We hope you enjoyed all John’s puzzles from last week, which are fully contained in this PDF. If you solved the complete set, Grandmaster Puzzles would like to reward you with a copy of the seminal reference “A Dictionary of 4,573 Crucial Cross Words and their Clues”, coauthored by John Bulten. This out-of-print 1987 work was the first crossword dictionary we know of to rank words using the methodology now standard for “The New York Times”. All copies will be personally signed by J.B.!
To obtain your copy, simply enter the proper product code (read: the answer to the hidden puzzle) in the applet below before midnight, April 19th (three weeks from today) May 3rd May 17th, so that we can verify your address via email. Solvers will also be recognized in a later post.
As with our first Hidden Contest, this is a challenge of logic and observation. We’ll be adding hints here each week until the close of the entry period.
Hint 1 (4/5/2015): It’s all good, but I recommend 138956247.
Hint 2 (4/12/2015): To obtain the product code, simply follow the correct instructions in the correct order. A review of other puzzlemaster debut weeks may help out.
Hint 3 (4/19/2015): Following the example of other puzzlemasters here, John tried to leave his mark on these puzzles. After finding out what that means, you are looking for an answer with one word followed by several numbers.
(4/26/2015): No extra hint today, but we’re sharing the official solution packet for the week’s puzzles which may be useful.
Hint 4 (5/3/2015): You are looking for a single element in common across all of the puzzles. It may be easiest to find this by looking at the solutions that include shading (BACA, Slithersweeper, and Tapa).
Next week will be a regular variety mix with puzzles from six authors.
