ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ OI! OI! OI!]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ OI! OI! OI!]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
I also have the puzzle in the Onion today which I’ve posted here as an Across Lite file or as a printout.
Anyone who’s been doing my work know I like my grids wide open. I feel like the lower the word count, the better. I remember when I started out just being completely blown away by some of the wide-open chunky white corners Merl Reagle and Mike Shenk would pull off in themed puzzles. Themed puzzles! As if there wasn’t enough constraint with grids jam-packed with theme entries, these guys showed off with flashy fill. And this was done on paper before computer assisted grids! Amazing! At the time, I truly felt the lower the word count, the closer to god.
It didn’t take long after I started selling puzzle for me to gravitate toward making themelesses. (I especially thought the grid patterns like this were the most visually-appealing. And that post pretty much sums up how I feel about themelesses, anyway.) I think the freeform nature of it was initially most appealing. But I didn’t realize how they were great exercises of overemphasize the good stuff, and de-emphasizing the bad. My first themelesses were fine at the time, but they probably wouldn’t be sellable nowadays. For one thing they had too many extra black squares (cheaters) to make the construction easier. Another minus was that certain parts of the grid could be cut off from the rest of the puzzle by a single black square. Rookie mistakes, for sure, but it bears repeating.
But then again, you gotta start somewhere/learn how to walk before you run/etc. After hours/days/months/years of making these wide-open grids, it didn’t take too long before I started applying this approach to my themed puzzles. That is to say themed grids with themeless-level word counts. (After all, I’d much rather make a grid than try and come up with fresh new clues.) In fact, a couple two-three of these themed-puzzles with 70 or 68 entries ran on Saturdays! I thought they were going to be Thursday puzzles. I guess it was mostly because of the lower-than-normal word count and partially because the the theme slipped by Will.
Course as the saying goes: cleanliness is next to godliness. Now if we apply that axiom to my crosswording life, I’m so nowhere near a god, it’s not even funny. Sure, there’s some snappy stuff all over the grids, but usually there’s some bullshit needed to keep the whole grid together. One of my editors, Francis Heaney, reminds me that my fill sometimes gets away from me because I’m either trying to cram another Scrabble-y letter or lower the word count. And it’s true. I am trying to do both those things, I just have to learn how to shut that off so it doesn’t interfere with the solver. I mean, sometimes you just gotta add a cheater to improve the corner. Joon Pahk, one of my test solvers (and up-and-coming crossword star), talked me into doing exactly just that in this puzzle I posted, and it erased a grand total of 4 kinda crappy entries. Thank you, Joon!
Do you as solvers enjoy the wide-open plus themed puzzles? Do you even notice? Do any other constructors weigh the options of lowering the word count on an otherwise normal puzzle? Leave a comment and start the dialogue!
All right. Enjoy these two puzzle I’ve posted. New one on Friday.
Real trouble in SE. YIPES. BEEEATER looks Insane in the grid. Having GIST for HEFT down there didn’t help. Also went with PEORIA (blindly) over DEKALB.
Cheater square portions of the puzzle are still rough. Too bad you couldn’t scuttle EIK (a desperation abbr. if there ever was one). But yeah, in your grids, generally, I hardly care about iffiness. Usually the payoff is so massive that iffiness hardly matters.
I liked both puzzles, but the crosses on 31D at 38A and 45A were really hard for me on the Onion puzzle. I never watched TMNT, didn’t know the director, and had no idea what “Big picture?: Abbr.” was supposed to be (though I get it now after running it through OneLook).
I’m just happy that 1. I was reminded of one of my favorite movies and 2. now have an English Beat song stuck in my head.
wide-open themeless puzzles always intimidate me a little bit… themes seem much friendlier.
i’m glad you added a pg-13 shirt – mine is on the way! now i’ve just got to think of a good answer for when people ask “who the hell IS brendan emmett quigley??” so that i don’t end up giving the lame cocktail party answer… 😉
RP: you’re too kind.
Craig: Glad you liked the puzzles.
Kelly: Pictures, or the t-shirt purchase didn’t happen!
Amy: Happy to oblige!
I always like a lower word count, but only to a certain point… as Amy always notes when it gets around 60 and below, the fill starts to smell funny. Don’t you ace constructors always try to open up the grid, if the theme allows? It seems like most of Dan Naddor’s puzzles are 72-74 words, even on a Tuesday.
(I looked up Naddor’s 2009 output: 74, 70, 74, 78*, 72*, 70, 70, 72, 72.)
(* = actually 3 more because of 15×16 grid)
Dan F: Yeah, we aces usually try and open it up a bit. Two more thoughts:
One, I finally got around to doing all of Trip’s puzzles (www.tripleplaypuzzles.com) and for some of the easier ones, Trip didn’t go overboard on openness and the grids were whistle clean. I feel like at times I’m not so-whistle clean. Maybe a 72/74 worder instead of a 70 worder with zero crapola might be better? I dunno.
