Eric Berlin has curated a terrific list of pencil puzzles you can get for free online. And not junky free puzzles, either—Eric is a connoisseur with exacting standards. If you’re looking for crosswords, cryptic crosswords, logic puzzles, variety word puzzles, and more, check out Eric’s post. Note that many of the crosswords can be done online, so if you haven’t got access to a printer, don’t let “pencil puzzles” deter you. Solve on!
There are also crossword apps out there. For easy pop-culture puzzles, there’s Crosswords With Friends, for which Trip Payne and I are the editors (you might be able to entice those friends and family members who are daunted by your NYT solving skills to get into crosswords). For daily themed puzzles in the easy to medium range, edited by the gifted Erik Agard, check out the USA Today crossword app. The New York Times crossword app, as many of you know, offers the daily puzzles along with smaller Mini and Midi puzzles; full access to those requires an NYT puzzles subscription, while the Crosswords With Friends and USA Today crossword apps make the current day’s puzzle free.
Peter Ritmeester of PZZL.com (who used to handle the old NYT crossword applet) in Amsterdam has just assembled a miscellany of printable puzzles and online apps, including crosswords (from Gail Grabowski, Stan Newman and Fred Piscop), logic puzzles, sudoku, and word searches for kids (from Helene Hovanec). You can access them all here.
This week’s AVCX puzzle is a contest puzzle – we’ll have a post up explaining the puzzle once the entry period closes.
If you enjoyed Trip Payne’s Fireball “Cuckoo Crossword” (aka a “Something Different” puzzle) on April Fools’ Day, have we got a treat for you! ACPT champ Dan Feyer has taken the time to make .puz files of a bunch of these wacky puzzles that were published in Stan Newman’s crossword newsletter from 1985 to 1994. You can read about the puzzle collection and download the files here. Big thanks to Dan, and to Stan for granting permission.