ANSWERS: Lucky Sevens 5 - L7

Just a tiny heads-up before I reveal the answers to "Lucky Sevens 5: L7": today is New Year's Eve, and since everyone will be busy watching the ball drop tonight, I've decided that tomorrow's puzzle will be delayed by an hour, meaning that it will be posted at 1:00 AM Eastern Standard Time (as opposed to my usual schedule of midnight EST). This shouldn't be a problem if you already follow this blog via email or RSS feed or get my puzzles through Patreon, but I just wanted to let everyone know regardless. Anyway, here are the ten people who have solved my puzzle from thirteen days ago:

• Grant Fikes ****
• Chris Hendricks ****
• Pavel Curtis ****
• Eric Maddy ****
• Brittany Trofimovich ****
• Sam Levitin ****
• Mom ****
• Lynn Sweeney ****
• Debbie Benford ****
• Alex Milton ****

Now head below the break for the answers as well as a couple solver comments!

CHRISTMAS GIFTS MONTH! PUZZLE #158: Brick By Brick 4

CHRISTMAS GIFTS MONTH!

PUZZLE #158

BRICK BY BRICK 4

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I've got gifts to open, but before I do that, I'm going to give you all one last gift of my own: a puzzle type that was requested by Brittany Trofimovich, so I hope she and everyone else enjoys this!

Place the 2x3 bricks into the grid below so that a crossword puzzle with rotational symmetry is formed. Each of the Across and Down clues hint at answers that appear in that row or column, all of which are in order. Be careful with the rows marked with a 7, 8, and 9, as the bricks that are placed in those rows will be split in half by a blue line, which you can see in the diagram above. Also, the letters that go in the blue line's squares will complete one answer in every Down column, though you'll have to figure out what those letters are.

This week's FINAL ANSWER is a movie that would be perfect for today (December 25th)

ACROSS
1) Sara Bareilles song with the lyrics "Say what you wanna say and let the words fall out"
    When doubled, Jim Carrey film about a lawyer forced to tell the truth
    Victoria Beckham's Spice Girls nickname
2) Cartoon cat with a magic bag of tricks
    Fencing sword
    Thought that can be bright
3) Shrek's wife
    Sammy who hit 609 home runs
    Member of a subculture that likes to wear all black
4) Star-bellied Seuss creature
    Duck _____ in the 24½th Century
5) Bug a phone
    Flamethrower-wielding character from Team Fortress 2
6) 18-wheeler
    Simon _____ (action film starring Dennis Rodman of all people)
    Pear variety named after a French province
7) They're no amateurs
    Mopes about
    Defunct TV network that aired Star Trek: Voyager
8) THE FINAL ANSWER
9) Deteriorate, like a tree
    Kansas City baseball team
    Partner of ready and willing
10) Yzma's henchman in The Emperor's New Groove
      _____ sequitur
      Manufacturer of noise-cancelling headphones
11) "Tom's Diner" singer Suzanne
      Barrel seen in a saloon
12) The Back to the Future movies, for one
      Positive responses
13) Sere
      Rick Springfield's character in General Hospital
      "Hello. My name is _____ Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."
14) Internet connection at a restaurant
      Mipha from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, for one
      Type of song you might hear today (December 25th)
15) Couch potato's spot
      Evens' opposites
      Express a viewpoint

DOWN
1) Lifelong pals, in text-speak
    Fire starter created by striking flint
    Reactions to anything adorable
2) Harness strap
    404 on a website, for example
    The Beastie Boys or The Dixie Chicks, e.g.
3) Singer Blacc who had a hit in 2014 with "The Man"
    Montana's "Oro y plata", for example
    Guitar lick
4) App where you used to upload six-second videos
    Black-_____ (ABC sitcom)
    Tech company that created the GeForce line of graphics processing units
5) On the nose
    Family Matters character whose catchphrase is "Did I do that?"
6) Maker of Mr. Potato Head and My Little Pony
    Blue Muppet with a big hooked nose
7) Primus singer/bassist Claypool
    Brother of Ron Weasley who was a prefect at Hogwarts
    "It's _____ Life" (Twilight Zone episode)
8) MP3 player whose Touch model is the only one still being made
    You Don't Mess with the _____ (Adam Sandler film)
    Three feet
9) "The Fox and the Grapes" storyteller
    Vampire from Nosferatu
    Owns
10) _____ Player One (upcoming Spielberg film)
      Animator Walt who created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
11) Lawn greenery
      Insurance company with a spokeslizard
12) Any one of the Goodfeathers from Animaniacs, for example
      The Coca-Cola Company's first diet soda
      Click one's fingers
13) ___-Eaters (shoe inserts)
      Oxymoronic shrimp size
      Digital assistant introduced in 2011
14) Complete collections
      About 95% of these gemstones come from Australia
      Harold Ramis' role in Ghostbusters
15) "Don't make me laugh!"
      Erase the memory of having looked at something, somehow
      Filleted flatfish

