Tag Archives: New York Times

PuzzleNation Book Review: Two Across

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Welcome to another 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 Jeff Bartsch’s novel Two Across.

Vera is a math prodigy whose childhood has been spent in rundown motels as her mother’s sales job takes them all around the country. Stanley is an overworked master of trivia, living in a hotel under the thumb and watchful eye of his reclusive mother.

Vera wants adventure, intrigue, and freedom from her mother’s itinerant lifestyle. Stanley wants to abandon the Harvard-bound track his mother has railroaded him toward and take up his true passion: creating crossword puzzles.

When the two of them meet at a prestigious spelling bee, they form a curious bond in that nebulous gray area between friends and more-than-friends.

Stanley’s master plan is for them to fake a wedding for the cash and gifts, funding their plans to escape their mothers and live their own lives. But the scam is complicated by Vera’s growing feelings for Stanley and his singleminded focus on his goals.

As we follow them through Vera’s college career and beyond, we watch their relationship evolve and change, haunted by Stanley’s selfishness and Vera’s willingness to pick up at a moment’s notice and start a new life elsewhere.

But, through the peaks and valleys of friendship and more, Vera and Stanley’s mutual love of crosswords proves to be not only common ground, but the thread that may draw them back together.

Partly a coming-of-age story, partly a romantic comedy of errors, miscues, and unintended consequences, Two Across is an interesting look at the social awkwardness that often comes hand-in-hand with intellect, as well as the many curious ways peoples’ lives connect over time.

Stanley is, admittedly, a putz — proving the old adage that being smart doesn’t necessarily make you wise — and he becomes at times a frustrating character to follow, almost serving as something of an antagonist in the story.

Vera on the other hand, for all her foibles and quirks, is sincere, engaging, and believable, someone who forges her own path. While you do root for Stanley to right his ship and make up for his failings, it’s far easier to cheer for Vera when she picks up the pieces (more than once) and continues onward toward a hopefully brighter future.

And since this is a puzzle blog, I would be remiss if I didn’t discuss the crosswordier aspects of the novel.

The puzzle references for the most part are clever, with sharp themes and playful cluing. (Though a reference to having the 8-letter RIFFRAFF as a center entry made me wary.)

Stanley’s early puzzle efforts in particular are great, in one case cluing words like BUTTERFLIES, CONCERN, and APPREHENSION with “winged insects,” “business,” and “the catching of a suspect,” while allowing the anxiety theme to emerge. In another, he creates a New York-themed puzzle where the boroughs are located geographically in the grid.

(Sadly, we only hear about these ambitious grids, we never see them.)

But it’s Vera’s puzzles that drive the narrative. When difficulties between them arise, Stanley hopes that she will reach out to him through published puzzles, solving obsessively so he won’t miss out if she does.

As someone who has forged many friendships (and a relationship or two) on shared puzzly interests like crosswords, spelling bees, and trivia, I related to a lot of the awkward moments in this book, and I suspect many other readers will as well.

The novel does drag a bit near the end as it diverts from the Stanley-Vera focus for an unexpected interlude, but for the most part, Bartsch delivers an enjoyably Ross and Rachel-style romance for the world of puzzles.

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A PuzzleNation First Look: Will Sudoku

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Sudoku puzzles haven’t been around all that long, especially when compared to the hundred-plus years of longevity that the crossword puzzle brings to the table. Nonetheless, Sudoku puzzles remain one of the most popular puzzles these days, whether solved with pen and paper or in app form.

I’ve written about some of the many Sudoku variants before, but today’s post is something different. It’s the debut of a brand-new type of Sudoku. That’s right! I have the distinct pleasure of introducing you to Will Sudoku, the creation of topnotch puzzler Bassey Godwin.

This is a standard Will Sudoku grid. (Not to be confused with the Will Shortz’s Sudoku magazine.)

Named in honor of puzzle master and New York Times Crossword editor Will Shortz, Will Sudoku offers a challenge that your average Sudoku puzzle cannot match.

Instead of placing the numbers 1-9 in a 9×9 grid so that each row, column, and 3×3 box features all nine numbers without repeats, Will Sudoku tasks you with filling in the grid in such a way that the numbers 1-8 appear only once in each of the rows and columns as well as the 4×4 boxes.

As you can see, each row and column is split into two tracks, inside and outside. Horizontal lines are indicated by the similar triangular cells in the corresponding boxes in a row. For instance, horizontal line 1 contains 45238761; horizontal line 2 contains 23816457, as shown above.

The vertical lines work the same way, with outside and inside tracks within each column. This tight arrangement means a LOT of information is available to a keen-eyed solver, but there are also more spots to place your numbers.

There are numerous variations included in this puzzle bundle:

  • Will Triangular Box Sudoku: Instead of 4×4 squares, the grid is divided into large triangles that contain all 8 numbers
  • Will Horizontal Bar Sudoku and Will Vertical Bar Sudoku: Instead of the 4×4 squares, the grid is divided into vertical or horizontal bars that contain all 8 numbers
  • Will Variable Boxes Sudoku: A mix of 4×4 squares, vertical and horizontal bars, and triangles appear in a single grid

In addition to these variations, Bassey experiments with the form and offers a few new twists on his established template.

