Quid Pro

The GenXword Mini: Year 2

2025-08-22T08:30:00-07:00

One year ago, I started posting a weekly GenXword Mini. The conceit for the puzzles is that each could have been written on December 31, 1999, but everything in the grid still is memorable enough that someone alive (and aware) in 1999 can reasonably be expected to remember it in the present day. Yesterday, I posted my fifty-third puzzle marking the start of year two.

It’s been a fun year, the puzzles get a lot of interaction and the idea seems to have built up a small following. Some of the favorites, based on number of starts: May 29, 2025, May 22, 2025 and August 14, 2025.

I haven’t posted anything new on my Quid Pro site in a little bit, I am taking a break from the larger grids right now. I do continue to post every week at GenXword, so please be sure to follow me there (there’s an RSS feed and everything) and help me celebrate one year of GenXword Minis!

The GenXword Mini: Year 2 was originally published by Quid Pro on August 22, 2025.

Summer Swoon

2025-07-12T09:00:00-07:00

The idea for this theme came from exactly where you’ll think it came from after you solve it. But I’ll admit that the pay-off is a bit too easy, for reasons also explained in the puzzle. And I’d apologize for three prefix/suffix clues, at least one proper name I should have worked out of the grid and sundry other laziness but 16-Across will explain all.

Happy summer (swoon)!

Summer Swoon was originally published by Quid Pro on July 12, 2025. To view, play or download puzzles and solutions, please click through to the site.

An It’s-Just-A-Number Midi

2025-06-21T09:30:00-07:00

It’s that self-indulgent time of year again: my birthday month. This year is a milestone number for me but saying anything more than that would be a spoiler. As I mentioned in a recent puzzle, it’s been a difficult last few months and so having spring turn into summer and my birthday around the corner is a nice chance to try to reset into a slightly more upbeat mood. Hopefully this puzzle reflects a little bit of that turn.

The puzzle ended up being the first 13x13 midi I’ve done in a while, the size was needed to fit the themers in. I think it’s also the first of this type of theme that I’ve done… but honestly, I can’t remember.

An It’s-Just-A-Number Midi was originally published by Quid Pro on June 21, 2025. To view, play or download puzzles and solutions, please click through to the site.

A Poisonous Midi

2025-06-01T09:30:00-07:00

This is one of those puzzles which came from an all too real experience — the springtime acquisition of the item referenced in 11-Across. I’m generally pretty careful about stepping in it myself but with a new puppy who likes to roam in the woods during our hikes, it was all but inevitable that she would bring it back home on her coat. Alas, she did and I ended up with it on my neck and arm. Thankfully, I’m pretty tolerant of it by now so it’s usually only a few days before it goes away.

Anyway, I hope your spring is otherwise free of the items referenced in both 11-Across and 24-Across and your life is generally free of the one referenced in 19-Across. We don’t need any more toxicity in our lives. But enjoy the puzzle!

A Poisonous Midi was originally published by Quid Pro on June 01, 2025. To view, play or download puzzles and solutions, please click through to the site.

Live Each Day

2025-05-10T11:30:00-07:00

I recently lost my wife of 40 years, this is the not surprising reason my puzzle constructing has been sporadic over the last few months. Today’s is the first puzzle I’ve constructed since her passing and the theme just evolved from where my head was — in general, I try to use these midis almost like blog posts representing my current life and this one is about as honest of a puzzle as I have made in that vein. The theme came together rather quickly once I knew where it was going.

I think I’ll just leave it there. I hope you enjoy the puzzle.

Live Each Day was originally published by Quid Pro on May 10, 2025. To view, play or download puzzles and solutions, please click through to the site.

A Bowie Extravaganza

2025-04-19T08:00:00-07:00

In late 2022, I spent some time trying to construct crosswords that were 100% themed — where every single clue referenced the puzzle’s subject in some way. The idea was inspired by a Taylor Swift puzzle constructed by Malaika Handa and sticking with the musical artist trope, my first effort was a Tom Petty themed 5x5 mini which I posted in October of that year.

My second effort was a much more ambitious 11x11 about David Bowie that I am posting now for the first time. Due to some personal issues, I just haven’t been able to construct anything new in the last few weeks so I am pulling this one out of the archive for your enjoyment. I realize it’s not for everyone — especially non-Bowie fans — and the 100% theme thing ended up just not having broad applicability. So this puzzle turned out to be more of a one-off than the first of many. Still, it’s something.