Once you believe you've figured out the FINAL ANSWER, send it to either redhead64@chartermi.net or itsredhead64@gmail.com (though I'm more likely to check the second one) and I'll put your name on a solvers list once I post the answers in about two weeks. You can also use those email addresses to give me some comments and feedback (or get a hint from me in exchange for a "hint star", more details for that are on the sidebar to the right) or send me the answer to last week's puzzle, if you haven't already figured it out. If you have a printer and want to solve this puzzle on paper, just head below the break for a version you can print out!

ANSWERS: Diagramless Crossword 2

Tomorrow's Christmas Day, but before we get to that, we have to reveal the answers to my second "Diagramless Crossword" puzzle from thirteen days ago, as well as the eight people who have successfully solved it:

• Grant Fikes ***
• Pavel Curtis ****
• Sam Levitin ****
• Eric Maddy ****
• Mom *
• Patrick Jordan ****
• Brittany Trofimovich ****
• Lynn Sweeney **

Now head below the break for the answers! Four of my solvers had stuff to say, too, so be sure to check their comments out as well!

CHRISTMAS GIFTS MONTH! PUZZLE #157: Lucky Sevens 5 - L7

CHRISTMAS GIFTS MONTH!

PUZZLE #157

LUCKY SEVENS 5: L7

This week's offering is a request from Chris Hendricks, which if you recall, wanted either a "Stretch Letters" or a "Lucky Sevens". I ultimately picked the latter, but he also wanted "some kind of twist to it" such as turning the Sevens to L's by flipping them upside-down. Not only that, I even included a word that he felt "would be a plus", so I hope he enjoys what I've made for him!

How unlucky! The Sevens have been flipped upside down! Stacked together below are seven L's made up of 7 squares each. The answers to each L start in their respectively numbered squares and continue along its path surrounded by a bold outline, going down and then right. Meanwhile, the answers to the Rows go straight across the grid, including those with only one or two letters in them.

Once you've filled in the grid, the letters in the colored squares (in the order of the L's that they appear in, starting with the L marked with a 1) will spell out this week's FINAL ANSWER: A seven-letter word

ROWS
i) 75% on a school paper, say
ii) Video game company that got in deep doo-doo last November with Star Wars Battlefront II's loot boxes
iii) Revival technique practiced on a dummy: Abbr.
iv) "You're So _____" (#1 Carly Simon hit)
v) Cozy country lodging
vi) Word on a doormat
vii) State capital that's home to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum: 2 wds.
viii) Evil robot played by James Spader in the second Avengers film
ix) Not urban
x) Best Picture Oscar winner with Leslie Caron in the title role
xi) A very, very, very long time

L'S
1) "Like a _____" (Weird Al's parody of a Madonna song)
2) Purple-wearing rival of Super Mario's brother
3) Manitoba's time zone
4) '80s cartoon adapted from the anime Beast King GoLion
5) Coffeehouse where you can play with and adopt felines: 2 wds.
6) Finest example
7) Massively bloody destruction

Once you believe you've figured out the FINAL ANSWER, send it to either redhead64@chartermi.net or itsredhead64@gmail.com (though I'm more likely to check the second one) and I'll put your name on a solvers list once I post the answers in about two weeks. You can also use those email addresses to give me some comments and feedback (or get a hint from me in exchange for a "hint star", more details for that are on the sidebar to the right) or send me the answer to last week's puzzle, if you haven't already figured it out. If you have a printer and want to solve this puzzle on paper, just head below the break for a version you can print out!

ANSWERS: Mixed Doubles 5

It's been thirteen days since I've posted "Mixed Doubles 5", and since then, seven of you have successfully solved it, as you can see in the list below:

• Pavel Curtis ****
• Grant Fikes ****
• Sam Levitin ****
• Eric Maddy ****
• Mom ****
• Lynn Sweeney ****
• Debbie Benford ****

Oh, and apparently, Feedspot really wants to be more well-known, so despite already adding this medal to the sidebar and last week's answer post, they've asked me to add it again, so here it is once more:

​

Now head below the break for the answers!

CHRISTMAS GIFTS MONTH! PUZZLE #156: Diagramless Crossword 2

CHRISTMAS GIFTS MONTH!

