Factor of Six BETA

by Brent Hartzell and George Barany

This "mid-week" level puzzle represented an ambitious and difficult construction that forced us to incorporate more black squares than usual, plus a handful of less-than-optimal words, but we hope that you find it to be challenging and interesting nevertheless. After completing the puzzle (spoiler), you may click here to learn more about its construction and some of the answer words (theme as well as auxiliary fill).

Click here to view or download the puzzle in PDF format; here to download it as a puz file [requires Across Lite software to play]; here to solve the puzzle interactively (thanks to Jim Horne); here for the solution. We thank Marcia Brott, Zhouqin Burnikel, Marti DuGuay-Carpenter, Noam Elkies, Michael Hanko, Martin Herbach, Paul Schoenholz, Loren Smith, and David Steinberg for beta testing and critical commentary that improved the puzzle to its current, admittedly imperfect level.

If you want to tell others about this particular page, refer them to
http://tinyurl.com/brentfactorpuz

More puzzles here.

E-mail barany@umn.edu to be added to a bcc distribution list.