Saturday, August 26, 2023

Launch of Year 9!

with year 8 coming to an end, we now turn our eyes to year 9, which will begin in september, with the first rows garden hitting inboxes on tuesday, september 5, 2023 and the first variety puzzle on the following monday. everything about the subscriptions is the same in year 9 as it was in year 8 (pricing, number of puzzles, etc.). you can subscribe at this link. year 8 subscribers, be on the lookout for one more email each for the variety and rows garden email lists, containing links to download all of the year 8 puzzles as a bundle. after that, the google groups pages for year 8 will continue to exist, but i'll no longer be sending any email to those lists. on to year 9!

Monday, August 22, 2022

Welcome to Outside the Box Puzzles!

hi! this isn't exactly how i had planned to do this, but my old site abruptly stopped working at the worst possible time, so here we are.

i'm joon and i make puzzles. you probably know this already if you've found this site. i've been making crosswords since 2008, and i've had dozens of puzzles published in the usual places: new york times, los angeles times, wall street journal, fireball crosswords, american values club, chronicle of higher education, plus crossword tournaments like boswords and lollapuzzoola. since spring 2022, i've been writing sunday crosswords for the boston globe, my hometown paper, every other week.

in addition to standard crosswords, i love making variety crossword puzzles: they're often crossword-like, but with different formats that play around with the way words can cross either other. my favorite variety puzzle types include acrostics, marching bands, labyrinths, pathfinders, diagramless and vowelless crosswords. but my favorite type is rows gardens. since 2015, i've been writing a weekly rows garden puzzle and distributing it to subscribers by email. you can subscribe to year 8 now, if that's what you're here for.

other stuff about me:

  • a few years ago, i wrote a book of trivia puzzles called triple decker trivia. if you enjoy trivia and "what's the connection?"-type puzzles (like the ones on the show only connect), this might be up your alley.
  • in 2011, i won seven games as a contestant on the game show jeopardy!, and made it to the semifinals of that year's tournament of champions.
  • i was part of the writing team for the 2022 MIT mystery hunt.
  • i live in somerville, massachusetts with my wife and our three kids.

Launch of Year 9!

with year 8 coming to an end, we now turn our eyes to year 9, which will begin in september, with the first rows garden hitting inboxes on t...