Tag Archives: Reddit

The Great Rebus Debate

Posted on by
2

I love Reddit. You can find a subreddit to discuss practically any topic. You can share memes, share thoughts, share opinions, and debate other users for eternity there. I’ve learned a lot, laughed a lot, and been baffled quite a few times during my Reddit journeys.

So you can imagine my surprise when I stumbled across a post about crosswords in the subreddit r/mildlyinfuriating, a subreddit designed for all the little indignities, inconveniences, and choices that leave users slightly miffed.

The title of the post said it all: The crossword I’m working on expects me to know that I need to write multiple letters in one square.

You see, gentle reader, this person had just encountered a rebus puzzle for the first time.

For the uninitiated (welcome!), a rebus puzzle is any crossword that requires you to disregard the one-letter-per-cell rule of crosswords, placing a symbol, a number, or multiple letters into a single cell.

They are one of the more devious tricks in the cruciverbalist arsenal, and there’s no denying that the first time you encounter a rebus, it feels like you’re going mad. You know the answer, but it seems too long, or not quite right, and it won’t fit.

AND CROSSWORDS ARE ALL ABOUT MAKING IT FIT.

Reddit user grubas summed it up nicely: When you don’t know a rebus is coming it’s the worst thing ever.

Yes, there’s usually a clue or a title slyly mentioning the trickery afoot, but for a new solver or one unfamiliar with rebuses, that can often feel like not enough of a hint.

In two days, this post has accumulated TWENTY-SIX THOUSAND up votes and over a thousand comments.

Some users said that rebus puzzles are the reason they stop solving the weekly NYT crossword after Wednesdays. Some claimed they stopped solving the NYT altogether. That’s a bummer.

Many others, even rebus fans, acknowledged that the first time you encounter a rebus puzzle, it’s brutal. Plenty of those commenters now see it as a welcome challenge, and even an expected one when Thursday rolls around.

I do enjoy a rebus, though I’m frequently flummoxed by the ones where the rebus involves one answer reading down and a different one reading across in the same box. But either way, the confusion and occasional frustration I feel with them is usually worth it when I finally crack what’s going on and complete the puzzle. That’s a great feeling.

Several users requested a symbol or sign to warn them of a rebus puzzle. It’s a nice idea, but it also immediately spoils the chance for the a-ha moment when you realize you’re solving a rebus puzzle. I must confess I’m not a huge fan of this idea (unless it can be concealed in a Hint feature or something, and not be immediately evident from the jump).

The OP (original poster) later clarified their position on crosswords, stating that they view crosswords more as a trivia challenge than a “how do I make the right answer fit” challenge. Which is totally understandable.

In a world fraught with so much uncertainty, people like their routine, their comfort diversions, and for one of those comforts to suddenly not make sense, it can be genuinely unpleasant. I absolutely get that!

A day later, someone shared the post on the r/crossword subreddit, with the title Rebuses don’t seem so popular outside of r/crossword based on the comments here!

But, funnily enough, the debate was just as enthusiastic there as it was on the r/mildlyinfuriating subreddit!

Several commenters commiserated with the original post, understanding that for some crossword solvers, a rebus is a step too far. As Shepherd77 put it, “Rebuses are a hat on a hat and my head is already warm enough.”

Other solvers were surprised that the additional challenge wasn’t welcome among fellow puzzlers, citing that rebuses and other crosswords that break from the traditional rules were pleasant surprises and some of their favorites.

Everyone’s welcome to their opinion. I mean, I don’t go a week without hearing some solvers complain that the cluing and entries are too antiquated or unwelcoming to new solvers, while other solvers complain that there’s too much modern slang/pop culture in the puzzles.

Of course, if everyone’s complaining, that’s usually the sign of a good compromise.

I tried to read as many of the comments as I could to get a good sample from all sides. And I think xanoran84 had a terrific response to the vitriol in both subreddits:

Mostly, I’m very baffled by how much anger people express at puzzles being tricky. If I can’t figure out a puzzle, I just assume I’m not good at it yet, I don’t get mad at the puzzle for being a puzzle. But I guess just… People are different.

Ain’t that the truth.

So where do you stand on the great rebus debate, fellow solver? Do you like them? Love them? Loathe them? Think they should be marked as a rebus from the start?

Let us know in the comments section below. We’d love to hear from you!

End-of-Year Crossword News Roundup: Globe and Mail, Upcoming Xwd Events, and Crossword Love!

Posted on by
Reply

We’ve got all sorts of crossword-related news, updates, and stories for you today! Buckle up, and let’s talk xwds!

