Thank you to George, Brent, and Doug for bringing some puzzly joy today to the PuzzCulture readership and all the World Cup fans within shouting distance!
Just a quick post today to remind you of TWO big crossword events coming soon!
Firstly, Boswords is just a few short weeks away, and they recently announced the constructors for this year’s tournament puzzles.
Chandi Deitmer, Kathleen Duncan, Peter Wentz, Joon Pahk, Damon Gulczynski, and the team of Emily Biegas & Sala Wanetick will be constructing this year. With a rogue’s gallery of top-flight constructors like this, the tournament is sure to be a great time!
Lollapuzzoola will be happening on a Saturday in August — Saturday, August 15th, in fact — and registration is now open!
This year’s event, Lollapuzzoola 19, has been titled “Around the World,” and promises all sorts of puzzly challenges:
Travel the globe with us through crosswords and games — the day includes tournament puzzles, warmup puzzles, a variety puzzle meta suite, a multi-crossword meta suite, and more!
Plus pizza!
There are two solo divisions for competitors: the Local Division (for newer solvers, more casual solvers, or those with less tournament experience) and the Express Division for “hardcore speed solvers with tournament experience.”
For those who solve with a buddy, the Pairs Division is always an option, and of course, the At-Home Division is available for players who can’t make it to NYC. (I’ll be solving from home for sure!)
A great summer of puzzles continues with two back-to-back highlights of the cruciverbalist calendar year.
And since we’re talking crosswords, I’ve got a 13x puzzle for you to solve today.
I tried something a little different this time around, but hopefully you enjoy! (Once you figure out the gimmick, it’ll probably be a pretty quick solve.)
Will you be participating in either Boswords or Lollapuzzoola this year, fellow puzzler? Let me know in the comments section below. I’d love to hear from you!
2026 continues to be a year of big anniversaries in the world of puzzles. Yesterday marked the 155th birthday of Arthur Wynne, the creator of the first modern crossword puzzle in 1913.
And today marks twenty years since the Wordplay documentary first hit theaters.
The documentary chronicled the 2005 edition of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, bringing national attention to the tournament (and inspiring a Simpsons episode about crosswords).
Wordplay introduced a wider audience to several famous names in crossword tournament circles, like Ellen Ripstein, Trip Payne, Tyler Hinman, Jon Delfin, and Al Sanders, as well as highlighting many celebrity crossword solvers like Jon Stewart, Ken Burns, Bill Clinton, and more.
And the impact Wordplay had on the tournament itself, and interest in crosswords in general, cannot be overstated.
Wordplay sparked a 40% increase in attendance the year after it aired, and the growing interest in the yearly event caused the tournament to actually change locations from the Stamford Marriott to a larger venue in New York City for 7 years.
And it’s delightfully apropos that this year marked the tournament’s last year in Stamford, once again moving to a larger venue (in Philadelphia this time!) in order to accommodate increased attendance. Synchronicity!
There was even a song for the documentary…
I think my favorite part of the documentary was Will Shortz reading some critical responses (aka hate mail) in good spirits, though getting a glimpse into the creative process of Merl Reagle was also a treat.
Over the last twenty years, Wordplay has gone from introducing many people to crosswords and tournament solving to a time capsule of a particular era in puzzles.
A time when the hundredth anniversary of the crossword hadn’t arrived. A time before crosswords on The Simpsons, before online tournaments and apps like Daily Pop Crosswords or Puzzmo. A time when crosswords were still weirdly considered a niche interest, despite the tens of millions of people solving them every day.
And we can thank Wordplay for helping welcome a new generation of solvers to our puzzly world.
In honor of the anniversary, I’ve got a puzzle for you!
I had the idea for the theme while writing this post and thinking about puzzle history, and I hope you enjoy.
How did you find your way to crossword solving, fellow puzzlers? Was Wordplay your gateway, or was it a friend or a family member? Or did you simply accept the challenge of a grid in your local paper on a whim one day?
