happy women's history month from crosstina & kate

this puzzle is the product of a clamor of demand generated by the triumph of our black history month puzzle. just kidding—this was borne of us saying to each other WE SHOULD DO THIS AGAIN and no one else saying anything because we are ARTISTS UNAPPRECIATED IN OUR TIME apparently. honestly, if you don't love this puzzle are you really listening to women? something to think about.

april is national fresh celery month, you're all ON NOTICE.

FULLSCREEN / .JPZ

puzzle no. 12: throw some d's (feat. erik agard)

i'm so excited to finally post this—it's been burning a hole in my pocket all week! he needs no introduction otherwise, but this is erik's debut on the blog! (a feather in his cap, i'm sure). it's hard to explain how this came to be, but it started with me listening to THROW SOME D'S by rich boy (2007 BET  award nominee for ringtone of the year), and ended in...a crossword. erik is, among many things, extremely funny and wrote some all-timer clues for this puzzle. we toiled and troubled (neither are true: making this was a blast) over it for a few weekends, and i hope you love the end result.  

in erik's words: solving crosstina puzzles has made me fall in love with crosswords all over again, and i had so much fun getting to collaborate on this one. hope you enjoy! 

shit tight, no slack, just bought a cadillac...

fullscreen | pdf | .puz 

happy valentine's day from crosstina aquafina

darkness falls across the land...the midnight hour is close at hand...creatures crawl in search of blood...

wait, hold on— wrong holiday, my bad.

happy valentine's day, y'all! i think this puzzle is a real treat, and speaks for itself. you will never, in a million years, guess what the inspiration/seed fill was because some sacrifices had to be made to pull this off, but i think the results are well worth it. i'll say no more! happy solving ❤️‍🔥

(thanks to meat for the test drive. questions? concerns? marriage proposals? tweet me or leave a comment!)

fullscreen | pdf 

happy black history month from crosstina & kateschmate

the image is a no-context puzzle spoiler. just go with it.

kate and i put this puzzle together over the course of an afternoon because we were deeply inspired and wanted to get out ahead of what is sure to be a tidal wave of not-at-all cringey and weird black history month content in the crossword puzzle universe.

please enjoy! don't @ us (or do!) 

also, major thanks to crosswordnexus and the 'boisvert machine', as we're henceforth calling it.

FULLSCREEN | .JPZ

themeless no. 9

 

SPOILER WITHOUT CONTEXT

(tshirt from @goodshirts)

happy tuesday! i wasn't going to post a puzzle this week—i don't know how i wound up posting puzzles with any sort of frequency, to tell you the truth—but here we are. i like this one; it has some fill in it i've been noodling with for more than a month, and i'm happy to finally share it with people. i hope something here makes you happy, too. have a nice week.

meat test solved this for me AFTER an evening at their latin reading group— forever indebted to them.

DIRECT | PDF | .PUZ

themeless no. 8

 

in this house, we love and support al roker. this is a no-context spoiler for the puzzle, by the way. you'll know it when you see it.

not a lot to say, again. on any given day there's just really not a lot going on in my brain, truthfully; it's a real 'the lights are on but no one's home' sort of situation. i had fun with this one, though, and i hope you do too! 

kate and quiara both test solved it, and were both exceedingly nice about my persistent inability to identify an adjective. grateful for them!

[DIRECT LINK] [.PUZ] [.PDF]

themeless no. 7: i never claimed to know anything about thermostats

it's still setting in that it's 2022 for me— how's it going for you? 2021 was a year of starts and stops; one that i can't really eulogize succinctly. so i won't! instead, i'm gonna offer you all this puzzle and say happy new year: onward and upwards! or, in the immortal words of a fortune cookie i once had, let go or be dragged. 

some constructor notes: an asymmetrical grid? on my blog? it's more likely than you think. it was playing a little more challenging than i intended (i never set out to make a hard puzzle— there's nothing fun about stumping people) so some blocking was done to ease up a few crosses. hopefully it spares a few DNFs!

my entire kingdom to kate for testing this and very gently reminding me to, like, use commas. life-changing stuff! also thanks to dob from crossweird for working some free-jazz magic. it takes a village.

[DIRECT] [.PUZ] [.PDF]