Update: Thank you for generating over $500 in donations for a great cause! I’m now releasing the pack freely, so if you didn’t get a chance to pick it up yet, here’s the zip file.

I have something special to announce today: a lovingly assembled puzzle pack of “Mexican Midis” for charity, by yours truly! The pack consists of 5 lightly-themed crosswords on the topic of Mexican and Mexican-American culture. Think of this as somewhere between a New York Times midi puzzle pack and the fully-themed 11x midis that I write monthly for this site.

How it works: The first crossword in the pack is freely available here, so you can enjoy it as usual and stop there if you choose. To access the full pack, head over to justice4women.org/covid-19 to read about how the pandemic is affecting farmworkers and their families, folks who do essential work with few protections and who are being disproportionately impacted right now, especially with recent wildfires. Then make a donation of any amount to that relief fund and send a screenshot of the receipt to datalexic@gmail.com, and I’ll reply with a zipped file containing .pdf and .puz versions of the puzzle pack.

Special thanks to my partner and perpetual test solver Vince Novak, as well as to the wonderful Steve Mossberg of Square Pursuit who provided keen and insightful feedback on these puzzles. Hope you enjoy!

[puz] [pdf] [solution]