Crosswordese: Now with Rhythm!

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[Image courtesy of Crosswordese Selfies.]

Crosswordese is the bane of solvers and constructors alike.

For the uninitiated, crosswordese consists of words that appear frequently in puzzles, but not nearly as often in conversation or common use. (My favorite variation on that definition: “words that crop up a lot but are otherwise pretty useless.”)

Not only does crosswordese prevent new solvers from enjoying crosswords to the fullest — by forcing them to learn a weird, esoteric jargon that feels exclusionary — but it hounds constructors who are trying to build solid, engaging grids, tempting them with easy letter combinations and tricky corner resolutions.

Crosswordese is so prevalent in the field that some crossword enthusiasts try to craft stories that include as many examples of crosswordese as possible.

The father of Reddit user Cheedrifin went another way, though, penning a delightful poem full of crosswordese!

We’ve posted it in full below. Enjoy!

THE CRUCIVERBALIST’S BALL

I was stunned, I’ll admit, when I got the call
To go to this year’s cruciverbalist’s ball.
For eons I’d wanted to earn such a bid
To see all the bigwigs who live in the grid.

I should say that I don’t have a poet’s portfolio
Up to describing this fabulous olio,
But I’ve always said “Carpe diem’s my motto.”
I’ll give it a shot with some help from Erato.

The lot of us boarded a sleek SST
And flew over what looked like the dry Aral Sea.
But just where it was held, I can’t properly say.
They swore me to silence at point of epée.

But it might have been Riga, or maybe Oman.
The Rhine? The Rhone? Iraq or Iran?
It could have been Agra—I know it was far—
Or maybe an aerie perched over the Aare.

Wherever it was, they served us some naan,
Aioli and Nehi and roasted eland.
And down at our heels, keeping watch for dropped pasta
Were dogs from the A-list: Ren, Odie, and Asta.

We all settled down at the sound of a raga
Announcing arrivals of sri, shah, and aga.
Still more eastern royals stepped out of the car:
An Arab emir and a ranee and tsar.

The big names could not keep away from this forum.
Mel Ott! Ernie Els! William Inge and Ned Rorem.
And brimming with pride both paternal and filial,
The architects Saarinen: Eero and Eliel.

Sajak was stoked to meet old Ayn Rand.
And Ezio Pinza hailed Elia Kazan.
Malia and Oprah remembered Chicago,
And Amis and Imus examined Iago.

James Agee went on about where he had been
With Ani DiFranco and Anaïs Nin.
We saw Uta Hagen, who didn’t speak German
To Yma and Uma (yeah, Sumac and Thurman).

E. Utne shared new-age convictions with Moby
While Cheri Oteri was tying her obi.
We sampled the ahi (it’s really just tuna)
With dear Mrs. Chaplin, who said “Call me Oona.”

We sang and we danced till they all had to go,
Catching planes to the Urals, or trains to St. Lo.
Now I’m stuck for an ending. Have one I can borrow?
I guess I’ll just wait for the answer tomorrow.

So many of the chronic crosswordese offenders are included! Did the poem miss any of your favorites/least favorites? Let us know in the comments section!

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The Labyrinth? Why, you must be mythtaken!

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Oh yes, it’s that time again! It’s to unleash our puzzly and punny imaginations and engage in a bit of sparkling wordplay!

You may be familiar with the board game Schmovie, hashtag games on Twitter, or @midnight’s Hashtag Wars segment on Comedy Central.

For years now, we’ve been collaborating on puzzle-themed hashtag games with our pals at Penny Dell Puzzles, and this month’s hook was #PennyDellPuzzleMyth, mashing up Penny Dell puzzles with anything and everything mythological! Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Celtic, Norse, whatever!

Examples include: Helen of Troy-Angles, Odin and Around, and Heads and Heads and Heads and Heads and Heads and Heads and Heads and Heads and Heads and Tails (because it’s a hydra).

So, without further ado, check out what the puzzlers at PuzzleNation and Penny Dell Puzzles came up with!

Greek Puzzle Myths!

