#crossword constructors

[todays-xkcd]

Also, we would really appreciate it if you could prominently refer to it as an 'eHit'.

Crossword Constructors [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[Cueball is sitting at a table and typing on his laptop. White Hat and Hairbun are standing behind him and looking. The following is written above the characters:] Dear Ms. Swift, Mr. Sheeran, Ms. Minaj, Ms. Grande, and Mr. Weeknd, We are a group of crossword puzzle constructors, and we would like to suggest some titles for your future albums:

Aete

Eni

Oreta

Aroe

Oine

Aen

Enta

Aerae

[evannakita]

I made a crossword puzzle!

It's June 24, 2024, and I'm the constructor of today's daily crossword on Puzzmo! It's my first-ever published crossword, and I'm extremely excited for the public to check it out!

Below the cut, I've written out some fun tidbits about the puzzle and the process of making it. That being said, SPOILERS follow—only read further if you've already completed the puzzle!

Hi again, I hope you had a fun time solving the puzzle! I certainly had a fun time constructing it. I’m incredibly grateful to Brooke for organizing Puzzmo's Open Submission Week, for giving me a second chance to submit after the theme of my first submission wasn’t a good fit for Puzzmo, and for helping me throughout the process of theming, filling, cluing, and hinting.

This puzzle began with the idea of using a diagonal to spell out something that actually is diagonal. As a public transit enthusiast, I’d initially thought of [FUNICULAR]. But the idea quickly expanded with the decision to also include horizontal and vertical answers corresponding to horizontal and vertical things. And since [ELEVATOR] was by far my favorite possible vertical answer, that left [ESCALATOR] as the obvious choice for the diagonal. Initially, I’d planned [CONVEYOR] for the horizontal answer, but Brooke pointed out that conveyors typically aren’t used to carry people the way escalators and elevators do. The next option I proposed was [TRAVELATOR], but I ended up liking [CORRIDOR] more, because I wanted the puzzle to have diagonal symmetry if possible.

Already, I had a ton of constraints for filling the grid—each letter of [ESCALATOR] had to intersect not one but two other answers, which would have been tricky even before adding in two other theme answers and diagonal symmetry. So I ended up spending countless hours testing out possible grid layouts in order to try to get a good fill. At first my idea was for all three theme answers to intersect at the bottom right, but I chose the current layout to represent how escalators and elevators don’t actually go between the same two points, meaning that when a train station is designed around escalators; [ELEVATOR] users are forced to also use a [CORRIDOR] to cover the horizontal distance. (Here in NYC, that makes for inconvenient wheelchair access to the fancy new platforms at Grand Central Madison, and it also means the planned accessibility upgrades at the Broadway Junction subway transfer will be a massive undertaking.) I personally find designing efficient train station layouts to be a lot of fun, and so I greatly enjoy the game STATIONflow, and I thought it’d be appropriate to shout it out in this puzzle’s title!

I did end up eventually managing to get a fillable grid (thanks to Ingrid and Spread The Wordlist—oh hey, yet another thing Brooke deserves major kudos for!), but due to all my self-imposed restrictions I had very little flexibility in what the non-theme answers would be, meaning I was stuck with some tricky ones like [SIDE A] and [ALDIS]. But honestly, I think the limited flexibility made cluing more fun than it otherwise would have been, since I now had the challenge of finding fun clues for answers I didn’t pick. I got to revisit some happy memories in 4-Across and 18-Across, I got to shamelessly plug my DeviantArt in 11-Down, I got to shout out an incredible activist in 19-Across, and I got to be unreasonably proud of myself for coming up with 10-Across. Some of my original clues were too long and confusing for Puzzmo (I was slightly sad to shorten my original description of a [T BAR] as a “low-budget chairlift alternative that’s basically an anchor that hooks around your butt and pulls you up a hill”), but Brooke was a tremendous help with capturing the spirit of my clues in fewer letters. And a couple clues were straight-up Brooke’s ideas, including 1-Across, 5-Down, and notably 17-Down—I hadn’t heard of Ayra [STARR] before but her music is excellent and I am very glad to have learned about her through this.

