Fits and Starts

It's a two-puzzle day around here! We're making our debut at Cryptic Crossweird with a timely little puzzle, and we're commemorating that with a bonus puzzle right here.

If you're here because you found us there, welcome — we have plenty of free puzzles to check out, and you can sign up to be notified of our new puzzles. We send variety cryptics every month to subscribers, and publish free straight and variety puzzles whenever we can manage. Today we're offering our smallest-ever variety cryptic — see below.

If you're here because you're already in the Rackenfamily, be sure to check out Cryptic Crossweird. You've heard us mention Crossweird as a hub of the indie crossword community on Twitch. Cryptic Crossweird is the publication they launched in January that has already published terrific puzzles by a number of names you'll recognize from having edited or co-written puzzles here. We hope you'll check them out and try our (bigger and better!) new puzzle over there.

Thanks to Momes, Dob and Bob Weisz at Cryptic Crossweird for their warm welcome and thoughtful edits, and to Andy Stilp and John Sams for testing both puzzles. Today's Rackenfracker was edited by Frisco17, whose work can be found at his blog Good Clues for People who Love Bad Clues. We were chuffed to have him aboard for this sticky wicket.