The Globe and Mail’s Annual Giant Holiday Crossword

Every year, constructor Fraser Simpson creates a giant holiday crossword for Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail. He has been doing so since 2003, so for many Canadian crossword and cryptic fans, this is a decades-long holiday tradition!

Not only is it enormous, but it’s visually striking, as he uses a cryptic-style grid, but American-style crossword cluing.

With 628 clues and entries, this puzzly behemoth will no doubt tax even the hardiest crossword enthusiasts!

And The Globe and Mail is offering a behind-the-scenes look at their constructing process, including an introduction to cluing styles for new solvers!

While it won’t be anything new to crossword enthusiasts or established constructors, it’s still cool that they’re willing to pull back the curtain on one of their biggest promotions of the year. Demystifying crosswords just means more people get to enjoy the puzzles we love so much. And that’s a very good thing.

ACPT, Boswords Winter Wondersolve, and Puzzmo’s Open Submission Week

Just a quick reminder of all the puzzly opportunities awaiting you at the end of this year and the start of 2026!

#1: Puzzmo is holding their next Crossword Open Submission Week from December 29th to January 5th, 2026, with new and established constructors all welcome to submit their puzzly creations.

Themed and themeless puzzles are welcome, as long as they fit Puzzmo’s specs, and the Puzzmo team has created an impressively thorough document to assist aspiring constructors with their efforts. Grid specs, examples of previously published puzzles, and more await anyone hoping to see their work pop up on Puzzmo.

#2: Registration for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament opens on January 1st for former contestants and on January 8th for rookies!

With the tournament changing venues for the 2027 tournament, this is the last time to experience the ACPT in Stamford’s familiar locale.

#3: The Boswords Winter Wondersolve is coming Sunday afternoon, February 1st (and registration opens Friday, January 2nd)!

This online only, four-puzzle tournament (3 themed puzzles and 1 themeless) kicks off another year of puzzly events from the Boswords team, and there’s plenty to enjoy.

They’ve already announced the team of constructors lined up for this year’s Winter Wondersolve: Adam Aaronson, Wendy L. Brandes, Pao Roy, and the team of Amanda Rafkin & Amie Walker!

Boswords never disappoints, so be sure to sign up early for this one!

Crossword Compatibility

Please allow me to wrap up this crossword-centric post with a fun story I spotted on Reddit.

Making a crossword for your partner is a wonderful gift, and I’m sure the significant others of many puzzlers have either commissioned a special crossword or taken the leap and constructed one themselves!

So it was delightful to read a story where BOTH partners had the same idea.

Yup, each of them had constructed a crossword for the other in secret, revealing their linguistic efforts at the same time.

How can you not love a story like that?

Even better is the top comment on Reddit, where this anecdote first appeared: “Your shared disregard for symmetry tells me you were meant for each other.”

Clearly it’s a match made in puzzle heaven.

What are you looking forward to in the world of puzzles for 2026, fellow solvers? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you.

Riddles of the Heart!

Posted on by
Reply
puzzlelove

I’ve always been a sucker for a story where puzzlers help make someone’s life better, their world a little bit more magical. I’ve had the privilege of constructing and facilitating several puzzly marriage proposals, for instance.

But there’s something even more heartwarming when it’s anonymous puzzlers helping a stranger with a puzzly dilemma. Like the time online puzzlers saved Christmas by decoding a kid’s encrypted wish list to Santa for his baffled mother.

This time around, it’s not Christmas magic, it’s a potential romance.

In a recent Reddit post, a request for help went out the puzzliest of D&D players:

I asked someone out using a riddle, and they responded with another one, but now I can’t solve it. We both dm at our local game store, and we’re running games tomorrow, I need a quick solution. I don’t need someone to give me the answer, but can someone please help walk me through how to solve this?

First off, that’s very cute.

Secondly, my dude, they responded to a riddle with your riddle. That’s a yes, my friend! Congrats.

As you might expect, his fellow riddle fans and puzzle fiends quickly explained how to find the solution, hoping that this marvelous exchange of riddles leads to more! Everyone loves a meet-cute, especially a puzzly one!

But what about you, fellow solver? Could you crack it?

I’ll give you a bit of space before I reveal how to solve it.

.

..

…

….

…..

……

…….

……

…..

….

…

..

.

Ready? Okay, let’s get to the riddle itself.

Egt y ryew nzc uslyc

This is clearly a single substitution cipher, also known as a simple substitution cipher, where each letter represented by another.

You could tackle this in a brute force way, treating it like a cryptogram. We know that “y” is going to be A or I. The most common three-letter word is “the”, which is a good place to start. At the very least, we can probably assume that “c” is the letter E, since it’s at the end of several words.

