Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Puzzle #233: ATV (with Brooke Husic)

I know what you’re thinking: it’s Tuesday, and Will only posts puzzles on Mondays. But there’s a good reason for posting this one today! Brooke and I made this puzzle to announce a project that’s out today, a project that we devoted the better part of a year to, working with a dream lineup of constructors. What project is that? You’ll have to solve the puzzle to find out! Brooke writes:

By my count, this crossword is my 18th collaboration with Will — the most I have with anyone — not including the much larger-scale collaboration that we finally get to announce today, which itself contains our 19th through 22nd puzzle collaborations. It remains to be true, after unspeakable hours of work since May 2023, that there’s no one I’d rather edit a book with either. (Note from Will: I feel the same way! But if you're reading this and want to commission us to edit a book for you, maybe give us a couple of months' break first.)

(Side note: The section around the revealer was particularly hard to grid, for reasons that will become obvious, and Brooke came up with a solution that’s one of the wildest strokes of genius that I’ve ever seen.)

(pdf, puz, pdf solution)

Made by Brooke Husic and Will Nediger with the crossword creator from Amuse Labs

Monday, September 23, 2024

Monday, September 16, 2024

Indie puzzle highlights

September 3: Dance, Dance Revolution (Nate Cardin, Lil AVC X)

September 6: Untitled (Quiara Vasquez, Slate)

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Dance, Dance Revolution (Nate Cardin)

There's a popular quote about Ginger Rogers that she did everything that Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in heels. That quote provides the inspiration for Nate's midi. The answers to the starred clues are written backwards inside the word for a type of heels: so [*Stem subject] is CS, which is reversed and added to MULES to make MUSCLES; [*Antlered forest animal] is ELK, which is reversed and added to BOOTS to make BOOKLETS; and [*Silver, per the Periodic Table] is AG, which is reversed and added to PUMPS to make PUMP GAS. An ingenious theme, and it's incredible that Nate found three answers that work, then managed to squeeze all three of them, plus a revealer, into a grid that's only 11x12.

But wait - that's not all! The revealer itself has another interpretation of the quote. Ginger Rogers appears in the grid as REGNIG and SREGOR, sandwiched between two chunks of black squares shaped like heels. It's basically a mini-theme in itself, with grid art to boot - and, I repeat, this grid is only 11x12. A feat of construction that's akin to, well, doing everything that Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in heels. 

Untitled (Quiara Vasquez)

Quiara has possibly the most distinctive filling style of any constructor currently working. She's certainly not the only constructor who's enamored of high-value Scrabble letters (JQXZ), but it's important to emphasize that what's going on here is more than mere Scrabblefucking. Quiara doesn't take J's, Q's, X's, and Z's to be of value in and of themselves - above all, her grids are packed with interesting and unexpected combinations of letters.

Now, this might be an odd preface to a writeup of a puzzle that has all of those letters, and indeed that's a pangram - we've got E-JUICE, QB SNEAK, FAUXLEX, and KIBITZ in this grid. But what's more interesting than the mere presence of these letters is their positioning. You don't expect to see QB SNEAK in the bottom row, of all places, since Q's overwhelming appear near the beginning of words. Yet it's a sneakily good choice for a bottom-row entry, because, the QB-K exoskeleton notwithstanding, it's filled with common letters, and K is extremely useful as an ending letter. So we have an unexpected and colorful choice for that slot, but one that doesn't compromise the fill quality at all.

Similarly, J is much more common at the beginning of a word than in the middle, and yet we have E-JUICE crossing SOJU. And that's not all: in the same section, the entry running down the side of the grid is not something like SENSE or ERRED, but UVULA. U and V aren't exactly common ending letters in English, so this is a surprise and a delight, especially with that ending V being provided by BOY WITH LUV going across. Everywhere you turn in this grid, there's something weird and wonderful (ZERG! COLLAB! MIXED-ISH!). 

Monday, September 2, 2024

Puzzle #231: Layered Up

I've been having second thoughts about my last puzzle - maybe it had too many revealers. To make up for it, here's a puzzle that has the normal number of revealers (pdf, puz, pdf solution).

 
Created by Will Nediger using crossword puzzle maker by Amuse Labs

Tuesday, August 27, 2024

Indie puzzle highlights

July 31: "What the ...?" (Ryan Judge, AVCX Classic)

August 24: Sinking Sensation (Adam Aaronson and Alina Abidi, Lollapuzzoola)

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"What the ...?" (Ryan Judge)

A response that crossword critics sometimes have to a puzzle is "Cool observation, but why did it have to be a crossword?" I've heard this in particular on the dearly departed Crossnerds podcast. And it's a fair point! As a crossword constructor, my first impulse when I think of, well, anything is to turn it into a puzzle, because that's what I do. But sometimes a piece of wordplay doesn't really lend itself to the genre of the crossword, and is better off dashed off as a tweet or something (Adam Aaronson's Twitter feed is full of brilliant examples).

