Aries Puzzles

ROWS GARDEN 77 — HARDER

ROWS GARDEN 77 — EASIER

Rows Garden 77 Harder — Solution

Rows Garden 77 Easier — Solution

Almost forgot to upload the puzzle today! Holiday weekends tend to screw up my body clock, and I’m definitely still in Sunday-mode, mentally. But, crisis averted. We’ve got another Rows Garden today, so all’s good in Puzzleland.

Not surprisingly, Row A was the seed entry. I’ve meant to put it in a puzzle for a while now, and as far as I know it’s a debut. Cool, I guess…though I don’t think I’ll ever make any use of said entry other than to put it in a puzzle. But it’s pretty much blown up all over the place, so I hope it resonates with you guys.

New puzzle next week!

ROWS GARDEN 76 — HARDER

ROWS GARDEN 76 — EASIER

Rows Garden 76 Harder — Solution

Rows Garden 76 Easier — Solution

Thank you, thank you, Thank You very much for your gracious donations last week. It seems like it was just yesterday that I inauspiciously launched this site, and it’s with your help that these Rows Gardens will continue well into the triple digits. Thanks so much.

I meant to pass this along sooner, but for those of you in the upper Midwest, this puzzle by fellow Minnesotans George Barany and Ben Geisbauer was sent my way and I promised to link to it. Not too difficult, and a puzzle that certainly fits the season. Enjoy it here.

As for this week’s puzzle, the seed is at B1, a common place for the marquee entry. I came upon it a few weeks back while playing Trivial Pursuit with my dad and brother at our family’s cabin in Wisconsin. Keep in mind — this is the original Genus version, released circa 1982, which predates my birth. Those pink-colored entertainment questions skewed in favor of a couple generations before my brother and I, which no doubt amplified his mystification on how I got [answer to B1] for a chip, no less. Chalk it up to a brain that soaks in useless trivia, apparently. As it turns out the name offers some interesting letter combinations, and I was absolutely thrilled that the Row A answer availed itself, too. Nothin’ like some marquee answers leading off the puzzle.

Enjoy!

5/22 3:57 PM CDT UPDATE: Inaccuracy in the “Quetzalcoatl worshipers” clue in the White Blooms, and the clue has been changed to “Chichen Itza natives”. Both PDF versions have been updated. Sorry about this, and thanks to Joon P. for noticing the error.

ROWS GARDEN 75 — HARDER

ROWS GARDEN 75 — EASIER

Rows Garden 75 Harder — Solution

Rows Garden 75 Easier — Solution

Passing the hat this week. Twice a year, (May and November) I will ask for donations in order to keep the site running and ad-free. I appreciate everyone’s help, and it’s with your support that the site continues to grow. I am very blessed to have some excellent friends and fans that continue to support me in my career. THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart. As we did last year, I’m going to donate a percentage of the donations to a charity to-be-determined. Haven’t picked one out yet, and if you have any worthy charities, feel free to let me know.

Paypal is the easiest way to donate (see the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar), but if snail-mail is more your thing, shoot me an email and I can send you my address. A few of you have opted to donate this way, and it’s always cool to get a piece of mail, right? But I’d rather not broadcast my address on the internets and expose my soul to spambots, so an email would be the safer choice.

As for this week’s puzzle, I like it. This is the first puzzle I’ve done where the “seed entry” isn’t in either the first two Rows; instead, it’s there at C1. There was some interesting letter combinations there that didn’t work so well up top, so I slid it in the third row and made it work from there. Hope you like it!