hi all! i'm excited to unveil the project i've been working on for the past two months: a set of 40 bite-sized crosswords filled with various themes and nerdy references.
these are all playable on crosshare today if you use the links in this post. if, on the other hand, you prefer playing minis day-by-day, they will be publicized one a time (from now to mid-june!) on my crosshare blog, so you can follow along with that if you like! each puzzle includes a detailed constructor's note that you can read after solving.
thanks to heron, niv, luny, and ethan zarov for playtesting these. have fun! links below:
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hello all niv and i just finished re-solving all of the atlas of mosaics round from mit mystery hunt 2026 and we are so f***** right now
i got to see what was up with case of the superhero dinner party, dance of the bumblebee, the tortured programmers department, and firefly, which i didn't get a real chance to look at during the hunt and knew i wanted another chance to visit. i also got to dive deeper into what was happening with underwater hunt, doubles games, bite-sized logic, and on the fence, which was cool. niv got to visit the puzzle that cannot be named and lifecycle, which i had worked on during the hunt but they hadn't.
i wish i could revisit the entirety of a mystery hunt this way, but it's not feasible unless i have people to work on it with, and even i don't want to be working on puzzles 24/7, like i have other things to do in a given year unfortunately :(
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this is a 5x5 i made for our team in the upcoming paradox puzzlehunt. the construction had some specific requirements (one of which was that the grid had to be 5x5), but i hope you enjoy anyway :)
someday in order to preserve the balance of the universe, the world needs to invent a fourth pog. currently we have
pog (2010), the twitch emote depicting ryan gutierrez
named after pog (early 1990s), the playground collectable and game played with milk caps
named after pog (1971), the citrus drink made of passionfruit, orange, and guava
if the timeline is to be believed, we are due for a fourth pog in like 2030 or so and it should be named exclusively after the twitch emote to mean something completely divorced from the idea of an emote. perhaps something even more abstract, so that the thing being called "pog" gets progressively more poignant in each iteration
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last night the last of the forty minis went live on crosshare! thanks to everyone who played! it was fun seeing comments trickle in.
this will be a big stats-for-nerds post that spoils the puzzles from the set, so please play them first if you haven't already!
stats about forty minis
themes
okay done? we'll start with a huge table listing every puzzle's theme:
i grouped the puzzles into seven buckets based on how the themes work mechanically:
APT PAIR: puzzles which revolve around two entries that go together in a wordplay-y sort of way
SET OF THINGS: puzzles with entries clues as lists of things like [a, b, c]
LETTER PATTERN: puzzles which revolve around entries that contain certain letters or letter combinations
GRID ART: puzzles with a grid shape or highlighted sections that depict something
GIMMICKS: puzzles that do (or at least pretend to do) something other than "fill each empty square with exactly one letter"
SINGLE PHRASE: puzzles found from 15-letter phrases (this is the same category of puzzle as the promotional "FORTY MINIS" puzzle i made before releasing the set.)
THEMELESS: puzzles with no theme
you'll also notice that puzzle 37.5 makes an appearance on this list, because i accidentally made two puzzle 37s and linked the second one from the first one. so technically this is 41 minis! i lied once again haha
grid sizes
some observations from this table:
the most common grid size was 7x7, used by five puzzles in the set: SONG & DANCE, YOU FOOL I HAVE 70 ALT ACCOUNTS, CHECK THAT RIGHT NOW, IS THIS..., and I'M NOT SKILLED ENOUGH TO MAKE A COMPLETELY EMPTY 7x7. other grid sizes were used at most three times each.
the widest grid was the one for DIATONICALLY INCREASING, at 12 squares wide.
the thinnest grid is a tie between THE WALLS ARE SCREAMING! and HOW'S THE WEATHER UP THERE, at 3 squares wide.
the tallest grid was the one for HOW'S THE WEATHER UP THERE, at 15 squares tall.
the shortest grid is a tie between FOREBODING MESSAGE (as well as the bonus puzzle 37.5) and ROUND NUMBERS, at 3 squares tall.
19 of the puzzles are wider than they are tall; 10 of the puzzles are taller than they are wide; 12 of the puzzles are square
white square count
i also made a histogram out of the total number of white cells in each puzzle (that's just the cells you're putting letters in, minus any gimmicked cells):
as the series developed this distribution was kind of bimodal, like there's a big lump around 27 cells and a second big lump around 36 cells. it's interesting that in the end the distribution is actually even meta-bimodal, like the lump at 27 cells has two peaks at 25 and 29, and the lump around 35 cells has two peaks at 33 and 37. weird huh?
then there's a long tail of grids which have 40 squares or more. i limited myself to no more than 50 squares in a mini, so the puzzle with the most squares was I'M NOT SKILLED ENOUGH TO MAKE A COMPLETELY EMPTY 7x7, which, being a 7x7 square with one black cell, has 48 white cells.
also originally there was one puzzle that had only 9 white cells, but it had to be cut due to the mechanic not working. so in the final set, the least amount of cells in a grid sits at an unusual peak on 15 cells. this histogram doesn't include the bonus puzzle 37.5, so there are actually 3 puzzles with this number of cells: FOREBODING MESSAGE, the bonus puzzle, and OCTO EXPANSION.
clue count
lastly i made a histogram out of the total number of clues in each puzzle:
in total, the puzzle set contains 574 clues.
the puzzles with the least clues (8 each) are LATIN SQUARE, OCTO EXPANSION, and FOREBODING MESSAGE (+ the bonus puzzle 37.5)
the puzzle with the most clues (22) is IS THIS...
i think the peaks at 11 clues and 16 clues correlate with the meta-bimodal pattern seen in the white cell distribution - not the bit where there's two peaks at 27 cells and 35 cells, but the part where there's two peaks for each of those two peaks. i haven't thought it through deeply enough to determine if that's really true though
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i have the number theory diagram post muted so i can't tell how many people independently thought of and decided to retweet the post today (6/11) as a clever joke
