“Impossible Linkups” Crossword Puzzle Contest

Our home is at the base of the Gunks but with the cliffs quarantined we might as well live a thousand miles away.  I’m sure we’re not alone in feeling so, no matter what your physical distance from the ridge.  And as this second weekend in May would’ve been the GCC BBQ, we’re going to really miss this annual gathering of the tribe.

Here at home in Gardiner, we’re really fortunate to be able to go safely outside the house whenever we want.  But I’ve still become much more of a homebody than ever before — and part of that means doing the New York Times crossword puzzles all week long as opposed to only on Sunday.  And I’ve also been teaching myself how to construct them.

Do a GCC crossword!  Win a GCC t-shirt!

So towards that end, I’ve constructed a Sunday Times sized, themed crossword I call “Impossible Linkups”.

Impossible linkups are individual, named routes from across the Gunks (all in the Williams guides) that are overlapped and mashed together to create linkup routes that don’t (can’t!) connect in reality.

As an example of an impossible linkup take “birdlandsend” which is an overlapping mashup of Birdland in the Nears with Lands End in the Trapps. This answer isn’t in the puzzle.

There are 14 individual, named routes across 7 long, linkup entries in the puzzle.  And as crosswords and some of the routes go, I’d rate the puzzle a solid 10, so it’ll likely be a project you’ll have to work a bit before sending.  Some of the clues are puns and a few of the answers are admittedly obscure — but hopefully none of the hardest bits cross each other to make for a sandbagged solution. That said, I don’t think any clue/answer pair is (totally) unfair.  But if you find you need beta, well, there’s always Google to spray some your way.

So sharpen a pencil, chalk up, and hopefully you’ll enjoy this Gunks test piece.

Contest Instructions

Completed solutions should be emailed back to us at the GCC as a PDF so we can check them and award the first five to arrive correctly GCC t-shirts.  We’ll be in touch with the winners individually to arrange t-shirt selection and mailing addresses.  If you work as a team of two, we’ll send you both a shirt with up to a total of three winning teams.

We’ll end the contest midnight of Sunday, May 17, and release the solution on Monday, May 18.

With apologies for any mental torture my clueing may inflict…

Matt Logan
GCC board member