Puzzle Notes

Dear Friends:

Hello, Francis Heaney here, welcoming you to the cryptic crossword component of AVCX Hype Week! Our debut offering is by Brendan Emmett Quigley, who you know well from uncryptic crosswords but has only written a few of these, but he reports that he's ramping up and is thrilled to have the opportunity to make more.

And we're excited for lots of people to make more cryptics! Part of our goal here at AVCXCHQ is to help more people understand how to solve cryptics, *and* help more people learn how to write them! I've got a fab editing team to help with that -- Stella Zawistowski and Claire Muscat -- and we edited this one collaboratively with some group brainstorming.

Speaking of "how to solve cryptics", we have a downloadable solving guide -- https://avxwords.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/AVxword_CrypticSolvingGuide.pdf -- and I've also tried to give fuller answer explanations to today's puzzle; hopefully those will be helpful if you ever have the feeling of "I figured out what this answer must be, but I still don't know *why*" that we all know so well.

If this Kickstarter thing gets funded, you can expect standard cryptics, variety cryptics, mini beginner cryptics, and probably other stuff! Anyway, enjoy the puzzle, and stay hype for puzzles from AVCX Plus and AVCX Trivia!

Top bets played (4) --

-- Francis

avxwords.com // @avcxword // @lilavcx // @avcxplus