Puzzle Notes

Dear Friends:

This week, Laura Braunstein and Brendan Emmett Quigley give us "The Constructors Taketh Away," a 21x21 puzzle at 3/5 difficulty. Hope you enjoy the extra-large challenge this week.

Oh and I personally apologize very much for last week's puzzle, which did not include an Across Lite (.puz) file. That was of necessity; nevertheless, I didn't realize the scope of the problems it would cause for so many solvers. We've done PDF-only puzzles in the past, but I think we just have a larger subscriber base now (and many of you solve on devices, of course, as it's 2018). That's obviously great but might mean that non-.puz puzzles aren't practical for the time being. We'll surely have other platform-busting puzzles in the future, but we'll be sure to give you a heads-up and provide easy instructions for downloading whatever free software is needed if and when we do. Apologies in the interim.

Finally, we've continued to give away the subsidized subscriptions generously provided by you. We'll keep advertising them until they're all accounted for; in the meantime if you know of anyone who might like one and can't afford it, don't forget to tell them they can email us at editor@avxwords.com.

Yrs,

Ben and the AVCX crew

avxwords.com // @avcxword