Talking Crosswords (and a Few Other Things)

My employer, RouteSmart Technologies, has a podcast, and I was on the latest episode talking crossword puzzles. Have a listen here if you are so inclined.

A Month In Crosswords: On Three Puzzles

Understandably, puzzles and puzzle blogs might not be first and foremost on people’s minds right now, but it’s all I really have to offer at the moment—and most other moments…

Three puzzles to discuss this month.

The first is by MOI. It dropped this evening in the NYT online edition and puzzle app. Looking back on it, I notice it has a Francophile feel to it with MOI joining long entries QUEBECOIS and JE NE SAIS QUOI. That was unintentional, although it is true that my wife loves French, can speak it quasi-fluently, and has both our kids taking online French classes, which they mostly willingly endure. I'm not a huge Francophile myself (although I thought the NYT Sunday puzzle this week was kinda fun). But I did take French in college, and I took a seminar class on the history of French-Canadian nationalism. I mean, I was required to take them, but still.

To graduate with a math degree, I had to take two years of French, German, or Russian, and I picked the former, because the teacher was young(ish) and attractive. What? It was just as good a reason as any other. I never really learned to converse en français, but I could conjugate the shit out of some French verbs back in the day. I also had a computer science teacher who was French, and I loved the way he said C++: cee ploose ploose.

I took the French-Canadian nationalism class my final quarter as an undergrad because I needed to take one more seminar course to graduate with honors, and it was literally (and I mean that literally) the only one on offer. It was dreadfully boring -- no shade to the QUEBECOIS, I'm just not really a cultural studies guy. I remember once I had to give a presentation on a group of people called the Rouges, but I read it wrong and wrote the Rogues in all my notes. So, for the first five minutes of my talk, I kept calling them the wrong name, until finally the teacher corrected me. I was wondering why the other students were looking at me funny -- legit embarrassing.

Anyway... this was my last themeless in the NYT pipeline, so it will almost surely be my last NYT themeless published for a while. (I still have a couple of themed puzzles waiting in the wings.) Partly this is by choice; partly it is not. What happened is, in the mid-2010s I went themeless crazy, spending the vast majority of my free time constructing themeless crosswords. It was fruitful -- I got a bunch of puzzles published -- but I also burnt myself out. So, I took an extended break, but then when I was ready to come back, the bar had been raised, and it wasn't as easy to get themeless puzzles accepted as it was before (and it was very hard before!). The rejections have been piling up a bit, and once the rejections start piling up, it's hard to stay motivated. As it is, I get apprehensive every time I check my email, wondering if there is going to be a rejection notice in there. It really makes me question why I put myself through this. Yeah, it's nice when I do get a puzzle published, but is it worth a regular reminder that I'm not good enough?

Also, I've been spending a lot of time doing other things. One of these actually has to do with crossword rejections. I've saved almost every puzzle I've submitted to the NYT since my first submission about two decades ago. I didn't really mean to do this, I just never deleted them. But I'm glad I did because I've been putting them together in a book, which I plan to self-publish by the end of 2022: Will Must Send Regrets: 101 Rejected Crosswords, Constructor Commentary, and Pointless Anecdotes. Don't worry, I 'll keep everybody posted when it comes out. You'll have a chance to buy a copy.

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Next puzzle: this Sunday crossword by Stephen McCarthy. It's a Schrödinger puzzle, in which the central entry can either be STAR TREK or STAR WARS, depending on how you filled in the crosses. I'm a huge fan of the Schrödinger genre, so I very much enjoyed this puzzle and thought it was excellent work by Stephen.

But that's not why I bring it up now. I bring it up now because a friend of mine who isn't really in the crossword scene (I don't even know if she does crosswords), emailed me a tweet she saw about it. In said tweet, the tweeter talks about what a cool puzzle it is, and all the commenters basically say the same thing -- how creative it is, how exciting it was when they figured out the trick, whether they're STAR TREK or STAR WARS people, etc., etc. And it was a nice reminder about how vast the NYT solvership is, and how differently different types of people experience the puzzle, especially the Sunday puzzle, which is the only one some folks do.

I mean, as I said above, I very much liked the puzzle, but I wasn't at all awed by it because Schrödingers are kinda old hat to me by now. I can name most the puzzles on this list from memory. I even constructed one of them, and I made another earlier one, which isn't on the list, but should be.* But I'm probably among, like, the top 2% of solvers when it comes to crossword obsessiveness, and since you're reading this, you probably are too. What about the other 98%? Most of them probably don't even know what a Schrödinger is, let alone remember specific past examples. Maybe the CLINTON/BOB DOLE puzzle is reasonably well-know (it was in Word Play, after all), but I'm not even sure about that. I have an acquaintance who does the NYT crossword semi-regularly, so I once brought up that puzzle, and not only had she never heard of it, she thought it was weird that I knew about a crossword from 25 years ago. She does the puzzle in bed with her husband, and their attitude is We're just happy when we have enough time and brainpower at the end of the day to finish one.

Anyway, I don't really know where I'm going with all this. I guess I'm just wondering if there's some sort of "silent majority" of solvers who experience the NYT puzzle very differently than the types of people who write and comment in the crossword blogosphere. Or do the hardcore crossword fans decently reflect the general solving population? I don't know. 

*I also had a quasi-Schrödinger run at ACPT 2018. Just don't ask how it went over with most competitors.

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The last puzzle to discuss is a meta contest from Fireball Crosswords. I typically shy away from metas, not because I don't like them, but because I specifically really like them. I get totally engrossed by metas once I commit myself to trying to solve one. It is all I want to think about, making it difficult to do other things, like work or sleep or pay attention to my family. I become prepossessed trying to figure it out, and I feel like a failure -- not just as a puzzle solver, but as a human being -- if I have to give up. Usually, I'm prudent enough to avoid this situation and not get involved in the first place (I could figure it -- I reassure myself -- if I tried, but I'm not going to try), but every so often I'll feel particularly sadistic and give a meta a whirl.

So it went with Peter Gordon's "Down Periscope!" puzzle. I completed the grid easily enough, and then set out looking for the meta answer. If you ever need an example that the human brain will create patterns from noise, this puzzle is for you. Because of the title, I started off looking for answers that somehow protrude upward or downward like a periscope. I noticed OONA embedded in AS SOON AS, and thought, this means something since AS SOON AS crosses OONA OUT OF ORDER.  Noticing AGE protruding upward at 8-Down and intersecting AT AN ADVANCED AGE, only confirmed that I was on the right track.

