Puzzle Notes

Hi friends: 

Francis Heaney brings us one on the easy side (for him) this week. "Words With Ends Fray" is 2.5/5 in difficulty. Enjoy it!

Meanwhile, I want to continue plugging puzzles by some of our friends. First, Patrick Blindauer's Space Puzzlefest consists of about a dozen crosswords, each of which leads to an answer (in a different way each time). All of these answers get combined at the end to form a final answer, which you can email to Patrick to be entered in the Feb. 27th drawing for the Grand Prize: a copy of "Sun & Shadows," a book of Vogonesque poetry written by former New York Times crossword editor Eugene T. Maleska. You can enroll here; for $17 you'll receive an invitation to Patrick's Space Puzzlefest Google Group, where you can access the PDF of puzzles.

Second, Pete Muller has a free monthly music-themed meta contest crossword at pmxwords.com. This is his fourth year doing the contest. In each of the last two years, two puzzles were among the highest-rated of the year at Amy Reynaldos Crossword Fiend blog, and one of them won Matt Gaffneys Crossword of the Month. In addition to the monthly metas, theres a musical mega-meta hidden in the 12 monthly puzzles. The first puzzle of 2015 came out just yesterday, January 20, and solvers have until Sunday to send in a solution to the meta.

ttyl,

Ben and the AVCX crew [avxwords.com, @AVCXWord]