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 them. (You’ll need to be a Cruciverb member to get to most of the crossword-authorship-related [...]
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 an entry that’s simply too grand to fit into just one or two strings of [...]
“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 repulse you, but could you live with yourselves, knowing that you looked away???” One of [...]
“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 form of humor – when you don’t think of it first.” – Oscar Levant There’s [...]
Last two times out, we dwelt upon the algebraic crosswords, which involved altering naturally-occuring phrases by the addition, subtraction or swapping-out of strings, and camouflage crosswords, which involved the concealment of strings. But a few aspects of said puzzles went unconsidered. Firstly, are the theme entries in a puzzle natural or artificial? That is to [...]
Back in the mid-Nineties, my roommate had one of those “Magic Eye” posters. You know the ones, right? You stare at them– and in some cases, stare and stare– until the pattern reveals itself. Only for me, it never did. Still doesn’t. The only flash of insight I got from that poster was what it [...]
Wordplayers are easily the most popular form of crossword after themelesses in general, and even more popular if you’re focused on the high-end publications like the Timeses and The Onion. They’re like the phylum Arthopoda of the crossword ecosystem: surely one category can’t contain this much variety! But it can and does. Wordplay’s the heart [...]
Geez, I turn around, and three months just blink out of existence. A lot’s gone on between now and then, including challenges on lots of other professional fronts. But it looks like I’ll soon be coming back to the world of crosswords as an editor and creator, in a big way. Maybe I can get [...]
The Marian is named not for Maid Marian or Marian Anderson, but for Marian the Librarian, the prim, priggish, proper, self-possessed, self-described spinster of The Music Man. Like her namesake, the Marian crossword claims to be all business, with no time for frivolity. That bit about “frazzling nerd play” in part 7? That wasn’t original [...]
Just a couple of quick notes for “Callin’ Them Squares” readers: Sorry that an unfinished version of this week’s installment, “The Marian” was on the site for a few hours, and sorry the finished version won’t be up till the 15th. The reason for both circumstances boils down to one three-letter answer: FLU. I’m doing [...]
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