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Hey everyone, and welcome to Week 83!

Before we start, I would like to say that this week’s title contains 7 E’s and no other vowels.

Hope you enjoy today’s 13×13 puzzle! Since I don’t have much to say, here a fun side story. In my list of seed entries LA QUINTA didn’t make the puzzle. And as a geography master’s student, here a link to an article where one person tried to determine the truth about a Mitch Hedberg joke about La Quinta and Denny’s using ArcGIS.

Also, I’ve got a Sunday-sized collaboration effort in the pipeline for CW. Be excited.

Enjoy the puzzle!

Chris

NOTE: Even if you solve the .puz version, be sure to check out the PDF version.
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Hey everyone, and welcome to Week 82!

In case you hadn’t seen it, FiveThirtyEight featured an article discussing the indie crossword movement this last week. Friend-of-the-show Neville Fogarty got a line in saying “My favorite thing about indie puzzles is the timeliness”, and I couldn’t agree more.

Today’s puzzle is a tribute to the sleeper hit of the summer, and one of my favorite pieces of TV this year. Technically, I should preface it with [Spoiler alert], but I think it’s just fine the way it is. If you haven’t checked it out, I strongly recommend that you do.

Besides that, can’t think of too much else to say. Hope your Labor Day weekend is going well! And since it is Labor Day weekend, I would be remiss not to include puzzle great Mark Halpin’s Labor Day Extravaganza puzzle suite. Take a crack at them. He’s good, and they’re fun.

Chris

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Hey everyone, and welcome to Week 81! This week’s puzzle might be a tricky theme for some, but I wanted to write one more summer puzzle before the season was up.

Last week, we had a meta, so let’s look at that:

The answer to the puzzle is a well-known 80s band, and there’s no obvious theme entries. There’s a 15-letter running across the middle, which is our main hint.

36A – [Problem encountered when traveling abroad] = LANGUAGE BARRIER

The idea of a language barrier plus the title “Use Your Alliteration”, the trick to this puzzle was identifying alliterations. None of the grid entries feature alliteration, so you have to go to the clues.

The trick to this puzzle is looking at an crossword trope of language answers. More often than not, a constructor will clue a foreign language word with alliteration, which has been done 9 times in this puzzle.

14A – [Girlfriend, in Granada] = NOVIA
27A – [Einstein’s ego] = ICH
28A – [Dresden donkey] = ESEL
49A – [Homer’s Hs] = ETAS
50A – [Crowned figure, to Caesar] = REX
66A – [Ingres’s income] = RENTE
7D – [Abbey title, in Assisi] = FRA
56D – [Fat, for Francois] = GRAS
60D – [Bogota bear] = OSO

After finding all nine entires, the clues all use the alliteration of a letter from A to I. When you arrange the answer words alphabetically by clue, you get the order FRA, OSO, REX, ESEL, ICH, GRAS, NOVIA, ETAS, RENTE. The first letters spell out FOREIGNER, our answer and appropriate answer for a puzzle about foreign languages. Needing a symmetric grid entry for GRAS, the clue for MICK is [Rocker Fleetwood, Jones, or Jagger], and Mick Jones was in fact the founder of Foreigner.

Tough week for meta solvers. Altogether, 11 readers submitted the correct hot blooded band. Congrats to those who got it! This week’s randomly selected winner was Tyler Hinman. He will join Jon Delfin, John L. Wilson, Jim Quinlan, Eric Maddy, Andy Keller, David Cole, Roger Barkan, Patricia Miga, Erik Agard, Charles Montpetit, Steve Blais, Mike Ruslander, Matthew Breen, David Stein, and Justin Weinbaum in a future section of the site. Congrats Tyler!

Thanks everyone, and I hope you have a great week!

Chris

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Hey everyone, and welcome to Week 80!

Before we get into today’s puzzle, I’d like to thank everyone who I got to hang with in NYC for last weekend’s Lollapuzzoola. It was great seeing longtime friends again, great making new ones, and great seeing you, the humble Chris Words audience. I so enjoyed the weekend, and I hope to make it to next year’s. Hell, I hope to make it to Stamford this year.

