#crosswords

[andhumanslovedstories]

An intro to doing crosswords for complete beginners

as told by someone who didn’t do any before this year and now has gotten so deeply into them

with examples pulled almost entirely from crosswords published in American publications this week

A crossword is not a measure of general knowledge or intelligence or skill with words anymore than a Mario game is a measure of how good you are at plumbing. It certainly helps to have the same cultural reference points as the puzzle, but you can brute force your way through a lot of it if you just know how crosswords work

Easiest on Mondays and then get harder over the week

The answer is in the same verb tense as the clue (ex. “doesn’t float” is “SINKS” while “didn’t float” is “SANK”)

If there’s an acronym or abbreviation in the clue, the answer will have one as well (ex. “Toothpaste-approving org.” is “ADA” because that the short way of referring to the American Dental Association)

If the answer is in written like a text from a teen girl with her first flip phone, the answer will be a common texting abbreviation (TMI, OMG, LOL, LMAO, BRB, TTYL, etc) (ex. three letter word with clue “i can’t believe u told me that” is “TMI”)

If the clue is in quotes, it’s dialogue and the response should also be dialogue (ex. the clue “‘That’s it for me!’” is “IQUIT”)

An answer can be multiple words, (see above) so some correct answers can make you second guess yourself because it creates letter combos that seem impossible to be in one English (mostly) word or mess you up bc it’s ambiguous where one word ends and another begins (ex. you have the letters “OWFO” and the answer ends up being “PILLOWFORT” or “UDAT” being “BERMUDATRIANGLE”)

Treat clues with a question mark like they’re going to be puns that make you groan so think about other meanings of the words in the clue (ex. “Volumes you can hear?” is “AUDIOBOOKS” or “Not fancy at all?” is “HATE” or “Remained under cover?” is “SLEPTIN”)

Clues that add hedging language line “they could be called…” or one might use this as…” are telling you to think very laterally. These are the ones that make you a little mad when you get them (ex. “They might be said to be dancing or raging” is “FLAMES” or “They admit they might be punched” is “TICKETS”)

The word “maybe” usually indicates the answer will be an example of the clue, not a synonym (ex. “Pet, maybe” is “CAT”)

If a person is in the clue and a person is the answer, the answer will be from the same part of name as the clue (ex. Trevor Noah replaced John Stewart on the Daily Show. So the clue “Stewart’s successor on the Daily Show” is “NOAH” while “John’s successor on the Daily Show” would be “TREVOR”

No word in the clue will be featured in the answer (ex. “What Beyoncé Knowles goes by” could be “ONENAME” but could never be “BEYONCÉ”)

A answer can be a phonetic spelling of a letter (ex. “Epic finale?” is “CEE”)

Not every clue is going to be tricky and clever, don’t rule out an obvious choice just because it’s obvious (ex. “Do ___ disturb” is “NOT”)

Roman numerals pop up a lot but typically only in clues where a Roman numeral makes sense, so “finale of a play?” could be “ACTII” but “Number of Stooges” is not going to be “III”

There’s a ton of really common clues. If you do enough crossword puzzles you recognize them. (ex. Literally almost anything about oil is going to be OPEC, any variations on “things on a smartphone that someone can download and use” is going to be “APPS”, and anything about a european capital city is probably “OSLO”)

If a clue can be about a cookie, the answer is almost certainly “OREO”

[mostly-funnytwittertweets]

[uh-ohspaghettio]

Chronically Supernatural Obsessed pt.6

[the-forest-library]

*please reblog for science*

[mydeadgaywizards]

rip remus lupin you would have loved all the nyt games

[lurking-latinist]

The Guardian is now running Quick Cryptic Crosswords, aimed specifically at people who don't have experience with cryptics. I have been explained how to do cryptics but never actually learned, so I'm having an amazing time with these. If you think you are the sort of person who would enjoy cryptics but don't know where to start... this might be where

[copperbadge]

When I mentioned I was feeling a bit apathetic about my usual phone games and apps, therapist (I should give her a nickname of some kind) suggested rotating in a new puzzle or game for a dopamine hit, so I thought I might go back to "Diagramless" crosswords, which is where you do a normal crossword but without any of the dark spaces or numbers. I used to do the normal crossword but when you've been doing crosswords since the age of 15 they stop being very challenging after a while.

