Tag Archives: Cluing

A Quantum Leap Forward in Crosswords!

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It’s fair to say that the 1996 Election Day crossword, pictured above, is one of the most famous puzzles in crossword history. The puzzle “predicted” the outcome of the election quite cleverly by allowing for either CLINTON ELECTED or BOB DOLE ELECTED to read out, depending on how the solver answered seven down clues.

(You can click the image to see a larger version of the grid and clues.)

Reportedly, Will Shortz called it the most amazing puzzle he’d ever seen.

Well, that puzzle may have been topped.

But first, a bit of backstory.

These rare crosswords are called Quantum puzzles or Schrodinger puzzles. These names reference the famous thought experiment involving a very unlucky cat in a box that could be alive or dead, and an observer wouldn’t know which until he opened the box. Meaning that both answers are correct at the same time; the cat is both alive and dead.

[This great t-shirt melds the Schrodinger’s Cat concept with a classic joke.]

Similarly, these puzzles have more than one answer, and each answer is equally correct.

And on Thursday, December 4, constructors Kacey Walker and David Quarfoot combined some considerable Scrabble skills and a dynamite crossword grid to create the most impressive Schrodinger puzzle to date.

You see, clues 26-Across, 36-Across, and 44-Across all feature seven letters, like a rack in Scrabble. And it’s up to the solver to find the anagram of each rack that fits the grid.

For example, 26-Across reads “Play in 7-Across with the rack DEIORRW”. (The answer to 7-Across is SCRABBLE, giving the solver a strong idea of where to go next.)

Quite amazingly, Walker and Quarfoot have designed the puzzle so that each of those clues has three possible correct answers — for 26-Across: ROWDIER, WORDIER, and WORRIED all fit the down clues — meaning there are a staggering 27 possible correct solutions!

This is just one of those 27 solutions:

[You can check out all of the possible solutions, as well as the clues, on XWordInfo here.]

This is David Quarfoot’s 41st NYT published puzzle and Kacey Walker’s first! Talk about setting the bar as high as you can.

This is also one of the flat-out coolest puzzle constructions I’ve ever seen. My thanks to Deb Amlen for doing such a great write-up on the puzzle and for pointing it my way.

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Beware the power of crosswords!

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Both athletes and sports fans can be superstitious. Some have rituals before game or during game, or certain things they have to do or say after a big play.

Sometimes, it’s a playful thing, a form of passive support for the team, or a fun activity for everyone gathered around the TV on a Sunday afternoon or in the parking lot tailgating.

But other times, it’s taken much more seriously. After all, where you have superstitions, you also have curses.

Well, we might just need to add crosswords to the list of possible ways to jinx a team or player.

You see, sports fan Evans Clinchy knocked one entry off his bucket list by publishing a crossword with the New York Times, a worthy goal to be sure.

But he’s afraid his entry for 58-Across, KEVIN DURANT, may have jinxed a long-time favorite player and idol. You see, news went out the next day that Mr. Durant fractured his foot and will be out from 6 to 8 weeks.

I highly recommend reading the entire article, which is very funny and offers some hilarious insight into the mind of sports fans everywhere.

And his post does raise an interesting question: have any of the constructors or puzzlers out there jinxed an athlete, an actor, or a celebrity with their puzzles, or worried about doing so? I have a hard time believing Mr. Clinchy is the only one, especially since there are plenty of sports fans in the puzzle constructing community.

Let me know! I’d love to hear your stories.

Better luck with your next puzzle, Mr. Clinchy! And heal up soon, Mr. Durant. Your team, and Mr. Clinchy’s conscience, need you.

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But I have all the koalafications!

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Good cluing is one of the cornerstones of quality crossword writing. Not only do the clues have to be interesting, clever, and challenging, but they need to be accurate as well. After all, there’s a big difference between playfully misleading and misleadingly wrong.

Thankfully, this is the Golden Age of cluing assistance, and there are numerous cluing archives and websites loaded up with crossword clues galore. Places like Crossword Nexus, Crossword Tracker, Wordplays, and XwordInfo are searchable, not only allowing constructors to look for new clues, but assisting solvers with troublesome clues.

It also makes researching crossword controversies a whole lot easier, like Hugh Stephenson’s koala-centric kerfuffle in The Guardian’s crossword blog.

You see, fellow puzzlers, a setter named Qaos used the following clue in a cryptic crossword:

Bear a left, then a right, then reverse (5)

This clue was intended to point toward the answer KOALA, both with the word “bear” and the directions “a left, then a right” — meaning A L, A OK — “then reverse” — KOALA. But some solvers took issue with Qaos referring to the koala as a bear, despite the common vernacular term “koala bear.”