Thanks to Brian and Patrick for putting on a great event, all the volunteers who made the event possible, and all the constructors who wrote some tricky puzzles. It was a phenomenal weekend for us all. Also, congrats to friends-of-the-show Paolo Pasco and Erik Agard for winning LPZ9. I hope to one day be as accurate as these guys. Speed, probably not, but accuracy? Maybe.

Well, since this week’s puzzle ends with a 5 or 0, it’s time for a meta.

In honor of my 80th puzzle, for this sixteenth meta, I’m looking for a well-known 80s band. When you think you have it, email me at cking.gow(at)gmail.com with your answer. I’ll accept answers all the way to midnight ET Saturday, August 27th.

I’m too tired to write anymore, so that’ll do it for me today. Have fun and good luck this week!

Chris

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Hey everyone, and welcome to Week 79!

I’m currently in Virginia for a quizbowl event this weekend, so I’m posting this on the hotel wifi. Also, I don’t have a whole lot to say.

A couple of admin notes:

-Come see me in New York this weekend at Lollapuzzoola! Also, if there any breakout events/escape rooms/games/shindigs, you’d be great to let me know.
-Today’s puzzle is certainly food heavy, so this is a great time to plug my other site Five Course Trivia, where basically all the food mentioned in #79 have been asked about at some point.

Hope you enjoy today’s puzzle, and I hope to see you this weekend! I’m so excited!

Chris

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Hey everyone, and welcome to Week 79!

Today is my sixteenth themeless, and I hope you enjoy the clue that you can probably guess was my main seed entry.

Lollapuzzoola is coming up in two weeks, so be sure to register for that and say hi to me! Also, my plans for after the tournament, Friday afternoon/evening, and Sunday noon are WIDE OPEN for me that weekend.

And, I do plan to write my Indie 500 wrap up soon, damn it.

All right, enjoy the puzzle!

Chris

Answer: [HERE]

Hey everyone! I didn’t get the review of the Indie 500 up for today, so it should be up within 24 hours.

Until then, here are the answers for the second Variety Edition published 3 weeks ago. Feel free to rummage through the answers and see what you got and didn’t got. At the end, this was just a side exercise to have fun. I’d like to imagine all of you solved it in a beach chair with the roar of the ocean in the background.

The randomly picked winner of this meta suite is Anita Hollister and Steve Watt, which I’ll be sending something to the for their valiant effort. I’ll let all of you know what it is when I come up with it.

Thanks to all the people who took a gander at it, and I hope that you had fun with the puzzles, no matter your personal progress.

I’ll see you soon for an Indie 500 recap, and a themeless comes out next Sunday!

Chris

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Hey everyone, and welcome to Week 77! Enjoy this week’s puzzle, as it did take a while to clue, for reasons that’ll hopefully become obvious.

I didn’t get the answer key for Summer Lovin’ typed up yet, so everyone’s got another week to work on the meta suite. Next week I’m taking a week off, and instead I’ll have solutions to the meta suite as well as my write up of the Indie 500, which I still haven’t done yet, and I have to assume the at-home division is closed.

Oh, and be sure to check out last week’s puzzle if you haven’t yet. In reflection, it maybe in my top 3 I’ve written for the site.

Thanks everyone, and have fun!

Chris

Note: This puzzle is best enjoyed as a PDF. That being said…
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[No solution for now]

Hey everyone, and welcome to Match Game 76! Ok, so although this week is not a meta week, there is a final answer to this puzzle. When you think you have it, feel free to email me at cking.gow(at)gmail.com, but there is no prize for getting it.

Also, my Variety Edition is still live, and next week is the deadline! Feel free to email me for any hints you may want or need, and I hope to get you through it!

And also, I have booked my flight for Lollapuzzoola 9! I am very, very excited for it. However, while I’ve booked my flight, I have not gotten a room. If you would like a roommate for that weekend, PLEASE email me, and I would love to defray some costs with you for the weekend. You as the crossword community are amazing.

