A happy little update

This blog has been very quiet over the past four years, but life has been quite the opposite. Since posting my last puzzle here in early July 2022, Hope and I moved to Florida, bought our first house, got engaged, got married, and moved again, this time to Dallas. We both started and finished graduate school. And we had a baby — in the blink of an eye, Ayla has somehow already grown into a goofy, toddling 14-month-old. She's obsessed with her stuffed lion, Marco, her library of board books, her cat, and watermelon (codenames include "you-know-what," "large round," and simply "W.M.").

Since graduating from my master's program in December, I've been able to stay home as Ayla's primary caretaker, and I'm so grateful that my crossword work has made that possible. So although I haven't posted anything here in some time, I'm as busy as I've ever been in the puzzling world:

• I've continued writing 15x15 puzzles for Apple News+, USA Today, and many other venues that I've worked with over the past seven years. You can find a list of all of those published puzzles here.

• I write crosswords, crossword hints, and Circuits puzzles for Puzzmo, which I highly recommend if you're not familiar with it already. Here's a recent Circuits puzzle to whet your appetite (each blank box gets a single word that forms two-word phrases with neighboring boxes as dictated by the arrows).

• I've become one of the regular contributors to the new-ish mini crossword at Yahoo!. My puzzle's usually run on Thursdays there, which means you can play one here today

• I contribute levels to TED's Letter Brew, a fun bite-sized game of word ladders and linguistic alchemy. Today's level is also one of mine.

  
  

• Starting this month, I'm writing Dallas-specific themed crosswords for D Magazine. I'm really excited to call Dallas home again, and I think it shows in these puzzles. If D Mag is what brought you to this site, welcome!

• A few times a year, I get to work with custom clients on puzzles for weddings, company retreats, and other special events. I really enjoy working with folks on these personalized crosswords — if you're interested in more info, click here.

  
  

• Another book project is in the works. I'll share more here when I can 🕵🏻

Thanks as always for solving my puzzles and sharing my work! I appreciate it more than you know.

Cheers,

Matthew