With Negroni's Cocktails, I will offer a new cocktail-themed variety cryptic crossword puzzle every two months. If you don't know what cryptic crosswords are, you probably want to learn about them and try some first before subscribing to these puzzles. Variety cryptic crosswords have some kind of twist to them; perhaps certain answers have to be amended before being entered into the grid, or some clues have a word that needs to be removed before solving, or any of a number of other things. The puzzles served here will have a final answer that solvers will need to find, often referred to as a meta in crossword circles. Each puzzle will be themed to a particular cocktail, and when the puzzle is released, it will have just a recipe for that cocktail and the puzzle. Use the recipe however you like--to make a drink while you solve, as a reward for solving, to file away for later, or whatever. The recipe isn't important to the puzzle per se, but the puzzle will be themed in some way to the cocktail. It might be something about the drink or something about the name, and you will likely need to figure out what it is to make it through the puzzle and find the final answer.
In addition, there will be an answer hidden in the six puzzles from the entire year. This will refer to all of the puzzles, and it probably won't be findable until close to the end of the year. It's up to you to determine how the year's answer is encoded--all information could factor in. Both the answer of each week's puzzle and the hidden answer for a year can be entered on this site. This site will also display a leaderboard of people who solved each month's puzzle without any help and before any hints. After a week, a new puzzle will be posted where the recipe is replaced by instructions that tell you about the puzzle's twist and might give some hints to finding the puzzle's answer. Everyone who solves the puzzle before the solution goes up, with or without help, will be mentioned in a separate alphabetical list.
The first puzzle was released Saturday, February 17 at 4pm Eastern / 1pm Pacific. Subsequent puzzles are scheduled to be released on the second Saturday of every second month (April, June, August, October, and December) at 4pm Eastern / 1pm Pacific. Each puzzle will be posted for members at my Patreon page, and members will also get an email with the puzzle. Register here.
My name is Martin Reinfried, and in some circles, I
am known as Negroni. I have been writing puzzles for a long time, both
for work and for fun, and I have always been enamored of cryptic
crosswords, especially variety cryptics. I have written several
variety cryptics, some for fun, some appearing in the MIT Mystery
Hunt, and some published in the National Puzzlers League's Enigma
magazine. Most of the variety cryptics I have written can be accessed
at negroni.fun/puzzles. I am
a software engineer, and I have been a co-founder of a couple of
companies, including Shinteki, where I wrote a mobile app to run
puzzle-based events. I live in Telluride, CO with my wife Dennise and
son Max, and I look forward to providing you with a steady stream of
variety cryptic puzzles.