Tag Archives: Crosswordese

It’s Follow-Up Friday: Crosswordnado edition!

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Welcome to Follow-Up Friday!

By this time, you know the drill. Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and bring the PuzzleNation audience up to speed on all things puzzly.

And today, I’m posting solutions to our Sharknado and Crosswordese puzzles from the last two weeks!

Two Follow-Up Fridays ago, I posted a deduction puzzle in honor of Sharknado 3 rampaging its way across TV screens all over the world, and I challenged you to complete the schedule of mayhem wrought by our five heroes with five different weapons across five different cities on five different days! (Whew!)

How did you do?

And that brings us to our second solution. Last week, we discussed crosswordese — those words that only seem to appear in crosswords, to the dismay and bafflement of casual solvers — and I created a 9×9 grid loaded with crosswordese.

Did you conquer the challenge?

ACROSS

1. Toward shelter, to salty types — ALEE
3. Arrow poison OR how a child might describe their belly button in writing — INEE
5. Flightless bird OR Zeus’s mother — RHEA
6. Hireling or slave — ESNE
8. “Kentucky Jones” actor OR response akin to “Duh” — DER
9. Compass dir. OR inhabitant’s suffix — ESE
12. Wide-shoe width OR sound of an excited squeal — EEE
15. No longer working, for short OR soak flax or hemp — RET
16. Like a feeble old woman OR anagram of a UFO pilot — ANILE
17. Actress Balin OR Pig ____ poke — INA

DOWN

1. Mean alternate spelling for an eagle’s nest — AYRIE
2. Old-timey exclamation — EGAD
3. Unnecessarily obscure French river or part of the Rhone-Alpes region — ISERE
4. Supplement OR misspelling of a popular cat from a FOX Saturday morning cartoon — EKE
7. Maui goose — NENE
10. An abbreviated adjective covering school K through 12 OR how you might greet a Chicago railway — ELHI
11. My least favorite example of crosswordese OR good and mad — IRED
12. Ornamental needlecase — ETUI
13. Movie feline OR “Frozen” character — ELSA
14. Shooting marble OR abbreviation for this missing phrase: “truth, justice, and ____” — TAW

I hope you enjoyed both of these challenging puzzles! If you haven’t had your fill of crafty puzzlers, worry not! We’ll be tackling another tough brain teaser in two weeks!

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Crossing swords with crosswordese!

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In the past, I’ve written about crosswordese, nemesis and irritant to many crossword solvers and constructors. For the uninitiated, crosswordese is shorthand for any and all obscure or curious words that you only encounter in crossword grids. From EPEE and OONA to Greek letters (ETA, RHO) and French rivers (AARE), these killer crossings are the bane of any solver’s existence.

And wouldn’t you know it, I encountered some crosswordese in a most unexpected place.

I was reading Patricia Marx’s book Let’s Be Less Stupid: An Attempt to Maintain My Mental Faculties, a humorous look at the common fear that our mental acuity declines as we get older. In the book, Marx references numerous ways she’s noted her brain working less efficiently than it used to, and she hilariously chronicles her attempts to combat this and keep her wits sharp.

As part of her ongoing efforts, she even created a crossword grid utilizing only tough crossword entries.

Her puzzle featured some truly great, funny clues, like “The side of the ship you want to be on if you don’t want your hair to get messed up” for ALEE and “No matter how bad your memory is, this is something to remember” for ALAMO.

While I wouldn’t count every entry in her grid as crosswordese, there were plenty of major offenders on her list. (You can check out the full puzzle in her book!)

And this gave me an idea. I would try my hand at creating my own 9×9 grid, composed entirely of crosswordese, utilizing some of the words from her list and some from lists submitted by fellow puzzlers.

[Forgive my nonstandard grid. I tried to go for the same homemade charm as Marx’s grid. Feel free to print out this post and try it out!]

ACROSS

1. Toward shelter, to salty types
3. Arrow poison OR how a child might describe their belly button in writing
5. Flightless bird OR Zeus’s mother
6. Hireling or slave
8. “Kentucky Jones” actor OR response akin to “Duh”
9. Compass dir. OR inhabitant’s suffix
12. Wide-shoe width OR sound of an excited squeal
15. No longer working, for short OR soak flax or hemp
16. Like a feeble old woman OR anagram of a UFO pilot
17. Actress Balin OR Pig ____ poke

DOWN

1. Mean alternate spelling for an eagle’s nest
2. Old-timey exclamation
3. Unnecessarily obscure French river or part of the Rhone-Alpes region
4. Supplement OR misspelling of a popular cat from a FOX Saturday morning cartoon
7. Maui goose
10. An abbreviated adjective covering school K through 12 OR how you might greet a Chicago railway
11. My least favorite example of crosswordese OR good and mad
12. Ornamental needlecase
13. Movie feline OR “Frozen” character
14. Shooting marble OR abbreviation for this missing phrase: “truth, justice, and ____”

Did you conquer this crosswordese-riddled grid? And what’s your least favorite example of crosswordese? Let me know! I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

It’s Follow-Up Friday: That Has a Name?! edition

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Welcome to Follow-Up Friday!

For those new to PuzzleNation Blog, Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and update the PuzzleNation audience on how these projects are doing and what these people have been up to in the meantime.

And today, I’d like to revisit crosswords for a moment.

We’ve explored crosswords a lot in this blog. From great cluing to the curse of crosswordese, from advice for constructing quality puzzles to tips for solving them, crosswords have been the centerpiece for many PuzzleNation Blog posts.

But friend of the blog Cathy Quinn recently passed along an article with an interesting bit of crossword trivia attached.

