January 17, 2019 - "Carmen Miranda's Hat" - by Tina Lippman

Difficulty ● ◐ ○ ○ ○

Puzzle Notes

Dear Friends of The Inkubator,

Welcome!

We're excited to inaugurate our first year of puzzles with a constructing debut: a lightly challenging and sweet treat we're calling 'Carmen Miranda's Hat,' by Tina Lippman.

Originally from New England and trained as a librarian, Tina became interested in constructing about a year ago. Tina now resides in southern Indiana with her husband, teenage daughter, and cat, and has worked as a college financial aid officer and a composer of grammar questions for the SAT. We're certain you'll be seeing more of Tina's elegant constructions, in the Inkubator and in other venues, in the weeks, months, and years to come.

A note about puzzle difficulty: We'll identify puzzles as lightly challenging, somewhat challenging, or very challenging. In the very challenging category, we have some themeless offerings by veterans of grid wizardry coming your way, as well as a bonus cryptic. We recognize that our subscribers range from first-time solvers to tournament competitors, and we hope that each week's puzzle will be just right for someone. If a particular week seems too light or too challenging, stay tuned! The party is just getting started.

When you're done solving, check out Diary of a Crossword Fiend for a write-up and discussion, every Friday after an Inkubator puzzle is published. For general updates, follow us on twitter at @InkubatorXWords, and we should have a fully functional website up soon. Since this is our first puzzle mailing, if anything is amiss or could work better, just let us know!

Our next puzzle, by Rebecca Falcon, will be published on January 31.

Many thanks, once again, to all of our Kickstarter backers. We wouldn't be here without your support!

Happy solving!
Tracy and Laura