Then my train of thought really went off the rails. I noticed that if you cut the AGE out of CARTHAGE, you had CART and then pivoting at the H, you had HORSE: PUT THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE! That's gotta be it! I then spent way too long trying to justify this as the answer. But I just couldn't figure out exactly how it ties together with the other theme answers (because it doesn't).
 
Thankfully, I had to take my kids somewhere, which helped break the put-the-cart-before-the-horse spell, and when I came back to the puzzle later, I decided to try to clear my mind and start from a clean slate. Almost immediately, I noticed the real theme -- three four word phrases, in which each word of a phrase begins with the same letter -- and started looking for other similar phrases within the grid. Picking out the S-words as a likely candidate, I put them all into one big google search, which led me to the answer -- SIGHTED SUB, SANK SAME -- a phrase I had never heard before, but which was surely correct given the title. I then made a mental note to submit my answer and possibly win some Fireball swag, but I forgot, which is fine. Not feeling like a metapuzzle patzer is its own reward.

[Image copied from Diary of a Crossword Fiend at the above link] 

 

 

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Five quick-hitters before I go.

• ORCA WHALE appeared in a puzzle a few weeks ago and both Amy Reynaldo and Rex Parker objected to it as a legitimate phrase, saying it's ORCA or KILLER WHALE, but not ORCA WHALE. Well, I've heard it called ORCA WHALE, and you can easily find that phrase in legitimate "real world" sources online. (In the comments of Amy's blog, I give links to two newspaper headlines using it that way.) Google, people! If you want to say something doesn't sound right to you, then that's fine; if you want to say something isn't right in general, you should at least do the minimum amount of research to back up your assertion. No disrespect, just a puzzle pet peeve of mine.
• This Kameron Austin Collins puzzle is excellent -- a beautiful open center, filled with a bunch of interesting entries. Kameron might be the best themeless constructor going right now.
• Although, he gets some stiff competition from Aimee Lucido, whose recent Friday I thought was excellent. Aimee also constructs great themed puzzles, which really makes her stand out as a top constructor.
• It was 2/22/22 this week, on TUESday, no less, and we saw a couple publishers take advantage of this wordplay syzygy. The NYT put out the rare Tuesday rebus puzzle (by Jacob McDermott), which I thought was pretty good (great gag; fill was quite rough, though).
• However, I thought the more impressive construction was USA Today’s puzzle (by Erik Agard) with the huge 2 grid. You’d think with a layout like that there would be a lot of compromises, and there are a few, but just that—a few. And most the longs are solid, and the grid art is spot on -- that's a 2 alright! I hear solvers complain sometimes about “stunt puzzles,” but I usually think they’re cool. I wouldn’t mind seeing them pop up in Crossworld more frequently.

Until next time...

Update: Reading some comments online, I see that PILAU tripped up a few solvers, since PILAF is probably the more common rice dish to American solvers. Well, we were visiting my in-laws this week, and before our return flight this afternoon, what does my mother-in-law make me for lunch? You guessed it: PILAU! She threw in some crosswordy RAITA, to boot.

[Yes, it was delicious.]

A Month in Crosswords: Ten Questions Answered

I've gotten some positive feedback about this blog over my last few posts. At least five people who aren't related to me told me they like it, and although it's possible they were just being nice because I gave them my word lists, that's more than enough encouragement for me to start a regular monthly column.

This is the first entry of my A Month in Crosswords series. The questions in this post are all from real readers -- and by real, I mean fake.

1. What are the ethics of constructing/publishing a puzzle that is very similar to one already published?

The debut NYT puzzle of Andrew Linzer ran on Thursday, January 6. It's a well-crafted puzzle, with a very clever theme, but not a totally original one. Paolo Pasco published a strikingly similar puzzle in Fireball Crosswords a few years ago.

Because of the similarities, a few blog commenters took Andrew and the NYT to task, saying the puzzle should not have been published. Some of the more over-the-top remarks contained the word plagiarism. So, let me dismiss that one straightaway: It's not plagiarism. I can see how somebody who is not intimately familiar with the crossword construction universe might think that, but you can trust me that it is almost certainly not. Andrew says in the notes linked above that he didn't even learn about Paolo's puzzle until after his was accepted, and, being somebody who has seen multiple constructors independently come up with the same theme many, many times, I have no reason to disbelieve him.

But should it have been published?

That one's a bit trickier, but I say yes -- or at least I don't say no. I think constructors should put in a good faith effort of database/blog searches to try to avoid duplicating other people's already published work, but it's never going to be perfect; things slip through the cracks, even for the best constructors among us. So, I think it's okay for an editor to publish a "non-original" puzzle, but it shouldn't be a regular thing. It would be unethical, in my opinion, to publish constructors who are consistently poaching puzzle ideas from other venues, but if it's just a once in a while coincidence, it's totally fine. No harm, no foul, as far as I'm concerned. Congrats to Andrew on making his NYT debut.

2. So, if I'm a budding constructor, and I find a really great theme idea but it's been done before, what should I do? 

I suggest trying to change it a little bit -- try to find a different theme set, a different revealer, or some sort of other twist that would make the puzzle your own. There's certainly nothing wrong with piggybacking on another constructor's idea. If that weren't allowed then there wouldn't be a crossword puzzle industry at all. I solve, like, five puzzles a year where I think Wow! That's something I've never seen before!

The NYT puzzle from last Monday (1/24/22) is an example of this similar-but-different type of thing. It had a QB theme (QUICK BREAD, QUILTING BEE, etc.) with the revealer STARTING QB. Elizabeth Gorski also did a QB theme in a WSJ puzzle, but with a mostly different QB set and a different revealer, QB VII, the Leon Uris novel. (It was also published over a decade ago, so only weirdos like me would even notice.)

