128. Chicken Puzzles

Have you been longing for a book with a wide-ranging and humorous assortment of poultry-themed puzzles suitable for all ages? Your wish is about to be fulfilled. FOWL PLAY is coming in November September!, just in time for the holidays fall harvest.

What’s in it? 144 pages of crosswords (some with illustrated clues), trivia, logic puzzles, anagrams, jokes, math puzzles, cockadoku, cryptograms, chicken lore, word searches, acrostics, mazes, criss-crosses, drop quotes, posers, visual puzzles, and an entertaining mix of other original word puzzles. Guaranteed to blow the lid off the poultry-themed puzzle book market!

127. Weekend Wind Down

That’s gonna be it for my old puzzles. Check out the NY Times or LA Times every day for new crosswords written by other, clever people and edited by two very clever fellows. Maybe even buy a paper; they can use the business.

126. Weekend Rewind #9

This was something new when it appeared on October 2, 2002.

• Click to download a PDF (answer on 2nd page)
• Click to access an ACROSS LITE version

125. Weekend Rewind #8

This is one I’d forgotten about, a Thursday NY Times puzzle from June 12, 2003.

• Click to download a PDF (answer on 2nd page)
• Click to access an ACROSS LITE version

124. Weekend Rewind #7

And rounding out the week of crosswords is a Sunday NY Times puzzle from 2004…

• Click to download a PDF (answer on 2nd page)
• Click to access an ACROSS LITE version

123. Weekend Rewind #6

Here’s a Monday NY Times puzzle from 2003…

• Click to download a PDF (answer on 2nd page)
• Click to access an ACROSS LITE version

122. Weekend Rewind #5

This one’s a 2004 Wednesday puzzle from the LA Times.

• Click to download a PDF (answer on 2nd page)
• Click to access an ACROSS LITE version

121. Weekend Rewind #4

This 2005 Friday NY Times puzzle is unique in that no black square touches another. The result is a set of eight 15-letter entries intersecting each other around the outer part of the grid and a rabbit warren of crossers in the middle. I’ve dubbed this the shotgun-spray grid.

• Click to download a PDF (answer on 2nd page)
• Click to access an ACROSS LITE version

120. Weekend Rewind #3

Each of these first seven puzzles is going to be from a different day of the week. This one is a Tuesday NY Times puzzle from 2003. Despite its early-week appearance, there are several things to discover in it.

• Click to download a PDF (answer on 2nd page)
• Click to access an ACROSS LITE version

119. Weekend Rewind #2

Here’s another puzzle from 2004, a Thursday from the NY Times:

• Click to download a PDF (answer on 2nd page)
• Click to access an ACROSS LITE version

118. Weekend Rewind #1

Here’s the first installment of a new weekly offering: newspaper crosswords of mine from the past. This one is a Saturday themeless from the LA Times. The impetus for creating it was that I liked the look of the grid.

• CLICK to download a PDF (answer on 2nd page)
• CLICK to access an ACROSS LITE version

117. Squares: ACPT Finals Cartoon

Previous Squares cartoons: CLICK

116. ACPT Snapshots

A few random thoughts about the three finalists in this past weekend’s American Crossword Puzzle Tournament…

115. Crosswide Puzzle

Can you figure out why this crossword grid looks the way it does? The answer appears after the cut.

114. Maze Monday

Okay, so I’m posting it on a Tuesday. But Maze Monday sounds much more alliterative. This is in honor of MAD Kids magazine, whose last issue will be hitting the newsstands this month. (©2006 by E.C. Publications, Inc.)