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Are you aware that, in the course of a lifetime, the average American adult discards enough ones and zeros to fill seven virtual football stadiums?  It’s just one more way that technology is making our world into a dystopian hellscape.  I’m thinking of doing my part to reverse this trend by etching my crosswords in stone the old-fashioned way and delivering them by ox-drawn carts.  Subscription fees may rise, of course, but won’t it  be worth it?  What can equal  the sound, the smell,  the tactile thrill, of entering your answers in granite, with a chisel?

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181-Digital-Waste.puz

181-Digital-Waste.pdf

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181 Digital Waste

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I have already mentioned on this site that my crosswords promote human betterment by mentioning those things we ought to pursue (“good,” for example, has appeared in six of my puzzles) and those other things we ought to shun (“evil” has appeared in eight).

But lately I’ve been exploring the crossword form as a vehicle for soul-searching confessional autobiography. So this is the second puzzle based on U.S. States in which I have lived (see Crossword 128).  Like much autobiography, it’s designed not just to indulge the writer but to give a voice to others with similar life experiences—in this case, to solvers who have lived in one or more U.S. States.  They will, I’m sure, “relate,” and feel gratifyingly “validated” in consequence.

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179-Midwestern-State-Sponsored-Terror.puz

179-Midwestern-State-Sponsored-Terror.pdf

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Midwestern-State-Sponsored Terror

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This puzzle celebrates the versatility in English of the terminal “s”—which can indicated plurality, possession (either singular or plural, depending on apostrophe placement), or nothing in particular (as in the name “Bywaters”). It can also (with an apostrophe) indicate an elided version of the common word “is,” but I'm saving that for another puzzle, in which I’ll celebrate the versatility of the English apostrophe.

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178-That's-Thats.puz

178-That's-Thats.pdf

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178 That's Thats

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Among the many human proclivities that baffle me is the love of racing—of doing a thing, or of watching somebody or something do a thing, faster than some other body or thing.  It honors the tyranny of Time, that inexorable force which impels us all helplessly towards apparent annihilation. It upsets the restful calm for which we ought all to strive, as both an aesthetic and a moral ideal. Rather than be in a hurry, I’m happy to come in last.

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177-Coming-in-Last.puz

177-Coming-in-Last.pdf

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177 Coming in Last

Though the inspiration for this puzzle was 64 Across (see my remarks on “The Star Spangled Banner” accompanying Crosswords 032 and 033), I’m proudest of 38 Across, which I recommend to any statistics-compiling social scientist stuck for a topic.

Download this week’s crossword:

176-Parliamentary-Divisions.puz

176-Parliamentary-Divisions.pdf

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176 Parliamentary Divisions

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Like other hip crossword constructors of today, I ask myself that question over and over again, as I decide on each word:  not “will it be known to the average solver?” but “is it in?”  Only the hottest new celebrities, the coolest TV shows, the freshest slang, will do.  To be sure, the French painter in today’s puzzle died in 1665, and its “mild oath” was in use as early as 1815:  but they’re fadding—wait, I mean trending—now!

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174-Is-It-In-Or-Isn't-It?.puz

174-Is-It-In-Or-Isn't-It?.pdf

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174 Is It In Or Isn’t It?

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This week I continue my ongoing attempt to render in crossword form the lighter side of all possible human afflictions.  Next week I might try to take the sting out of intake manifold runner control system malfunctions, unless something better occurs to me in the meantime.

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173-Faulty-Instrument-Panel.puz

173-Faulty-Instrument-Panel.pdf

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173 Faulty Instrument Panel

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When I test-solved this puzzle, I found I’d clued 35 Across “Jacob’s brother” and 55 Across “Seth’s son.”  This seemed like too many Biblical relatives, so I substituted two “hidden-in” clues, which are more fun anyway—not that modified homonym cliché-based animal pun phrases aren’t already more fun than anybody ought to be trusted with.

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170-Beastly-Puns.puz

170-Beastly-Puns.pdf

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170 Beastly Puns

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Today’s crossword sets records for this site, in number of entries (80), number of 3-letter entries (39), and number of black squares (54) for a 15 x 15 puzzle.  Maybe you’ll agree that the dazzlingly unusual theme is worth it all.  Maybe you won’t.  In either case, it’s too late to do anything about it now.

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169-Triple-Play.puz

169-Triple-Play.pdf

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169 Triple Play

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You’ve heard of MP3, a format for compressing recorded music files to a convenient size, and MP4, a format for compressing movies to a convenient size.  Now here’s MP5!  It isn’t a format, and it doesn’t compress anything to a convenient size.  It’s just a crossword puzzle.  Nevertheless,  in its quiet, unassuming way, it  makes its own tiny contribution to the sum of human achievement.

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168-MP5.puz

168-MP5.pdf

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168-MP5

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In this puzzle I interrogate our society’s underlying structures of power, as part of my ongoing critique of post-modern, late-capitalist cultural hegemony.

