8. Themeless: Cover-Up

I try to put 26A in basically every puzzle I write, but he showed up fortuitously here.

7. Talking in Circles

"Just the puzzle, please. Nothing on the side."

6. Puzzle with a Twist

 Everyone loves a good twist. 

5. Themeless: Extra Sauce

Enjoy!

4. Defectors

Et tu?

3. Sweet Nothings

Check out my tutorial posts if you're interested in how I constructed this one.

2. Pretty Gouda Puzzle

Pretty bada title.

1. Themeless: Bright Young Women

Seeded this one after having nothing but Disney songs looping in my head for several weeks. I also noticed that WE DONT TALK / ABOUT BRUNO cleanly breaks into two 10's, but I cap my Disney puzzles at one per year.

Tutorial: Grid Manipulation

Not all tricky puzzles require complicated wordlist shenanigans to successfully fill. Sometimes you can make your life a lot easier by simply manipulating the grid shape while constructing. Even if you're constructing a 15x15, it might be easier to fill by working on a larger canvas.

Tutorial: Stretched Squares

 Another use case for wordlist encoding is having single letters stretched across multiple squares. This is a slightly more cerebral spin on the mechanics outlined in previous posts.

Tutorial: Blank Squares

Another interesting challenge is when you have a word entered in one direction that should be treated as blank for its crosses. As a twist, the crossing answers can be valid both with and without the missing letter.