  • Will Sudoku Word Search: Instead of the numbers 1-8, eight letters appear in a grid, and once you’ve finished placing them all, you search the grid Word Seek-style to find an 8-letter word reading out in some direction
  • Will Trigonal Sudoku: A Will Sudoku grid is divided diagonally, leaving you half a grid to solve. Cleverly enough, each of the three sides of the triangle also adhere to standard Will Sudoku rules, with all 8 digits appearing once each.
  • Finally, and most challengingly, there is Will Samurai Sudoku, where you confront five interconnected Will Sudoku grids in one monster puzzle.

This debut collection of Will Sudoku offers 150 puzzles for $10!

As a solver, I was very impressed with how many different solving styles emerged from the Will Sudoku template. And going from nine numbers to eight certainly didn’t decrease the puzzle’s difficulty! (The new inside and outside tracks in each column and row certainly took a little getting used to.)

The puzzles marked “average” will keep you on your toes, and some of the ones marked “tough” will really test your deduction and logic skills. But for the price, you simply can’t go wrong.

Thank you to Bassey Godwin for giving PuzzleNation Blog the exclusive first look at Will Sudoku and allowing us to share this clever new Sudoku variant with our fellow PuzzleNationers and the online puzzle community at large!

But before I go, I want to leave you with one last surprise: a video of Bassey himself solving a Sudoku puzzle blindfolded! It’s mind-blowing stuff, and the perfect sendoff for this post. Take it away, Bassey!

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View a Clue: Common Crossword Words!

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Welcome to a brand-new feature on PuzzleNation Blog: the View a Clue game!

I talk about crosswords a lot here, and rightfully so. Crosswords are the most famous pen-and-paper puzzles in the world, and here at PuzzleNation, you can always find terrific, fresh puzzle content for our Penny Dell Crosswords App!

And although I love running our daily Crossword Clue Challenge on Facebook and Twitter, I wanted to try something different today.

I’ve selected ten words that commonly show up in crossword grids — some crosswordese, some not — and I want to see if the PuzzleNation readership can identify them from pictures. It’s a visual puzzle I call View a Clue!

Let’s give it a shot!

#1 (4 letters)

#2 (4 letters)

#3 (4 letters)

#4 (4 letters)

#5 (4 letters)

#6 (4 letters)

#7 (3 letters)

#8 (4 letters)

#9 (4 letters)

#10 (4 letters)

How many did you get? Let me know in the comments below! And if you’d like to see another View a Clue game (maybe about common names in crosswords or crosswordy animals!), tell us below!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

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!

A Guide to Crossword Clues

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[Image courtesy of npr.org.]

For someone who has never solved a crossword before — or has solved them before with less-than-stellar results — the field of clues that accompanies the grid is a daunting sight.

But if you take those clues one at a time, you’ll quickly find that there are different kinds of crossword clues, each with their own flavor and level of difficulty.

Now, I’m referring to American-style crosswords here. Cryptic or British-style crosswords have a completely different language when it comes to cluing. (Let me know if you’d like me to do a post on cryptic cluing!)

By far the most common style of crossword cluing is the synonym clue. The default form of cluing is simply offering a synonym or definition of the word. You practically can’t have a crossword puzzle without at least one.

Some recent examples of synonym clues from our Crossword Clue Challenge every weekday on Facebook and Twitter include “Before sunrise” for PREDAWN, “Ample” for ENOUGH, and “Talent” for KNACK. Simple and straightforward.

Another common cluing form is the fill-in-the-blank clue.

These clues can vary wildly in difficulty depending on how much information is offered. For instance, “Quentin Tarantino’s ____ Fiction” is a super-easy clue, whereas “____ Sea” would be pretty tough, even knowing how many letters are in the answer.

Along the same lines are the see-also clues. These are clues that reference other clues in the same puzzle, often by spreading a multiple-word answer across several entries.

For instance, you look at 3 Across, and it says “See 9 Down.” And when you look at 9 Down, it says, “With 3 Across, popular song by The Verve.” But you might need help from the crossings to get BITTER SWEET SYMPHONY reading across several spaces in the grid.

[Wait, wrong Clue…]

Some clues offer more information than you expect, if you’re observant. For instance, it’s common in many crosswords to signal a variant spelling, a foreign word, or an abbreviated word as an answer within the clue.

For instance, if the answer is AMEER (instead of EMIR), you might clue it as “Moslem chief” instead of “Muslim chief” to indicate the variant spelling. For REP, a standard clue would be “D.C. fig.” For SRA — short for SENORA — you might get “Mrs., in Madrid”.

(You can also employ wordplay with entries like these. For a French-fueled clue, how about “Nice, in Nice” for BIEN?)

And that serves as a marvelous segue into our final crossword cluing style: wordplay clues!