Now, if we’re going by strict dictionary definition, those solvers are correct. The koala is a marsupial, not a bear. Of course, dictionaries were recently amended to say that “literally” no longer just means “literally” — it can mean “figuratively” as well. So I’m inclined to go beyond the dictionary definition and plumb the depths of crossword clue archives to see where the crossword community as a whole stands on the question of koala vs. koala bear.

The Crossword Solver lists the clue [Australian “bear”], but mostly avoids the controversy with a litany of clues like [Gum leaf eater], [Australian critter], and [Down Under climber].

If you go to Crossword Tracker, you mostly get clues that hedge their bet, like [Australian “bear”], [Marsupial sometimes called a bear], and [Australian bearlike beast], but there are a few hard-nosed clues like [It isn’t really a bear].

Crossword Giant agrees on this front, while Wordplays wavers wildly, citing both [Cute “bear”] and [Cute bear] in its archives.

I’d hoped for a definitive answer when searching XwordInfo, which is dedicated to clues featured in the New York Times Crossword. The Shortz era comes down firmly on the side of “bear”, not bear, but the pre-Shortz era is less rigid, with clues like [Living Teddy bear], [Bear of Down Under], and [Kangaroo bear].

And while I feel that the koala vs. koala bear issue remains unresolved, Mr. Stephenson is firmly in the koala bear camp, jokingly citing the 1983 Paul McCartney / Michael Jackson collaboration “Ode to a Koala Bear” as evidence.

Of course, if we’re going to start citing songs as evidence, that means “pompatus” is a real word, and that opens a whole new can of worms.

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Clever Cluing & Playing With Expectations

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Probably my favorite aspect of a truly great crossword puzzle is topnotch cluing. For me, the perfect field of clues covers a lot of subjects (history, pop culture, etc.), uses engaging wordplay to make me work for my solve, and surprises me a few times with some diabolically clever cluing.

That last one is particularly difficult, because a clever clue needs to work on multiple levels, misleading you in one direction but still allowing you to have that a-ha moment of realization when you finally get it. Clever clues play with a solver’s expectations, trusting us to make snap assumptions that turn out to be wrong.

[Trust me, Google Image searching “a-ha moment” is a delightful way to spend a few minutes. This woman seems WAY too excited, even for a eureka moment.]

For instance, “Second cousin?” is one of my all-time favorite clues. It uses an established phrase to push you in one direction (following what sounds like a standard synonym-style clue), but any crossword solver worth their salt knows that a question mark implies some wordplay is afoot.

Indeed, the common crossword clue construction “____ kin” or “____ cousin” — meaning something like or similar to whatever fills that blank — provides our next hint, pushing our attention back to the word “second.” And once it clicks that we’re not using “second” in terms of counting, but in terms of “increment of time,” the wordplay reveals the real answer: MOMENT.

It’s a great a-ha clue, seemingly simple but immensely clever.

There was a terrific story on FoxSports.com about another case of a solver’s expectations getting the best of him. Detroit Tigers player Max Scherzer was excited to see himself referenced in a USA Today crossword, under the clue “Max Scherzer’s pride.”

The answer was a three-letter word, and the constructor was expecting most solvers to come up with ARM as the answer. But Scherzer had something else in mind, posting on his Twitter account:

Check out 7 down in the USA TODAY… If They did their homework the answer should be DIC for eye color. #luvdablueye

DIC is the standard DMV abbreviation for dichromatic eyes, meaning eyes of two different colors.

Just goes to show you need to keep an open mind and stow your expectations at the door when you tackle crosswords these days.

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PuzzleNation Book Review: The Centenary of the Crossword

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Welcome to the eighth installment of PuzzleNation Book Reviews!

All of the books discussed and/or reviewed in PNBR articles are either directly or indirectly related to the world of puzzling, and hopefully you’ll find something to tickle your literary fancy in this entry or the entries to come.

Let’s get started!

Our book review post this time around features John Halpern’s The Centenary of the Crossword.

With the hundredth anniversary of the Crossword only a few weeks behind us, interest in puzzle is perhaps at an all-time high. With that in mind, constructor John Halpern has put together a tribute to the crossword that’s part history, part solving tool, and part celebration of everyone’s favorite pen-and-paper puzzle.