If there really is no good way to tweak a theme, then I suggest moving on to the next idea or just making a puzzle for practice. Aside from it being kinda shady to knowingly replicate another constructor's work without proper attribution/compensation, you give editors an easy reason to reject it. I know this from experience. Although, I say that, but it's worth pointing out that the NYT does recycle themes, sometimes even with some of the exact same theme entries. In fact, they just did it a few days ago. So... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

3. Have you ever had a puzzle rejected for being too similar to one that has already been published?

Yes, many times. Usually it's a puzzle that's already been accepted but hasn't run yet, so at least it's clear I thought of it independently. But still, it sucks to get beaten to the punch. Once, I submitted to the NYT a FULL HOUSE themed puzzle, in which each theme entry contained a three-of-a-kind string and a pair string (e.g., IT'S A ZOO OUT THERE), and it got rejected the same day this puzzle ran.

It's gone the other way too, though. Once Tracy Gray told me she had a puzzle rejected because it was too close to this X'S AND O'S puzzle (a Gulczynski classic). She's such a nice person, I felt bad, but, I mean, not that bad.

4.  What are your thoughts on CLEAN COAL?

CLEAN COAL became a point of discussion early this month when the prolific constructor Lynn Lempel put it in an NYT Monday puzzle. Personally, I think the term is an oxymoron, perpetuated by coal lobbyists to make coal consumption more palatable to the general public. There is a concept called carbon capture and storage, which, as I understand it, really does reduce the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere while burning coal, but it still doesn't make coal clean, in part, because carbon is not the only pollutant produce by coal. Also, this technology is very expensive, and so it is not actually practical for wide-spread use.

With all that said, the term itself does not offend me, and I have zero problem with a constructor putting it in their grid. I don't think that using a term is a perpetuation or endorsement of the concept behind it. It also doesn't make me uncomfortable to come across terms like this while doing a crossword puzzle.

In general, I think I experience crossword puzzle solving differently from a lot of other people. I frequently hear solvers talk about puzzles being a "distraction" from the ills of the real world, or puzzling taking them to their "happy place," and those things have just never been true for me. It's too bad, really, as it sounds lovely. I'm jealous of that type of solver the same way I'm jealous of somebody who can fall asleep right when their head hits the pillow. (I'm a lie-in-bed-and-ruminate-endlessly kind of guy myself.) To be clear, I'm not especially distraught or anxious or anything like that when I'm solving a crossword puzzle. I'm my normal self, in a normal mood, so if I come across a disagreeable entry, it's not, like, a total buzzkill or anything like that. I just move past it, the same way I do when I hear an unpleasant news story (seemingly every news story these days) while making my kids breakfast in the morning.

Getting back to CLEAN COAL, I do think the NYT editing team erred by changing Lynn's original clue for it. Per her notes (linked above):

"Clean coal" as an answer gave me a slight pause because it's debatable whether there is such a thing. My original clue included something of a hedge ("Dubious term for a greener energy source"), but the editing team didn't think that was needed.

That's just a bizarre decision. I don't get it, and I strongly disagree with it. CLEAN COAL is a dubious term, and more to the point, the constructor wanted to qualify it as such. I could understand not adding a hedge if the constructor didn't have one in their original clue, but I don't understand removing one the constructor did have. Weird edit.

5. What about Harry Potter references?

I don't care much for them because I never got into the stories. I read the first book when it came out and thought it was... fine. (The fantasy genre has never been my cup of tea.) It's undeniable, however, that the Potterverse has become a massive subset of the pop culture universe over the past 25 years, so I'm not complaining that Harry and his pals (and acquaintances and enemies and teachers and magical paraphernalia...) pop up in grids so frequently. I just memorize enough to get by -- POTTERMORE and HORCRUX being this month's additions to my mental boy-wizard database.

I know there are a lot of solvers who would rather keep all things J.K. Rowling out of puzzles because of her controversial tweets concerning transgenderism. My take on all that: I don't know what she's said that's so bad. I mean I literally don't know what she's said. I go out of my way to avoid this story whenever it come ups. A wise person once said, "You don't need to have a take on everything." I've adopted that philosophy when it comes to J.K. Rowling. She was never one of my favorite authors; I don't know much about her; I really don't care what she says or tweets.

The Potterverse is so much bigger than her now, anyway, and I'm sure a lot of good people have done a lot of great work in it worth honoring. If you're turned off by Rowling, do what I do and think of the late, great Alan Rickman the next time you see a Harry Potter reference in a grid. But think of him in his Galaxy Quest role. That movie was surprisingly funny, as I recall.

Note: After writing this, I read this story about the "culture wars" of the NYT crossword puzzle. It touches on a lot of the general themes I've been discussing (and just discussed) on this blog. Because I got the link from Rex Parker's website, and Rex is usually very critical of Will Shortz (excessively so, in my opinion), I was worried it was just going to be a Shortz slag-fest, but it's not. It's decent and even-handed, and closes with the following quote by a graphic novel writer named Hayley Gold:

“In my experience, Will Shortz has been the nicest guy in the world. I hate all the articles that tried to slander him and make it like, ‘Oh, he’s this old white dude. And he’s trying to keep puzzles, sexist and racist.’…Change is slow and change is happening.”

Amen. No constructor or solver is going to agree with everything an editor does, and of course it's fair game to call somebody out when we think they make mistakes, but in my experience so much of the broad criticism of Will is just not accurate.

6. What was your favorite puzzle this month?

Favorite is an impossible adjective, but I really enjoyed a puzzle by Malaika Handa called "Dealer's Choice" that dropped in Fireball mid-month. It has a MONTY HALL PROBLEM theme, which, being 65% math nerd, is right up my alley. It also references the song "DA DOO RON RON," which I've loved since I heard it in an Energizer commercial as a kid: E-n-n-n-ergizer, it do run, run, run, it do run, run...

Incidentally, I solved the MONTY HALL PROBLEM the first time I heard it, in my head, during a five-minute walk between classes. My economics professor posed the problem to us at the end of a lecture, but didn't tell us the solution or give us any background on it. I thought it was just a fun little brainteaser, so I worked it out and didn't think anything of it. Only later did I learn a lot of really smart people found it so vexing. I now consider solving it so effortlessly the greatest thing I've ever done that nobody will ever care about but me. (The relatively recent time in martial arts class I took down four dudes in succession, all much younger than me, to win a toy WWE championship belt is a very close second.)

By the way, here's the solution I came up with: You want to switch doors if and only if your first guess is wrong; there is a 2/3 probability your first guess is wrong; therefore it is better to switch. It's an absolutely inarguable, ironclad proof as far as I'm concerned. 

