Here is the story behind some of my favorite puzzles.

First off, I’ve never really done that many Cryptos. I preferred the OWW and Hypers.
However, here is one of my favorite Crypto:
https://www.tanga.com/puzzles/5875

My first published OWW… taking the plunge.
https://www.tanga.com/puzzles/4674
Thanks Philana for your kind words of praise after this one.

This one was actually my first puzzle created.
https://www.tanga.com/puzzles/4673
I really liked the premise behind it.

This was probably the next one I created.
https://www.tanga.com/puzzles/4688
I really liked the fun of it and it had potential. However, I didn’t really nail the final step. It taught me, I think, that a puzzle is only as good as its weakest step.

This one was part of a series of OWW submitted in my first few months…
https://www.tanga.com/puzzles/4941-6-3-2009
It’s a home-made image. I really liked the nice a-ha of this one.

I also liked how I was able to build the background around this puzzle. I felt it really added to the solve experience.
https://www.tanga.com/puzzles/4956

Then, after a string of lacklustre OWWs, I sorta got a lack of inspiration with respect to OWWs. Nothing at all. I started focusing on Hypers and I really enjoyed doing them. There were these two related hypers where I strived to add a curve ball at the end (what I call a final CLUE). These two, I liked because the final clue was hidden in plain sight:
https://www.tanga.com/crossword_puzzles/1348-8-9-2009 (within the clues)
https://www.tanga.com/crossword_puzzles/1353-8-15-2009 (within the grid)

Then, I created Stickman (many puzzles had him in it). The idea behind Stickman was to clue something in 2 different ways (often, figuratively and literally).
Here is the first Stickman:
https://www.tanga.com/crossword_puzzles/1372-9-16-2009
I remember Arnott really liking this puzzle (probably one of the first time, but not the last, that Arnott dealt with one of my puzzles)

Then there were the “Clues winding through the grid puzzles”. The first one was my favorite. I liked how I shaped the grid like a maze.
https://www.tanga.com/crossword_puzzles/1400-10-21-2009
https://www.tanga.com/crossword_puzzles/1464-12-16-2009
https://www.tanga.com/crossword_puzzles/1637-5-25-2010

Speaking of having fun with the grids, there was this Stickman puzzle where the goal was to shape the grid like a map of the US.
https://www.tanga.com/crossword_puzzles/1421-12-28-2009

… and this one where the final clue (a chess piece and two letters) were created by the blanks in the grid.
https://www.tanga.com/crossword_puzzles/1441-2-26-2010

A FEW MONTHS AFTER THAT, I BECAME A MODERATOR… just to situate things, timewise.

The OWWs continued. The hypers became more run-of-the-mill, for some reason…

I really liked how this OWW turned out. I liked the a-ha of figuring out the shape and then the a-ha of the final step:
https://www.tanga.com/puzzles/6673

Sometimes, you have an idea and you just write it out and it’s gobbledygook everywhere except for one area… and there’s your puzzle.
https://www.tanga.com/puzzles/7332
…another example
https://www.tanga.com/puzzles/10861
…and another
https://www.tanga.com/puzzles/7505

Sometimes, puzzles are just aesthetically pleasing. I felt this was one of them:
https://www.tanga.com/puzzles/7803-2-26-2011

Around that time, Tanga changed its hyper programming a little and “red letters” would appear when a solver had a different crossing letter. So I had this idea for an April Fool’s puzzle that I pitched to Arnott. This puzzle was extremely, extremely, extremely difficult to build. And plus, Arnott insisted on a) a longer clue sentence, b) a later onset of red letters and c) clear clues. Every attempt to “build” this puzzle pretty much had to start from scratch. After 45 minutes, you’d know if it was successful. I must have tried 25-30 times until, out of nowhere, I got an awesome grid and perfect clues:
https://www.tanga.com/crossword_puzzles/2053

This one had a lot of back and forth between Arnott and me. I liked the new “paradigm” of using the dates. There were many words I could use and that made it fun. Some puzzles you only end up with say 5-6 words that fit a paradigm and some of those are obscure. When you can have a whole bunch of words that fit a premise, building the puzzle is FUN!
https://www.tanga.com/puzzles/8188

One of my favorite puzzles of all time. BTW, it never bothered me that my puzzles got unfeatured. They were still available to be solved. That’s what counts.
https://www.tanga.com/puzzles/9020

I like the simple one where the answer stares you in the face but you feel compelled to try something else… like this one, inspired by bargellos
https://www.tanga.com/puzzles/10363

Another experimental Hyper with stuff happening in the grid.
https://www.tanga.com/crossword_puzzles/2713

My main goal when creating these puzzles was to create “A-HA MOMENTS”. I hope you had lots of them. Thank you for having been my audience all these years!