PUZZLE #156

DIAGRAMLESS CROSSWORD 2

It's week 2 of Christmas Gifts Month, so I should probably explain what it's all about. You see, people who solved my Anacrossword puzzle from two weeks ago were asked to request a type of word puzzle from me, so for this month, I'll pick four of those requests as Christmas gifts from me to you! If you want a full list of puzzles that I may do this month, go to this link that I posted yesterday. This week's offering is a request from Pavel Curtis, and I hope he finds it satisfactory!

Diagramless crosswords are solved by using the clues and their numbers to fill in the answers as well as the black squares. When completely filled in, the black squares in the grid will have diagonal symmetry, meaning that they'll look the same when rotated upside-down. As a help, the first number has already been placed in the grid.

Once everything's filled in, two of the across answers will spell out a clue that will lead you to the FINAL ANSWER: A title.

ACROSS
1) Piggy bank from Toy Story
5) Legal drama that NCIS spun off from
8) Army rank with two chevrons: Abbr.
11) Mexican water
12) Cheer for a torero
13) Scottish hillsides
16) Zoe and Hammie's baby sister in Baby Blues
17) Freddy Krueger's street
18) Up to this point
19) Rock band that sang the lyrics "And now you find yourself in '82"
21) "Ich bin ___ Berliner"
23) Beverly Hills, 90210 actress Spelling
24) Garfield's favorite pasta dish
26) Treebeard, for one
27) PART ONE OF THE FINAL ANSWER'S CLUE
32) Popular Reddit Q&A feature
33) Greek vowel with the shortest name
34) Chews on wood
35) In medias _____
36) Popular urban "sandbox" video game series published by Rockstar, for short
37) Cremation container
39) iPad platform
40) Voices above tenors
42) Wrestling org. that changed its name to Impact Wrestling in 2017
43) Gun grp. founded in 1871
44) PART TWO OF THE FINAL ANSWER'S CLUE
49) Three, in Italy
50) Residents of Pago Pago
51) Record label that Yes released 90125 on
52) Dadaist Jean that crossword solvers are sick of seeing
53) Ice planet from The Empire Strikes Back
55) The L in AWOL
57) The invention of this blue energy-saving bulb earned its creators a Nobel Physics Prize
59) Beekeeper that Peter Fonda played in 1997
61) Comparable to an embarrassed beet?
62) Prefix for "metric" and "morphic"
63) Gnorm _____ (Jim Davis comic predating Garfield)
64) Like deadpan humor
65) Utmost degree
66) Group of goats

DOWN
1) Hee-_____
2) Taj Mahal's city
3) Cereal comprised of rolled oats
4) Hit Michael Sembello song from Flashdance
5) Barack's Vice President
6) _____'s Window ('90s Nick Jr. show)
7) Zodiac sign after Taurus
8) Network that airs </scorpion>
9) Casein, for one
10) Legendary movie trailer announcer Don
14) _____ Jim (quirky 16-bit platformer video game)
15) Word preceding "Lanka"
20) Black-ink item
22) Short snooze
25) Ant princess from A Bug's Life
27) Weight unit for gemstones
28) Egg dishes that may come "au fromage"
29) Their "Priceless" ad campaign began in 1997
30) Chicago-based cable channel that used to have "Superstation" in its name
31) Analyze ore
36) Idiotest channel
37) Ctrl-Z, in Microsoft Word
38) Princess Jasmine's pet tiger
41) Bogey
42) Unicorn with a broken horn in My Little Pony: The Movie (2017)
45) Sly-fox link
46) Nemo's dad in Finding Nemo
47) "Quit quarreling!"
48) Free letters given out in Wheel of Fortune's Bonus Round
51) In the style of
54) Use your ears (assuming you're not deaf)
56) Dreyer's ice cream partner
58) Exclamation written in The Simpsons' scripts as "annoyed grunt"
60) Airplane takeoff guess: Abbr.

Once you believe you've figured out the FINAL ANSWER, send it to either redhead64@chartermi.net or itsredhead64@gmail.com (though I'm more likely to check the second one) and I'll put your name on a solvers list once I post the answers in about two weeks. You can also use those email addresses to give me some comments and feedback (or get a hint from me in exchange for a "hint star", more details for that are on the sidebar to the right) or send me the answer to last week's puzzle, if you haven't already figured it out. If you have a printer and want to solve this puzzle on paper, just head below the break for a version you can print out!

ANSWERS: Anacrossword

Well, this was unexpected. Yesterday, a website called Feedspot sent me an email saying that they've selected me as one of the Top 100 Puzzle Blogs online! I'm #67 on the list, while my buddy Grant Fikes is also on there! Talk about an early Christmas present!