It’s a wonderful introduction to puzzles for anyone looking to get into solving crosswords. Beyond the timeline of puzzle history and glimpses into the minds of various constructors (or setters, as they’re known in England) and crossword editors (Rich Norris of the Los Angeles Times and Will Shortz of the New York Times included), Halpern offers numerous solving hints, including a terrific breakdown of cryptic cluing for fans of British-style crosswords.

Not only that, but the book is chock full of complete puzzles for the reader to solve, starting (quite appropriately) with Arthur Wynne’s marvelous “Word-Cross” and proceeding straight through to the modern day, featuring constructors from around the world. These puzzles show the depth and variety of crossword grids and cluing, and I think even well-established solvers will get a lot out of tackling the puzzles Halpern has collected.

The book is capped off with interviews with the top solvers from last year’s American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, some terrific clues (including some from PuzzleNation Blog favorites David Steinberg and Doug Peterson), and a delightful collection of crossword-centric anecdotes, weird words, and impressive anagrams.

Essentially a cross-section of modern puzzling and the rich puzzle community, The Centenary of the Crossword is a quick and informative read, peppered with puzzles to engage and challenge you. I’m happy to report that I learned a great deal about crosswords (especially cryptics!) from Halpern’s work, and enjoyed every minute of it. What a treat.

[To check out all of our PuzzleNation Book Review posts, click here!]

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Happy Anniversary, Crosswords!

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Today is the 100th anniversary of the crossword. (Not yesterday, as Google’s marvelous Merl Reagle-penned crossword doodle might’ve had you believe.) One hundred years ago today, Arthur Wynne’s “word-cross” puzzle debuted in The New York World, kickstarting a phenomenon that has gone well past pencil-and-paper, more relevant and influential today than ever before.

Let’s take a look at that very first puzzle, shall we?

[For the solution and a slightly larger grid image, click here.]

In modern crossword terms, this diamond shape is known as an open puzzle or a cut puzzle, since it’s not the standard crossword square. I’m a fan of cut puzzles, because their shapes draw the eye. H-shaped, Z-shaped, and diamond-shaped puzzles aren’t uncommon among cut puzzles, and it’s always a treat to see one when flipping through a book of crosswords.

And it’s sort of fascinating to see all the differences between this puzzle and the modern crossword, despite its utter familiarity.

There’s the set word, the singlet letters at the puzzle’s four corners that don’t get crossed, and those enormous numbers that leave no writing space for the actual letter. There’s also that very curious cluing order, which took me a second to decode: the acrosses along the left side of the diamond grid, then the acrosses along the right side of the diamond grid, then the downs from furthest left to furthest right. Figuring that out was something of a puzzle in itself!

It’s not hard to see the appeal of the crossword from the very beginning. The grid is open, not daunting at all, and that casual spirit no doubt attracted plenty of intrigued first-time solvers. The mechanics of the puzzle are solid, and the synonym-heavy cluing style is an easy introduction to cluing.

Some of those clues, like 23-30’s [A river in Russia] for NEVA wouldn’t be out of place in a grid today. Though hopefully you wouldn’t come across a clue like 10-18’s [The fibre of the gomuti palm] for DOH too often. Wow, that is a seriously tough one. (Plus, I suspect modern solvers would get it much faster if clued as [Homer’s exclamation].)

Still, there’s a sense of humor to the construction. Look at clue 18-19 [What this puzzle is]. HARD. Well, no kidding, Mr. Wynne, when you expect us to know the fibre of the gomuti palm. *laughs*

What about clue 6-22? [What we all should be] MORAL. Wynne’s puzzle has a message. =)

Solving the puzzle was a curious experience, both as a solver and constructor. On the construction side, the word DOVE appears twice, a serious no-no in the modern puzzle community.

It would need editing to make the cut these days, but Wynne’s word-cross remains a worthwhile and laudable start for a long, proud legacy of wordplay and puzzling.

That legacy is quite personal for me, since this year also marks my ten-year anniversary working in the puzzle business. (That anniversary came less than a week before today’s centennial celebrations.)

I make a living thanks to Arthur Wynne’s wildly-successful creation, and I am grateful every day that I get to work on puzzles, or come here and write about them, all the while contributing to a community with a century-long tradition of humor, playfulness, intelligence, and style.

Thank you, Arthur.

Thanks for visiting the PuzzleNation blog today! You can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, cruise our boards on Pinterest, check out our Tumblr, download our Classic Word Search iBook (recently featured by Apple in the Made for iBooks category!), play our games at PuzzleNation.com, or contact us here at the blog!