Brooke was surprised I wanted to hint my own puzzle, and I get why—hints aren’t meant to be entertaining, and coming up with good ones can be quite challenging. (Shoutout to Matthew for being an absolute hinting MVP!) I actually quite enjoyed all the lexical games, though—the “mancala” anagram for [ALMANAC] was a very satisfying find, and I was quite proud of how my hint for the crossword staple at 27-Down was able to match the Minecraft theme of the clue. (Of course, the flipside was that some hints, like the one for [KORRA], had to jump through a lot of hoops to get to something coherent.)

I realize this is probably way longer than it needs to be, but making this puzzle was just such an experience. I’m absolutely going to keep making puzzles, and that’s all thanks to Brooke and Puzzmo.

[haymarketvtubestuff]

New year, hopefully the ability to afford a new me. I'm raising funds to further my medical transition (and reduce the risk of a family history of cancer, it turns out). The goal is steep but only because Texas hates trans folks. Thanks for reading.

[oneefin]

crosswords | prev | next

12 tone serial concerto

a cross-staff-word by onefin (me). this one is a bit spicy 🌶️ be warned

crosshare link: https://crosshare.org/crosswords/NYQo7TQnXbtb6ZIRUyl6/12-tone-serial-concerto

solution and constructor's notes below the break (spoilers!)

SOLUTION

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i made this crossword because one of my friends suggested that i write a 12-tone serial concerto, as a joke

i thought about it for a bit, and then wondered how possible it would be to make a convincing crossword fill that contains every solfege note exactly once.

i think other crossworders aren't as familiar with this because crosswords typically disallow two-letter words, but i have the names of all 12 solfege notes, including the pairs of names for enharmonic equivalents of accidentals, committed to memory:

the fill i came up with (the solution to the puzzle) was a 10x4 that looks like:

it definitely has problem points (looking at you, OLID), but i think it's shockingly functional given the restriction.

putting this together was an entirely manual process, but i did write a quick script to spit out all of the candidate 8-letter words that i could use. LITERATI is the one i went with, but as a bonus here's crossword clues for the others that i could reasonably have chosen (remember, the solfege notes have to all be different):

like a long, boring drive (in more than one sense?)

not quite fully uncommon

it's around 3 minutes and 45 seconds for the record holder (2 words)

get up after sleeping in too much (2 words)

hope you enjoyed it, despite the inelegancies!

[transmutationisms]

hey! i saw all the crossword stuff and wanted to ask if there are any other crosswords you like besides nyt/new yorker. thanks!

hi! so, the closest you'll get to nyt is the washington post and wall street journal puzzles; these are generally drawing from roughly the same knowledge base, though i find their clueing tends to be a bit straighter and less creative (new yorker's knowledge base skews a little more toward arts and academic theory, though this depends heavily on who the constructor is on any given day). the usatoday puzzle tends easy (meaning lots of straight clues; usually about the difficulty of an nyt monday) but it's also become much more interesting since erik agard took over as their puzzle editor: he's really pushed to move beyond the usual stodgy newspaper knowledge base, so although that puzzle doesn't scratch the same itch as, like, an nyt saturday, i do still really like it. i also love the black crossword, which is a free daily mini that places emphasis on terms and clues from across the black diaspora, and there are some free online puzzles that are pretty good: brendan emmett quigley posts a themeless one on mondays and a themed one on thursdays, and there's merl reagle's archive, which posts a sunday puzzle once a week.

but! puzzle preferences are highly individual so it's always worth poking around to see what you like. this is a good list of puzzles you can try out; you might also find that you really like certain constructors, and just follow their work (i love erik agard and anna shechtman, eg).