But the poem tells us how to solve it.

Start with the “letters in heaven,” your alphabet.

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

We get references to a mirrored screen or a shadow’s flip, so let’s try the alphabet backwards and placed underneath.

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA

We’re told to count backwards with steps no more than seven.

So let’s take the first letter in our secret message, E. Counting backwards (and wrapping around the alphabet again), that brings us to X. And in the mirror of X, we have C.

Continuing, seven letters back from G is Z, and in the mirror, A. Seven letters back from T is M, and in the mirror, N.

Egt Y ryew nzc uslyc
CAN

Continue for all the letters, and you get your answer written in the stars (presumably replying to his riddle):

Can I pick the movie?

Here’s hoping we get some updates in the future (or more riddles) from this pair of dice-rolling riddle-crafting delights.

And let’s offer one more huzzah for the anonymous puzzlers who helped crack the code!

Puzzlers… is there anything they can’t do?

Ornamental Puzzling!

Posted on by
Reply

Let’s do one last festive post before the new year begins!

Last week, a reddit user posted a picture of this Christmas ornament, and asked if the grid could actually be filled.

I happily accepted that challenge.

Now, there are a few caveats here. Obviously this is not a traditional crossword grid. It has no symmetry (either radial or axial), and it is littered with one- and two-letter entries, which are not allowed. There is also the small matter of the bottom left corner being completely disconnected from the rest of the grid.

Here is the empty grid with MERRY and CHRISTMAS preset (without the pencil blocking several squares):

Now, to stick to the reddit request, I left the grid mostly as is.

However, I could not in good conscience have part of the grid disconnected from the rest, so I removed a single black square in order to connect the grid fully.

There we go.

Oh. And one additional challenge: I only allotted myself ten minutes to fill the grid.

As usual in crossword construction, I tried to avoid abbreviations and variant spellings as much as possible (even with the two-letter entries), and keep the vocabulary as accessible as possible.

The only real challenge in this grid was finding a seven-letter word starting with R that aligned nicely with CHRISTMAS as the neighboring word.

In keeping with the holiday theme, I chose RAISINS, as the California Raisins and their long-lost classic Christmas special came to mind.

From that point, it was a pretty quick job filling in the rest of the grid.

There are more plurals than I’d prefer, and DYNAST is by far the most difficult entry in terms of vocabulary, but otherwise, I’m pleased with my nine minutes and thirteen seconds’ worth of work.

What do you think?

I might come back to this one and see if I could clean it up more. Eliminate all the plurals, or maybe put themed words for all the border words along the edge. Something to really challenge me.

But for now, I think this will do.

Please check out the reddit post to see other puzzlers’ attempts at filling this ornament’s unusual layout. Or maybe even accept the challenge yourself! If you do, I’d love to see your fill.

Happy puzzling, everyone! And Happy New Year!

Who Is The “Average Solver”?

Posted on by
2

In crossword forums, the comment sections of crossword blogs, and virtually any other online space where people share their thoughts on puzzles, you’re bound to see the same criticism over and over.

“The average solver wouldn’t know ____.”

I saw a comment on a r/crossword reddit forum recently, regarding the November 11 USA Today puzzle. 10-Down was clued “Spoons,” and the answer word was ENERGY. The poster was baffled.

(If you’re among those who didn’t get the reference, this clue references Spoon Theory, a concept common to those who suffer from chronic pain, fatigue or other debilitating conditions, regarding how many “spoons” a certain activity costs. It’s a way of quantifying how their condition affects their daily life.)

After it was explained, the poster asserted that “nobody” would make the connection between spoons and energy.

Now, no matter what you think of that clue — I personally would have gone with something like “Spoons, to some” or “Spoons, metaphorically” — it’s plainly false that NOBODY would make that connection.

Is it commonplace? Depends on how old you are and in what circles you travel, it seems. (Based on an informal poll I conducted, people 35 and younger are far more likely to know it.)

But one must never mistake their own unfamiliarity with a term for genuine obscurity. And I don’t say this out of judgment. It’s a mistake I’ve made myself on more than occasion. Heck, earlier this year, I did so when reviewing a tournament puzzle. I felt an entry (a hybrid fruit) was too obscure, only to discover others found it fairly common. Live and learn!

Another example where someone questioned the “average solver” was recently shared on Twitter. Constructor Malaika Handa shared part of a Crossword Fiend review:

She pointed out that this assumes that the “average solver” isn’t of Latino descent.

(It’s also worth noting that AREPAS is a more interesting entry than ARENAS, but I digress.)

What do you picture when you imagine the “average solver,” I wonder?

