Dear Friends:
Trivia is back. I hope you missed us as much as we missed you. First, a quick recap:
Our Championship puzzle proved to be a worthy adversary, and even played a bit harder than we had calibrated. We knew the theme wouldn't help with backsolving, so we tried to offer some assistance by mentioning the prior puzzles that the Championship puzzle drew from in our email. Kudos to those of you who picked up on this, and kudos to everyone who wrangled a few correct answers from a tough set.
The 2026 Championship puzzle will take a different format, so there's no need to memorize this year's puzzle themes (unless that gives you pleasure, of course).
As for our 2025 AQCAG Champion ... drumroll... the award goes to ... drumroll intensifies... Chelsea and Sean Blink! They'll receive a small token of accomplishment that they can proudly display on whatever shelf or mantle or bookcase that they deem appropriate.
A reminder that our submissions are closed until April 1 this year, but don't let that stop you from brainstorming ideas until then.
Trivia Puzzle #1
Today's puzzle is from Wendy L. Brandes & Juliana Tringali Golden.
Juliana has published many crosswords with AVCX and elsewhere, but this is her first trivia puzzle. She also publishes weekly Rows Garden puzzles on her website, Stay Golden Puzzles. She thanks to Wendy for bringing her positivity and trivia expertise to this collaboration!
Wendy (she/her) is a lawyer, professor, and children's book author. She is a crossword constructor whose crosswords have been published in the LAT, NYT, Apple, USA Today and Universal, among others. She will be a featured constructor in this year's Boswords Winter Wondersolve (2/1). Wendy is very grateful to be working with Juliana again. She thanks Juliana for her brilliant ideas and quick wit, and she thanks Karen, T.J. and the ACVX testers for shaping this puzzle with their support and thoughtful edits.
This one is 7 questions, and we hope the nuggets of knowledge you need to ace it aren't buried too deep in your mind. Enjoy!
Until next time, T.J., Karen & the AVCX Billikens avxwords.com | @avcx.bsky.social | @lilavcx.bsky.social | @avcxtrivia.bsky.social