Chasm № 1 (Themeless)

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Hello Crossworld! 🍀

This puzzle marks the first in the Chasm series of puzzles, all of which will feature wide open middles. If you've done my puzzles before you'll know that I love these types of puzzles with imposing, gaping maws in the middle. Part of the solving challenge in these grid designs is trying to find toeholds without much assistance from shorter entries. These types of puzzles are also how I got into constructing in the first place!

For this grid I originally tried getting this middle to work in a 15x15, but I wasn't happy with the fill in the corners, so I just...extended it. By bumping out the top and bottom and making it a 15x19 I was able to fit in some more long entries, including quad stacks in the NW and SE! Why not?

Thanks to Will Nediger for helping test solve. Ádh mór!

Vowelless Mini № 2

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Quick vowelless mini inspired by 7A after watching the movie on Hulu.  Enjoy!

Vowelless Mini № 1

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Happy March!

This is the first of a series of vowelless mini puzzles. I've been inspired since working through Frank Longo's pioneering Vowelless Crosswords book to give these types of puzzles a try. I also thought they would work well in a mini format, allowing for some more colorful phrases with fewer boxes.

For those of you who haven't tried vowelless crosswords before, the concept is pretty simple: all vowels are removed from the answers in the grid. For example, the entry MIND-BLOWING would become MNDBLWNG, and AVERAGE JOE would become VRGJ. To avoid complications, no entries will contain the letter "Y".

These puzzles can be pretty tough because of all of the missing letters and difficulties with pattern matching. As a result, the cluing will be more straightforward for the most part. Though this first one is fairly challenging, I'll also try to make some easier ones in the future.

I'm pretty new to working with vowelless grids, so let me know if you have any feedback, and if you'd be interested in seeing these more regularly!

Asym № 1 (Themeless)

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Hello Crossworld!

I'm super excited to be debuting my indie crossword blog McGrids!  I've been making crosswords for a few years now, with several dozen published across various publications.  My specialty has been themeless puzzles, particularly those with wide-open grids and low word counts.

For this blog I'm looking to continue exploring crossword construction beyond standard formats and expectations.  I'll be grouping these puzzles into several parallel series—some will be more familiar, some more experimental.  This puzzle is the first of the Asym series of themeless puzzles with deliberately asymmetrical grids. 

As of now, I'm planning to post a new puzzle monthly on the 17th plus whatever else I feel like/have time for in between.

Special thanks to Brooke Husic and Ada Nicolle for their help and advice with putting this together.  Please check out their puzzles if you haven't already!

Hope you enjoy!