Puzzle Notes

Dear friends,

James Mattina and Bart van Merriënboer collabed on this week's puzzle, a 4/5 difficulty offering called "No Half Measures." It's their first AVCX puzzle and a lovely one to be sure.

Bart is a Dutch computer scientist working at Google, developing AI models to help protect endangered species and preserve biodiversity. James is a Canadian internist. We are partners living together in gorgeous, bike-friendly (by non-Dutch standards) Montréal. This puzzle means a lot to us as it was our first acceptance (for either of us!) to any outlet, which kept us motivated to make more. For this puzzle, we worked together using Bart's computer science background and James's grid wrangling chops to find, clue, and place the perfect theme answers for you. We hope to deliver a rewarding puzzle experience that'll make you think twice. No half measures here, we promise!

Also, excitingly, AVCX has taken over Raddle this week with a multi-day meta puzzle featuring some of your favorite AVCX constructors. Raddle is a daily word puzzle that's a twist on a conventional word ladder. In each step, you transfer one word into another by using one of the given clues. But the clues are out of order, and you have to determine which clue should be used next. It's played by over 10,000 people every day, is a genuinely original and entertaining game, and we're delighted to be doing a guest spot with it. Tell your friends, and of course solve the puzzles and the meta for a chance to win a prize. Special thanks to Zoey Foley for brainstorming the big concept. Zoey has today's puzzle; yesterday's was by Shannon Rapp and Will Eisenberg, with more great ones to come.
Yrs,
Ben and the expanded AVCX crew


avxwords.com // @avcx.bsky.social' // @lilavcx.bsky.social' // @avcxtrivia.bsky.social'

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