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Update 12/15/25

Happy first day of Hanukkah to all who celebrate!

Unfortunately, I am not releasing any Hanukkah-themed puzzles this year. However, back in 2023, I released "Spin To Win" for the holiday season. If you're craving a Hanukkah puzzle and haven't solved that one yet, there you go!

As always, three new weekly puzzles are out now! These ones might be some of my favorite in terms of theme, however I think they'll prove to be a bit of a doozy. You'll see what I mean when you start them :)

"Trend Stepper" is my new Wednesday-difficulty release. I'm such a sucker for wordplay and pop culture references in crossword puzzles. This puzzle's theme combines them in a way that I'm very proud of.

Good luck with your solving everybody, and happy holidays!

Update 12/8/25

Hello everyone!

It is extremely late at night as I am writing this, so I'm going to keep things very short.

Three new weekly puzzles! Play them. They are good.

One new Monday-difficulty puzzle! The theme is definitely not a standard Monday theme, but I think a lot of the clues are on the easier side. Play it. It is good.

Good luck, and goodnight to me!

Update 12/1/25

Happy December!

Shorter blog post today, but you're still getting the same usual releases here.

Starting off. I have three new weekly puzzles! With these ones, I experimented with including more 2-letter words to see if it makes the puzzles any more or less interesting. You'll have to let me know what you think :)

Then, I have another Friday-difficulty puzzle to put on the site! I think this is the second time that I've had to edit a clue in a puzzle because it became outdated in the months it sat in my drafts. Unfortunately, there are probably many more errors that I haven't caught in puzzles already on the site. I think this is a sign that I both need to really proofread my puzzles before releasing them AND that I just need to get through this backlog faster.

One last thing I'll mention is that I created a Reddit account to try and promote my puzzles on there. In the off chance you're from Reddit and reading this: Hello! I hope you like the puzzles.

Happy solving everyone!

Update 11/24/25

Happy (early) Thanksgiving!

I had a great idea for a Thanksgiving-themed crossword last week, so I started working on it. Then, midway through making it, I had ANOTHER idea for a Thanksgiving-themed crossword. My original plan was to finish making and playtesting both puzzles and then pick one of them to upload this week, but because I think they both turned out so good, I'm uploading BOTH! It's a Thanksgiving miracle!

The first crossword is a Tuesday-difficulty puzzle that, despite being a simple theme, was a tricky one to make due to the interesting seed words. Aside from a couple difficult clues, this one shouldn't be too bad. The second crossword is a Wednesday-difficulty puzzle that revolves around a very specific episode of a very specific television show. None of my playtesters knew the reference, but I'm sure my parents and a few people from an older demographic will understand it (notice I didn't say "old", I said "older"!). I gave it a Wednesday-difficulty tag because of its relative obscurity, but even if you don't know the show, you'll still be able to figure it out. Extra note about that one, I believe this is my first puzzle on the site that uses left-right mirror symmetry instead of the classic rotational symmetry. I always try to do rotational symmetry if I can, but this puzzle just worked so much better without it.

As always, I am also uploading 3 more weeklies to the site! I've noticed that the Nibble on average tends to take people longer to solve than the Bite. This was not my intention, but I think this is due to the fill on the Nibble being a bit more difficult for me than the Bite just because of the small size. I'll be keeping this in mind more in the future because I do want to have a consistent progression of difficulty with the puzzles. This week, I also wanted to challenge myself more with the Bit by doing a 5x5 grid with zero blocks. That means the grid contains only 5-letter entries. A couple entries are definitely harder than what I would normally accept for a Bit, but I think the clues should do most of the heavy lifting here.

Anyways, I think that's enough yapping out of me. Happy solving everyone!

Update 11/17/25

Hello again!

I'm back from my brief hiatus with a new batch of puzzles for you all! As usual, I've got 3 new weekly puzzles and a full-sized Friday puzzle from the backlog!

The weekly puzzles are a bit trickier than normal this week but not in an unfair way I don't think. However, I also think the clues this week are more fun and exciting. Good luck with them!

Honestly, the same thing could be said about the Friday puzzle this week. Quite tricky with some rather silly clues (Fee-fi-___-fum (possible name for a nursery rhyme-themed Asian restaurant?) (3)). Definitely a puzzle I'm proud of!

As next week is right around Thanksgiving time, I'll have a Thanksgiving puzzle finished and ready for upload. As much as I've been enjoying these pop-culture themeless puzzles, I do want to have some themed puzzles too to give some more variety to the new uploads.