Because I think about those two nebulous measuring sticks a lot: “nobody” and “the average solver.” While they can be valuable to consider, they’re also very misleading.

I mean, what does the “average solver” know? European rivers? Football players? Greek letters? Classical composers or K-Pop bands? How many people would know ETUI if not for crosswords? It’s hardly commonplace.

Do they know those things AND solve crosswords, or do they know those things BECAUSE they solve crosswords? If constructors start regularly cluing or referring to spoons or arepas, then they become part of crossword vernacular, and then the “average solver” might be expected to know them.

Quite a slippery slope when you really start digging, isn’t it?

Plus, there’s more than one average solver, depending on how you look at it. Every outlet has a different “average” solver, and they’ll change over time.

Take PuzzleNation for example. Our Facebook audience is different from our Twitter audience, which is different from our blog audience. But there is overlap. We know there are Daily POP Crosswords and Daily POP Word Search solvers among all of those groups. But that’s five different “average solvers” to consider at the minimum.

tumblr_nnl5c43Ov61qd4fqho1_500

That’s the challenge, isn’t it? Every crossword constructor walks a tightrope, trying to keep their puzzles fresh while still appealing to solvers.

And, as recently pointed out in a New York Times piece, the Internet has accelerated the proliferation of new slang and terminology. Words become part of the modern vernacular much faster now. (And every time The Oxford English Dictionary adds new words, we get a sense of how deeply some of these new terms have embedded themselves.)

Personally, I think crosswords are better when we’re learning from them. I’d rather have to look up a word or assemble it from familiar crossings — and broaden my own vocabulary and knowledge — than see the same old fill. Those European rivers. Those composers. Those Greek letters.

More spoons and arepas, please. If there is an ideal average solver out there, let’s teach them something new.

   dailypopwsicon

Treat yourself to some delightful deals on puzzles. You can find them on the Home Screen for Daily POP Crosswords and Daily POP Word Search! Check them out!

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

Younger Solvers and Constructors Building Online Crossword Communities!

Posted on by
Reply

It’s a dynamic, fluid time for crosswords. It feels like we’re on the cusp of a sea change.

Women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community are featured more often, although we still have a LONG way to go on all of those fronts where representation is concerned, both for constructors and editorial staff.

Younger voices are rising up the ranks, and helping to influence the direction of crossword language through projects like the Expanded Crossword Name Database. Online resources like more inclusive word lists, free or discounted editing software (often constructed by younger solvers!), and words of guidance from online crossword collaboration groups are more available than ever.

Recently, these topics were tackled in The New York Times itself in an article about younger crossword enthusiasts penned by freelance writer and reporter Mansee Khurana.

mansee

Her article is a terrific snapshot of the modern crossword world.

It discusses the divide between older solvers and younger, and how the content of crosswords doesn’t always serve both sides. It tackles the concept of “evergreen puzzles” — crosswords edited for timeless reprint value, eschewing up-to-date and provocative references that would appeal to younger solvers and underrepresented groups for the sake of republication later.

The article mentions the many virtual and online spaces that are now comfortable haunts for younger crossword fans. Facebook forums, Discord chats, Zoom solving parties, Crossword Twitter, r/crossword on Reddit, and even Tiktok accounts dedicated to crosswords got some time in the sun, and it’s really cool to see how these new spaces have emerged and grown more influential.

[A solve-along video from YouTube, Twitch, and Crossword Tiktok user
Coffee and Crosswords. Actual solving starts around 10 minutes in.]

Several names familiar to crossword solvers were cited as well. Constructors like Sid Sivakumar (mentioned just yesterday in our Lollapuzzoola wrap-up), Nate Cardin, and Malaika Handa were all quoted in the piece, reflecting many of the same concerns we’ve heard from new and upcoming solvers in some of our recent 5 Questions interviews.

I actually remember the author’s post reaching out to the contributors and readers of r/crossword a few months ago, and I was glad to see the subreddit getting some mainstream attention. Yes, like any internet forum, it can be combative and argumentative at times, but that’s a rarity.

Most of the time, it’s a supportive community for crossword fans and aspiring constructors, a place where they share questions, bravely offer up their first attempts for input and criticism, and discuss all things puzzly. It’s genuinely inspiring to see new solvers on a near-weekly basis reaching out and being embraced by fellow solvers and cruciverbalists-in-progress.

I highly recommend you take the time out to read Mansee’s piece. She captures a true sense of not just where crosswords are now, but where they’re headed. And if these young people have anything to say about it, it’s headed somewhere very bright indeed.

dailypopwsicon

Have you checked out our special summer deals yet? You can find them on the Home Screen for Daily POP Crosswords and Daily POP Word Search! Check them out!

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