7. Do you play Wordle?

Of course I fucking play Wordle.

It's really a silly game though. It's super easy to get it in six guesses and getting it in only two or three guesses is almost entirely luck. It's hard to be that good or that bad at it. Still, it makes me think about words and letter patterns, so I enjoy it. What I might start doing is picking a word at random to start with. That's probably more fun (if less optimal) than just starting with RATES every time, which is what I've been doing.

One thing I was I wondering is if it's a solvable game. Is there a decision tree that leads to guaranteed success no matter the correct word? I suspect yes, because each time you guess a word, you can't help but significantly reduce the relevant search space. If you guess "well" -- a lot of matching letters -- then that obviously greatly limits the possibilities, but if you guess "poorly" -- almost no matching letters -- that also limits the possibilities by the process of elimination. It would be interesting, and probably not all that difficult, to teach a computer to play something close to optimally and see if there are any words it couldn't get with certainty.

8. What's a crossword puzzle convention that annoys you more than it should?

The use of "for short" or "briefly" or some other such term when cluing an initialism or abbreviation that is at least as common as the full expression itself.

For example, if the answer is ALS we don't need the "for short" part in the clue "Lou Gehrig's disease, for short." People don't call it ALS because they are in a hurry, they call it ALS because that's what it's called. I bet a lot of people don't even know what ALS stands for. I might not even know -- acute lateral sclerosis? Nope. See, I had no idea that the first word is amyotrophic because almost nobody calls it amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. It's just ALS, and that should be reflected in a clue. Some other common entries along these lines -- MBA, NFL, PHD, ICU, UCLA, IUD, and many, many more. For a person, we accept that often their nickname is their name -- you'd never clue TOM as "Quarterback Brady, for short" -- and I think we need to extend this more frequently to places and things.

In general, I think mainstream crosswords are way too heavy-handed with clue qualifiers, not just "for short" but also "in slang", "informally", "colloquially", and the like. I get they are supposed to give the solver a nudge, but to me they come off as incredibly fusty, a sign that crossword clues are lagging behind the evolution of the English language. BAE, for instance, still gets slapped with the "in modern lingo" tag, and it's been, like, eight years since I first heard that word. What's the scale here? I mean, in a sense, every word we use is modern. (Also, is BAE lingo? I think of lingo as being specialized speech among a specific group of people -- like, baseball fans have baseball lingo -- not just general neologisms.)

Concerning qualifiers, Stella Zawistowski brought up a good point in her review of the LAT puzzle from January, 22.

[T]he clue for LEARN, [Teach improperly?] really rubbed me the wrong way. I hadn’t thought about this much until recently, when I learned that at least one major puzzle venue avoids cluing words as “slangy” because slang to some might be standard language to another. I’m not sure I will never again use the word “slang” in a clue, but “improperly” here sure feels like an unnecessary value judgment.

Well said. We all speak how we learned to speak, and no matter how that is, it sounds right to somebody and wrong to somebody else. There is no definitive authority and no reason to judge.

9.  What do you think of the NYT's (relatively) new online submission portal?

I like it a lot. Part of me misses printing everything out and snail-mailing submissions, but a bigger part of me doesn't. I also like that they put a limit of three submissions in the system at a time per constructor. It saves me from myself.

10. Got any good ideas for future puzzles?

At the moment, not really. I have a document on my phone with ideas that now runs like 50 deep, but if any of them were any good, I would have made them already. Some of them are too simple; some of them are too complicated; and some of them I don't even know what they mean now (I have one that says "themes the breaks", and I don't know if it's a typo or if it's an idea about breaking themes or what).

The worst is when I like an idea but just cannot get the symmetry to work. This doesn't happen often, usually I can massage it somehow -- a 16-column grid, mirror symmetry, a different verb tense, etc. -- but every now and then I can't, so I just give up on an idea. I did that a few weeks ago. I was thinking about multiple discovery (call back to Question 1), and I noticed the phrases GREAT MINDS and THINK ALIKE are both 10-letter long. Then I thought of CALCULUS (8 letters), because that, to me, is the quintessential example of a multiple discovery. It was independently developed by NEWTON (6 letters) and LEIBNITZ (8 letters), and... Wait! 10-10, 8-8, 6 -- that's a puzzle!

But no, it isn't. Do you see the problem? It's LEIBNIZ, no T, only 7 letters. So, it's acutally 10-10, 8-7-6. How do you make a grid out of that? And there really is no way to change any of the themers. Sometimes you can use a plural to get the symmetry to work, but I can't call him NEWTONS. I could use a different theme example of simultaneous discovery, but I couldn't think of one, and when I looked at the Wikipedia page none of the other cited examples seemed very well-known. (Is the NETWON-LEIBNIZ story even that well-known?)

So, not knowing what else to do, I walked away from my computer and moved on with my life. Speaking of which...

Ten Things I Like and Don't Like about Crossword Puzzles

Another crossword puzzle of mine dropped this evening in the New York Times puzzle app (will appear in tomorrow's print edition), meaning I have an excuse to post something new on this blog. Inspired by Zach Lowe's "10 Things" basketball column, which I used to enjoy reading before it moved behind the ESPN+ paywall*, I decided to write my own such post about crossword puzzles.

*I'm not an ESPN+ subscriber on principle. The principle being I feel as if I've given (and continue to give) more than enough money to ESPN (and their parent company Disney) by way of subscription fees and advertisement consumption. I shouldn't have to pay even more to read their best writers, especially considering an ESPN+ subscription doesn't even come with regular ESPN programming.

1. Word Ladders

I like them. I think they are kinda cool and wouldn't mind seeing themes utilizing them every now and then. Relatively recently, I had a word ladder puzzle rejected by the NYT partly because "We’re just not doing many word ladder themes anymore. They tend not to be too popular with solvers." Why is this the case? What's wrong with word ladders?

One thing I've always wanted to do, but almost certainly will never do because there are too many other things I want to do more, is build a digital graph, in which the nodes are the entries in my word list and the edges represent differences of a single letter. Using this graph, you could do cool things like find the optimal word ladder between any two words and find the most connected puzzle entry (the Rod Steiger of crosswords).

So, yeah, I like word ladders, and I have another confession: I don't mind quote puzzles either.

