It’s time, once again, for me to sit down and try my hand at some tournament-style puzzles. This week, it was the puzzles from this past weekend’s Westwords Crossword Tournament.
Given the talent involved amongst the organizers and constructors, as well as the previous year’s banger crop of puzzles, I had high expectations, and I was not disappointed.
So let’s put those puzzles under the microscope and see what’s what!
Puzzle #1: Western Expansion by Andrea Carla Michaels & Mark Axel
The tournament began with this 15x grid where the word WEST appeared in each theme entry, but the letters were spread further apart with each subsequent answer, offering solvers the Western Expansion promised in the title.
This was a great opener with a fun, accessible theme and a very smooth solve. The vocabulary was playful and the puzzle had great Monday energy. My only quibble was the repetition of YOU in the crossing entries I GOT YOU and WE STILL LOVE YOU, but that’s more of a personal preference than any fault with the construction.
Interesting grid entries included BAD LUCK, HIS LOSS, E-CLASS, and SOBFEST, and my favorite clues were “Duct tape has dozens of these” for USES and “Beatles song about an age that Paul is nearly 20 years past” for WHEN I’M SIXTY-FOUR.
Puzzle #2: Make It Rain by Sophia Maymudes
The second tournament puzzle was a freestyle 15x absolutely loaded with trivia about the West Coast and western cities, as well as two grid-spanning entries about the Pacific Northwest in particular (BIGFOOT SIGHTING and SEATTLE SOUNDERS).
I found the difficulty to be pretty much on par with the first puzzle of the tournament, and I was impressed with Sophia’s clean layout, construction, and delightful grid fill. (The across pairing of MADE PROUD and IMMODESTY was a fun little visual Easter Egg as well.)
Interesting grid entries included LA GEAR, ARMAGEDDON, DIOGENES, and KATNISS, and my favorite clues were ‘Word preceding “dash” or “bracelet”‘ for SLAP and “Quality that’s neither very demure nor very mindful” for IMMODESTY.
Puzzle #3: Pride of Place by Zhou Zhang and Mallory Montgomery
This 18×17 grid was the largest of the tournament (though Puzzle #5 came close), and the theme centered around common phrases where a W was replaced with a B, as explained by the revealer WESTCOASTBESTCOAST (which is a nice nod to both the tournament’s setting and the fantastic URL for the Westwords website, westwordsbestwords.com).
The puckish wordplay (particularly with READ ‘EM AND BEEP) made this midpoint puzzle of the tournament a treat. I also liked the synchronicity of HASTA LA VISTA and LEAVE NO TRACE reading down, continuing the unofficial theme of related fill entries in grids.
Interesting grid entries included DOG DAD, ODAWA, JOIN US, MALORT, and TREBEK, and my favorite clues were “Fairy tale girl who gets a witch baked?” for GRETEL, “Super-duper promise” for VOW, “Lawless heroine?” for XENA, “Hue grant?” for DYE JOB, and “They were celebrated 35 days ago” for MOMS. So many great clues in this one!
Puzzle #4: Catch My Drift? by Rebecca Goldstein
I predicted last year that Puzzle #4 in Westwords could build a similar reputation to the dreaded Puzzle #5 at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, and this year’s Puzzle #4 understood its instructions perfectly.
This 16×15 grid was the toughest of the tournament. Fault lines ran throughout the grid, causing letters to drop out of many of the down entries. These SHAKEUPS related to the shifting of TECTONIC PLATES — our two revealers in the grid! — not only caused PLATE to be removed from those aforementioned down entries, but they also made the across entry ABOVE each fault line scramble/anagram itself into another word!
There was so much going on with this grid, and despite the fault lines, it all fit together seamlessly. (The down words that lost letters STILL spelled actual words.) It was a diabolical bit of crossword construction, to be sure!
Between the down entries with letters from PLATE removed and the scrambled entries across, there was a lot of “I KNOW this is the right answer, but it doesn’t fit” brain scramble as I was solving, heh. But it was an immensely fun challenge to puzzle out.
Interesting grid entries included PIXIE CUT, ANOMALIES, and DRIP PAN, and my favorite clues were “Not exactly a long look” for PIXIE CUT and “Some docs” for IDS.
Puzzle #5: Play Grounds by Sarah Sinclair
After the deviousness of Puzzle #4, and with the freestyle final puzzle looming, Puzzle #5 was a lighter, breezier solve, but one that still managed to pack this 18×15 grid with five punnily-clued entries tied to West Coast landmarks.
And that “play”-ful aspect continued throughout the cluing. We had pop culture trivia, tongue-in-cheek jabs at pop culture and crosswordese, and more facts and details germane to the tournament’s setting. Sinclair went all out with the cluing in this one.
Interesting grid entries included OH HELL NO, KOOPA, SO LONG, and ADORBS, and my favorite clues were “Concave decagon, more familiarly” for STAR, “Knd f lttr mssng frm ths cl” for VOWEL, and “Something read by a cleric… that becomes something read by a clairvoyant when a letter is removed” for PSALM.
Puzzle #6: Final by Byron Walden
The final puzzle for the tournament boasts a different set of clues for each of the divisions — Beach and Mountain — and Byron constructed a 15x puzzle with smooth fill, cunning cluing, and great variety in vocabulary. This was a Byron Walden special, for sure.
Both the Beach and Mountain versions of the puzzle had kickass clues (including a Reginald VelJohnson reference), and either version would made for a suitable challenge for the tournament’s finalists. I’m glad I didn’t have to try to puzzle this one out in front of a crowd!
Interesting grid entries included BUDDY SYSTEM, STANDING O, HOG WILD, and DAIKONS.
As for favorite clues, here’s a list:
BEACH: “Company with a Breakout hit?” for ATARI
BEACH: “Unruly way to go” for HOG WILD
BEACH: “Poly relative” for MULTI
BEACH: The Galatea pairing of “Water-dwelling divinity such as Galatea” for SEA NYMPH and “Solar system body such as Galatea” for MOON
MOUNTAIN: “They’re not sold on the Sabbath” for AGNOSTICS
MOUNTAIN: “Alaska is 120 times its size: abbr.” for CONN
MOUNTAIN: “Set of safety matches” for BUDDY SYSTEM
MOUNTAIN: “Past perfect mood?” for NOSTAGIA
MOUNTAIN: “Avon calling?” for BARD
There were genuinely too many to list. Between this one, Puzzle #3, and Puzzle #5, solvers were absolutely spoiled with great cluing this year.
Westwords goes from strength to strength with another standout year of puzzles. The bar is SO HIGH for tournament puzzles these days, and the 2026 Westwords constructors stepped up big time. The creativity was there, the trivia was flowing, and the cluing was fantastic.
We got several different puzzles playing on the Westwords / West Coast branding, and every puzzle felt like it had its own identity and voice, which is not always the case with tournament puzzles as a whole.
If you’ve never tackled tournament-style puzzling before, I would highly recommend giving Westwords a try. It gets you into the flow of solving with the first few puzzles, punches you in the face with a proper challenge, then eases you back into it before the final. It’s a great time.
I can’t wait to see what they cook up for us next year!
Did you attempt this year’s Westwords tournament puzzles, fellow solver? Let me know in the comments section below! I’d love to hear from you.
PuzzCulture 