On October 17th the very determined Josh Larios, his wife Cameron, and his friends Jake Manalan and Mia Lipner became the second group to crack the Bad Monkeys contest puzzle. I congratulate them, and hope Josh can get some sleep now.
I’ve left the puzzle up for anyone else who wants to try it, but be aware that there are no more prizes. I’ve also posted an email from Jutta Degener describing how she and her coworkers at Metaweb became the first group to solve the puzzle (as you might expect, it contains spoilers).
Thanks to everyone who played. For those who are curious how I designed the puzzle, I used a program called Crossword Express, a very versatile piece of ‘ware that can generate traditional crosswords, Cryptics, Acrostics, Word Search, Sodoku, and Kakuro, among others. I bought the “professional” version of the program; it has since been released as freeware, and it’s definitely worth checking out if you’re a puzzle fanatic.