The observation that's the basis for this puzzle's theme, on the other hand, is one that lends itself perfectly to the format. The first two themers are RUE D(E RIVOL)I and SA(VILE RO)W, which are cities in Paris and London, respectively. Then we have A TALE OF/TWO CITIES, described as a "work set in Paris and London," as a sort of quasi-revealer. The true revealer is OLIVER TWIST, clued as [Titular street child in a famous novel ... and a hint to finding that child in the streets of 17- and 27-Across]. This is a truly remarkable set of correspondences - the first Dickens novel, A Tale of Two Cities, provides the pair of cities that connects the two streets; the second Dickens novel, provides the justification for the fact that they're streets (because Oliver's a street child), and it provides the justification for the wordplay, hiding anagrams of OLIVER in the themers. Not only that, both streets are genuinely well known, neither of them being plucked from obscurity simply to make the theme work.

You could try to package that set of correspondences in a tweet: "There are famous streets called Rue de Rivoli and Savile Row that contain anagrams of OLIVER (Oliver twists, if you will), and those streets are in Paris and London, the titular cities of A Tale of Two Cities." But that's so wordy that the impact is dulled. Instead, Ryan took advantage of the familiar conventions of the crossword to get the observation across more pithily - "twist" is a classic anagram indicator, so it needs no explanation, and the clue for A TALE OF/TWO CITIES can simply name-drop Paris and London and let the solvers make the connection themselves. It all unfolds beautifully over the course of the solve, and it feels like an organic whole.

Sinking Sensation (Adam Aaronson and Alina Abidi)

Perhaps a surprising choice, since when I highlight tournament puzzles, I tend to go for flashy, deviously difficult themes (of the sort that typically take the Puzzle 4 slot at Lollapuzzoola). And this year's edition of Lolla has not one, but two such themed puzzles: Hoang-Kim Vu's Puzzle 4, and Neville Fogarty's finals puzzle, which departed from tradition by having a theme (but which certainly didn't depart from the tradition of having fiendishly difficult clues). Both of these had tricky themes that separated the wheat from the chaff, and extremely clever cluing that made them an excellent challenge even after you figured out the theme. Both would be eminently worthy subjects for this post - but I don't want to risk giving the impression that tournament puzzles have to be knottily complex to be worth lauding.

Adam and Alina's puzzle, "Sinking Sensation," has a fairly straightforward (but very elegantly executed) theme, but one that's perfect for a relatively easy tournament slot. The theme entries are Across answers that take a vertical turn at the letter A, turn into a string of A's heading down the grid (representing a scream let loose by someone riding a drop tower), and then take a horizontal turn so they finish in a lower Across spot. For example, CHICAGO is split up into CHICA, AAAAAA, and AGO - notice that both of the Across entries are legitimate words. Once you figure out the theme, you get a whole bunch of free squares, most strikingly at 9-Down, which consists of a whopping 17 A's spanning the entire height of the grid, and connecting LIBRA and ARIES to form LIBRARIES. Particularly in a timed setting, being able to plop down all those A's in a row is a thrilling feeling, and a perfectly apt one for the amusement park theme that united all of this year's Lolla puzzles. It can be hard to properly enjoy a puzzle at a tournament (at least if you're a competitive type, like me) because of the intensity of the competition; this puzzle is perfectly designed so that even the most laser-focused solver will get a real kick out of it. It's also not lost on me that the constructors leaned into their initials with this theme (they both have the monogram A.A.) - another fun little touch.

Monday, August 5, 2024

Puzzle #230: All Will Be Revealed

It seems like every regular-sized crossword these days is just three or four theme entries plus a revealer - yawn! As a refreshing change, here's a puzzle that's a theme entry plus three or four revealers instead (pdf, puz, pdf solution).

Created by Will Nediger using crossword puzzle maker by Amuse Labs

Tuesday, July 9, 2024

Indie puzzle highlights

May 28: A-to-Gen Z Crosswords (Ada Nicolle)

June 20: Untitled (Kaitlin Hsu, The New York War Crimes)

June 23: Themeless 77 (Ryan McCarty, The Modern Crossword)

June 23: Going a Little Overboard (Adam Wagner, Westwords)

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A-to-Gen Z Crosswords (Ada Nicolle)

The marketing copy on the back of Ada's book advertises that "it's giving 'big brain'" and that it's perfect for people you agree "most mainstream crosswords are in need of a glow-up," which presents a very particular idea of what it means for a crossword to be "Gen Z": almost a caricature of the mainstream media's conception of "Gen Z slang," which I put in scare quotes because it's really appropriated AAVE. And that's a pity, because I think Ada's conception of Gen Z crosswords is quite different.

