Our First Century

Today, the Rackenfracker welcomed its 100th subscriber — our goal for year one, hit just as we concluded our first series and are about to begin our second.

So we want to again say thank you to our dedicated solvership. Without solvers, our puzzles are just very strange objets d'art, and we so appreciate that anyone anywhere picks up what we're putting down, much less a hundred of you. (And that doesn't count those who have signed up only for the free puzzles — thanks for being here, and there are plenty of free puzzles ahead.)

We are collecting Word▶️ into a volume with our left hands while we prepare Out of Shape with our right. We've been fortunate to get quality feedback, both good and bad, from our solvers, and we appreciate that too — indeed, we'd love any of you to comment on this post about what you did and didn't enjoy about Word▶️. It'll help us make sure we're delivering the puzzles you want to be solving, and maybe even help us figure out how our puzzles might reach new solvers.

Thanks also to the folks who make The Rackenfracker go: Andy, John and Joe for sage counsel and for acting as your first line of defense; Bill for his editing; the Twitchy part of our audience that welcomes us in and gives us clue-by-clue insight into what works; and our families for understanding why we chose to do yet another strange pursuit with our free time rather just sit down and read a book.

And just to say it again, your sign-ups as we launched subscriptions were a significant vote of confidence that we had not yet earned. We hope that we've fulfilled our end, and we can't wait to ride with y'all into year two. (As a preview, we think Out of Shape will be a touch easier than Word▶️ without, we hope, sacrificing any of the satisfying gnarliness.)

So: thank you, thank you, 100 times, thank you!