Ubercross Abecedaria U...Launched!

26ish hours after the 24-hour announcement, but who's counting? (Me. I'm counting.)

At long last, the Ubercross Abecedaria U, the most challenging crossword design I have ever attempted (and probably will ever attempt), the Uberest of Ubercrosses, the “moUth of madness”…is done. Done. Done!

…

(Or is it?)

I feel like I should be making this one of my triumphant press releases, but you who follow me deserve more honesty than that. This one ran me ragged! So ragged that I’m more concerned than usual that errors and glitches may have slipped by me. It’s extra hard to scan for those in the U, because the nature of this section means that a lot of clues and answers that look like errors or glitches…aren’t.

So I’m treating this as a beta release. If you spot anything amiss, do let me know. My plan on this front is to work with the V puzzle (far easier than this one in every way) and finish that up before going back to this one with a fresh pair of eyes. (If you prefer to wait it out, I estimate those corrections will be done by the end of the month.)

Even with those qualifiers…I hope you enjoy the ride! It is indeed the Uberest of the Ubercrosses. Because I started this whole project with an eye to pushing the crossword form past all conventional limits. This is what happens when you add the Ubercross scale to the genre of crosswords that is more freeform than any other. This is as close as my imagination can get to the true outer limits of the form’s potential.

Things start out somewhat normally. But once you get inside that giant U-design…all bets are off.