THEY BETTER WIDEN THE DOORWAYS AND REINFORCE THE RUNWAY HONEY BECAUSE JUXTAQUOIZE IS BACK IN THE HOUSE! hello fans of juxtaquo(i)ze... i added an i to the name of this blog to make it supervocalic and have jqxz because i thought it would be a bit more scrabbbly and 11 letters > 10 letters. what is juxtaquoize (pronounced the same as "je ne sais quoi")... idk! maybe i'll figure it out. enjoy this themeless in the meantime! i've been meaning to fill this FOREVER but i finally got around to doing it. the skeleton/grid is kinda like... jaw-dropping imo so the fact i was able to fill this somewhat cleanly makes me happy 😊.
this puzzle was also made for my college's zine, with the following prompt: "we want to explore what makes life worth it during these unstable and dangerous times. Let’s say nothing has inherent meaning—there’s only the meaning we give to things." thus, this puzzle is slightly experimental in its approach - the first half of the clue is just a regular clue, the second part (in parentheses) is what i'm thankful for existing in relation to the entry. hope you enjoy a slightly different puzzle! also the .pdf file this time is very like pretty because i had to edit it myself for the zine. (there also might be some minor dupes in the pdf/puz version oops) ALSO, i finally got my first published puzzle with the atlantic on feb 9th! super happy with it and thank you for all of the compliments about it 💗 everyone who i asked to do it in the crossword community said it left a big impression on them which is very good! (SPOILERS FOR FEB 9 PUZZLE PAST KELELA WALL, NEW AVATAR OUT JULY 10TH):
i wanted to start with an interesting spanner, and i thought A SEAT AT THE TABLE would be perfect, because it fits in with my whole brand (alt black gay), the album is life-changing, and it can also be clued as the idiom. after that, i found MICRODOSE and thought that would be a great entry. fitting with the juxtaquoize™️ brand, i was able to sneak in TELFAR and ANOK (YAI), and even included some of my major (applied math) with FIBONACCI! i was actually planning to do a collab with thee reigning ACPT champion agard and have him fill out the second half of the grid, but tbh after he filled it i was like "err the remaining fill is kinda so so :-X" so i decided to just fill out the rest myself. after shelving it for like a month, i settled on the other spanner being SIT BACK AND RELAX for the scrabbly value, but i somehow accidentally managed to finagle a mini-theme of like perching down and being at ease, which i love! sometimes crazy coincidences can happen when you construct.
thank you so much to anna for testing! also including two songs - it's been a couple months & i need to promote kelela like my life depends on it (because it does). ALSO i've finally had a lot of ideas for crosswords so i should get back in the swing of constructing monthly blog puzzles. how fun!