I've featured plenty of Ada's puzzles in these highlights before, and if you solve her Patreon puzzles, you've already know her style. Solving 72 of them in quick succession really threw one aspect of that style into sharp relief for me, though. After I finished the book, I went through and added phrases I liked to my wordlist, as I do whenever I solve something. But there was a conspicuous number of phrases that I liked in the context of the puzzles that I nonetheless didn't add to my own wordlist, phrases like FOR THE WII and ATE A WHOLE THING OF. These are prototypical examples of "green paint" phrases, which are definitely things that people say but don't have distinct meanings or connotations that aren't figureoutable a priori from the literal meanings of the words.

I tend to avoid green paint when I construct, but as a solver, I actually kind of like it in Ada's puzzles because I know it's used deliberately and thoughtfully. My read on Ada's style is that it's an attempt to stay attuned to the landscape of language as it's actually used. So entries that speak to Gen Z solvers aren't just things like YEET or whatever, but also particular turns of phrase that ring true to the ears of someone who's been around young people for the last couple of decades. So FOR THE WII and ATE A WHOLE THING OF may be green paint, but they also gives the solver a pang of recognition that yeah, that's exactly how you phrase that.

The antepenultimate puzzle from the book has a stack that includes GOOD LISTENER, which is apt because that's exactly what you have to be to be able to produce puzzles like these. That includes paying attention to phraseologies like the ones mentioned above, but also keeping an ear out for particular cultural phenomena like (all from the same puzzle) MLG MONTAGES, AFFILIATE LINKS, and COFFEE SHOP AU. I don't know of any constructor whose ear is as finely and specifically tuned as Ada's.

Untitled (Kaitlin Hsu)

(Full disclosure: I've been working with both Kaitlin and some of the people involved with the New York War Crimes on organizing this letter.) I'm a huge fan of the New York War Crimes as a publication; the work they're doing to provide a leftist, anti-colonialist alternative to papers like the New York Times is vital. So I'm delighted that they now have a weekly crossword, particularly because the crossword is such a central part of the identity of the New York Times itself. They've published a number of puzzles with very impressive themes, but this puzzle, despite its relative simplicity, is the best illustration so far of their ethos.

The revealer is THE RADICAL LEFT, clued as [Rightwing pejorative for anybody who simply... cares about other people, or a hint to the theme clues in this puzzle]. The theme entries all start with words meaning "radical," and are all clued with a leftist bent: (LIT)TLE PAKISTAN is [Neighborhood where you can hear Urdu, pick up mithai, and if you're in Brooklyn, participate in an independence mela every August], (HOT)EL WORKERS is [Housekeepers, clerks, and the 300,000 members of labor union UNITE HERE], and (FAB)RIC SCRAPS is [Materials used by the group Hope In The Art World for their "From Occupation to Liberation" quilt, displayed outside of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on March 24, 2024]. It's a perfect example of how a theme that theoretically has a ton of possible options can be elevated by choosing very thoughtfully from those options.

But it's in the choice of entries and clues for the fill that Kaitlin's puzzle really shines. There's particular attention paid to Palestinians and other Arabs, with OLIVE TREE clued as [Plant that symbolizes Palestinian rootedness to the land], plus ARAB clued as [Radius of ___ American Writers (literary community that promotes the work of Etel Adnan and Fady Joudah, among others)]. But equally, the puzzle recognizes that it's crucial to draw connections between decolonial and antiracist struggles around the world. Kaitlin chooses to use the OAHU clue to highlight Haunani-Kay Trask's From a Native Daughter, a text which explicitly links Hawaiian resistance to U.S. colonialism and Palestinian resistance to Israeli colonialism (which itself, of course, is actively supported by the U.S.). Similarly, YELLOW is clued with reference to "Yellow Peril supports Black Power," a slogan that has been used by Asian Americans to express support for radical Black movements. This kind of cluing is not uncommon in the crossword blogosphere, but it's hard to overstate how thrilling it is to see it in an outlet that explicitly mimics the format of the New York Times, whose ideological function is utterly at odds with this approach. It's a way to imagine the way that things in the crossworld, and the world of media writ large, could be.

Themeless 77 (Ryan McCarty)

Ryan is the master of themelesses with wide-open centers, which are his trademark (so much so that he's coined his own term for them, "chasms"). So he knows better than anybody that chasms, while they're obviously very hard to fill in and of themselves, also put a lot of pressure on the corners of the grid. Once you've got a chasm that you like, you generally have very little freedom to change the ends of any of the long entries in the chasm, because they intersect so intricately and because they take up so much real estate that there's not much freedom to add black squares to the corners (aside from helper squares in the very corners). So a themeless with a beautiful chasm will often feel noticeably weaker in the corners, as if the corners are there merely to support the center. You can see the effects of this in my most recent themeless on this here blog - I wanted to keep the word count extra low, and that meant using some entries that simply wouldn't be interesting enough to support a stack in any other type of themeless.

