Hello, and welcome to Puzzles for Progress.
I'll just say it: I will be taking a break from Puzzles for Progress in January 2022, and after that will probably be biweekly.
I continue to love making puzzles, but with the book and everything I've been feeling a little burnt out the last few months. It's nothing serious, it's just that making Puzzles for Progress has been a little more of a stress than it was at the beginning. Therefore, I want to have a month where I don't have to worry about making Puzzles for Progress puzzles.
I keep going back and forth about what the best schedule is after that: biweekly, monthly plus, no schedule, even something like sesquiweekly? I still don't know what's going to happen–my best guess is biweekly–and I will let you all know once I'm confident. I welcome suggestions on this issue! By some metrics, Puzzles for Progress is as successful as it's ever been, and I have no intention of actually stopping it. There will be many, many more puzzles to come.
In any case. Today's puzzles include a Spiral that I believe is on the easier side; a Star Battle with a bit of a different feel compared to my others; and a puzzle-huntier word puzzle titled "This is the Answer?" (It's puzzle-huntier in the sense that what you have to do is less defined. It's not evilly difficult, but if you have less experience with these sorts of things you may not be totally sure what to do. I've posted a few small hints below.) Enjoy them!
Print the puzzles out from the following pdfs:
Spiral: tinyurl.com/pfp-74a-spiral
Star Battle: tinyurl.com/pfp-74b-starbattle
This is the Answer?: tinyurl.com/pfp-74c-thisistheanswer
Or here they are, all on one page: tinyurl.com/pfp-74
Alternatively, solve the Spiral and Star Battle using the following links:
Spiral: tinyurl.com/pfp-74a-spiral-jpz (.jpz file, download it and drop it into squares.io or elsewhere)
Star Battle: tinyurl.com/pfp-74b-starbattle-o (puzz.link)
And, as always, the answers: tinyurl.com/pfp-74-answers
Hints for "This is the Answer?" (rot13ed)
I'm not that good at writing hints so these may or may not be useful
to find what the words have in common: ybbx sbe fhofgevatf bs gur jbeqf
to combine them into the final answer: gur jbeq vf rvtug yrggref naq lbh unir rvtug nafjref. hfr gur cebcregl
See you on December 31 for the last edition of the year!