[Image courtesy of Rocky Smith Files.]

Wordplay clues employ some sort of pun or linguistic trickery to take them a step beyond the average clue. Often, these clues are marked with a question mark, indicating that there’s something going on beyond the surface meaning of the clue.

As you’d expect, wordplay clues are a favorite of mine, and they’ve been featured several times in our weekday Crossword Clue Challenge. Some previous examples include “Tot rod?” for TRICYCLE, “Tread the boards?” for WALK THE PLANK, “Star trek?” for SPACEWALK, and “Take the honey and run?” for ELOPE.

If you’ve never solved a crossword before — or never had much luck with them in the past — hopefully you’ll find some helpful tools here to guide you toward crossword-solving success.

And hey, if you need more practice, you can always check out the Crossword Clue Challenge every day at 2 PM EST on Facebook and Twitter!

Good luck!

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!

Goodbye, Merl.

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[Picture courtesy of crosswordfiend.com.]

The puzzle world was stunned this weekend by the sudden passing of a true crossword legend: Merl Reagle.

Merl has been one of the biggest names in puzzles for a long time now, one of the few crossword constructors who was successful and prolific enough to work on puzzles full-time.

Between his appearance in the Wordplay documentary and a cameo on The Simpsons alongside New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz, he proudly represented both the love of puzzles so many solvers share AND stood as a standard-bearer for crossword construction and quality puzzling.

Merl sold his first crossword to the New York Times at age 16 — ten years after he started constructing puzzles, amazingly enough! In a career spanning five decades, his contributions to the world of puzzles were myriad. Nearly every year, one of his puzzles appears at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. The crossword he constructed for the 100th Anniversary of the Crossword was turned into a Google Doodle, and, based on my research, is the most solved crossword puzzle in history.

A craftsman with humor and heart (and no small amount of anagram skill), Merl was truly one of a kind.

[Picture courtesy of tucson.com.]

I had the privilege of meeting him at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament this year. It was only for a few minutes while the tournament participants were tackling one of the early puzzles and the vendor’s floor was pretty empty. (Otherwise, there were always puzzlers crowded around Merl’s table between tournament puzzles. He was the center of gravity around which many fellow puzzle fans orbited, a master of ceremonies wherever he went.)

He was friendly and gracious, one of those people who can strike an instant rapport with virtually anyone. He put me at ease immediately as I checked out his latest puzzly offerings and we briefly chatted about the tournament itself. (I didn’t get the chance to challenge his legendary anagramming talents, sadly.)

Fellow puzzler and friend of the blog Keith Yarbrough was kind enough to share one of this experiences with Merl:

Merl gave me his philosophy of puzzle construction at the ACPT one year. His goal, he said, was to make the solver smile. Coming up with a funny theme was the main thing. His test when he came up with an idea was to run it past his wife, who is not a puzzler. If it made her smile, it was a keeper.

He wasn’t out to frustrate the solver with obscurities or unnecessary crosswordese, so he used common entries as much as possible. His mantra was that the fill should not be overly difficult.

[Picture courtesy of cltampa.com.]

The dozens of tributes I’ve seen online are a testament to how many friends and admirers Merl earned over the years. There are too many to link to here, but I want to highlight a few from fellow puzzlers Brendan Emmett Quigley, Deb Amlen, and David Steinberg.

Merl, you will be missed. Thank you, for the laughs, for the tough crossings, the trickiest-of-tricky clues, and the many unexpected delights you managed to spring on so many solvers.

You can check out Merl’s work on his Sunday Crosswords website as well as some of his collections on Amazon. Click the links. You won’t regret it.

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!

Can you solve BuzzFeed’s 14 Trickiest Crossword Clues?

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Last week, a fellow puzzler passed along this link, which had an intriguing premise. The folks at BuzzFeed asked prominent crossword constructors to contribute their favorite tricky or misleading crossword clues, challenging the audience to puzzle out as many of them as possible.

The constructors involved are a who’s who of top puzzlers, including Ben Tausig, Peter Gordon, Elizabeth C. Gorski, Brendan Emmett Quigley, Matt Gaffney, and several of the puzzlers involved in the Indie 500 tournament: Erik Agard, Neville Fogarty, Andy Kravis, and Evan Birnholz.

There are 14 tricky clues, each with either some crafty wordplay or some delightfully wicked humor attached.

Now, fair warning, some of these are a bit risque (one drops the f-bomb), but they will all put your puzzly skills to the test.

[I wonder how Nancy Drew would do…]

My personal favorites were “Journey accompanier, often [9 letters]” and “Michigan county I promise never to use in a crossword again [6 letters],” both of which involve a level of honesty and pop culture awareness that transcends standard crossing cluing.

I managed to riddle out 10 of the 14 clues. Some of them were vague enough to allow for multiple answers — you don’t have a grid or crossing entries to help you limit options, after all — so I gave myself credit if the correct answer was one of several that came to mind.

How did you do on this crafty BuzzFeed challenge, PuzzleNationers? 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!