Working on marketing...

While putting together a broadcast email for wordXross, I've gotta wonder why, given the game and introductory puzzles are, in fact, free o' charge, it is somehow taboo to put the word FREE in the bleeping subject line! ;-)

It's Official...

We are open and operating and we welcome your feedback!

Visit us at www.wordxross.com.

Well gee...a rather important link should be added here, dontcha think?

A business in the growth stage.

Pay Day!

Once again, the justly deserved checks o' wordXross constructors are in the mail!

wordXross Makes A Sale!!!!

Yes, it's true, we have made the first official sale! While the site is still not perfect and we have not launched in any grand way, people have found us.

What's next you ask? We finish testing with the help of friends, family and strangers alike and start on Phase II.......MARKETING!

To all those involved - thank you and congratulations!

It's about to get interesting.....

17x17 sizes on hold, at least for now

From a note I just sent to wordXross constructors:

I'm now dropping, at least for the present time, the 17x17 size, with my client's approval. Until the rate for 15s can be adjusted upward -- and it can't right now -- the discrepancy in paying $40 more for a 17 seems a tad unfair to me.

NB: This temporary dropping of 17x17s does not apply to those puzzles whose theme entries or completed puzzles I've already approved.

Thank you for your attention and, more importantly, for your puzzles and theme ideas -- keep 'em coming!

Very cool puzzle check tool gives players a break!

wordXross players rack up points based on how quickly they complete the puzzle. The point system is based on the assigned difficulty level coupled with a judgment of how long it should take the average player to complete the game. Part o' my job is to encode this data into each puzzle.

Alas...poor Harvey.

It turns out that, due to a coding error, a player would've been told that he or she was expected to solve a Harvey Estes puzzle in about...a year or so.

This was not good.

So Jerry put on his programmer's hat and made a tool for Vicki and I to easily check for any coding errors. Very cool. I spent Labor Day checking for coding errors on every single puzzle. There were, um, several.

But the good news? Folks can now be expected to solve a Harvey Estes puzzle in 'way less than a year! :-)

Pay Day!

Guess what, constructors? You're check, as they say, is in the mail as of yesterday.

Oh, BLEEP!

Got a note -- make that TWO notes -- from Jerry today...seems like I screwed up in the coding in two puzzle packs o' ten each.

Let me explain: this is not rocket science.

There are essentially two codes I need to include before sending completed puzzles to Jerry. One is the title. Duh. The other one is a description (in code-speak) o' the expected time it takes the solver to complete the puzzle, along with a numerically stated rate o' difficulty. From this data, Jerry works whatever magic he is that he works.

I can't imagine how this happened...wait, I think I can.

"Carelessness" is the word that pops into my mind. Sheesh!