Let me know in the comments section below! I’d love to hear from you.
Let’s start off the month right with a few bonus puzzles for you to solve!
Inspired by one of the many puzzles featured by our friends at Penny Press, I’ve constructed two Escalators for you today.
Instructions: Write the 5-letter answer to clue 1 in the first space. Drop one letter and rearrange the remaining letters to answer clue 2. Put the dropped letter into column A. Drop another letter and rearrange the remaining letters to answer clue 3. Put the dropped letter into column B. Follow this pattern for each row in the diagram. When completed, the letters in column A and column B, reading down, will spell an appropriate phrase.
Here’s the clues for Puzzle #1:
I’ve also included an empty sample grid for you to fill!
Here’s the clues for Puzzle #2:
And again, an empty sample grid, if needed!
The answers reading down in both puzzles are equally appropriate for this month (and next month), depending on your mood!
At this point, Mystery Science Theater 3000 is a comedy institution.
This simple idea — a man and his robot pals watching movies with the audience and gleefully poking fun at them — has spanned decades and generations.
And it’s been a good year for MST3K fans.
Not only has a copy of the last lost episode of the show been found — the KTMA-era version of Star Force: The Fugitive Alien 2,” which hasn’t been available since its original airing in November of 1988 — but the RiffTrax team of Bill Corbett, Mike Nelson, and Kevin Murphy have successfully crowdfunded a new quartet of episodes, MST3K: The RiffTrax Experiments.
A glimpse of the new set!
Over the years, this show has gone from local cable to Comedy Central, then to the Sci-Fi Channel. It left terrestrial cable for a while, until crowdfunding resurrected it. Then it streamed on Netflix, and moved to its own private streaming platform (The Gizmoplex, which is sadly shuttering soon). Along the way, it has toured with live shows, inducted new hosts and new robot voices into the cast, and now has constant livestreams running on YouTube.
It has spawned spinoffs like The Film Crew, Cinematic Titanic, and most famously RiffTrax, and new generations of fans are continuing to discover the show. (Plus a very lucky few joined the writing crew in some of the latest seasons.)
And new episodes on the horizon aren’t the only reason to celebrate.
Today marks the start of Halfway to Turkey Day!
Thanksgiving marathons have been an MST3K tradition going back to the ’90s, and the Turkey Day Marathon is so beloved that fans simply can’t wait until November to celebrate.
So Halfway to Turkey Day was born. A marathon of all the previous Turkey Day events, Halfway to Turkey Day starts today and will run through June 2nd. It’s available on Amazon Prime Video, Tubi, RokuChannel, the CW app, plus Samsung, LG, VIZIO and Google Smart TVs and more.
And I’ve been working on a puzzle celebrating Mystery Science Theater 3000, so what better day to share it than today, I ask you?
I hope all of the MSTies out there delight in a puzzly little journey through the history of one of my all-time favorite TV shows.
I’ve tried to make it as inclusive as possible, so no matter who your favorite host is or what your favorite episode is, there should be something for you to enjoy. (Plus I couldn’t resist coloring in a few black squares when I spotted Gypsy/GPC in the grid.)
Happy puzzling, MSTies! And Happy Halfway to Turkey Day!
[Thank you to Jennifer Cunningham, Troy Bond, and Crossword Gentleman Doug Peterson for your testsolving and input!]
I usually make brain teasers for Star Wars Day — check out these ones from 2021, 2018, and 2017 — but this year, I felt inspired to create a crossword puzzle!
Now, this 19x puzzle might be a little challenging if you’re not steeped in SW knowledge, since the theme involves bits of Star Wars-specific wordplay.
But hopefully the crossings will help you unravel what’s going on here!
After decades of movies, TV shows, novels, comic books, and all sorts of adventures, the saga of Star Wars still remains one of my favorite fictional universes. And I’m happy to bring two of my most enduring passions — Star Wars and puzzles — together again today.
