012: Teeny Tuesday 6

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Word Count: 30, Mean Word Length: 4.60

Happy Tuesday! For those who celebrated the Holidays last week, I hope you had an enjoyable time. I spent the two weeks leading up to Christmas in isolation, so I could spend the day with my mother. She made me an amazing gift, a temperature blanket for my first year living in my house, of course being 2020, (Here's the color guide). The blanket will be finished hopefully in a week or two, since there's still a wee bit of the year remaining.

Okay, okay, enough about Christmas, you're probably here for the crossword puzzle after all. Like all my Teeny Tuesday puzzles, it's another themeless. I enjoy having those two sets of 9s running down each side of the grid. It made it a wee bit more difficult to fill, but I got it to work. The grid does feature a word that likely isn't on most folk's word lists. (Gee golly, it's like it's related to the song below or something 😜).

Anyways, I hope you have fun with this puzzle!

Cheers,

Jac

Currently Playing: Beastars by Satoru Kosaki

011: Themed Puzzle 6, 2020 Mini Holiday Special

It's the most wonderful time of the year, or at least that's what the carols tell us. At the time of writing this intro *waves from last Tuesday*, there isn't any snow on the ground here in the Twin Cities. Everything is brown, cold, and rather dismal. To cheer up this rather gloomy time, I present the Trash Panda Puzzles 2020 Mini Holiday Special!

Edit from Wednesday Night: Hey Jac, gee thanks. We went from no snow to a blizzard in a 36 hour time span. Next time there isn't any snow, don't say anything.

A fair warning, these clues are meant to be a bit more silly than usual, as I wanted every single one to be holiday themed (hence why I'm still calling this a themed puzzle). This crossword is not meant to be taken that seriously nor should its clues.

P.S, the song below really kicks in at 0:57.

Happy Holidays!

Jac

PUZ | PDF | Mobile | Solution

Currently Playing: Jingle Bells by August Burns Red

010: Teeny Tuesday 5

The fun thing about rules? Breaking them. This week's Teeny Tuesday breaks one of my self-imposed rules I made for this group of crosswords, not exceeding 9x9 in size. Last week, I nudged that a little and made an 8x10 puzzle which technically did have less squares than a 9x9. Well, I decided to throw the size limit completely out the window this week by making this crossword 15 squares wide! There's only 26 words in the puzzle, so I don't expect this to take much longer than usual to solve.

So what's in the crossword? It should come as no surprise that 16-Across, my 15 letter answer is the seed for this puzzle. Once that was in place, I focused on the 8 letter answers at 11-Across and 20-Across. Overall, I'm happy with this fill and this puzzle came together quite easily.

P.S., have you noticed that each piece of music I've included since Puzzle 8 is related to a clue? This puzzle's song is related to 14-Across.

Cheers,
Jac

PUZ | PDF | Mobile | Solution

Currently Playing: The Boy Who Swallowed a Star by Joe Hisaishi

009: Themed Puzzle 5, Sole Searching

 

It seems to be the week of complete puzzle overhauls. Just like how Teeny Tuesday 4 was re-written a few times, so to was this puzzle. I compiled 514 different words to use in this theme and changed which theme words I used with each rewrite. Every time I started building the puzzle, I didn't like how the words were fitting together. Finally on the *looks at my notes* 5th attempt at this theme did I find words that clicked well together. After that, I was able to fill the grid without much issue.

I have three clues in this puzzle that are representing my home state, Minnesota. They can be found at 24/42-Across, and 29-Down. Regarding my favorites in this puzzle, 43-Across is my favorite clue and 17-Across is my favorite word.

EDIT: Oh boy did I goof on a section of this puzzle. Thanks to @Will Nediger, @arctan, and @romkd on the crossword Discord for the feedback. I have updated this puzzle fixing the word that didn't quite fit and wrote 6 new clues! This folks is why it's important to have test solving and an editor.

Enjoy!

Jac

PUZ | PDF | Mobile | Solution

Currently Playing: PSYCHO-PASS by Yugo Kanno

008: Teeny Tuesday 4

Oh boy!  Oh boy!  Oh boy!  Oh boy!  Oh boy! 

Ahem, sorry about my excitement, this is the third iteration of this week's Teeny Tuesday crossword puzzle. I was UBER unhappy with the first one, kinda meh about the second, but this one, oh BOY did this one pop out of my brain and do a little jig.

I continue to enjoy doing weird shapes for the Teeny Tuesdays, so here's an 8x10 with some nice and chunky bits. Two sets of 9 and 10 letter words next to each other as well as two sets of double 8s. I hope you enjoy completing this puzzle as much as I had making it.

Cheers,

Jac

PUZ | PDF | Mobile | Solution

Currently Playing: Take the "A" Train by Chicago

007: Themed Puzzle 4, The Fare at the Fair Is Fair

This song has been stuck in my head on and off for over 15 years, so it should come as no surprise that it influenced today's puzzle. I have a particular fondness for homophones because they help in coming up with some truly amazing puns and wordplay. Do not fear my dearest reader, I did not include puns in today's puzzle, but there are homophones in the clues.

A special thank you to my friends Charles, Paul, Kevin, Chris, and Stephen who all test solved this puzzle together. Paul gets the credit for revising my clue for 41-Across as while my original clue was almost right, he helped me write one that's more appropriate.

Cheers,

Jac

006: Teeny Tuesday 3

There was some discussion lately about the inclusion of non-English words in a crossword puzzle. The consensus was that if most of the world is bilingual or is expected to be so, why shouldn't Americans as well. This discussion led to the inspiration of my seed word for this crossword and I clued it in a way that should hopefully be fun and interesting.

I tossed out roughly half of the original clues of this puzzle since they just weren't clicking with me. I'm glad I did, because I find the replaced clues much more enjoyable than their predecessors. Part of this was caused by feedback I received on last week's Teeny Tuesday. I was presented with the question, "does this clue make me interested in looking up more information about it?" I took that feedback to heart and hopefully it shows in future clue writing.

Enjoy!
Jac

005: Themed Puzzle 3, Tunes of December

It's amazing to think that we're already in December. This year has felt like an eternity and an instant at the same time. Now that we're in the holiday season, I've pulled out my Christmas tree, strung the lights, and switched out my Spotify playlists for something a bit more festive. In addition, I have a new Christmas tree topper this year, a mini Death Star. My wonderfully adorable cat Milo hasn't attacked the tree so that's a Christmas miracle!

Given that the holiday season is upon us, I have whipped up a festive crossword for everyone to play!

Enjoy,

Jac