Puzzle #234: Stop Interrupting Me!

I learned about the song at 49-Across a few weeks ago and immediately knew I had to work it into a puzzle somehow. Here's that puzzle (pdf, puz, pdf solution), featuring a middle name reveal!

Constructed by Will Nediger using PuzzleMe's free crossword generator

Indie puzzle highlights

September 11/12: Hey hey hey!/Just Add Water (Brooke Husic, Puzzmo)

October 29: Repeat Stuff (Ada Nicolle, Luckystreak Xwords)

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Hey hey hey!/Just Add Water (Brooke Husic)

Last year on September 21, I published a puzzle for Vox with this grid:

TONES was clued as ["Earth" follower], SWEPT as ["Wind" follower], and EMBER as [Fire follower], so the puzzle was a little tribute to Earth, Wind & Fire's "September." If I can toot my own horn a bit, I liked that it rested on a simple observation (that a song by Earth, Wind & Fire has a title ending with a word related to fire) and turned that observation into a theme in a consistent way.

Brooke's tribute to "September" has a similar genesis - she noticed that the phrase "how we knew love was here to stay" in the lyric "Remember how we knew love was here to stay" has a satisfyingly symmetrical set of numerations: both halves start with a 3-letter word and end with a 4-letter word, with 2- and 4-letter words (not necessarily in that order) in between. Many constructors would be satisfied with putting those words in a grid in an aesthetically appealing pattern and calling it a day, but Brooke went further. After all, the word "remember" is in that lyric too, so Brooke created two grids with the same pattern but different fills, both of which have the words "how we knew love was here to stay" in the same positions. Those two puzzles ran on consecutive days, so on the second day, the words could be unclued, in effect asking the solver "Do you remember?"

I've been playing around lately with puzzles that are really pairs of puzzles whose interrelationship results in more than the sum of their parts, and this is a fantastic example. Crosswords are generally a pretty ephemeral art form, and it's rare for the solver to remember much about the layout or fill in a crossword a day after solving. That's particularly the case for features that don't call attention to themselves, like the hidden lyric in the first of the two puzzles here - the clues don't tell the solver that they form a song lyric, so the solver either notices it as a sort of Easter egg, or doesn't realize it retroactively until the second puzzle reveals it. So it functions as a kind of invitation to solvers to dwell on the puzzles they solve, to look closely at their patterns and to understand what makes them tick. You never know if there's more to the puzzle than meets the eye (and even if there are no extra layers, there's always craft to appreciate).

An extra elegant touch: aside from the lyrics, the only word that's the same in both grids is REVEAL, which of course gets an innocuous clue in the first puzzle, but is clued as [Big moment for someone who constructed a two-part crossword] in the second puzzle. A cheeky reminder that cluing is everything: even the big REVEAL doesn't reveal anything unless the constructor chooses to make it reveal something.

Repeat Stuff (Ada Nicolle)

I posted recently about my admiration for Ada's themeless style, and she's certainly primarily known as a themeless constructor. But she mentioned to me recently that she's being trying to flex her theme muscles, too, and has been posting more themed stuff, with stunning results. It's kind of like if Michael Jordan had actually turned out to be an elite baseball player, too. What I like about Ada's recent themed puzzles is that they always give me a "wish I'd thought of that" feeling. Admittedly, that's partly because the themes have tended to be right up my alley. For example, she's had a couple of linguistics-adjacent themes lately, including a GREAT VOWEL SHIFT theme and a PERSON-FIRST LANGUAGE theme featuring languages that start with words for types of people (MANDARIN, GALLIFREYAN, GUYANESE CREOLE). 

"Repeat Stuff" is no exception. I'm on record as enjoying themes that cheekily violate the no-dupes rule, and I also love themes that play on crossword lingo. This puzzle does both: the revealer, RUTHLESS DUPE, is a term used in crossword circles for an entry that shamelessly repeats or closely echoes another entry in the grid. Here, Ada literalizes that phrase, including BABY RUTH next to BABY and BABE RUTH next to BABE. What really takes it to the next level is that those two pairs also dupe each other ruthlessly, since BABY and BABE are basically the same word. This could've been spun into a 15x15 puzzle featuring, say, RUTH BENEDICT and BENEDICT, RUTH HANDLER and HANDLER, etc. But this version packs a minimalist punch that a larger puzzle wouldn't: it has precisely as much as is needed to execute the concept with maximum elegance, no more and no less.

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

Puzzle #232: Back Exercise

New themed puzzle this week (pdf, puz, pdf solution) - happy solving!

 

Made by Will Nediger using PuzzleMe's crossword creator

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!). 

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

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.