Crossword Fiend Forum

Hi everyone!

I've been writing unpublishable puzzles lately, so I thought I'd share a couple with you.

First is Machine of Death, based on the collection of short stories of the same name (http://www.machineofdeath.net). You don't need to have read the book to understand the theme - the title says it all, really.

Second is Ultimate Dilemma. I was inspired by Patrick Blindauer's recent asymmetrical puzzle (http://www.patrickblindauer.com/Free_Mo ... %20PUZ.pdf), so I tried making my own. Getting this theme will require some current pop culture knowledge and is just a little twisted.

Anyway, get PDFs here: http://www.scribd.com/neville_fogarty

.puz files are attached to this post. Does anyone know of a weblog service that lets you include .puz files natively? The free-r the better.

If you do either of these puzzles, I'd love to hear your feedback - positive/negative/neutral/chaotic/otherwise.

Cheers,
Neville

And I realize that I titled this thread incorrectly - Decision v. Dilemma. Don't worry - that spoils nothing

Love "Ultimate Dilemma". Tres kewl.

Re: "Machine of Death"... and now I have to read up on the stories behind 17- and 50-Across.

Glad you enjoyed them Unfortunately, some sources say that 50-Across is an urban legend, but I say to hell with that. Both are still quite interesting stories. I'll leave the research to you, as most sites that I could post the names of would clearly contain spoilers!

i liked machine of death just fine. ultimate dilemma took me 1.5 saturdays, and still makes no sense to me. then again, i'm not sure i want it to. however, i also think several of the clues have problems (37a, 45a for instance), and the 24d/29a crossing is an infelicitous one.

----minor spoilers - no answers unless you click links----

Joon,

I definitely recognize those two cluing issues - my attempts to be tricky may have obfuscated a bit too much. I see where you were coming on on both that you mentioned - I should have indicated first name in the first clue, and the second has weird part of speech nonsense going on.

Yes, that is a tricky crossing, but I think it's the only letter that really makes sense in both 'words'. Very liberal use of 'words' here.

Finally, if you're still not sure what's going on here, this should help you out - only the first minute is necessary. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD2LRROpph0