Miscellaneous
Welcome to Crossbirds! We've ALIT beside Sid Sivakumar (@sid_sivakumar) who, in just the last three months, made his debut (6/22), dibut (8/8), and tribut (9/3) in the New York Times; celebrated the yearniversary of his indie crossword blog, Sid's Grids; and contributed puzzles to several charity packs and to xword tournament Lollapuzzoola. Meanwhile, I was eating a popsicle. We gab about the wonders of the crossword community, the beauty of indie publishing, and Important Topix such as: Lexical gatekeeping The dangers of specialization Constructor credit as a commodity Crosswords vs. Scrabble Sizeism (in puzzles, ahem) Cryptics in India, Britain, and the US SUPPORT Crossnerds ON PATREON! Then visit some of the indie sites word-upped in this episode: Themelesses: Bryan Thomas on Puzzles That Need A Home Clues to make you smile: Amanda Rafkin's Brain Candy Freshest fill: Adam Nicolle, luckystreak xwords Puzzles by Crossword Jesus: A-Frame Games Brain-benders: Stella Zawistowski's Tough As Nails Liz Gorski's Crossword Nation Brendan Emmett Quigley Happy Little Puzzles by Matthew Stock Paolo Pasco's Grids These Days Master puzzle newsletter by Matt Gritzmacher