If you haven't already, please support These Puzzles Fund Abortion : make a donation to any abortion fund and then email them to get 16 great puzzles with reproductive and social justice themes. Check out  the specific funds they support  or find more at  https://abortionfunds.org/   --- 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 ...

I have been working on variations of this theme for a while and I think something like this could work as a full-size puzzle, but this is the best I have so far. Let me know if you have similar ideas and want to discuss! (In particular, I wonder if something involving the  Four Tops might work...) This is also a funny grid with theme answers in the long downs crossing a central revealer, and with non-theme answers of the same length sandwiching that revealer. Perhaps not the best layout, in general, but I think it works out alright for this puzzle. And I hope you enjoy some of the bonus fill, including those central non-themers and the 7s in the top-right/bottom-left corners. In other news, I made my print puzzle debut* with the Universal crossword this past Saturday 11/13! (The puzzles are only available online for a couple of weeks afterwards so I can't link to it anymore. And to be honest, I didn't even get to see it in print myself until a couple weeks later because I assu...

Happy Halloween! 🎃🎸👻🥁🦇🎵💀🎹 I thought it might be fun to celebrate with a concert, so this puzzle's theme entries are all appropriately-named bands who are putting on a Halloween show for you. I'm sure something like this has been done before, so rather than scouring lists of relevant band names, I stuck to whatever came to my mind from the bands that I know of. Sure, not all of them are widely known (and at least one of them is really obscure, although that one's my favorite of the bunch by far), but I think I put enough hints in the clues that you'll be able to suss everything out. You'll notice several other answers and clues pertaining to music, as well, to go along with the main theme. In other news, the most recent Sunday puzzle (10/24) over at The Atlantic is mine! Check it out on their site where it will be available for the next week only. (I believe it disappears two weeks after publication date, unless you have an Atlantic  subscription.) Although...

Have you seen the awesome 7xwords website yet? Check it out! The index page shows you all 312 possible 7x7 crossword grids (subject to a few standard rules as described on the "why?" page ). That amounts to a new puzzle six days a week for all 52 weeks of the year and constructors could claim a grid for a certain day in advance. When I first heard about this project on Twitter toward the beginning of the year, I was really intrigued and hoped to take part. I looked for a date that was not imminent (so I could worry about making a puzzle later) but also not too far off in the future (so I wouldn't have to worry about forgetting until the last minute). I picked April 3 because it was soon-ish and also not within a day of a holiday. I didn't even think to look at what the grid would be, so I'm glad it ended up being something manageable (the image at the top of this post). A few weeks later, when I started working on the puzzle, I looked for interesting people bor...