Category Archives: Callin’ Them Squares

“Wait a second… DUMB DAD SORRY FOR HIS BET. Wow. It’s almost as if Dad planted that message. No, it must just be a weird coincidence. But what if it’s not? No, it must be. Or mustn’t it not?” Lisa … Continue reading →

Pop quiz! Enter the missing letter in each word. Stick with the first workable answer that comes into your head. We’ll review the answers later: Scheme: PL_Y Almost certainly biased: _EALOUS Big no-no in many religions: POR_ Collapse: FA_L Website … Continue reading →

Storytelling media run “hot” and “cool” in Marshall McLuhan’s estimation. As a crossword constructor who also writes fiction, I can testify that there’s a lot of crossover potential between the two, and narrative crosswords are still a largely unexplored frontier … Continue reading →

Crosswording used to have more thievery. Two installments earlier, we mentioned the problem of taking material for a puzzle without attribution. In the course of researching this entry, I looked up Cruciverb.com’s database of clues with the word “quip” in … Continue reading →

If long entries are, in general, tougher to get than short entries, run-ons ramp up the difficulty by expressing one idea that runs on past the usual allotments for such ideas. The quote, the improv and the riddle all have … Continue reading →

“Step right up, ladies and gents! You’ve seen all the commonest forms of wordplay, the pedestrian, the mundane! Now it’s time to explore the freakshow, encompassing the outer limits of verbal experience! What you see may amaze you, may even … Continue reading →

“The lowest form of humor.” – Samuel Johnson (paraphrasing John Dennis) “If I were punished for every pun I shed, there would not be left a puny shed of my punnish head.” – Samuel Johnson “A pun is the lowest … Continue reading →