2. Word Lists

I don't like how reliant constructors are on their word lists and automation. This is probably just me misremembering "the good old days," when my only construction tools were a pad of graph paper, a sharp pencil with a good eraser, and a big-ass dictionary, but I do miss the feeling of satisfaction of filling in grids "by hand."

This is similar to my old-man gripe about the ease with which unknown things can be easily looked up online. Sometimes when I'm watching a movie and I know I know an actor from something else but can't place them, I intentionally won't look them up, just so that I can have that great a-ha moment when it finally comes to me. It's annoying and distracting to not know, but when it finally clicks that the dad from Towelhead is the art teacher from Six Feet Under, it's so worth it.

I don't do this with crossword construction, however, because I would never get a puzzle published if I did. I can barely keep up with the competition using huge word lists, commercial software, and my professional-grade coding skills.

Speaking of huge word lists, I use four: All, Monday, XwiWordList, and Hybrid Master. All is my personal word list curated solely by me over the past 15 years; Monday is All with a bunch of non-Monday-level entries eliminated; XwiWordList is the XWordInfo list, which I purchased; Hybrid Master is All and XwiWordList combined. I will gladly give All and Monday to anybody who wants them for free. The other two aren't mine to give, so I can't do that.

3. Asymmetrical Grids

I don't hate hate them, but I definitely don't like them. USA Today will sometimes publish grids with no black-square symmetry, and I'm surprised by how off-putting I find this as a solver. Symmetry doesn't seem like it should be a big deal, but for some reason it is for me. In general, I find that when you eliminate rules you often detract from creativity, rather than enhance it, because removing obstacles removes clever solutions around them. But before I saw an asymmetrical grid, I would have thought I would not have even noticed it was different. Maybe this is another curmudgeonly take, but I do notice it, and, unless it directly ties into the theme somehow, I don't really care for it.

4. Dupe Pointing-Outing

I don't like it when dupes are used as a demerit against a puzzle. I rarely notice dupes as a solver, and I don't care about them when I do notice them, even when they intersect. If you want to put DO UP, UP TO, and TO-DO all in the same section, fine by me (as long as the rest of the puzzle is good). I get more annoyed by solvers pointing out dupes than I do by actual dupes.

5. Aspirations for Theme "Tightness" 

This falls into the same category as dupes. I don't like it when theme tightness, or lack thereof, is used as a criterion in evaluating a puzzle. (See this XWordInfo entry for an example of what I'm talking about.) After I finish a puzzle, I almost never go back and see if I can find other entries that fit theme. But if I do, and I find a lot of them, I don't count this against the puzzle. What difference does it make? Why are themes with only a few possible theme entries better?

If anything, having lots of theme entries makes construction more impressive to me, because it adds another layer of difficulty -- judicious decision-making. All constructors who have pored over a massive list of theme candidates knows how nerve-wracking it can be to try to pick the best ones (i.e., the ones you think the editor will like the best). Aspiring for theme tightness makes little sense to me.

(On a similar note, I couldn't care less if "hidden" words span all parts of an entry of not.)

6. When People Label All Boring/Common Fill as Crosswordese

I don't like this. To me, a defining characteristic of Crosswordese (which I once wrote an entire post on) is that it is specifically overused in crosswords vis-à-vis the real world. Not all boring or common fill qualifies. OREO, for example, is a word that appears often (arguably too much) in grids, but I would never call it Crosswordese, because every solver knew what an OREO was before they started solving. Contrast this with something like OREM, and you see what I mean.

Tangentially, are we sure Crosswordese is even bad? It probably is, and I don't like it now, but when I first started solving it was a fun code I had to crack. Is OLEO S-shaped molding or is that OGEE? This was a part of the draw for me -- learning a new weird language. There's a prevailing thought that Crosswordese is a turnoff for most new solvers -- and maybe it is -- but for what it's worth, it was the opposite for me.

7.  The "If I Don't Know It, It Must Obscure" Attitude

I call this the Priyanka Chopra Principle, so named because a person in a blog comments section once insisted, over several increasingly stubborn posts, that the international movie star/model, getter of over 75 million Google hits, and wife of a frickin' Jonas Brother is not a well-known celebrity.

Perhaps I'm particularly sensitive to this, because solvers have criticized my puzzles for using too many proper nouns (I remember this one particularly getting called out), but this is one of my least favorite attitudes among solvers. Even the best trivia knowers among us have big gaps in their knowledge, and you probably aren't one of the best trivia knowers among us. If you do enough crosswords you are likely to come across things and people -- important, famous things and people -- that you don't know. It doesn't mean that this thing or person is obscure or unworthy or that their inclusion in the grid is unfair. If the crosses are inferable, then it's fine.

Hot take: Even if the crosses aren't inferable, it's still fine. I'm not that bothered by the occasional "Natick." If you get a square wrong once in a while because you guess incorrectly, so what? 

8. ANOS Hate

I'm not down with the ANOS hate. ANOS appears sometimes in grids clued as something akin to "Spanish years." But the word in Spanish is actually AÑOS, with the tilde-N, so every time it pops up, somebody will complain about it and point out that it actually means anus, not years. But I don't get this because ANOS is completely in line with other foreign words in Crossword puzzles. The default convention is to transliterate non-English words using the standard, 26-letter English alphabet. In grids it's RENE, not RENÈ; it's NINO, not NIÑO; it's BRONTE, not BRONTË. Why should ANOS be treated differently?

Also, the fact that ANOS translate to anus is irrelevant to me. A lot of solvers don't know that, and even if they do, who cares? There is nothing inherently untoward or lewd about an anus. It's just a body part -- one used mostly (but certainly not exclusively) for pooping, sure -- but a body part nonetheless. Actually, this brings up another thing I don't like about crossword puzzles...

9. The Prudishness

Would it be so bad if mainstream puzzles could have anatomical words like ANUS and PENIS and VAGINA in them? I don't think so. In previous posts, I've made pretty clear my dislike of censorial guidelines in crossword puzzles, and this sentiment extends to private parts. We've just taken it as a given that such words are no-nos, but it doesn't have to be this way. And maybe it won't be someday. If G-SPOT can make regular appearances in the NYT, why not CLIT? I mean, the latter is shorter, has more convenient letters, and is an actual term people use, outside of article writers asking if it's real.