Have you encountered a difficult crossing in a crossword that left you baffled? This happens with proper names, archaic terms, and other more difficult grid entries, and when two of them cross, you might find yourself guessing instead of solving.

As it turns out, that difficult crossing, that unfillable square, that unsolvable spot, has a name, and it’s “Natick”.

From the article:

Back in 2008, The New York Times crossword puzzle featured a crossing of NATICK (“Town at the eighth mile of the Boston Marathon”) with N.C.WYETH (“Treasure Island” illustrator, 1911). If you weren’t from ’round these parts and were unfamiliar with the less-well-known Wyeth, it was a tough intersection.

Readers were not happy, and the term “a Natick” became shorthand for what is basically an unsolvable part of the crossword grid. (You can check out constructor Brendan Emmett Quigley’s take on the Natick here!)

So, if you’re ever flummoxed by a challenging crossing or an obscure intersection of terms, at least now you know what to call it.

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Crossword Cameos!

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When he was asked if his name had given him anything but grief over the years, actor Rip Torn replied, “Well, when I couldn’t get a job, everybody would say, ‘Where do I know you from?’ I said, ‘Crossword puzzles!’ That kept my name alive for years.”

And it’s true. Some names are simply crossword friendly and have shown up regularly over the years, transforming from pop culture reference to fully established element of crosswordese.

Many constructors have ETTA James, Arthur ASHE, Alan ALDA, IONE Skye, and Yoko ONO to thank for getting them out of a tight spot. Others owe completed grids to Mel OTT, Bobby ORR, ESAI Morales, Judge Lance ITO, and Robert E. LEE. (At this point, some of these actors could probably cite The New York Times or The LA Times on their IMDb pages.)

Then, of course, you have the numerous obscure ladies offering helpful three- and four-letter names to constructors. UNA and ONA and OONA and OSA and ENA and ESME and ISA and EWA, for starters. (Of course, INA and ANA have lucked their way into being more contemporary references, thanks to SNL’s ANA Gasteyer and Food Network’s INA Garten.)

(Una Merkel, someone many crossword solvers easily recognize
by name, but probably wouldn’t recognize from her picture.)

The one I’m guiltiest of overusing in puzzle editing is easily author ELIE Wiesel, because there’s only so many ways to clue ERIE before you start looking for other options.

If there was a top contender for person most frequently appearing in crosswords, I have to imagine it’s an ALI, ELI, or LEE, though each of these can reference multiple people, so the title would have to be shared.

Unless you also want to factor in fictional characters. I imagine ULEE of “Ulee’s Gold” or Mr. SMEE from “Peter Pan” would rank pretty high on the list of common crossword entries.

Unfortunately, some names are simply more suited for crosswords than others. Author Norman Mailer actually commented in an interview that he was disappointed not to be a common crossword entry:

“I’m hurt that I’m never in one of them. And I’ve got a last name with three vowels. You’d think I’d be hot cakes, but I’m not.”

Tough luck, Norman. But hey, maybe you’ll make a cameo in one of the puzzles in this year’s American Crossword Puzzle Tournament this weekend!

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A 12-letter word for puzzly frustration…

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Today, we’re tackling one of the most controversial aspects of the crossword world, my friends.

Oh yes, let’s talk about crosswordese.

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.”)

For me, one of the worst offenders is ELHI, the abbreviated adjective covering school K through 12. I have never encountered this word in the wild, and in fact, I only became aware of it after I started working with puzzles professionally.

Many of the dedicated puzzlesmiths I know try their hardest to avoid crosswordese at all costs, but unfortunately, so long as American-style crosswords dominate the landscape, crosswordese will be with us in some form or another.

But it did make me wonder: what are the most egregious, the most annoying, the truly infamous examples of crosswordese among my fellow puzzlers?

And when I reached out to some of my friends in the puzzle community, they enthusiastically responded.

New York Times Crossword contributor Ian Livengood (check out our 5 Questions Interview with him!) immediately fired back a litany of crosswordese he’d love to see stricken from puzzle grids, including ALAI (as in Jai alai), ULEE, YSER, ESME, ESNE, ERATO, ETO, SST, ASE, ISERE, and AARE.

The folks at Penny Press — whom you might remember from my previous posts about terrific puzzle-cluing — provided NUMEROUS examples of their least favorite bites of crosswordese.

ALAI made another appearance on Executive Editor Amy Roth’s list, among such suggestions as EKE, ETUI, and ELA, wherein she posed the pointed question “Who IS Guido, anyway?”

ETUI popped up on variety editor Keith Yarbrough’s list of objectionable entries, alongside ANOA, ANA, OLIO, and KEA.

Crossword guru Eileen Saunders offered INEE (an arrow poison), NENE (the infamous Maui goose), ATLI, SELD (as in “Not oft”, ick), and perhaps my least favorite crossword entry of all time, IRED.

Variety editor Cathy Quinn had one particular example in mind when she replied: “Anile. It just has no positive connotations at all.” [Random House defines ANILE as “of or like a foolish, doddering old woman.” An adjective sure to get you slapped in certain company.]

For an example of the level of enmity some crosswordese evokes, look no further than variety editor Andrew Haynes’ outstanding reply, which I proudly present in full:

OPE.

I despise that entry. I know that it has appeared in a poem or two, but be for real…

The door was ope
I saw the pope
He had some soap
It was on a rope

Pure drivel.

And for a marvelous glimpse into the exasperation crosswordese can elicit, I leave you with variety editor Paula Curry’s lyrical response, which makes for a wonderful mini-puzzle in itself:

What duel tool is full of E’s?
What Melville tale is in the South Seas?
What ubiquitous word is a building wing,
Or that wide-spouted pitcher thing?
Whenever I see such crosswordese…
I just get ired!

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