we've had some great early feedback for the creative variety puzzle from yesterday. give it a try if you missed it; if you're not a variety subscriber, it's worth your $1 to get this one à la carte.

i'm really excited about this puzzle, which is a crossword unlike anything i've ever seen before. it comes to you from the brilliant mind of erik agard.

there are times when i think a one-week production schedule actually feels too slow. case in point: it's february 16, and the NBA all-star game and grammy awards were this weekend. do you remember the super bowl? it was only a week ago, but it feels longer.

a couple people let me know last week (one privately, one in the comments section) that their antivirus software was blocking the rows garden pdfs; one suggested the hyperlink (to this website) in the copyright notice was the source of the badness. so i took it out. i didn't hear back from them, but hopefully the problem is fixed.

spiral is a simple but elegant puzzle format invented by none other than will shortz. if you've been solving the nyt second sunday variety puzzles, you've seen several of these over the past few years. this week, i decided to try my hand at one.

you all heard last week about poor abe vigoda, right? i take full responsibility for the clue i wrote about him in rows garden #19. rest in peace.