Puzzle Notes

Dear friends,

Today's Classic puzzle is by Nate Cardin, and titled "Give Me a Hand" at 2.5/5 difficulty. Many of you will know Nate from writing and editing Cryptics for AVCX (among other things); he's long been a core part of our operation and we're always delighted to run his stuff. This puzzle has an unconventional shape at 17x13, so Francis Heaney very wisely and generously made two versions of the PDF, one with a larger grid and smaller type, and another with larger type and a smaller grid. Solve whichever you prefer, if you're a paper person.

From the constructor: "Nate Cardin (he/him) is a high school chemistry teacher in the Los Angeles area, where he lives with his husband and French bulldog, Eero. Amongst his other published puzzles, he regularly writes minis for Slate and SFGate and is an editor at AVCX Cryptics. He once got two NYT crossword acceptances on back-to-back days ... and the universe has been course correcting ever since. He encourages everyone to be gay, do crime!"

Plug time! AVCX does this a fair bit, especially this time of year, for puzzle concerns that we think might be interesting to you (they are not paid ads, though we sometimes exchange plugs, just for transparency) Anyway, PuzzleStaxx is a new bookmarking tool for organizing all of your daily puzzle games. We live in a golden age of online puzzles and games, from established publishers to homemade side projects from creative independent puzzlers around the world, churning out super-high quality brain ticklers, often every day, and usually for free. On PuzzleStaxx, you can save your own stack (your Staxx) of favorites in one place, discover new puzzle games from others, and submit your own hidden gems from around the internet.
Yrs,
Ben and the expanded AVCX crew


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

Solve this puzzle online