Adam Simpson author page
1 puzzle by Adam Simpson
with Jeff Chen comments
Adam (he/him) is a Canadian living in San Francisco's historic Castro neighborhood. He graduated from Cal with a degree in Theatre, and now works as a children's video game designer. Adam enjoys playing weird board games, watching campy horror movies, and cuddling with his black cat. His 15 minutes of fame was when he won the grand prize on Wheel of Fortune, which ultimately led him down the path to puzzle construction.
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As a huge fan of grid art, I'm embarrassed that I missed the two pluses in the middle of the grid — perfect image for a DOUBLE CROSS theme!
I'm doubly ashamed because I used to program recreationally in C++.Plus, I've seen so many redox reactions with both pluses in the ions AND pluses in the equations … I deserve an F-- today.
Adam is spot-on about "words that can precede X" puzzles — Will Shortz rarely takes them these days. Will does sparingly accept "both words can precede x" puzzles, but he's ultra-careful to spread them out, publishing roughly one a year. That sparsity has been great for this longtime solver — I couldn't immediately recall the last one, so today's didn't trigger my ennui for this tried-and-true genre as badly as usual.
Mondays are geared for newer solvers, so even in the remote chance that a newb thinks "here we go again," there's still a lot to love:
- This type of theme often feels dull, because the possible thematic phrases are so limited that constructors are forced to use blah entries. Not today! WIND SECTION, BAR EXAMINATION, and REFERENCE CHECK are all worthy.
- The revealer is spot-on. DOUBLE CROSS clearly points to (cross) WIND, (cross) SECTION, etc.
Although, I did have to do some self-EXAMINATION after I wondered if it was (double) CHECK and double (BAR).
Better make mine a double.
A couple of minuses in gridwork — kicking off your NW corner with ALII and ALIE is a double-negative — but overall, a solid offering. If Adam had been able to add PLUS into the grid to doubly point to the grid art, I'd have added a + onto his grade.