Puzzazz New Year 15

by George Barany / Edited by Roy Leban

To ring in the new year of 2014, Puzzazz held a special event, Puzzles Live!, through which anyone out there in cyberspace could communicate a request for a free custom puzzle.  I was invited to be a guest constructor, and happily agreed [putting me in the company of such crossword constructing mavens as Harvey Estes and Victor Fleming]. My assignment was to create something for the proprietor of (spoiler) this blog, who lives and twitters "across the pond."  With the consultation and guidance of the amazing Roy Leban, I created and clued a "Puns & Anagrams" type puzzle with a cryptic grid, along with two solid bars, symmetrically placed, that made it possible to fulfill a dream of the individual who requested it to find his name in a puzzle.

Click here to view or download the puzzle in PDF format and here for the solution complete with annotations and explanations. For technical reasons, we are unable to provide a puz file, or some of the hard-copy files and on-line solving experiences derived from it . However, if you have an iOS device, you can solve the puzzle in the Puzzazz app, using this link. Finally, I heartily recommend that you sample others from the full suite of sixteen Puzzles Live! constructions.

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

More puzzles here (all) and here (tributes).

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