Hello, and welcome to Puzzles for Progress! Today, instead of three puzzles, there will be a single full-size crossword! I have done this once before, but a long time ago.
I've been wanting for some time to get a crossword published in a newspaper, such as The New York Times—they're a major inspiration to me, so I think it would be super cool! However, my bottleneck is that, despite having made a whole lot of puzzles overall, I'd only made that one 15x15 crossword. I've never had any to submit! So a few weeks ago, I decided to force myself to make another one by giving myself exactly one day in which to do the puzzle front-to-back: Crossworkshop Day, if you will. It took basically all day, but I did!
You may be asking why the puzzle is here, then, instead of the NYT queue. Well, this puzzle's theme has inconsistencies that testers were very divided on. Some didn't care about them at all, but others felt they ruined the puzzle. I do think the theme is fun and cool, but felt that a publication editor would rightly flag the inconsistencies, and they're very foundational to the puzzle, so it would be unsalvageable. Therefore, since I am proud of the puzzle and the theme concept, I decided to post it here! I do plan to make some more 15x15s, and, at the very least, try to get them published. I'll keep you all posted.
Before the puzzle, though, today's Puzzles fordle Progress should be slightly less scary than previous weeks'.
Now for the actual crossword, entitled √n:
I hope you enjoy! As always, using the internet is not cheating, and you should spend exactly as much time solving puzzles as is fun. It should never feel like homework!
—Jacob