[pumpkinland]

Robin Stears is like my favorite crossword constructor no one understands me

[acommonrose]

Not to be a crossword shill blog, but there's a cool thing I'm a part of, so:

Puzzmo is basically trying to be a digital version of a newspaper's puzzle page. It has a bunch of little games, but the thing I've been involved with is a daily midi-sized crossword. I'm on the crossword constructing/editing/test solving team, and we're trying really hard to make really fun puzzles that highlight individual constructors' voices and interests. (They also have added hints if you want to make them a little easier.)

They're still in the soft launch period right now, so they're releasing a few hundred keys everyday. (You have to solve a puzzle to get in.) If you can get in soon, I do have a puzzle running there in a little over a week, and hopefully I'll have more running after they fully open the site in a month or two.

[luulapants]

My guess for what Misha Collins didn't want to be at'ed about while on vacay is today's (wed 6.14.23) horny nyt crossword puzzle that I would bet money was constructed by an SPN fan.

(cross word spoilers below)

If it were just that he's the answer to 25 down that would be one thing ("Supernatural" actor Collins / Misha), but the S of Misha goes on to make smut across. The leftmost down answers (1, 25) read "lick Misha", which could be coincidence, but is also hilarious. 32 down (Possessive type? / Demon) is very SPN. There's a clue about lurkers. There are some more general clues that normally wouldn't read "I would bet money the constructor has read fic", but given the above I'm getting some more subtle / general fandom pings on a couple of the other clues.

Anyway just going to laugh forever about the Misha/smut cross

I've been deleting asks about the Misha drama but honestly I want this one set on a pepe silva meme, printed, and framed on my wall

[hawkeyebj]

don’t think anyone loves alan alda as much as crossword constructors do

[softandwigglybones]

Wasn't there a similar thing (I think crossword people call it the most famous crossword) where the clue was something like "tomorrow's election results" and it also worked irrelevant of which candidate you put?

Edit: yup

Perhaps the most famous is the November 5, 1996, puzzle by Jeremiah Farrell, published on the day of the U.S. presidential election, which has been featured in the movie Wordplay and the book The Crossword Obsession by Coral Amende, as well as discussed by Peter Jennings on ABC News, featured on CNN, and elsewhere. [16][17][52][53] The two leading candidates that year were Bill Clinton and Bob Dole; in Farrell's puzzle, one of the long clue/answer combinations read [Title for 39-Across next year] MISTER PRESIDENT. The remarkable feature of the puzzle is that 39-Across could be answered either CLINTON or BOB DOLE, and all the Down clues and answers that crossed it would work either way (e.g., [Black Halloween animal] could be either BAT or CAT depending on which answer you filled in at 39-Across; similarly [French 101 word] could equal LUI or OUI, etc.). [52] Constructors have dubbed this type of puzzle a Schrödinger or quantum puzzle after the famous paradox of Schrödinger's cat, which was both alive and dead at the same time. The first Schrödinger puzzle in the Times, by Ralph G. Beaman, appeared eight years earlier, and as of October 2024, 19 Times puzzles have used a similar trick. [54]

- Wikipedia, "the new York times crossword"

pretty much the only good thing about the paper of record anymore, the crossword

[puzzlenation]

What's a Shortz Number?

While I was researching Salomon Numbers for last week’s post, I discovered another crossword-centric number system with an S-name attached. The Shortz Number. Actually, I found several of them. Allow me to elucidate. XWordInfo lists a constructor’s Shortz Number as a reflection of when that constructor was first published in a daily puzzle during the Shortz Era of The New York Times…

[haymarketvtubestuff]

Fuck it, we're kickstarting this.