As always, thanks for playing my crosswords everyone! Happy solving!

Update 11/3/25

Hello everyone!

The weekly puzzles I've been making, while fun, are quite the time commitment to design. Therefore, as this will be Week 10 of the weekly puzzles, I'm going to take a small break after this batch. Next Monday, there will be no new puzzles on the site. However, I plan to resume the following Monday. It'll just be a week of no puzzles. You'll all be ok, I promise!

Anyways, this week's weekly puzzles are hot and ready for solving! I suspect that this batch will be a bit harder than normal. I didn't give myself as much time to fully refine them, and that's on me. I've been pretty busy this week with schoolwork, so I partially blame that. I wish you all good luck!

Another Friday puzzle has hit the site! This one's got a large amount of longer entries, so it's a bit of a beast to solve. But I know you'll all do fine :)

Happy solving everyone!

Update 10/27/25

Happy early Halloween!

I'm writing this post on a dark and stormy night ... oooOOOOOHHHhh (ghost noises)! It just so happens to be raining right now so I guess that's fun.

This week's weekly puzzles are out! Best of luck to you all!

To celebrate the spooky season, this week I'm publishing a Halloween-themed puzzle with a good amount of spooky and scary clues! I had a lot of fun making this one and I hope you all enjoy solving it!

Thanks for playing my puzzles, and I wish you a fun and festive 31st!

Update 10/20/25

Hi guys!

Anybody notice anything different about the website? Well, I have some exciting news — art! Before, my website background and logo were created by me. I am not an artist, so they looked not great. Big thanks to my sister Leah Lurie for creating both the logo and the background art! She did a great job and helped breathe some more life into this website. You can find more about her work here!

This week's weekly puzzles are out now! I think I've finally struck a good balance of difficulty with them, so I hope you all enjoy solving these ones!

I also meant to say this last update, but we are now in what I'm calling "THE FRIDAY PUZZLE MARATHON"! Basically, we have now reached the part of my puzzle backlog where I made a bunch of pop culture-filled Gen-Z-pilled crosswords back-to-back. So, I hope you're all ready for a lot more of these (technically next week's puzzle is going to be the spooky one I mentioned a couple blog posts ago). This week, I'm releasing "Clip Show", a themeless puzzle with 3 15-letter entries.

I ramble so much in these posts and I don't know if anyone actually reads them anymore. If you made it this far, congrats! Good luck on the puzzles!

Update 10/13/25

Hello everyone!

Week 7 of the weekly puzzles are now live. Good luck and have fun!

I'm releasing a Friday puzzle as well. Not too much to say other than I'm proud of how open the grid on this one is. It makes for a more difficult solve, but a satisfying one when you get it.

That's all for this update. Thanks for playing my puzzles everyone!

Update 10/6/25

Happy October everyone!

Tis the beginning of spoo-o-o-ooky season! And what's more spooky than a jumpscare of three new weekly puzzles! I suspect this week's puzzles will be generally easier than last week, but good luck anyways!

Last week, I finished writing the clues for about 3 puzzles I've had stuck in limbo for a bit. Really excited for you all to play them, but first, we have a Tuesday puzzle I finished constructing back in June! It's a simple theme with some basic clues that's on the easier side of a Tuesday.

I have some ideas for some more spooky season-themed puzzles, so depending on when I get those finished, I might halt the backlog to release them on season. We'll see what happens :)

Happy solving everyone!

Update 9/29/25

Happy end of September everyone!

Week 5 of weekly puzzles are now live! I'd recommmend doing these ones in order from easiest to hardest. Might be helpful to you :)

Another pop culture-filled puzzle is here! I orginially wrote the clues for this one in early 2025, so I had to change the clue "Band with an upcoming "Long Live the Black Parade" tour, briefly" because I released this puzzle so late. Whoops, my bad! This puzzle is filled with silly stuff so I hope you all enjoy it!

Happy solving everyone!

Update 9/22/25

Hello once again everyone!

The puzzles from week 3 were much more difficult than I intended. Sorry! Week 4 puzzles are out now and should easier than before. They're still gonna be tricky, don't get me wrong. Just much easier than week 3. Also, I made a minor change to a clue in the Week 3 Nibble puzzle because I made a small error. Oops :/ Good luck y'all!

