Mini 2

Solve here: Crosshare

It has been a long time since I created a puzzle, and I’ll consider this as dipping my toes back into the waters. It’s nothing too exciting or creative. A pretty straightforward mini that experienced solvers should be able to complete in less than a minute without much trouble. 1Across (mild spoiler alert!) has been at the forefront of my attention for the last week or so, and I thought I would throw it in there. I think if I can continue to do mini puzzles like this for a little while, where I include one or two entries that happen to be related to what’s going on in the world or in my personal life, that might be enough to keep me interested in making more puzzles again. No promises, though.

Themeless 1

Solve online: crosshare

Download: pdf / puz

Today’s puzzle coincides with my debut (on August 12) on 7xwords.com, curated by the amazing Malaika Handa. If you want to try it, go check it out! If you are here because you already saw my puzzle there, welcome! Thanks so much for visiting! I hope you’ll try my puzzles and give me feedback if you have the time. Also, you can check out my video solves and commentary on the NYTimes crossword which I do several days a week over on YouTube. Links to other things I do can be found over on my About page.

This was my first stab at doing a themeless puzzle. It was TOUGH! The puzzle itself isn’t tough to solve (I hope). I’d put it at a mild to medium difficulty. But it was tough to construct. I suppose it’s one of those things that you just get better at with more practice. I started out with the spanners (15-letter entries) and I originally tried to keep more long answers (10 or more letters) in, but just couldn’t get anything working right. Eventually I added enough black squares that the second longest entries were only 9 letters. Oh well. It’s all part of the learning experience. I still had fun making the clues, though, so I hope you find a few things in there to make you smile.

Sowlympics

Solve online: Crosshare

Download: .puz / .pdf

Here’s Alphabento’s first full-size puzzle! I was inspired by this particular bit of Tokyo 2020 news that broke last week (mild spoiler if you click it, technically, but it shouldn’t really affect your solving experience if you check it). FEEDBACK IS APPRECIATED!! It should be clear from going through the puzzle that I’m not expecting a puzzle like this to be published anywhere, so any kind of feedback like “An entry like this would never make it in the NYTimes” and such is unnecessary, but more general feedback about cluing or layout or anything like that is more than welcome!

Mini #1

Solve online: Crosshare

Download: .puz / .pdf

Welcome to AlphaBento! This is going to be an adventure. I intend to update the site with more information about myself in the near future, as well as the plans I have going forward, but for now, I thought I’d get the ball rolling with a Mini Puzzle! I welcome any comments, positive or negative (but hopefully constructive), either here or on Crosshare!