[oneefin]

crosswords | prev | next

catch 22

a standard crossword by me

spacious grid today! it contains some niche video game trivia, fair warning. constructor's notes (spoilers) below the break.

try this on crosshare: https://crosshare.org/crosswords/F2XBAtXRvtUyD6X8RToR/catch-22

SPOILERS

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i trust that you did it because as usual i will not be posting the solution here! yay!

i feel like there must be so many ways to make a compelling crossword about the number 2. this is my entry to the vast ocean of possibilities. this grid spawned from noticing the similarity between the terms 2B2T and R2D2, then the grid shape solidified when i crossed them with TWICE TWICE. the mario maker troll level scene is awesome and it's like two layers deep of hyper niche

easter eggs! there's so many. these were all accidental but i liked them:

the pair of long answers on the left side THALAMI and AILERONS both come in twos. thematic!

the word TO appears exactly in the bottom right corner of the grid, which is a fun callback

also, so many answers about WATER! LTRS and DEW, which are laterally aligned in the middle, both have to do with water - the clue for ITSY is about water (which i called attention to in the clue) - and in a way WAVERED is about water if you read it hyper-literally (waves, as in the ocean?)

finally i'll note that in research, the term LTRS as an abbreviation of "liters" or "litres" doesn't actually HOLD WATER. although it's commonly used, the correct abbreviation has always been L and that's what you should be using. quite ironic for an answer about how much space water takes up

[ulkaralakbarova]

All About Steve

After one short blind date, Mary Horowitz, a brilliant and eccentric crossword constructor, is convinced that Steve, a CCN cameraman, is her soul mate. Because his job takes him hither and yon, she crisscrosses the country following Steve, with the encouragement of a reporter, turning up at media events he’s at to convince him they are perfect for each other. Along the way, she befriends an…

[art-sciencedesigns]

A Crossword For You: All Things March

Did you know that crossword puzzles have a language of their own? Yes, indeed! The “language of crosswords” is a fascinating linguistic phenomenon. Constructors, the architects of these mind-boggling word grids, ingeniously weave a web of words using cryptic clues that could confound even the most ardent of linguists. And here’s a fun fact: the term “crosswordese” has been coined to describe the…

[politixpulse]

Off the Grid: Sally's Take on USA TODAY's Daily Crossword Puzzle, 'I Love a Parade

Puzzle Breakdown:

In today's USA TODAY crossword puzzle titled "I Love a Parade", constructor Neville Fogarty celebrates Bisexual Visibility Month with a lively puzzle that plays on parade-themed words. The puzzle was edited by Jared Goudsmit and is packed with interesting clues and answers.

Constructor’s Insight:

Neville Fogarty explains that this puzzle was originally intended for Pride Month but was delayed. He expresses gratitude for the opportunity to showcase it during Bisexual Visibility Month.

Puzzle Highlights:

DISC (1A): Refers to "Goaltimate", a game similar to ultimate frisbee but played on a circular field.

JET SKI (45A): Featured in the 1996 Nintendo 64 game Wave Race 64, where players navigate jet skis through various courses.

IKE (32D): Guitarist Ike Willis, known for his work with Frank Zappa.

OHIO (14A): Has become a meme symbolizing unusual news events, similar to the "Florida man" trend.

ISLA (25A): Actress Isla Fisher, known for her role in Disney+’s Godmothered.

LASIK (34A): Eye surgery for correcting vision problems.

ROOT BEER FLOAT (55A): A classic soda fountain treat.

Fun Facts and Observations:

NORM (17A): Apt for a conformist.

HOPE (63A): Featured in Obama's famous "Hope" poster.

PEONY (53D): Known as the "king of flowers" in China.

Theme Synopsis:

The theme of the puzzle revolves around words associated with parades:

SPEECH BALLOON (20A): A comic strip feature.

RESISTANCE BAND (38A): Used in strength training.

ROOT BEER FLOAT (55A): A festive soda fountain treat.

Each theme answer cleverly ties into the concept of a parade, with each ending word representing a different parade-related item.

Final Thoughts:

Sally enjoyed solving this puzzle and appreciates the clever play on parade-related words. If you haven’t yet tackled it, you might want to try it out before diving into more details!

For more crossword puzzles and solutions, visit USA TODAY’s Daily Crossword Puzzles section.