I also have a Wednesday-difficulty puzzle for you all to try out! Simple theme with a few tricky entries here and there, but I think this puzzle has some unique, interesting, and just downright silly clues [Each letter in a viral 2019 IKEA font (4)]. I expect this puzzle to be trickier than your average Wednesday puzzle, but I believe in all of you who take it on!

Happy solving!

Update 9/15/25

Welcome back everyone!

As per usual, the three weekly puzzles are out now! Try and solve them as fast as you can!

Not only that, but I've uploaded a new Friday puzzle! This one was a tough one to make simply due to the large number of 6+ letter words. Definitely a tricky one, so good luck to anyone trying it out.

Happy solving y'all!

Update 9/8/25

Hello everyone! I'm back with another set of weekly puzzles and a standard-sized crossword too!

The Week 2 Bit, Nibble, and Bite puzzles are up! As a reminder, these puzzles are smaller than my normal puzzles at 5x5, 7x7, and 9x9 squares respectively, but this doesn't mean that they're easier than my normal puzzles! The Bit is the easiest, while the Bite is much tougher. Try and complete them as fast as you can! (BTW if you want to see your timer, click the settings icon in the blue bar in the puzzle window and enable "Show Timer"). If you missed out on last week's puzzles, they are still available to play with links to them underneath the current week's puzzles.

Today's standard-sized puzzle is a really fun one! Most of the time, my crosswords have the standard rotational symmetry which can make putting in the theme words tough. However, if I think the theme is fun enough like this one, I'll switch to left-right symmetry which allows me a bit more freedom in terms of theme word length and placement. I won't spoil too much else about the puzzle, you'll just have to trust me on this one :)

Good luck everyone and happy solving!

Update 9/1/25

Lots of big changes to the website today, so let's go into all of them!

First and foremost, I'm going to be starting a new weekly release of puzzles! After the New York Times locked the Mini crossword behind a subscription fee (boo!), many friends of mine have no way to satisfy their tiny puzzle craving. What I am going to try and keep up with doing is releasing three smaller crossword puzzles (the Bit, the Nibble, and the Bite) every Monday for you all to complete at some point during the week. I don't have a leaderboard hosted here, but you're more than welcome to try and beat these puzzles as fast as you can! These puzzles will be similar to the NYT Mini, but I'm gonna be trying to put my own spin on things. I've got some fun ideas cooking up in my brain. The first batch of weekly puzzles are out NOW, so go check them out!

Secondly, I have a couple more big boy puzzles to upload here. One of them is another pop culture-filled Friday puzzle that references Fortnite, Severence, and a 2016 meme you've all forgotten about. The other is a chill Tuesday puzzle that, now that I'm looking at it, also has a good amount of pop culture in it (Star Wars, Five Nights at Freddy's, and Super Smash Bros to name a few).

Last on the docket is a less exciting but pretty cool addition. As many of you know, I am in college for game design right now. I've got quite a few projects under my belt and am currently working on at least 3 more that I can name. If you're interested, my portfolio is now being hosted on this site, so you can check it out if you're a game studio executive or just really bored.

The addition of weekly puzzles should force me to update this site on a more consistent basis, so I'll probably be spacing out the release of my bigger puzzles a bit more. That or I'll immediately bail on updating the site weekly when it gets too tedious. We'll see what happens. Happy solving everyone!

Update 7/29/25

Huge news!

I am so excited to finally announce that I am now the proud owner of my own web domain! Even if my website changes hosts, you'll always be able to find it with buckscrosswords.xyz! I honestly wish I had done this months earlier. Huzzah!

Anyways, new crosswords! My dad told me he tried one of the Friday puzzles I had uploaded last time and said he was very lost which makes sense cause they were all Gen-Z-pilled. Don't worry Dad, I've got some more approachable puzzles right here!. School Slice is a more beginner-friendly puzzle, however I gave it a Tuesday difficulty rating instead of a Monday rating because of a few particularly tricky and deceptive clues [Tech company that sticks in your brain? (9)]. Alphabetical Order has a simple theme with some really silly clues that make me chuckle [Diet that, according to my research, does not require eating dinosaurs (5)]. Lastly, Bollards is another pop culture-filled themeless puzzle containing references that my dad will never in a million years understand [Bunny-like character from YouTube's "The Amazing Digital Circus" (3)].

I hope you all find the new domain as cool and exciting as I do, and hey, maybe I'll get a fun logo in the near future lol. Happy solving!