So I was frankly stunned when I solved this puzzle and the corners could easily pass muster in a chasmless themeless. A stack of HEMP FARMS/ONCE A WEEK/SAND WEDGE crossing RED SAUCE/MEGASTAR/SKECHERS is something I'd expect to see as the anchor of a 15x15 themeless. Here, it's merely part of Ryan's 19x19 canvas. Elsewhere in the corners, we've got NOODLE TAG, MICRONAP, AYO EDEBIRI, IOWA NICE, AI-POWERED appropriately near FINANCE BRO, and more. To include all that in a grid whose center stacks are WIZARD BEARD/COMEDY TEAMS/DOUBLE BONDS and DARK ACADEMIA/COUNTRY BALLAD/GOOD TO SEE YOU feels like, well, wizardry.

Going a Little Overboard (Adam Wagner)

Sometimes, all you need to create a unique solving experience is to make a slight tweak to something that's been done many times before. Adam's Westwords puzzle does just that. Most constructors using HANG TEN as a revealer would put Across entries in the grid that have the string TEN, and then have that string head vertically through an intersecting Down entry - the type of theme that's done all the time, particularly in the Wall Street Journal. Instead, Adam made a tiny adjustment to the idea: he hung the string TEN vertically in the clues instead.

I say a tiny adjustment, but I definitely don't want to imply that it was obvious or easy. If it had been either of those things, surely someone would have thought to do it before. But there's a very good reason people don't do it: crossword clues aren't normally laid out in perfectly regimented grid patterns, so you can't just make a string of letters go vertically through a series of clues. Adam's masterstroke is to use a monospaced font for the clues, so he could finesse the character counts of the clues to make the TENs go in perfect vertical lines. For example: 4-Across is UNTIE, clued as [Opposite of fast]. It should really be [Opposite of fasten], but the E has dropped down to the 6-Across clue, [Staunchly averse], which should really be [Staunchly avers] (ASSERTS), and the N has dropped down to the 8-Across clue, [Unappealing goon], which should really be [Unappealing goo] (SNOT). Not only do the clues have to line up perfectly, the corresponding grid entries are stacked, so it's simultaneously constrained on both fronts.

This would be incredible in any context, but it's especially apt for Puzzle 5. Like many tournaments, Westwords has one brutally hard, outside-the-box puzzle designed to really weed people out; for Westwords, just as for the ACPT, this is Puzzle 5. An ideal Puzzle 5, for me, is an original gimmick that resists standard puzzle-solving techniques, but that isn't so unusual that a top solver can't be expected to figure it out within the time limit. This gimmick ticks both the boxes, since it's highly original, but is still only one step removed from something very familiar.

I also like the attention to the solving flow. Moreso than most grids, the design of this puzzle really predisposes solvers to travel in a particular path, from the top to the bottom. It's shaped like a surfboard, only 9 squares wide but 27 squares tall, so there's not much horizontal leeway. Adam thus had a lot of control over what order the vast majority of solvers would encounter the theme entries in, and the sequencing of the theme entries here is very canny. The UNTIE/ASSERTS/SNOT stack that I mentioned above is easily the sneakiest of the four thematic stacks, since all three clues are extremely plausible clues that I wouldn't blink an eye at in a themeless puzzle. The next stack is pretty close, but there's a hint that something might be off - [It may be on tape] and [Sticker in a barn] are both perfectly normal-looking clues (the latter in particular suggests PITCHFORK, which happens to be the same length as the intended answer, BEER LABEL, which is a sticker in a bar). [Was happy to list] is a bit suspicious, though - it has a plausible meaning, but I can't think of a plausible crossword answer for it. The clues in the third stack are [Whit], [Cane], and [Chin] - all single words, so all plausible clues, but the fact that they're all short is a potential tipoff, as is the fact that "chin" doesn't really have a lot of synonyms. Finally, the fourth stack starts with [Gluts of glut] (really [Gluts of gluten], for BAKE SALES), which is a clue you'd never expect to see in a regular crossword. So for solvers who don't figure out the gimmick in the nth stack, the n+1th stack gives them a bit more to go on.

One of the devilish things about a typical Puzzle 5 is that, even if you figure out the gimmick early, the regular clues are no picnic either, so the solve is still extra challenging. Adam really brought his A game to the wordplay clues outside of the theme here: the best ones include [Book seller?] for BLURB, [Making room?] for SHOP, [It might have you cutting and tearing simultaneously] for ONION, and especially [Linguini topper from Pixar] for REMY. All in all, an absolutely ideal Puzzle 5.