You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike (Sunday brunch: April 28, 2013)

"Twisty" is the operative word for some of the weekend's variety crosswords too.  There are at least four puzzles where words aren't traveling the straight and narrow.

There are two from Nathan Curtis today, since he posted this weekend's entry early.  That one is a "Some Assembly Required": a cross between a crossword and a jigsaw puzzle.  The way I approach these is to get some different colored pencils and shade over each jigsaw piece as I place it.  Start in the corners and work your way to the center.  Once you place a couple of pieces adjacent to each other, they will greatly narrow down the pieces that will fit nearby.  Great challenge.

Nathan also tried out an "Around the Bend" (originated by Mike Selinker and Thomas Snyder, we're told).  The last letters of each word are turned around to become the first letters of the next word.  Unique.

The Wall Street Journal has a Labyrinth by Mike Shenk.  It has some similarity to the jigsaw crossword in that there are normal acrosses to help you fit the words, but the intersecting words are streamed together with no enumeration.  You have to spot the letter patterns within that winding stream that approximate the location of a word in the stream, and then you can work out from there.  If you're having trouble with it (I didn't think it was very difficult), I've posted a hint grid elsewhere on the blog.

Puzzazz launched its "Year of Puzzles" project with the standard freebie: it's a double spiral called "Dawn in Seattle" with a meta reading through a shaded path.  It's not too hard, though you'll probably want an eraser.  Or do it on their iPad app, and it will look really nice.  The whole hunt is a little pricy at twenty bucks, but it's more than just the puzzles themselves (of which there are 18).

You prefer your puzzles cryptic and your words in straight lines?  That's OK.  Hex have their weekly puzzle in the National Post.  Falcon reports that it does turn a page though.

The New York Times puzzle (behind the paywall) is a diagramless by Fred Piscop.  I'll have the solution here Sunday night.  Deb Amlen at Wordplay (spoiler warning) reports there is a theme to it.

Bonus: Play Colossal Cave online!

Solution to the New York Times diagramless is below the fold.