[.puz][PDF][Solution] Difficulty: 3.5/5
The deed is done! If you backed us on Kickstarter, you’ve probably received your copy of the Honeypot Puzzle Fragments and a handful of puzzle stickers designed by artist and activist Parker Higgins. We salute you! The zine is also now available for purchase at the Cursewords Live website. We’ll be streaming tomorrow (Monday) evening at 10pm eastern after the Boswords fellas wrap. Stop by and live solve some fun puzzles with us, or just say hello in the chat!
And! There’s another IRL crossword tournament to put on your calendar: Brian Cimmet of the Fill Me In podcast has announced a date for Lollapuzzoola 2022. Jessie and I plan to make the I-95 pilgrimage to NYC; we hope to see you there on Saturday, August 27th!
Thoughts and spoilers for “The Final Countdown” after the jump!
This puzzle is another great expression of certain of how my puzzle tastes have begun to coalesce around certain priorities in recent years. More and more I find myself prioritizing a snappy revealer answer, theme density, and 100% theme symmetry.
In this case, TICKING TIME BOMB (15) needed to span the middle row such that that [BOOM] MICS/OIL [BOOM]S could occur in the bottom (i.e. “the end”) of the puzzle. With that formulation, there would need to be the S[TICK]LER/POLI[TICK] in the northwest corner, and *hopefully* enough distinct T-I-C-K words to fill out the NE and SW. But, because *density* matters so much to my weird puzzle brain, it became necessary to interlock the revealer answer with the 4th and 5th TICK answers in [TICK]ETED and DIPS[TICK].
All in all, grid architecture and filling took a lot longer this week than your average 15x Rossword puzzle, but I really like the end result. And I hope you did too!
Happy solving, friends.
-Ross