Puzzle Notes

Hi friends: 

Brendan Emmett Quigley is up this week with a lovely contest puzzle called "Theater in the Round." It's 4/5 in difficulty, and you solve it just like a regular crossword. However, there's a twist -- within this puzzle's seven bands (as in a Marching Bands puzzle, which are explained here) there are eight instances of "theater in the round," potentially going in either direction, four letters or longer. Hint: every band has at least one answer. We've marked off alternating bands for your solving convenience.

Oh, and we invite the true theater buffs in the house to stick around for an encore! There are TWO MORE answers that are just three letters long, bringing the overall total to ten.

Find eight answers and send them to theater@avxwords.com by the end of Sunday, April 12 for a chance to win one of two 3-month subscription extensions. Find and send ALL TEN for a chance to win one of two 6-month extensions.

And say, if you like this kind of puzzle, did you know that our dear friend Brendan is launching a Marching Bands feature next year? You can sign up to get a new one every other week simply by going here. And even better, if you wanna kill two birds with one stone and save some money at the same time, sign up here to score another year (or two) of the avcx PLUS a year of BEQ's Marching Bands together at a combined discount. You can get the combo subscription at either link above. Finally, in case you're new to Marching Bands and want a sample, I'm attaching the one BEQ made for this venue a little while ago that you can try free.

Good luck,

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