Two, I started making puzzles for a new client (Paste) and since they want a lot of pop-culture stuff and they want it to be easy, I had to go 78 words with it. Check that, 76 words. Oh, and five 15s for theme material. Jesus, I need my head checked, I don’t make my job easy at all. Anyway, when I went lower on the word count the grid was clean. (BTW whenever they start posting these puzzles I’ll link to them here.)
Do you as solvers enjoy the wide-open plus themed puzzles? Do you even notice? Do any other constructors weigh the options of lowering the word count on an otherwise normal puzzle?
I tend to notice when a puzzle is wide-open but I don’t care at all. There are a few other things I don’t care about too — cheater squares, 20+ 3-letter words, areas of a grid that can be blocked off with a single black square. As long as a grid is full of fun, lively fill, none of those things matter to me.
I occasionally construct, and I generally try to lower the word count if I notice I can … but I’m getting more strict with myself about bad fill, so I’ll usually end up lowering it and then raising it again. I honestly think all of this stuff is “inside baseball” and doesn’t matter to Joe Solver, who just wants an enjoyable crossword.
Alex: Good points. If there’s anybody who abuses the three-letter rule it’s me. Glad to see another constructor on the board. Feel free to chime in more.
I’m definitely in the “Joe Solver” category. I’ve tried some constructing, but not to any great extent. For me, it’s all about the content. I don’t study the grids, wouldn’t recognize a cheater square unless it was circled. I really don’t even focus on the theme unless it smacks me in the face or I’m really really stuck and need to figure it out to help complete the puzzle. It’s all about clever clues, well-concealed misdirection, and fresh fill. A grid full of white squares is intimidating, but the long fill is usually pretty easy to suss out and the rest just comes together without too much stress. Your puzzles are current and full of stuff I don’t know – especially the music and sports stuff. It’s good exercise for my brain and I always feel good that I can solve them… eventually!
JannieB: FWIW, the black sqaure that is to the left of 5 and just above 14 is a cheater. Now you know. I’ll try to ease up on the sports and music, but like all writers you write what you know, right? Thanks for chiming in.
Not asking you to ease up at all – I’m learning every day – keeps me young. Thanks!
PS – If you’re into tournament bridge, you have to come to the Gatlinburg Regional sometime. (It starts Monday). Largest regional in the country (10,000+ tables) and all the pros are there. Check it out.
JannieB: Tennessee is a little far away from where I live, but maybe sometime in the future. You never know.
Solving this puzzle of yours (and most of your others) have been blown away by the stacked long answers and wide open spaces, and thinking “in a themed puzzle!!!” and “in a 4X15 themed puzzle!!! This is not human!!!” Then I read the blog, fun synchonicity that! As I solver I love the challenge of trying to get into those corners – wide-open themed puzzles make my day! Though as you can see by my mediocre time this takes a while… As a wannabe constructor collecting rejection emails, though, one of my problems is wanting to make grids like this even though I don’t nearly have the chops for it yet…
Oh The only downs (for me) were NATANT (which I’ve seen in crosswords but in the outside world only with super in front of it…) and the first theme entry which was a little on the forced side, but hey 4X15 puns are hard to find. But after solving local South African puzzles for so long, whistle-clean isn’t so big an issue (you wouldn’t believe the stuff you’re confronted with and crossing each other/uncrossed too…)
Oh and LoL at PWNS, Dave
PPS… also loved the A.V. puzzle… anything with music in it floats my boat…
this is pretty much exactly how i feel, both as a solver and constructor. i do try to open up the grid and lower the word count (e.g. my recent NYT tuesday was 74), but not at the expense of malodorous fill. and when i’m solving, i definitely notice wide-open grids (even in themed puzzles), and i appreciate that, but i also notice ugly entries, and … i don’t appreciate those as much. to me, a lot of the point of going lower on the word count is to have a longer average word length, so that there will be fewer really stale entries like ORE and ENO and AREA. but if the cost of having more 6s and 7s is that the 3s and 4s end up being even uglier than usual, then you’ve sort of shot yourself in the foot, haven’t you?
I’m Joe Solver, too, and am happy to learn via JannieB and BEQ what a cheater square is. . . but I go for a great-looking grid over cute pun-ridden themes any time.
Forgot to praise the puzzles – I liked them both – and thank BEQ for the public service.
I don’t think about themes or grids…I just try to get into your devious head and out think you’re constant cleverness. I have never done one of your puzzles when I didn’t have a smile on my mug. Thanks for all!
OOPS YOUR…NOT YOU’RE. SILLY ME
I just may start linking to this post as a quick substitute for explaining why a theme is rather arid.