Puzzle Notes

Hello, friends! We're back with another batch of bite-size brain candy for you, featuring three mini cryptics by the following fab crew:

David Ward writes: I grew up solving (London) Times and Telegraph cryptics and set my first puzzle for a school project. Twenty-five years later, with a broader experience including Guardian and Independent puzzles, I came back to setting as a more serious pursuit. I'm still finding my own style, but Nutmeg (Margaret Irvine) in particular was a big influence in my development.

Dylan Blok is a longtime wordplay and crossword enthusiast who began setting cryptics about a year ago. When he's not doing crosswords, he is probably reading. He lives with his fiancée and their cat.

Elise Corbin is the creator of the blog Cruciverbology, which focuses on science-themed puzzles. She wrote the ORCA Awards' best themed puzzle of 2024, 'You're Projecting'. This is her first published cryptic and her first published collab. She lives in Toronto.

Owen Bergstein is a high school senior from Boston. Normally he tries to write pretty funny AVCX bios, but today he wants to brag a little bit. He'd love it if you could check out his blog, where he wrote a puzzle every day last month. With today's cryptic, he has finally achieved his childhood dream of "hitting for the AVCX cycle"'that is to say, having one puzzle in every (crossword) AVCX branch. You're next, trivia... '

We'll see you back here in two weeks, but in the meantime, we hope you enjoy these mini puzzles, whether you solve them on paper (as we personally prefer) or with an app, or online, which you can do at crosswordr.com: Mini #1, Mini #2, Mini #3 (AVCX login required).

Be well,
Francis (and the AVCX Cryptic crew)