If all goes well, I’ll be back in another three weeks with a brand new normal midi. Until then, [TK bad David Bowie lyric reference pun].

A Bowie Extravaganza was originally published by Quid Pro on April 19, 2025. To view, play or download puzzles and solutions, please click through to the site.

A Midi with a Bone to Pick

2025-04-02T09:00:00-07:00

The topic of this puzzle moved around a bit. I ultimately decided that the theme would honor the start of baseball season and my home team San Francisco Giants’ new President of Baseball Operations, Buster Posey. To be honest, it’s kind of a morbid play on his worst injury 14 years ago but given some personal circumstances in my own life, it just made more sense to go this way. The Giants are off to a great start, so I am hoping the sentiment is in the right place and Buster ends up being as successful in the front office as he was during his time as catcher.

The basic theme (as in the revealer) has been done a few times but, best I could find, no one has ever attempted to do the puzzle in the way I did with the word forms that I used. Hopefully that adds some novelty and you enjoy the solve.

A Midi with a Bone to Pick was originally published by Quid Pro on April 02, 2025. To view, play or download puzzles and solutions, please click through to the site.

Stop Bugging Me

2025-03-08T10:10:00-08:00

It’s been raining a lot in our part of town (as with much of Northern California) and after the soil gets sufficiently waterlogged, a certain insect tends to seek out the driest place it can find. Unfortunately for us, the driest place in our little area happens to be the place we also call home. In other words, we’ve been suffering from a non-stop [REDACTED] invasion over the last few weeks. I’ve mentioned it to a few friends and neighbors and from their reports, we’re not the only one so afflicted.

We have an exterminator who normally visits us every other month to keep things under control, over the last two months she’s made a few extra visits and the nasty invaders seem to have been beaten back… for now. There’s another storm on the horizon so we’ll see how much more rain it takes before they’re back in our kitchen once again. We know this isn’t a battle you win, it’s just one you stay on top of as much as you can.

But hey, what a good topic for a puzzle, amirite?

Stop Bugging Me was originally published by Quid Pro on March 08, 2025. To view, play or download puzzles and solutions, please click through to the site.

A Dutiful Midi

2025-02-15T16:50:00-08:00

I blamed our new puppy for the ish-ness of the theme of my last midi and I get to credit her with inspiring the theme this time. I really don’t remember if it was 4am or 4pm, raining or not. But I have been spending an inordinate amount of time outside lately with a Mutt Mitt in one hand and either flashlight or umbrella in the other chasing our little darling around the yard waiting for her to do her business. Some time during that process, this theme just… emerged?

While there are probably enough comparable theme entries that one could construct a Sunday sized 21x21 on this idea, thankfully this is a much more tasteful (or much less distasteful) 11x11. I hope you enjoy the solve.

A Dutiful Midi was originally published by Quid Pro on February 15, 2025. To view, play or download puzzles and solutions, please click through to the site.

A Theme-ish Midi

2025-01-25T17:30:00-08:00

I described my last midi as “coming together quickly” and this week the puzzle gods got their karmic retribution in that this one never seemed to come together at all. I had an idea that I executed in the grid spanning answers and had a revealer that I stuck in 14-Down with a general idea of how it was all going to fit. But when it came to cluing the reveal and why everything worked the way it did, I just couldn’t make it work.

Now this is normally when your typical constructor tells a heroic tale of ripping the grid apart, changing entries left and right and saving the metaphorical day with a witty new revealer that makes everything better than it ever was in the first place. Alas, read no further for that tale because I have a young puppy in my charge and thus had very little constructing time this month. Yes, the dog did literally eat my puzzling time.

For the past five months or so, I have been holding myself to a schedule of a new midi or 15x puzzle every three weeks (along with a GenX mini every week) and so I am shipping today’s puzzle on my self-imposed schedule. I’m happy with the grid, happy with the cluing and hope you find it otherwise up to whatever standards you hold me to. But the theme is more -ish than I’d like. It happens.

A Theme-ish Midi was originally published by Quid Pro on January 25, 2025. To view, play or download puzzles and solutions, please click through to the site.

I’d Settle for a Flurry

2025-01-05T08:00:00-08:00

This is one of those midis that came together quickly — and I think the theme kind of speaks for itself without needing much additional info.

