Matt Gaffney‘s “Murder by Meta: A Crossword Puzzle Mystery” has already met its funding goal, but there are only 4 days to go before your chance to order this puzzle set vanishes. The minimum pledge that gets you the puzzles in PDF form (in March 2014) is $10. Here’s Matt’s description of the project:
Daphne Pratt was big in the puzzle world — until her murder at a crossword tournament. Solve the puzzles to unmask her killer.
If you want the hammer of justice to rain righteous blows upon Daphne Pratt’s killer, you have a moral obligation to back this project. The puzzles are fun, too.
Never solved a meta-crossword before? Don’t worry! There’s a built-in plot mechanism that will allow even meta-newbies to solve “Murder by Meta” like a champ.
You’ve got 20 days left to make a pledge to Peter Gordon’s “Fireball Newsweekly Crosswords 2014.” Peter will be making his topical puzzles roughly every other week, and you can get all 20 puzzles for as little as $5, which is a steal. Pledging more gets you various pledge-drive premiums. Peter’s only at $3,477 in pledges towards a $10,000 goal, which means a lot more people need to ante up or all of our pledges get canceled and we don’t get the puzzles. People! I want the puzzles. I use them to supplement my regular news-reading so I am less likely to be caught unawares on current events trivia questions.
If you associate the name Peter Gordon with fiendishly difficult puzzles and aren’t looking to add more such puzzles to your diet, know that Peter’s taken the challenge level way down for Newsweekly:
Note that unlike the superhard Fireball Crosswords, Fireball Newsweekly Crosswords are aimed at a general audience. The difficulty level will be like that of a typical Tuesday or Wednesday newspaper crossword.
If you can spare the $15 (or more, at your option), please join me in backing both of these puzzle ventures. Both constructors are superb, write terrific clues, have high standards for fill, and are worthy of your support.
Just commenting to second Amy’s comments above. I had already subscribed to Matt’s Murder by Meta but hadn’t renewed my subscription to Peter’s Newsweekly Crosswords because, for me, the harder the crosswords, the better! I feel that I have ample opportunity to solve puzzles on the easier side. BUT!! After Amy’s plea above, I went and renewed my subscription because I feel that we crossword solvers have an embarrassment of riches of free online puzzles and if we don’t support the better constructors via real $$$ we won’t have great puzzles to solve — puzzle constructors need to make a living to survive too!