Puzzle – AVCX

December 13, 2024 - "Aughties Music" (themeless) - Shannon Rapp and Will Eisenberg, edited by Kim Vu

Difficulty ● ● ● ○ ○

Puzzle Notes

Dear Friends:

Today's AVCX+ is a 70-word themeless titled "Aughties Music" from the constructor duo extraordinaire of Shannon Rapp and Will Eisenberg. Shannon and Will think you'll find it easier than getting out of bed on a cold morning... which is to say, not quite that easy, but still approachable.

Shannon is a research administrator at Washington University in St. Louis. Will is a French horn player and music teacher in the Twin Cities. As a constructing duo, they've collaborated for every branch of AVCX and many other venues. They enjoy visiting new places, dining well, and solving and making crosswords together.

We'd also like to wax poetic today about AVCX+, our little corner of indie puzzledom. Though we've run a handful of themed and variety puzzles over the last few years, we're effectively the themeless/freestyle feature of the overall AVCX expansion. Our feature is currently run by a tiny staff of just four: Max Carpenter, Ada Nicolle, Sid Sivakumar, and Kim Vu. We sign off every newsletter with just "the AVCX+ crew", because our stated goal as a crossword venue is to highlight the voices of our outstanding puzzle contributors first and foremost. In other words, as editors, we prefer to be the quiet supporting crew in the background.

But during our ongoing subscription drive this month, we'd like to share with you a little peek behind the curtain. Our process begins with a call to constructors for puzzle submissions. (This year, we were lucky to receive many outstanding puzzle submissions from both veteran and newer constructors.) The four of us meet once per quarter to select our favorite submissions to publish. After that, each of us chooses the puzzles we'd like to edit. We're extremely grateful for the chance to share these thoughtfully crafted, voicey works of art with you.

Each of us on the squad has so-called day jobs, but we remain very passionate about AVCX+ -- as it's one of the only themeless-focused crossword venues operating today. To serve up a fresh puzzle every two weeks, we to some extent divide and conquer. Kim wears several hats on our team, including being our resident project manager, exchanging many emails with constructors and editors during production. He works in international development in Washington, DC -- and is trying his best to raise two daughters under five. Ada serves as an editor for both for AVCX+ and for AVCX Classic. She's a comedian in Toronto who is currently good friends with a cat named Maverick, who stops by her apartment from time to time to hang out.

Typesetting, final proofs, and email newsletters are handled by Sid. By day, Sid's a forever-student, currently eight years into an MD/PhD program at WashU in St. Louis; and by night, a keyboardist and composer who perennially swears that debut album is just a year away. Max manages our version of the AVCX's profit-sharing model that puts almost 100% of our revenues in the pockets of our puzzle constructors and editors. He's a programmer (both in the computer sense and film museum sense), a sometimes-writer, and someone who's been very inspired this year by the literary works of Péter Nádas and the auditory works of Max Roach.

But no matter our roles and responsibilities, the most important member of the AVCX+ team is, undoubtedly, you. Without your support, we would not be able to elevate the diverse and rich voices of -- and pay -- the constructors whose work sustains our feature. In a media landscape that increasingly puts corporate interests first and creative ones last, we are incredibly fortunate to be able to pay competitive rates directly from subscription revenues, with no mega-conglomerates siphoning away precious dollars from the folks who are making and advancing the art. Ultimately, we consider that opportunity to be priceless.

Yours,

the AVCX+ crew

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