Homer Runs

Odyssey It Again

Odysseycret Word

Letter Illiaddition / Iliadd One

Midas Touch Tank

Crostyx

Dionysuspended sentence / Pegasuspended Centaurence

Dionysus Fill-In

Places, Pleiades

Hera and Theras / Hera & Thor

Roll of the Diana

Kraken-jacks

Krak-uro

Animal Krakens

Seven-Up Against Thebes

Roll of the Eurydice

Psycheword

Minotaur-Crosswords

Muse Calling

Nemean Lion ‘Em Up

Pandora’s Boxes

Janus Face to Face

Square Nine Muses

Cerberus in the Square

Face to Face to Stone

Math Maze/Labyrinth: Plus and Minotaurus

Apollo to Zeus Maze

Minotaur’s-Eye Spiral

Hecuba Match

Norse Puzzle Myths!

Bricks and Thor-tor

Thor ‘n’ Aft

Freya Know the Odds

Frigg-erits!

Frigg-zag

Frigg-saw Squares

Mimir Mimir

Mimir Image

Annar-gram Magic Square

Tyr-Angles

Tyr-amid Words

Buri Treasure

Loki Score

Loki Star

Lokiword

Loki Double Cross

Exchange Borr

Quo-Dagr-ams

Fulla Circle

Egyptian Puzzle Myths!

Sphinx’s Riddle Me This

Picking up Osiris Piece by Piece

Horus and There

Shu-doku

Khepri It Moving

Pyramiddle of the Road

Hierocryptics

Crypto Puzzle Myths!

Mega Sudoku

Nessie Solitaire

Mathsquatch

Anagram Mongolian Death Word

Chupacommon Combos

There were a few submissions that deserve their own section, as several of our intrepid puzzlers went above and beyond.

Grand Minotaur (obviously in the Labyrinth, son of the Cretan Bull’s-eye Spiral and killed by Theseus Three)

Siren Says “Come down from that Mast-to-hear-our-words” You know the Odysseus… facing yet another Dilemma. Sailors have him Family Tied and only bind him tighter. I’m sure he has A Few Choice Words for them. 😉

Roll the Dionysus before he Looses his Tiles! He had Two at a Time all night!

Riddle Me This in the Middle of the Road: “Which creature walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?” asks the Sphinx guarding the route to the city of Thebe.

Spell and Score: In retribution for Minos the King of Crete’s failure to sacrifice a white bull Poseidon sent him, Poseidon ordered Aphrodite to cast a spell on Minos’ wife, Pasiphae, to fall in love with the Cretan bull; they mated, and their offspring was Minotaur.

Have you come up with any Penny Dell Puzzle Myths entries of your own? Let us know! We’d love to see them!

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The Rubik’s Cube World Championship!

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This past week, Rubik’s Cube enthusiasts from around the world convened in Paris, France, for the Rubik’s Cube World Championship.

The event spanned three days, welcoming over 1,000 competitors from dozens of different countries to test their speed-solving abilities against fellow solvers.

Think about that. Dozens of countries. The Rubik’s Cube is truly ubiquitous these days. (Rubikquitous, perhaps?)

Although the bulk of the competitions were centered around speed, the list of events was pretty impressive, including solving a cube in the fewest moves, solving blindfolded, solving one-handed, and even solving with your feet! Plus there were events where competitors solved variations on the classic cube!

[From left to right, a Skewb, a Megaminx, and a Pyraminx. All three cube variants were used in speed-solving competitions.]

You can check out all of the results from the Championship by clicking here. But I do want to make a point of highlighting just how quick these competitors are.

The speeds we are talking about here? Mind-blowing. The 3×3 cube champion averaged 6.85 seconds across 5 solves. His fastest solve was 5.87 seconds. That’s madness.

And that level of speed was not an outlier. You had to ratchet things up in both size and complexity, all the way to a 6×6 cube, before a championship-winning time exceeded one minute.

But individual achievement was not the only game in town here. For the first time, three-member teams from various countries competed in the Rubik’s Nations Cup.

