Josh Solves

In many ways it feels strange to start a blog post about Palestine, but then it also feels weird to not only be talking about Palestine all the time. So I’m sharing https://www.puzzlesforpalestine.com/ to lead off:

We are a team of all-star crossword constructors and editors that reside throughout North America – the faces, new and old alike, behind thousands of your favorite crossword puzzles in syndication across the continent.

We believe that everyone has the right to grow up and live with self-determination, dignity, humanity, and freedom and are compelled to action to help end the violent occupation and siege of Palestine in Gaza and the West Bank, which is firmly at odds with each of these values.

I’m not part of the team that created them, but I love that puzzlers used their skills for good and support them. There is one thing in the Venn diagram from those puzzles to this one, which is that this puzzle is much later than intended because one of my seed entries felt bad to see in the puzzle, so I promise the puzzle features bank heists, fake bagels and (like most crosswords) Issa Rae.

So about this puzzle: This puzzle started out as a “what if I tried submitting a puzzle to a place rather than just putting it on the blog?” but stopped when I couldn’t resist the funky middle of the grid. There are hints available for each clue, where the hint is the part of the clue that is the straight definition. In addition, 13A has an alternate clue as when I submitted the clue to test solvers one gave a “maybe” and one gave a “I think its too much of a stretch”. I think it works as is.

Huge thanks to those test solvers, the wonderful Joe Adultman and skaldskaparmal, great solvers and constructors both. If you don’t like something in the puzzle, its probably something that was pointed out to me and I chose to stick with it anyway.

Link to puzzle on Amuselabs: Squirt! (Cryptic Themeless #4)

Easy to print PDF downloadable below, if that’s your preference.