But for the record: I do like living in California and don’t miss much about the East Coast. But it’d be nice not to have to go to Tahoe or elsewhere to enjoy something other than rain where precipitation is concerned.

I’d Settle for a Flurry was originally published by Quid Pro on January 05, 2025. To view, play or download puzzles and solutions, please click through to the site.

Heading Home for the Holidays

2024-12-14T10:30:00-08:00

It’s that time of year when many people are on the move, heading home to see family or leaving home for warmer (or colder) climes. I finished off this puzzle from the comfort of my home in the middle of a wind and rain storm very happy that I don’t have anywhere to go today but with lots of memories of mid-December travel. Having gone away to school for many years, this is the week I was usually boarding a series of buses and trains to make my way back home for the December holidays. Fond memories… better in the rear view mirror!

Among my recent midis, this one should rank as much more traditional with fewer blocks, a more open grid and four interlocking 11s that form the theme. I tried to keep the cluing on the easier side so you can have a fun solve while spending time being transported elsewhere.

I hope you enjoy the puzzle and more importantly, have a peaceful and relaxing holiday season!

Heading Home for the Holidays was originally published by Quid Pro on December 14, 2024. To view, play or download puzzles and solutions, please click through to the site.

A Very Veggie Thanksgiving

2024-11-23T10:30:00-08:00

For the last two years, couples crossword puzzle solving has been a Thanksgiving tradition at our house — we’re not much for watching football on TV and it’s a much more fun way to get everyone engaged while we wait for dinner. Last year, I created my first Thanksgiving puzzle and about a month ago came upon the theme for this year’s while grocery shopping.

Both of my daughters have been vegetarians for most of their lives, so we’ve been doing the partial veggie Thanksgiving for a while. In truth, none of us are big turkey eaters so we haven’t had a bird at our Thanksgiving table in many years. We actually have brisket rather than some of the foods mentioned in the puzzle, but why spoil a good theme with the facts on the ground?

Also, this midi keeps with the heuristic mentioned in my last puzzle that it’s perfectly allowable to keep adding blocks until the theme works. The themers here are not the most flexible and so I did what I had to to make things work.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

A Very Veggie Thanksgiving was originally published by Quid Pro on November 23, 2024. To view, play or download puzzles and solutions, please click through to the site.

A Mid-Autumn Tea Break

2024-11-04T11:00:00-08:00

The fun part about midis — to me, anyway — is getting to play with wackier formats. In a 15x15, I try to hew closer to conventional word and block counts and if a theme isn’t working then I tend to throw it out and start again. In a midi if something isn’t working, I’m not against just adding blocks until it does. What sometimes results is a grid that looks like today’s offering, block and word counts be damned.

I’m calling this a theme although it probably borders more on a freestyle, whatever that means. I was drinking a cup of tea, it was early November and I wanted to do another semi-topical puzzle — live in the moment, right? I’ll let you suss out the rest.

A Mid-Autumn Tea Break was originally published by Quid Pro on November 04, 2024. To view, play or download puzzles and solutions, please click through to the site.

A Somewhat Topical Themeless

2024-10-11T10:00:00-07:00

I had the idea for 17-Across burning a hole in my mixed metaphorical pocket and played around with a few themes using the same device but ultimately couldn’t make any of them work and so decided to just toss that one into a themeless. Having not done a 15x15 themeless in a while (since June of 2023 to be exact), it seemed like a good time to go that way anyway.

Some grids come together easily, some don’t. This one was closer to the latter although ultimately I was happy with where it ended up. After spending a lot of time writing GenX themed minis, I did my best to be as au courant as possible with the cluing here. Which, I acknowledge, is only somewhat there. But still… it’s the attempt that counts, right?

A Somewhat Topical Themeless was originally published by Quid Pro on October 11, 2024. To view, play or download puzzles and solutions, please click through to the site.

Taylor Swifties

2024-09-22T10:25:00-07:00

The idea for the theme to this puzzle came to me earlier this year and I’ve been honestly surprised to see no one else attempt something similar, given Taylor Swift’s popularity and what seems (to me) like the obviousness of the idea. I tried to get this one published but I think because I played the idea too straight, it wasn’t really publishable.

When I decided to update the Tom Swifty for Taylor, the punny phrase thing just seemed so dad joke and, well, being the dad of two Swifties, it just seemed like the wrong way to go. Thanks to my daughters and a podcast in 2014 discussing 1989 era Taylor, I’ve been Swifty adjacent for many years and so it wasn’t difficult to navigate her catalog and pick the right songs. But for those expecting hilarity, I’m sorry to spoil that instead I went for the emotional core of the songs in my adverb choices. Yell at me for going wrong with my choices but seek your puns elsewhere!