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167-Power-Plugs.puz

167-Power-Plugs.pdf

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167 Power Plugs

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I encourage you, gentle solver, to admire the painting above and its title while you recall the reports of the past week (especially of Wednesday around noon), and only then, with a calm soul and clear head, to open this week’s puzzle—which, I am pleased to report, has nothing to do with anything.

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166-The-Latest-Reports.puz

166-The-Latest-Reports.pdf

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166 The Latest Reports

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Can this be the end?  Is this the last puzzle I’ll post to this website?  Have I finally turned in disgust from an ungrateful world, resolved never to cross words again?  Or is this just another punning reference to my theme?  Come back next week and find out!

(NB: The clue to 23 Across, once the weakest, now the strongest, of the puzzle’s theme clues, is in fact the inspiration of Canadian test-solver Kevin Walker.)

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165 Last-in-Line.puz

165 Last-in-Line.pdf

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165 Last in Line

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Now and then, in the major crossword venues, one finds a puzzle in which the theme answers consist of common two-word phrases that start with the same one or two letters.  POISONPILL PINGPONG PARCELPOST POLOPONY—voilà.  That theme took me just sixty seconds to produce.  No doubt a competent programmer with access to a phrase database could make a computer produce sixty such puzzles in sixty seconds.  And they would be just as much fun to solve as they were to make.

Why is such a theme acceptable?  Does anyone know?  I don’t get it.  Anyway, today’s puzzle represents my effort to improve on it.

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163-P-P-Puns.puz

163-P-P-Puns.pdf

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163 P-P-Puns

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Does any artist in any field face such ruthless editorial tinkering as the poor crossword constructor?  You shape and carve and etch and hone and polish your little gem till it shines and sparkles and glistens and glows, and (if you’re lucky enough to have it accepted) it appears in print lopped and maimed and marred and scratched and sullied.  Your reference to a favorite musician has turned into a reference to a TV actor you’ve never heard of.  Two of your answers have been tortured into a cross-referenced phrase.  The wit of a favorite theme clue has evaporated in the unwelcoming atmosphere of somebody’s dubious assumptions.  Now and then, to be sure, you find a real improvement—but that only wounds your authorial vanity all the more.

Well, here’s a puzzle where I made all the editorial changes my own self.

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162-Editorial-Changes.puz

162-Editorial-Changes.pdf

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162 Editorial Changes

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If you think this week’s puzzle involves Christmas carols—and are in consequence either thankful (you actually know what it is that King Wenceslas does after he looks out on the feast of Stephen!) or resentful (you can’t stand the damned things coming around every year!)—you haven’t been paying attention.

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161-Noels.puz

161-Noels.pdf

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161 Noels

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Have no fear:  this puzzle has nothing to do with bullfighting, or soccer, or anything that requires you to watch people kill animals or run around on a rectangular surface.  I put an accent over the "e" just for the look of the thing.

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160-Olé.puz

160-Olé.pdf

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160 Olé

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So many of those other crossword constructors think they have all the answers!  I, in contrast, retain the questioning mind of a curious child, open to experience, hungering insatiably for new knowledge.  Someday I mean to make a puzzle filled only with open-ended answers, prompted by welcoming, non-restrictive clues like “Stuff” and “Thing.”  Meanwhile here’s another one for which I do have all the answers—78 of them.

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158 Can-You-Reframe-the-Question?.puz

158 Can-You-Reframe-the-Question?.pdf

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158 Can You Reframe the Question?

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With this puzzle I embark on my fourth year of providing the world with a weekly crossword and a weekly Victorian novel recommendation.  And I’m not going anywhere.  I’m here for the duration (don’t ask me of what), grimly determined to see it through (whatever it might be).  Nothing can shake my resolve!

Well, we’ll see how I feel tomorrow.

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157-Not-Going-Anywhere.puz

157-Not-Going-Anywhere.pdf

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157 Not Going Anywhere

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I conclude this website’s third year with a third cavalcade of crosswordese—a puzzle that combines the tiredest crossword fill I can find into the groanworthiest answer phrases I can imagine.  Its purpose is to arouse in the solver the emotions of morphological pity and alphabetic fear, thereby inducing a catharsis of those emotions (see Aristotle’s Poetics).

Once cleansed, you’ll find yourself in a mood to donate to the site; so I’ve made that easy for you with the button below.  Donate $10 and you’ll get a crossword filled only with words and phrases current in the Victorian era (and still current today, of course).  Donate $13.50 and you’ll get a 21 x 21 crossword.  Donate $15 and you’ll get both.  Donate $10,000,000 and the site will be renamed in your honor.

DONATION UPDATE:

I can also receive donations through PayPal and Venmo, at my email address.

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Download this week’s crossword:

156-Yet-Another-Cavalcade-of-Crosswordese.puz

156-Yet-Another-Cavalcade-of-Crosswordese.pdf

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156 Yet Another Cavalcade of Crosswordese