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BWS Puzzle 67 + Announcement: 7x7 hard themeless puzzle pack on Redstone

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I was working on some mini/midi themeless puzzles a while back and stumbled on the 7x7 grid above: it has eight interlocking 7-letter entries, eight 3s around the border, and a couple 5s crossing in the middle. This means about half the entries are spanners (good for puzzle-solving intrigue) and, simultaneously, about half are short fill (good for making inroads to the longer stuff). So, I thought it would be fun to fill this grid over and over for solvers who are looking for quick, but still potentially challenging, small themeless puzzles...

...and now you can find 25 of those puzzles on the Redstone Crossword app! The app is available for both iOS and Android, and you can sort puzzle packs by size and difficulty. To find these puzzles, select the "Minis - Midis" and "Hard" categories, then look for the pack titled "B. Sullivan, Minis 1."

I'm hoping that these feel like fun, fresh, Friday-level puzzles, just much smaller. I'm also hoping that you'll derive some fun from both the entries and the clues: with essentially just a bunch of short entries and a bunch of spanners, I tried to spread the difficulty around, give solvers several chances to break into the puzzle, and overall live up to my belief that shorter fill doesn't have to feel stale.

To celebrate, this blog post has a bonus 7x7 puzzle (links and applet below) to give you a sense for what you'll get in the puzzle pack. And, if you'd rather solve those puzzles in .puz or .pdf format, please email me and I'll gladly send you a folder of files.

Enjoy the solve, and share if you do! Constructive feedback in the comments is always welcome.

Download links:   [puz]   [pdf]   [solution]        Direct link: [open in new tab]

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Location: Cambridge, MA, USA

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