10. This Puzzle

I really like it, and it makes me super jealous I didn't create it. I used to be a big BOGGLE guy, unbeatable in my heyday,* and I've brainstormed so many different ways to make a BOGGLE-themed crossword puzzle over the years, but I never hit the jackpot. Trenton totally nails it. Coming up with a grid that can fit three synonyms of BOGGLE (an angle I never considered) in a BOGGLE board and as regular entries in the grid is brilliant in both its conception and execution. Kudos, Mr. Charlson; Kudos indeed. 

*I probably was beatable, but I don't remember ever actually losing. One of my finest moments came at a party, many years ago, when somebody randomly busted out Boggle and got a big game going. All the participants but me were close friends who had played each other before, and it was just assumed that one guy would win, as he was clearly the resident champion. I played it cool, like I was some normy bro and not a huge word nerd, and then proceeded to unseat the king in spectacular fashion. All the shorties in the house were flocking to me afterward, I assure you of that.

Until next time...

"No Bummers" Is a Bummer of a Policy

Since my last post, a short followup to my post before that about potentially problematic vocabulary in crossword puzzles, I received a longish post in my comments section (second link) from fellow constructor Evan K. It prompted me to write this followup to the followup, which will probably be my last post on this topic for a while, although -- who knows? -- maybe something else will arise.

Evan's entire comment is worth reading, but I want to focus specifically on something called the "no bummers" principle. Here's the relevant quote:

Many pushing for restrictions on crossword entries espouse some version of a principle they call "no bummers," which in its applied form infantalizes while patronizing the emotional capabilities of the solving audience.

The way I interpret "no bummers" is that it is basically a woke breakfast test. I've not seen an editor reference it as a guideline exactly, but Universal Crossword comes fairly close, asking constructors to not included entries that "could make solvers of any gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and/or ability level feel uncomfortable." They also list a handful of "commonly-seen" words they are "phasing out," LEER, OGLE, OD, etc., with no specific reason why.

I don't like the "no bummers" policy for reasons stated below. Before I get into that, however, I want to state explicitly that I don't expect nor desire all editors and constructors to adopt my preferred guidelines. (I'm a big tent guy.) There are two distinct dynamics in play, and I don't want to blur them together: 

1. There has recently been an influx of new voices to Crossworld. Constructors and solvers from previously underrepresented groups are getting involved in crossword puzzles through a variety of venues -- individual constructor sites (e.g., Rosswords), pop-up indies (e.g., The Inkubator), mainstream venues under new leadership (e.g., Universal and USA Today), and the evolution of old-guard crosswords to be more inclusive (e.g., New York Times).
   
   
2. There has recently been a decentralized push among some in Crossworld to drastically limit acceptable grid vocabulary and impose censorial rules to crossword puzzles as a whole. This mirrors what is going on in other areas of culture. In Crossworld, it includes calling out or otherwise being highly critical of constructors/editors who don't wish to adhere to these new rule or don't even know them (Evan gives some examples in his comments; I've seen it and experienced it myself); propagating word lists (which every constructor now needs and aren't always freely available) that have "no bummers" entries effectively deleted (given a zero score); evaluating puzzles based largely on how much the fill aligns (or doesn't align) with the ideology of the evaluator; calling for Will Shortz to be replaced by an editor with more censorial guidelines (admittedly, this last point was prompted almost completely by one post; I have seen this sentiment express by other folks, however).

I am wholeheartedly in favor of movement 1. I am wholeheartedly not in favor of movement 2. I think "no bummers" is a bummer of a policy for the reasons given below. 

It can be patronizing to a broad solving audience

I agree with Evan's comments above for reasons I lay out in my original post. People understand context and it can be condescending to behave as if they don't.

It can be exclusionary

One seemingly weird thing is how many people fall into both camps 1 and 2 above, when these two things are kinda antithetical by nature. Solver comfort can be used as a reason to be exclusionary. Consider the entry WHITE PRIVILEGE, which was in a New York Times crossword by Natan Last in 2017. In his commentary of the puzzle, Jeff Chen at XWordInfo said of the entry:

... although I think it's an important concept more people ought to learn about, I wonder if some solvers will feel like the puzzle is trying to shame them. I wonder how I'd feel if I were white.

I'm white and have no problem with the entry (nor the concept), but surely there are a lot of white people who do. It makes them feel uncomfortable, which, I assume, is part of the point of putting it in the grid in the first place. It's a great entry. But if we apply, say, the Universal Crossword criterion of not making people of a certain racial group feel uncomfortable, it should be excluded.

It's unevenly applied, politically/ideologically

But I don't think that that's the spirit in which such guidelines are meant to be interpreted. It would probably be deemed okay to make white people feel uncomfortable (at least the type of white person who would balk at seeing WHITE PRIVILEGE in a crossword) because they are not an underprivileged group or something to that effect.

But then what to make of Ilhan OMAR? She's appeared in puzzles dozens of times (including Universal, multiple times) since making her second round of controversial comments, despite there being plenty of other OMARs out there. Regardless of how you feel about the Minnesota congresswoman, I don't think there is any doubt she has made a whole lot of Jews feel uncomfortable. Shouldn't this disqualify her from grids or outrage the "no bummers" crowd? I mean, what's more likely to offend members of an historically oppressed ethnic group, allusions to antisemitic tropes or the word OGLE?

One thing that drives me crazy is when people, usually people on the left, frame things in terms of identity when it is clearly more about ideology. In the case of OMAR, it's apparently okay to make some Jews feel uncomfortable -- presumably just not those who are on the "correct side" of things ideologically speaking.

And, to be clear, I think Ilhan OMAR should be in crossword grids. Retweets are not endorsements. She's a prominent member of the zeitgeist, which, in my opinion, is a better heuristic to apply than trying to assess whether or not she might offend the wrong subgroup of a subgroup of solvers of a certain identity.

It's too arbitrary

All decisions are necessarily arbitrary to some degree. You frequently have to draw a line somewhere even when there is no obvious spot to do so. But if you look at the newer entries that constructors and editors are now avoiding, there doesn't appear to be any line at all. It's seemingly a hodgepodge of terms I've seen people complain about online. I mean, the Universal spec sheet cites "OGLE, LEER, TASE, OD, gun references, and bra sizes" as objectionable -- what do those things even have in common?