The problem is that because diagramless or skeleton crosswords are more difficult, they're not readily available, like I couldn't just go out and buy a book of them; there was one Chicago paper that would print them but they were cribbing the clues from the LA Times and anyway that only worked when I was stealing the paper from my workplace years ago.

My workaround was to create a 15-square grid in Excel, print that out, and do them by hand (more satisfying anyway) using clues from the LA Times crossword that I copy-pasted in. I stopped doing diagramless basically because just acquiring them was slightly more work than I wanted to be doing on a regular basis. (If anyone knows of a phone app that offers them, or a book of them I could buy, sing out.)

Anyway all was going well; above you can see the first two I did, and while I'm obviously rusty it's very satisfying to just do one, let alone complete them. I didn't bring very many with me while traveling but I was doing today's and something seemed...very off. It took me about four lines in and several headscratchers to realize that the puzzle clues were randomly and unusually for a 16 square crossword and I was trying to cram them into a 15 square grid.

Insert old joke here about "You aren't allowed to do crosswords anymore when you can do them entirely wrong" etc etc

Personally I blame Dan and Doug who designed it, and Patti who let it through, but on the other hand "Dan Doug and Patti" is a great name for a folk trio so I can't be too mad.

[ID: Several images of a printed 15-square grid filled out by hand with both crossword clue answers but also the squares and numbers that give the puzzle structure; the third image is only partially filled and clearly full of errors, and the last image is of the actual LA Times puzzle pattern, showing that there are 16 squares instead of 15. This never used to happen.]

[theraspberryone]

Hi!!

So, nobody even cared about it on insta, but I now know that Tumblr is way better for that kind of stuff.

It's an MHA crosswords. I did it myself, and I hope some people would like it, even maybe do it and send it back to me to check the anwers.

If I see that people like it, I will do more of them

Only rule : You have to put their first name!

If you have any suggestions of names, hints, or way to improve my stuff. Or if you need to ask me something, no matter what, about it, feel free to DM me!

[jafffacakess]

8 across: you & me (1, 4, 3)

✏️for flufftober day 10: bet, game, contest ✏️4.1k | dual pov | social media | general audiences ✏️Henry is a crossword creator with a crush

The first time it happened, it was a Tuesday. 14 Across: Sherlock Holmes author. 3 letters. Well that’s easy, Arthur Conan Doyle. Alex raced through the rest of the crossword, a fairly simple one even for a Tuesday. There was a Jane Austen clue that might have stumped him a few weeks ago, but he'd borrowed June's copy of Persuasion last time he stayed overnight at her place, so he'd have something to read on his longer commute to work that day.

[recoiloperated]

Across

2. English's only definite article and a common first word for book titles.

3. a place where goods and products are manufactured in quantity.

5. the side of a racetrack nearer to the center, where the lanes are shorter.

7. synonym for snared

Down

1. four letter word for assistance.

2. third person plural pronoun that's also used for nonbinary individuals.

4. a puzzle consisting of a grid of squares and blanks into which words crossing vertically and horizontally are written according to clues.

6. first person singular pronoun

[autistic-partisan]

for day 8 i made a board with some things that remind me of my grandma

1, 2, 3; 4, 5, 6; 7, 8, 9.

[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.

[uh-ohspaghettio]

chronically supernatural obsessed pt 4

hint 15 & 14 submitted by @i--ihavemoney

[baroque-hashem]

Oh this crossword was definitely made by a Jew.

Hmm, Mizz Dershewitz I presume???

[lennylenski]

Imagine welcoming a 1950s legend into your home—someone who could bring Hollywood charm, musical magic, or groundbreaking talent right to your living room! Whether they’d teach you a thing or two about rock ‘n’ roll, show off some silver-screen glam, or have you laughing ‘til you cry, there’s no shortage of icons to choose from

[peachdoxie]

I love opening the Sunday crossword and immediately going what the fuck