Puzzazz Blog  

Sometimes, it seems like we work eight days a week here at Puzzazz. That's the life of a startup company, when you're working hard to build a great product and deliver great experiences to users. As CEO, I get to do about twenty jobs, including taking out the trash. But, just because we're working hard, it doesn't mean we're not also having fun. And some of the fun I get to have sometimes is making puzzles, including the latest installment of the Year of Puzzles, set in Liverpool and sort of about The Beatles.

This puzzle was inspired by a puzzle by Mike Selinker that I had the pleasure of editing. It's the last puzzle in Mike's Killer Cryptics puzzle ebook and it wraps up the book with a nice tribute to Stephen Sondheim, who is credited with bringing cryptic crosswords to the US from England. Mike's puzzle nicely weaves the names of a variety of Sondheim's musicals and songs into the clues.

So, when I saw that Liverpool was one of the cities that our intrepid puzzle solver was going to visit, I jumped at the opportunity to do something similar for The Beatles, one of my all-time favorite groups. It turned out to be quite a challenge, but I think it ended up very nicely. This puzzle also had an editor, Parker Lewis, who really helped tighten the puzzle up and get rid of some problems I didn't even know I had. Thanks, Parker!

I hope you enjoy solving this as much as I did making it.