February 18, 2026 - "Natural Cycle" - Leonard Williams, edited by Ben Tausig

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Puzzle Notes

Dear friends,

This week's Classic puzzle is by Leonard Williams. It's called "Natural Cycles," and is 1.5/5 difficulty. I'm really proud to edit Leonard's work here, as I've appreciated him and his puzzles for many years!

Leonard is a retired political science professor who began constructing crosswords at the start of this century. A few years ago, he published a collection of politically themed crosswords entitled Black Blocks, White Squares. Since then, he has blended politics and puzzles through his 'Cross-pollination' Substack and through contributions to movement publications in the US and the UK. He's currently celebrating this debut puzzle for AVCX, coming a few months after his first contribution to Cryptic Crossweird.

Finally, many of you who solve AVCX puzzles on the Crosswordr platform will have seen that they recently announced they're wind down operations in the coming months. In brief, that means that AVCX will (temporarily) no longer be affiliated with any web-based solving platform as of April or so. We are actively working to find a new platform, however; if you know of or use any alternatives that you like, and might want to suggest that alternative to us, please feel free to reach out at editor@avxwords.com. Similarly, we would love to know what features you tend to prefer in a web-based solving platform, whether it's solving bells and whistles or features like leader boards. Your feedback will go a long way toward helping us choose the best possible platform going forward! Our collective thanks in the meantime.

Yrs,
Ben and the expanded AVCX crew


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