Outside the Blocks: A Puzzle Podcast

[damefox]

New episode today! A little shorter than our regular episodes since we didn't have a chance to do a full recording, but hopefully still enjoyable!

[damefox]

New episode today! A bit longer than usual, but the last episode was only 15 minutes so it balances out. Please send us any of your favorite metas of the year that we forgot to mention!

[Joe Ross]

New episode today! A little shorter than our regular episodes since we didn't have a chance to do a full recording, but hopefully still enjoyable!

SPOILER: Played along & got 4 or 6 entries before announce FUN

[damefox]

@docison came and chatted with us on today's podcast episode! Available here or wherever you get your podcasts. Discussion on the 2023 MMMM begins ~9 min in, but before we go to that we had to have Adam give us a crash-course in speed solving. Thanks again to Adam for talking with us!

Also, I forgot to post about this, but we've already had an episode on the first two PBWMC puzzles of season 6! So check out last week's episode too if you haven't already!

[damefox]

Another episode on Pandora's Blocks puzzles out today!

[damefox]

New episode out today! The working title for this episode was "How PBWMC exists despite the best efforts of Crossfire" but the story that would've made that title make sense had to be cut for time. If you listen to the episode though and wonder why I say "oh here we go again" when Will brings up Crossfire at the end, it's because we had previously talked about how Crossfire did its level best to prevent "Outside In, Inside Out" from ever existing. Fortunately it failed!

Speaking of "Outside In, Inside Out," if anyone knows of a meta puzzle larger than 24x25 that exists out there in the world, we'd love to hear about it!

[Joe Ross]

Stick around for the discussion of the opening of the bag of pretzels... Or is it the microwave background noise of the Big Bang?

[damefox]

We're back! https://outsidetheblocks.buzzsprout.com ... ollar-stay

[damefox]

New episode today, our final one on Pandora's Blocks puzzles! https://outsidetheblocks.buzzsprout.com ... -into-line

Outside the Blocks will return - the plan is to keep the podcast going even though PBWMC is over. There are many other meta puzzles out there to talk about!

[Joe Ross]

Listening, now. I am shedding a lot of work I do on others' metas. When complete, I plan on working my way through all of your puzzles, Will. I've not had the time, previously.

Just LOLed at Emma's early emails to Will pointing out all of his mistakes & not quite up to snuff parts of his puzzles.
😆

[damefox]

We talked with Mike Dirolf, creator of Crosshare, on today's episode: https://outsidetheblocks.buzzsprout.com ... -crosshare. We first talked to him back in episode 5, which astoundingly was more than a year ago, and a lot's been going on at Crosshare since then!

[damefox]

We talked to Peter Gordon and Alex Eaton-Salners in today's episode! https://outsidetheblocks.buzzsprout.com ... ter-gordon

[Joe Ross]

Ooh! Phone got runnedover by some rainy SUV (my fault) Friday night & am waiting patiently for all apps & data to transfer from a barely functional hunk of chips & broken glass to new machine.

This will help!

[BarbaraK]

Great episode! I love Fireball, and Alex Eaton-Salners is one of my favorite constructors.

I listened while I was out walking, and feel like there was something else I meant to comment on, but no idea now what it would have been - a common problem with my listening while walking habit.

[damefox]

I listened while I was out walking, and feel like there was something else I meant to comment on, but no idea now what it would have been - a common problem with my listening while walking habit.

Was it the calendar thing? I had feeling as I was putting this together it was possible our listeners might have stronger opinions on the question of "which is the fifth day" than on anything else we've ever said...

[BarbaraK]

I listened while I was out walking, and feel like there was something else I meant to comment on, but no idea now what it would have been - a common problem with my listening while walking habit.

Was it the calendar thing? I had feeling as I was putting this together it was possible our listeners might have stronger opinions on the question of "which is the fifth day" than on anything else we've ever said...

No. Obvious enough to try both. Though I'm not sure I actually got that far anyway.

[Joe Ross]

Fascinating conversation! Not the days of the week, but everything else.

36 years of crosswords trying to never use the same clue twice? WOW!

[BarbaraK]

36 years of crosswords trying to never use the same clue twice? WOW!

I actually find that kind of gimmicky. I appreciate new clever angles on cluing, and there are a lot of those in Fireball. But sometimes it's just so strained I'd rather see an old clue.

I did remember what I wanted to mention. Peter talked about how fast the top tier speed solvers are. At one ACPT where he had constructed a puzzle, the fastest solvers completed his puzzle faster than he did! And he's no slouch in the speed solving world. Those folks are truly amazing.