“I hope you enjoy solving it even if the big publishers weren’t interested,” Andrew said usuriously.

Taylor Swifties was originally published by Quid Pro on September 22, 2024. To view, play or download puzzles and solutions, please click through to the site.

An End of Summer Midi

2024-09-07T09:10:00-07:00

I’ve been having fun constructing midis lately. Although I have been working on a few 15x’s on the side, I am finding that the smaller puzzles are just more interesting to make. I think minis and midis just feel like less of a commitment — to both the constructor and the solver — and so I’d rather focus my attention on smaller puzzles much in the same way as I’m solving a lot more minis and midis lately. Like everything in my life, it’s a cycle and I’m sure I’ll rebound to more 15x’s soon. Maybe I’ll even attempt something larger at some point, I’ve never tried to make a classic Sunday 21x21 and that feels like something worth doing in the future.

This grid is a little random… literally. My construction software (Crossword Compiler) has a mode where it will generate a custom grid pattern given certain parameters. I gave it a shot and this was the first grid that came up. I liked the plethora of long downs and so I went with it. Serendipity is so often a constructor’s able assistant.

An End of Summer Midi was originally published by Quid Pro on September 07, 2024. To view, play or download puzzles and solutions, please click through to the site.

The GenXword Mini

2024-08-23T14:30:00-07:00

Back in May, I put together a puzzle targeted at my Generation X peeps — Not For GenX Only (May 2024). It was a fun puzzle to make as it’s always enjoyable to nostalgize and late 20th century pop culture is a wonderfully deep well of content to mine. I got some good feedback on the puzzle and I decided to turn into a semi-regular feature.

We’ll see how long I can keep it going but yesterday I posted the first of a series of GenX-themed mini puzzles to the genxword.com website. A new one will appear every Thursday under the #tbt tag. I decided not to post the puzzles here although I will occasionally post pointers such as this one to remind my blog readers that they exist.

I hope you enjoy this new effort. I have a bunch of puzzles already finished in the hopper and am going to try to do this project for at least a year. I realize that’s a tall effort but isn’t that why I retired? Oh wait…

The GenXword Mini was originally published by Quid Pro on August 23, 2024.

Sensational

2024-07-27T11:30:00-07:00

This is the first 9x9 puzzle I have posted here, it’s not a dimension I normally gravitate to as it’s a little betwixt and between. For whatever reason — I’ll let you play armchair therapist — I was noodling around with using 13- and 18-Across as seeds for a puzzle and I just figured it would be nice to frame the whole thing around a bunch of interlocking 9 letter answers. I was feeling a little frisky so the plethora of 2 letter answers that resulted seemed more like a feature than a bug.

When the answer for 24-Across popped out of my word list, it did not take me long to realize it had to be clued as a “The Big Lebowski” reference name checking Aimee Mann, one of my favorite singers. But it was only in researching the clue fully that I was reminded that Flea was also a member of the group. Refreshing my memory for that kind of arcane trivia is definitely my favorite part of cluing crosswords.

Sensational was originally published by Quid Pro on July 27, 2024. To view, play or download puzzles and solutions, please click through to the site.

It’s AAll AAbout Me!

2024-06-23T10:20:00-07:00

This is one of those puzzles that came out of nowhere; I haven’t really been in a puzzle making mood for a while but I sat down late last week with an idea about making a midi and before I knew it, this puzzle appeared. And, if I am being completely honest, the full idea of the theme only became obvious to me after the grid had been mostly constructed. It sometimes works that way I guess — the puzzle ended up being a gift to me from me and in many ways it was a present from my subconscious to my conscious self. It’s strange but I’m thankful for the puzzle grid as it gave me a chance to be incredibly indulgent in the cluing. Even apart from the themers, I really went to town on this one.

Hopefully you will enjoy solving it as much as I enjoyed making it. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I reused the exact same grid pattern as one of other my recent puzzles (Pals). I would normally pay attention to varying things more but as discussed above, I was kind of on autopilot when I created this one.

It’s AAll AAbout Me! was originally published by Quid Pro on June 23, 2024. To view, play or download puzzles and solutions, please click through to the site.