The competition was modeled around a relay race. The first team member would solve a cube, then the second, then the third, and their aggregate time (as well as individual times) recorded.

72 teams competed in the Nations Cup, but the victory went to one of the German teams! Although it wasn’t a sanctioned event, it was a real crowd pleaser, and something that would definitely offer some puzzly bragging rights on the speed-solving circuit.

And although this was a competition, the spirit of camaraderie and community that infused the event was wonderful. You could really sense that this was an opportunity to make friends, to show off your skills, and to remember that puzzling is a universal language, whether you’re talking crosswords or cubes.

You can check out some of the event highlights, as well as a message from Erno Rubik himself, in this video:

All in all, it looks like an absolute blast was had. Now that’s some quality puzzling.

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Puzzle(r)s in Pop Culture: Superhuman

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Superhuman is a television show on FOX that combines elements of game shows and talent shows, wherein people with exceptional mental abilities are tested on the air, competing for a $50,000 grand prize.

The show has featured exhibitions of memorization, visual acuity, math and puzzling skills, and more, offering people the rare opportunity to show off the mind’s amazing capabilities. (It also bucks the trend of modern reality competition shows by not having the contestants judged by a smug British man.)

Actor Kal Penn hosts the show, and the three panelists who comment on performances and help choose the winner are boxer Mike Tyson, singer Christina Milian, and neuroscientist Dr. Rahul Jandial.

And on last week’s episode, “All Parts Extraordinary,” a face familiar to puzzlers and crossword fans appeared on the show: Tyler Hinman.

The former 5-time American Crossword Puzzle Tournament champion was pitted against four other contestants with impressive mental abilities.

Chris Authement, a math whiz, was tasked with adding up all the pips on giant dominoes as they fell, correctly counting 535 pips in the time allotted.

Tatiana Marquardt, a mother of three with impressive memory recall, was tasked with memorizing five days of scheduling for three different kids. Each day had four activities. The judges then randomly chose a child and a day of the week, and she had to pack their backpacks for each day’s agenda. And she nailed all three days.

Dave Farrow, a computer scientist with a focus on robots, memorized a grid of 108 blue and red balloons (laid out in an 18×6 grid). Then, based on the judge’s choices, he was asked to recall the color of a particular balloon, the pattern of a particular column of balloons, and finally, a particular row of balloons. Recited backwards. And he did so.

Luke Salava, a lawyer with a knack for facial recognition, had to learn the faces of 100 members of the studio audience. Then, three of those people were removed, and that entire section of the audience was reshuffled. His task was to identify the three new people in the crowd. And he did so with ease.

When it was Tyler’s turn to show off his puzzly skills, he had a serious challenge ahead of him.

This grid of crisscrossing 5-letter words can only be completed with the letters in a 9-letter word provided alongside the grid. But Tyler had five of these grids to solve, and he wasn’t told which of the five 9-letter words went with which grid.

Oh, and he only had 3 minutes and 30 seconds in which to solve all five grids.

He went right up to the wire, but solved all five grids, showing off not only his deductive reasoning, but his vast vocabulary and his speed-solving technique, honed by years of crossword solving and tournament competition.

After all five competitors had their time to shine, the judges narrowed the field to three: Chris, Dave, and Tatiana. And the audience voted electronically for the winner: Dave Farrow, master of balloons.

Honestly, I thought both the judges and the audience picked wrong. Tyler was the only one who really had to work out his technique in front of the crowd, showing missteps and false paths that he corrected on the fly.

He actually talked through the process as he solved, which to me was more engaging and interesting.

Don’t get me wrong, the acts of memorization were very impressive, but only Tyler and math whiz Chris were really under a time limit. (Tyler’s was literal, while Chris’s was kinetic, since the dominoes were toppling.)

Also, I can’t believe that Luke didn’t at least make the top three, let alone win. 100 faces to memorize and reshuffle in your head? That’s mind-boggling to me.

Alas, such is the flying fickle finger of fate. Still, it was a strong showing for a world-class puzzler, an exhibition of puzzly talent that did not fail to impress.

