of puzzles in that batch that simply couldn’t be solved from straightforward googling. Two examples are here and here. Wow. From a puzzlemaking standpoint, that’s a pretty astonishing feat. I guess I could start applying that ungoogleable approach to my puzzlemaking. Expect clues like {What number am I thinking of right now?}, {Has anybody seen my keys?} and {What’s the problem with kids nowadays?} in the future.
BTW, feel free to search if you need to. Remember: puzzles are meant to be solved.
Finally, if you liked the puzzles this month, and/or you were thinking about hitting up the tip jar this month, I am requesting that you please give that donation to help those in Haiti instead. Thank you.
Share the puzzle. New one on Wednesday.
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