Puzzle Notes

Hi friends: 

This week's puzzle, Patrick Blindauer's "Operators Are Standing By," is 2/5 difficulty.

Patrick's puzzle is timely, because he has a cool project to plug. Patrick is "very excited to have just launched a new Kickstarter campaign called Piece of Cake Crosswords. If successfully funded, it will be a yearlong series of easy-but-fun crossword puzzles, one puzzle per week. These will be daily-sized crosswords that have original themes with no sneaky tricks. The grids will be filled with familiar words, phrases, and namesno ULEEs or ERNEs allowedand they'll be delivered directly to your inbox every Monday morning. My goal with these is to create a series of puzzles with NO OBSCURITIES so the focus is on fun and not frustration. Please check out my video and rewards here, pledge if you can, and help me spread the word far and wide."

I pitched in $100 -- Patrick's a great dude and an equally great constructor. Lastly, a new error has been posted to the AVCX errata wiki, thanks to the keen eye of Bob Klahn. Don't forget that you can report a mistake to the wiki any time you like, without any kind of credential other than, uh, not being a troll.

Thanks!!

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