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Puzzles in Pop Culture: Twin Peaks: The Return

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On Tuesday, I concluded a multi-part series about the history of American codebreaking. In a related story, a fellow puzzler pointed out that there might be a new code out there awaiting an enterprising codebreaker.

In a recent episode of the television show Twin Peaks: The Return, there was a brief scene with an airplane flying over a snowy mountain. Sharp-eyed viewers noticed that the plane’s windows seemed to disappear and reappear as it flew.

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Naturally, when you have a show that’s all about trying to unravel mysteries and finding deeper meaning in even the most obscure clues, fans leapt onto this possibility and began trying to crack the code of the windows.

There are six windows, and they disappear and reappear numerous times in the brief scene. (There’s also a spot closer to the tail that also appears and disappears.)

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[One solver’s breakdown of the plane window pattern.]

Charting out a possible pattern in the windows has led to several intriguing theories. While attempts to translate the pattern into morse code, binary, and other languages have yielded nothing so far, some fans posit that it’s a musical pattern, since one of the characters, FBI agent Gordon Cole, plays a 6-hole flute. (A villain from the original series, Windom Earle, also played a flute.)

While this may simply be a red herring, I suspect there’s more to the window mystery than just providing a distraction in a show littered with distractions.

People have gone so far as to track down the original footage of the plane flying, so they can see what was altered to produce the window pattern:

What do you think, PuzzleNationers? Is there a message or a tune lurking in plain sight on Twin Peaks: The Return? Or is this much ado about nothing?

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PuzzleNation Product Review: Roller Coaster Challenge

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ThinkFun’s products are all about learning through experimentation. Whether you’re making music note-by-note with Compose Yourself, mastering the basics of programming in Robot Turtles, or tackling complete-the-path puzzles with marbles, lasers, robots, or electronic circuits, kids and adults alike get the chance to put their puzzly chops to the test.

Roller Coaster Challenge is the largest, most ambitious ThinkFun puzzle game to date, featuring several dozen pieces and challenge cards galore to test your ability to bend momentum and gravity to your will as you complete unfinished roller coaster tracks!

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[With multiple track lengths, posts for building support pylons, 90-degree turns to navigate, and even a loop you can construct, you’ve got all the ingredients you need for a roller coaster worthy of the name.]

The concept is fairly simple. You have challenge cards that offer a starting layout. You’re given the beginning and ending points of the track, and some pieces in between. You are also told which pieces you’ll need to use to bridge the gaps and finish the track. Now it’s up to you to place them correctly and then test your creation with the little red roller coaster car.

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Not only is the building plate bigger than those in any previous ThinkFun puzzle game, but the sky is the limit as you build onwards and upwards in order to solve your challenge card and give your little roller coaster car the ride of its life!

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The challenge cards serve as the perfect introduction to solving the game’s puzzles, teaching the solver how to identify pieces by length, how to avoid missteps, and even how to get the most out of the available pieces.

But the challenge cards are just the beginning. Roller Coaster Challenge encourages you to develop your own roller coaster layouts, and even share them with the company!

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After battling my way through numerous challenge cards of all difficulties — ranked from easy to super hard — I began indulging my creative side by constructing my own layout.

Naturally I had to go above and beyond, trying to weave two tracks together so one would use the loop, and the other would rocket the roller coaster car through the loop and over a gap before reuniting with the track itself.

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[OSHA would shut down my roller coaster so fast…]

In terms of scale, creativity, and sheer visual panache, Roller Coaster Challenge is the most ambitious and impressive ThinkFun puzzle game to date. The DIY encouragement built into the solving experience really adds something extra to the enjoyable (and sometimes challenging) layouts provided by the game’s designers.

Roller Coaster Challenge was the result of ThinkFun’s first venture into crowdfunding, and when it came time to go big or go home, they went big, and solvers reap the benefits with this dynamic, fun product.

Roller Coaster Challenge is available through ThinkFun and other vendors for the very affordable price of $29.99.

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You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!