PUZZLE LINK: Online Solver
We’re happy to show off a puzzle type that’s new to this site: a Consonant Companions puzzle! This is a puzzle type invented by Eric Berlin that I think is really fun. Here’s how it works:
The answers in this puzzle begin in the upper left and spiral their way to the center. Consonants are to be entered in the shaded squares, vowels in the white squares. The same consonants will be used in the same order in both grids. The letter Y is not used in any answer. Clues are given in order for the left grid, but you will need to figure out the order for the right grid.
I very much recommend using the online solver (as opposed to printing a PDF) since the consonants will auto-fill between grids. Thanks so much to Joon for suggesting that improvement to this puzzle type and for sharing code with me that could make the JPZ.
As usual, when we debut a variety puzzle type, we also unveil code to help you create puzzles of that type. Here it is! You can even make your own JPZs on that site. Go get ’em!
In other news, we ran a contest crossword a few weeks back, and we have results! But first, we have spoiler space.
Three theme entries in that puzzle, each one wackier than the last:
[staffs held by the ice queen?] = FROST SCEPTRES
[run at some mermaids?] = CHARGESIRENS
[success for the french navy?] = FLEETVICTOIRE
At this point presumably you knew exactly what was going on or these just looked like gibberish. Hopefully you took my advice and Googled the theme entries to find that all of these were names of PWHL teams. There are, however, two missing, which makes TORRENT GOLDENEYES our contest answer, and that is indeed a way to get your hands on some classic video games.
Our randomly chosen contest winner is Ben Zimmer, who elected to receive a subscription to Outside the Box puzzles!
This was really fun! I’m already working on one of my own. Thank you yet again for posting such great puzzles and sharing the tools with which to make them.
Addendum: I posted my first Consonant Companions puzzles on my site (In Pursuit of Puzzles). I have a couple of comments and questions:
1) Can you add the Consonant Companions tool to the Variety Puzzle Tools on your Resources page?
2) In the CC tool, what exactly does the numerical score tell us?
3) In the Consonant Companions JPZ Creator, it’s not immediately clear what Hard Mode is. It’s only after entering all of the answers and clues, clicking ‘Convert’ and reading within the bottom of the Generated XML field that one sees this description: “All clues are combined into one list, so it is up to you to figure out which answers go in which grid and where.” (And holy cow, that would be a brutal solve!)
Thank you again for all of the tools!
Nice, I’ll go solve yours right now! And thanks for the notes; I’ll look into them.
Thanks for adding Consonant Companions to the Variety Puzzle Tools; FYI: it’s linked to the Flower Power Grid by mistake…