Anyway, we had a meta from last week, so let’s look at that:

The answer for this meta was a well-known trio, and there were only three theme entries:

20A – [PART 1] = MIKEY’S BREAKFAST
39A – [PART 2] = LADY IN NYC HARBOR
56A – [PART 3 (you have to change a letter for this one)] = JADEN SMITH DEBUT

A little knowhow or research will tell you that Mikey’s breakfast from commercials was Life cereal, Lady Liberty stands in New York’s harbor, and Jaden Smith’s first big role was in one of his father’s movies, The Pursuit of Happyness. Thus, by changing a letter in the movie name, that famous trio would be LIFE, LIBERTY, and THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. Nothing too hard for your week of the Fourth.

Altogether, 51 (one for each state plus Puerto Rico) readers submitted those unalienable rights. Congrats to those who got it! This week’s randomly selected winner was Justin Weinbaum. He will join Jon Delfin, John L. Wilson, Jim Quinlan, Eric Maddy, Andy Keller, David Cole, Roger Barkan, Patricia Miga, Erik Agard, Charles Montpetit, Steve Blais, Mike Ruslander, Matthew Breen, and David Stein in a future section of the site. Congrats Justin!

That’s all I’ve got for now. Thanks everyone, and enjoy!

Chris

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Hey everyone, and welcome to Week 75! I hope all of you are having a great Fourth weekend, and I hope you plan on eating some great American foods in the next few days.

Just a reminder that last week’s Variety Edition is still live, and you’ve got two more weeks to work on it! We already have some people who have submitted a correct final answer, and now that I’ve got Internet again, I’ll be able to address errata and emails.

Before we discuss my biggest crossword development, let’s take care of some usual Chris Words business. It’s time for a new crossword, and since this week’s puzzle ends with a 5 or 0, it’s time for a meta.

For this fifteenth meta, I’m looking for a well-known trio. When you think you have it, email me at cking.gow(at)gmail.com with your answer. I’ll accept answers all the way to midnight ET Saturday, July 9th.

By the way, this meta is a Week 1 MGWCC. I figured you all deserved it.

–

As I’m sure you probably know, I had the absolute honor to be the fourth member of Matt Gaffney’s Guest Constructors Month. Matt assigned me Week 4, knowing I had a penchant for intricate and elaborate metas, and I’m glad I didn’t disappoint.

This puzzle originally didn’t have the days-of-the-week sequence that it ended up having, and instead had seven clues with a (2) or (5) at theend, so that you had to arrange them in the designated order. As you can tell, some of the words made it to the better puzzle, but some didn’t. The challenge was to find someone you don’t see everyday, with CAROLER as the final answer. After much thought, I realized that a solver could theoretically just plug the words into the Ginsberg database and find that word, so I knew I needed a different method, which is the one involving Sunday through Friday sequentially.

I want to make it clear that I really wanted to have each day of the week, but it just couldn’t be done. Note that I used this Wikipedia page as a good barometer for any holidays. Solvers over at Crossword Fiend suggested the possible observances of Holy Saturday, Derby Day, and Armed Forces Day. While I am very familiar with each of those days, I just didn’t think those three days meet BOTH qualifications of being widely celebrated and in the public conscience. I felt way better picking both Labor and Presidents Day rather than a day most people probably wouldn’t have known. Holy Saturday is the closest to being best known, but I’ve already got two religious days, and I didn’t want half my themers to be based on Holy Week.

But still, 116 folks (and maybe a viewer like you) got it, and it was slightly easier I guess than last week. I wrote a Week 4 puzzle, and it turns out Jeff wrote a Week 3 puzzle that could have been a Week 5! Still, the numbers don’t like, and I think both of our puzzles were pretty normal for their slot.

As a lover of metas (which explains those five puzzle hunts I’ve written), it was a great honor being a pick for Week 4. And no matter what some might think, I’m extraordinarily proud of my entry. Haters, as they say, gonna hate.

Good luck with my meta this week, and I surely hope it’ll be easier than CANDLES.

Happy nonmoving Fourth!

Chris