And why are bra sizes bad? If you asked me beforehand, I would have thought the progressively evolved take is that bra sizes specifically should be included. Once, a female constructor complained to me that editors always change her clue for PMS from one referencing premenstrual syndrome to one referencing prime ministers. Her point was that PMS is a normal part of the lives of many women, and so it's a pro-woman position to see it reflected in crossword puzzles as such. It makes sense to me, and I would have thought bra sizes would follow similar logic. I still don't get why they don't.

It's anti freedom of expression

As a constructor, I'm always looking for opportunities to put entries in my grids that reflect my personality or push the envelop in someway. The point is not always to make people feel comfortable. I've heard people argue that crossword puzzles are art. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but they are a form of expression, and I think they are better when constructors have more freedom to fill them as they see fit.

Until next time... 

[Note: Universal Crossword has changed its submission guidelines since I originally posted this entry. For example, they no longer mention bra sizes among the fill they are phasing out.] 

What Words Belong: Brief Followup

I got some interesting and surprising feedback from my last post. Several other constructors reached out to me anonymously or privately to say they mostly agree with what I wrote but were too apprehensive to publicly say so out of fear of getting on the wrong side of the crossword puzzle commentariat or the more ideological editors. One pointed me to a few submission spec sheets, like that of Universal Crossword, that specifically ask to avoid using some of the words I mention in my last post, such as OGLE and ODS. I've actually published a puzzle at Universal, so they either changed the guidelines or I didn't completely read them -- either is possible. I might do a future post centered around some of the bullets on their spec sheet. But I don't have the time or energy to do it right, at the moment. (Hey, I made a sentence that changes in meaning if you remove the comma, and I didn't even mean to -- cool!) 

I really wasn't expecting the type of outreach I received. I didn't think I was saying anything that "controversial." I figured I was just stating my very reasonable, well thought out, beautifully elucidated opinions. Certainly some people will disagree with my post (that's kinda the point), but I don't expect anybody to hold it against me. Maybe I'm being Pollyannaish, though -- and if I am... well, not everybody has to like everybody else, I suppose. (Although, to be honest, I pretty much do like everybody else.)

Whatever the case, I'm going to keep thinking what I think and occasionally write it up on this little podunk word blog of mine. It's something of a calling: I have the perfect blend of no self-esteem and really high self-esteem that makes it easy to just say what I really believe. On the one hand, I feel it's safe to speak my mind with full candor because nobody gives a shit what I have to say, anyway; on the other hand, if I do offend somebody, I figure I'm so damn charming, they will come back around on me eventually. I'm not batting 1.000 on this latter proposition, but I have a pretty good career average.

More to come... at some point.

What Words Belong

My 42nd New York Times puzzle dropped this evening online and it will appear in tomorrow's print edition. It's a nice easy-peasy puzzle, in my opinion, but I do not have too much to say about it.

Instead I want to post some thoughts that had been in the back of my mind for some time, before being brought to the forefront by an article in the Washington Post by Tracy Jan about offensive words in word games. It mainly discusses a game called "Typeshift," about which I know nothing (aside from what's in the article), but it also hits on other word games near-and-dear to me like crossword puzzles. The impossible question the article suggests, but does not answer (in part because it's impossible), is What words belong and don't belong in word games?

The following are some of my ramblings on the matter, centered around two words some in the crossword puzzle community have found objectionable.

 NIP 

In addition to its many unoffensive definitions (a small sip, a quality of chilly air, a little pinch, etc.), NIP is a pejorative term for a Japanese person. For this reason, some in Crossworld have called for its banishment (or at least strongly implied as much, as Rex Parker does in this post and this post). I am not one of these people.

When I'm making puzzles, I apply the following standard for a word that is not a slur, but could be a slur in a different context: If the first thing a significant portion of the solving population will think when they see the word is "that's a slur," then it is unacceptable; otherwise it is okay.

This is a slightly different (more subjective) criterion than Will Shortz has traditionally applied to puzzles he edits for the New York Times. Will has long stated that any word with an unoffensive meaning is fair game. However, he more recently added the qualifier: "Perhaps I need to rethink this opinion, if enough solvers are bothered."

I think he should rethink it, and I think he should adopt my standard or something close to it. It should be less about what's in the dictionary and more about what's in solvers' everyday lexicons. If enough people react to something as if it's a slur, then it should be deemed a slur, even if we all know it has another benign definition. I mean, when you see the word BITCH, you do not think "a female dog" even if (for some reason) it's in a puzzle and the clue is "A female dog."

As to NIP, I don't think it qualifies as a slur under my definition. My sense is that most people do not strongly associate this word with its derogatory meaning; it's not the first thing that comes to people's minds when they hear it. (Personally, I think of the verb to NIP -- to prominently display the shape and outline of one's nipples under one's shirt -- because I have a dirty, but not racist, mind.) It's possible a sizeable portion of the crossword-puzzle-solving community does not even know NIP has an offensive definition. In my informal sampling of mostly highly educated adults it's about fifty-fifty. And, for what it's worth, I have had a decent number of Japanese friends and family throughout my life (I grew up in the Seattle area), and I've never heard any of them express any consternation over the usage of NIP in its many innocuous forms.

A common retort I've seen from online commenters to the above paragraph goes something like: Yeah, but maybe you're wrong and a lot of people really do find it offensive. Why not err on the side of kindness and just not use it? It's no big deal if NIP never again appears in a crossword puzzle. It's a decent retort, and one I've taken to heart but ultimately rejected for three main reasons.

1. If you apply that standard to every word that could be used as a slur, you are going to eliminate a massive number of words, to the point of pure absurdity. Unfortunately, human beings are quite prolific when it comes to inventing identity-based putdowns. This list has hundreds of them, and it's only ethnic epithets; you could probably double the size if you include gay and transgender slurs. So, you have to take a stand somewhere or the whole thing becomes ridiculous and untenable. I mean, OREO, in a certain context, is a legitimate racial insult. And if constructors are forced to remove OREO from their word lists, the entire industry of crossword puzzles might collapse.  

