January 5, 2025 - Trail Mix (contest variety puzzle) - Sid Sivakumar, edited by Kim Vu

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Puzzle Notes

Dear Friends:

Surprise on a Saturday night! To show our gratitude to YOU for generously helping the expanded AVCX reach our 2024 subscription drive goals, we've got a bonus variety puzzle for you, from AVCX+'s very own Sid Sivakumar. This puzzle is a Trail Mix (a format invented by Patrick Berry) -- and it's also a contest puzzle with an associated prize. Your instructional text is as follows:

The meta answer to this puzzle is something you can draw. Send any version of that drawing to trailmix@avxwords.com by 11:59pm ET on Friday, January 10, 2025 for a chance to win a prize.

As for solving the Trail Mix itself, detailed instructions are provided in the puzzle files, but here's a quick overview. Answers go into a Trail Mix grid in two ways: Rows and Trails. Each Row in the grid contains two answers placed side-by-side, and each Trail answer begins at a numbered square and snakes around to one of the dotted squares. Each Trail must make at least one turn along the way, and cannot occupy a 2x2 block of squares. Since the movement of each Trail is initially ambiguous, we're calling this puzzle 4/5 on the difficulty scale -- although we do think it's accessible enough for anyone who's never solved this style of puzzle before. If you're nervous, a good way to think of it is as a hybrid between a logic puzzle and a crossword.

As it goes for many variety formats, this puzzle plays best with paper and pencil. But if you really prefer a digital solving experience, we've bundled in an IPUZ file that works in the online Crossword Nexus solver or on squares.io. (Unfortunately, it doesn't work in our embedded AVCX website player, nor in Across Lite.)

The solution file for this puzzle will be sent out next weekend, along with the name of a chosen winner. Good luck! We'll see you later this week with your regularly scheduled themeless.

Appreciatively yours,

the AVCX+ crew

avxwords.com | @avcxword | @lilavcx | @avcxcryptic | @avcxplus | @avcxtrivia