95. Squares #40

94. Squares #39

93. For the Kids

A couple of kid’s puzzle books coming in the near future:

• Count Gravy’s Horror Hall of Fun: 64 pages of ghoulish fun for ages 8-12 — puzzles, illustration and book design by Patrick Merrell (release: Sept. 2)
• Pony Play Games & Puzzles: 144 pages for all your equestrian pals ages 6-10 — puzzles by Patrick Merrell and Helene Hovanec, illustration and book design by Patrick Merrell (release: June 25)

Click on the HORROR HALL cover to see the TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Click on PONY PLAY cover to go to Amazon.

92. Puzzling Thoughts…

…about the birth of crossword blogs. As far as I know, Curtis Yee was the first daily crossword blogger with THIS ENTRY on April 18, 2005 (scroll down to the bottom). Curtis gave it up later that year but went on to create some very nice puzzles for The New York Times and Los Angeles Times.

Also worth checking out is Curtis’s music on his homepage, kazoo and all. Once you go HERE, click on the “Music” link. My personal favorite is “Songs about Milk” toward the bottom of the list. I challenge you to listen to it without smiling.

91. Squares #38

90. Squares #37 (new every Monday)

89. Puzzling Thoughts…

…about the People Puzzler Book: Jumbo Edition — on newsstands April 14th! It’s got Harry Potter, Dirty Harry, Prince Harry, When Harry Met Sally, Deborah Harry, Harri-son Ford, and the Donald’s hair. Twenty “puzzlers” (13×13 crosswords) and twenty “jumbos” (17×17 crosswords) in the book are mine — but don’t let that stop you! The book has another 20 jumbos and 14 classic puzzlers from the past, plus profiles on Brad, Katie, Zac, Ben, Julia, Rihanna, Oprah, Catherine, Carrie, and George!

Have you read every issue of People and don’t know what to do with all that knowledge? Here’s the answer!

88. Puzzling Thoughts…

…about turnaround time. Today marks two contrasting crossword records for me: the longest and shortest waits between submission and publication.

Wednesday’s New York Times crossword was carefully aged for 3 years (3 years, 1 month, 2 days to be exact) while a March Madness crossword I created for Sports Illustrated is appearing only 3 days after being handed in (5 if you count from when it was assigned).

For all you solvers who can’t get enough sports clues in your crosswords, the Sports Illustrated puzzle is in the April 7th Final Four issue. It should be on newsstands today or tomorrow.

87. Squares #36

86. Squares #11 Revisited

I’m rerunning this cartoon from last September because of a recent comment left by Brendan Pimper on the original strip. He had this very thing (the 2nd panel) happen to him on a show that aired March 18. The video of the show can be seen here, thanks to Nancy Shack: part 1 and part 2.

85. Squares #35

84. Squares #34

83. Squares #33

82. Puzzling Thoughts…

…about the 2008 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. I’ll have this week’s cartoon up at some point, but it’s much easier to string together a few random (spoiler-free) thoughts than think up a cartoon:

81. Squares #32