2. There's an element of "letting the racists win" when you eliminate a perfectly cromulent word like NIP from usage, and we shouldn't let the racists win. A more pronounced example of this comes from a different Rex Parker post in which he casts a side-eye at the word HAJJI -- a respectful title for a Muslim who has made a pilgrimage to Mecca -- because bigots have used it disparagingly. "I wouldn't let it anywhere near my puzzles if I were constructing," Parker says. This is very much the wrong conclusion to draw, in my opinion. The word HAJJI should not be treated as toxic; the assholes who use it pejoratively should be.

3. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Surely some people appreciate the thoughtfulness in avoiding potential slurs; just as surely, others find it patronizing and annoying -- and this includes people in the groups targeted by such slurs. This was elucidated nicely by Slate's Stefan Fatsis in an article about the debate over offensive words in competitive Scrabble. What he reports is that many, perhaps even most, players, regardless of identity, are against banning slurs. You have Black players unbothered by the "anagram of GINGER"; Jews standing up for their name being used as a verb; a player with cerebral palsy not offended by seeing SPAZ on the board. One quote that really resonates with me is from a gay player: "It doesn’t matter when an opponent plays FAG or FAGGOT. It does irk me that people are telling me you should be mad when people do this." (Italics are mine.)

Admittedly, Scrabble is different from crossword puzzles in that the meaning of the words are completely irrelevant, but I have to imagine the larger point holds: People understand context, and it can be condescending to behave as if they don't. Erring on the side of kindness is not the kind thing to do for all people.

ODS

Aside from slurs, there is another type of entry I'm seeing crossword solvers object to more and more: words that can be depressing or triggering or otherwise unpleasant. ODS -- the abbreviation for overdoses -- in its various forms (ODS, ODED, OD ON, etc.), is an example of such an entry. I bring it up because I once read a Twitter thread in which some solvers and constructors were calling for its ouster from Crossworld.* OGLE is another one I've seen multiple commenters express discomfort over, although I'm not sure if anybody has ever said it should be outright banned.

*I considered trying to find this thread to link to it, but decided against it, because it might take me a while, and I kinda hate Twitter, and I'm much happier when I'm not looking at it. In fact, I've almost entirely quit social media altogether. I miss parts of it, but it's been a huge boon to my mood and mental health. If you're thinking of quitting, I recommend it.  

My standard for exclusion for these types of words is much higher than it is for potential slurs -- basically, I don't think they should be excluded at all* -- because the feelings they evoke are more personal and don't necessarily commute to a broader population. I mean, undoubtedly, overdoses are a terrible thing to think about, especially in the midst of an opioid crisis, and ogling people (usually women, by men) on the street is a form of low-grade sexual harassment, also not a pleasant thought. But I suspect most solvers compartmentalize these things, and move on, the same way you do if you listen to a super heavy podcast about the situation in Afghanistan right before attending a soccer match with friends (which is what I did last weekend). If we weren't able to do this as humans, we would spend all day in bed with the covers over our heads. Also, it's worth pointing out, both OD ON and OGLE have totally benign usages: After I OGLE the dessert tray, I'm going to OD ON chocolate cake.

*There are a few exceptions to this. For example, I wouldn't put RAPE in a puzzle -- not even as a reference to Rappers Against Phony Entertainers, the group MC Serch of 3rd Bass says he should've started in the 1991 hip-hop hit "Pop Goes the Weasel". 

I think most of us have words that can evoke pain or otherwise bother us, for whatever reason. Not too long ago I was making a puzzle and opted not to put NUNES is the grid because the most prominent NUNES is Devin NUNES, and I didn't want that clown in my puzzle. Similarly, I've passed on putting IVANA in a grid because I'm genuinely disturbed by the rise of Trumpism in the US and don't want to think of anybody associated with it if I don't have to. But these are my personal, kinda petty, choices. I don't think they need to be adopted by other crossword constructors or editors. And I am worried that that's the direction things are headed in word puzzles -- like, it's not enough to find something personally distasteful; rather, you now have a moral imperative to try to stricken it from the record for everybody. (Do I dare get into how this mentality has already infected so many other parts of society like art and business and even science? No, because I want to wrap this up soon.)

Another thing is that the standards of comfort are often applied asymmetrically. There is a quote in the Washington Post article linked at the top of this post from a developer of "Typeshift": "Nobody playing ‘Typeshift’ should be experiencing a word that is traumatic for them." In addition to being so unrealistic it's little more than a platitude*, I suspect this quote also isn't totally true. Maybe it is, I don't know the person who said it and don't want to disparage them, but in general when people say something like this, I find what they mean is something closer to: Nobody should be experiencing a word that is traumatic for them, provided they are aligned with me ideologically on major social issues.

*There is no way to put something out in the world and achieve this goal, since almost anything could be traumatic to somebody somewhere. I mean, GUN, WAR, DIVORCE, DEATH, SICKNESS, SEX, RIOT, KIDNAP, DRUGS, ALCOHOL, ADDICTION, BOMB, SLAVE, MASTER, CRAZY, OBESE are all words that a person might reasonably find triggering -- and you can keep on adding item after item to this list, seemingly endlessly. 

I think it's safe to say word games, especially crossword puzzles, are dominated by left-leaning folks like myself. They are largely the realm of the highly educated, and education level has become a very pronounced dividing line between between the right and the left in the U.S. Being as such, most constructors, while probably being sensitive to how an entry like NRA might turn off solvers, are not, I suspect, particularly concerned if their entries offend people on the right. If BLM was in a puzzle and a right-wing solver complained that it's a riotous hate group, would people call for an apology by the editor and the elimination of this entry from future crosswords? If a hardcore pro-life activist said they were traumatized by seeing ABORT in a grid, would this complaint gain any traction? What if it was a bathroom-bill zealot who found TRANSGENDER objectionable?

I think we all know the answer to these questions is "no." And I'm okay with that -- that's how it should be. But I think we should at least be honest about it and not pretend like banishing words is a matter of making everybody feel welcome and included and comfortable, because that's not really accurate. And there is no way to achieve this goal, anyway. Constructors and editors are obviously going to cater somewhat to the preferences of their solvers on the whole, but it's impossible to do this at the niche level, and we shouldn't be expected to try.

The way I look at it -- if I may conclude à la a mediocre philosophy student -- in crossword puzzles, as in life, there are no correct answers, just least worst tradeoffs, gray area, and ever changing arbitrarily drawn lines. It's all just the sorites paradox, repeated ad nauseum.