PUZZLE LINK: Online Solver
I made a flower power puzzle! But how, you ask? Well, it’s quite easy now with our Flower Power tools and the brand-new Crossword Nexus Variety Constructor!
The variety constructor is a new project, the heavy lifting for which was done by Ryan Fitzgerald’s Ingrid, whose backend is open-source. The variety constructor allows you to interactively create a puzzle of basically any type, as long as you know where the words will be placed ahead of time.
The key to setting up how the words interact is via a “batch file”, terminology we borrowed from Crux and its successor Qxw. If you’re interested, the syntax is laid out pretty well in the Crux page. I’ve been told it’s relatively intuitive; at least, it’s more intuitive than Umiaq is. Try it out!
Oh, we do have a puzzle today. It’s a flower power! Here’s how it works:
The answer to each clue in this puzzle is five letters long and should be entered in a curve starting in the correspondingly numbered space on the outside and curving in towards the center of the flower. Each numbered space is the start of two answers, one curving clockwise and the other counterclockwise.
If you like flower power puzzles, we’re offering one as part of the charity puzzle pack we’re giving to anyone who makes a donation of any size to Alex’s triathlon fundraiser. Some really good stuff in there, don’t miss out!
Do you like acrostic puzzles? Join our Patreon!
Do you want a place to discuss puzzles? Join our Discord!
Hi Alex,
I’m excited to try the new Flower Power tool. Any chance you could do a ‘how to’ video demo-ing the Crossword Nexus Variety Constructor, batch files, etc.?
If you’re sufficiently motivated you can check this out: https://m.twitch.tv/videos/2852946202
If I’m sufficiently motivated I’ll edit that down to 10 minutes and put it on YouTube
I’m going to check it out right now; thank you!
Alex,
The Twitch video is very helpful. Thank you so much. Of note, while your blog post links to the version of the Flower Power tool seen in the video (i.e., with the batch file tab and the link for creating a .vpuz file) the one in your Variety Puzzle Tools section doesn’t have either of those.
Good catch! Fixed
Alex, I’ve created a Flower Power puzzle and am now trying to put it on my website. I’ve managed to figure out that it’s not embeddable, like a crossword or acrostic. I tried uploading the .vpuz file to the Crossword Sharing tool and copying the shareable link, and then pasting that link into my website, but I keep getting an error message (maybe that’s because the Crossword Sharing tool isn’t meant for uploading .vpuz files…). I see that Jason, over at Trash Panda Puzzles, has linked his Flower Power puzzle to open for solving in Crossword Nexus. Can you tell/show me how to do that? And thanks for your patience.
https://crosswordnexus.com/variety-solver/share.html
there’s a link to that from the flower power vpuz page
For some reason it’s not working. I click on Generate Shareable Link, then Copy Link, then I go to my website and try to link the copied link to the word ‘here’, but I get a message that says “This block has encountered an error and cannot be previewed.” I also tried clicking on Shorten URL (da.gd), but get the message “Failed to shorten link”. (Could this be a WordPress issue?) Any other thoughts? If need be I simply present the puzzle as a pdf, but I’ve love to offer solvers the option to solve at Crossword Nexus.
Hi again Alex, I think I’ve discovered the problem. The shareable link that’s generated by the variety solver is 232,000 characters long (!!). I think that’s crashing the block on WordPress. I tried shortening the url on both Bitly and TinyURL and neither worked. Bitly said “We’ll need a valid url” and TinyURL has a limit of 32,000 characters. I’m wondering how Trash Panda Puzzles was able to successfully link to Crossword Nexus. In any event, if you have any additional ideas, I’d welcome them.
Try clicking the “upload image to imgbb” checkbox. That should shorten the URL enough that tinyurl will be able to handle it.
You’re the best, Alex. Clicking the checkbox and then further shortening the url with tinyurl did the trick. As the Shareable Variety Puzzle Creator notes, it slows the download a bit, but not too badly. Thanks, as always, for your patience with my endless questions. Just posted my first Flower Power!
Worst case scenario just let users download the vpuz and point them to https://crosswordnexus.com/variety-solver/