Speaking of Christmas presents, now's the time for me to explain what Christmas Gifts Month is all about: the people who solved my "Anacrossword" puzzle from two weeks ago were asked to request a puzzle type from me, and a whopping ten of you did so! Here are the solvers who did so, as well as the types of puzzles they requested:

• Grant Fikes **** [A Second Anacrossword]
• Eric Maddy **** [Crossword]
• Brittany Trofimovich **** [Brick By Brick]
• Mom **** [Mixed Doubles]
• Sam Levitin **** [Meta-Crossword]
• Debbie Benford **** [Anagram Chambers]
• Lynn Sweeney **** [Sudokurossword]
• Chris Hendricks **** [Stretch Letters or a Lucky Sevens variant]
• Pavel Curtis **** [Diagramless Crossword]
• Bryce Herdt **** [Waterfall]

Now head below the break for the answers, as well as some comments from two of my solvers!

CHRISTMAS GIFTS MONTH! PUZZLE #155: Mixed Doubles 5

CHRISTMAS GIFTS MONTH!

PUZZLE #155

MIXED DOUBLES 5

Happy December, everyone! And as you can see in the header above, it's another theme month! I'll elaborate more on the details of it next week, but for now, all I'll say is that this puzzle type was requested by my mom. Now let's get to the directions!

Each answer word in this crossword variation has two clues leading to it, using different meanings of the word. The clues are separated into Across and Down, but are otherwise ordered randomly. When you find two Across clues or two Down clues that seem to have the same answer, add up their clue numbers to determine the place in the grid where the answer should be entered. For example, if the clue for 1-Across and the clue for 16-Across both have the same answer, the answer would go in the box labeled 17 (1+16). To make things harder, tags such as "Hyph." and "2 wds." have been omitted.

There is one extra clue in both lists of Across and Down clues. This week's FINAL ANSWER is the answer to both of the extra clues, which you can get by rearranging the letters in the grid's pink squares.

ACROSS
1) Second book in the Divergent trilogy
2) Avoid an issue, say
3) X-Men member born in Canada
4) Grace who sang for Jefferson Airplane
5) Fascinate
6) Simba's family, e.g.
7) Patty Bouvier's twin sister in The Simpsons
8) It goeth before a fall
9) Rebel
10) What Resident Evil is called in Japan
11) Feature of a whodunit's plot
12) Wild recklessness
13) Sans' brother in Undertale
14) Looked through again
15) Clothing item that may have a poodle on it
16) Covered in oil
17) Ancient scroll material
18) Type of sign used to label dangerous viruses
19) 2014 film about Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous march
20) Forsake
21) Critiqued a piece of media

DOWN
1) Its state bird is the cactus wren
2) Movie studio that turned 100 in 2012
3) Glowing piece of coal
4) Fantasy film starring David Bowie as Jareth
5) Young model on the front of a magazine
6) College football player that wears maize and blue
7) What the Minotaur from Greek mythology was trapped in
8) "Marvins Room" musician
9) Hockey infraction
10) Evil organization in Captain America: The First Avenger
11) The largest constellation
12) Iced tea brand that sells Arnold Palmers
13) All-inclusive
14) "Eh, I expected as much"
15) The world's fastest dog breed
16) Blue dragon princess from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
17) Male duck
18) "Easy, breezy, beautiful" makeup brand
19) Statuettes and such
20) Toaster Strudel topping
21) Bus that the Allman Brothers Band's "Ramblin' Man" was born in

Once you think you know what the FINAL ANSWER is, send it to either redhead64@chartermi.net or itsredhead64@gmail.com (though I'm more likely to check the second one) and I'll put your name on a solvers list once I post the answers in about two weeks. You can also use those email addresses to give me some comments and feedback (or get a hint from me in exchange for a "hint star", more details for that are on the sidebar to the right) or send me the answer to last week's puzzle, if you haven't already figured it out. If you have a printer and want to solve this puzzle on paper, just head below the break for a version you can print out!

ANSWERS: Snake Charmer 2

D'oh! Late with posting the answers again! I really need to start getting better about scheduling these! Anyway, you know the drill by now: since it's been almost two weeks since "Snake Charmer 2" was posted, it's time for me to post the answers and the people who solved them:

• Grant Fikes ****
• Pavel Curtis ****
• Chris Hendricks ****
• Sam Levitin ****
• Dan Simonds ****
• Mom ****
• Eric Maddy ****
• Debbie Benford ****
• Lynn Sweeney ****

Now head below the break for the answers as well as a comment from one of my solvers!