Word Salad

The Rebus Clue

on July 19, 2012 - 9:12 PM ET

A few links before this week’s post:
• The current puzzle
• Our puzzle-solving guidelines

Theme Variations

Joshua Kosman and Henri Picciotto on July 12, 2012 - 2:01 PM ET

[First off, links to the current puzzle and solving guidelines]

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t solved our previous puzzle yet, you might not want to read on.

One of the things we’ve been exploring during our first year at The Nation is how to add thematic content to the world of the black-square cryptic crossword. (Variety cryptics, of the kind that appear monthly in Harper’s and the Wall Street Journal, are themed by definition, and don’t need our help.) The themes have come in a variety of flavors, but one way to categorize them would be based on how pervasive a theme is in a given puzzle.

Following Frank

Joshua Kosman and Henri Picciotto on July 5, 2012 - 5:52 PM ET

[First off, links to the current puzzle and solving guidelines]

When The Nation announced an opening for cryptic crossword constructors, each of us had been solving cryptic crosswords for many years. Like many of the experienced solvers we know, we had largely lost interest in standard American black-square cryptics, such as the ones found in Games magazine and the occasional Sunday New York Times. Those puzzles have a limited audience: beginners find them impenetrable, but for more experienced solvers they are, frankly, rather boring. Most experienced solvers we know sooner or later migrated to so-called variety cryptics, such as the ones in Harper’s or The Enigma, or to British puzzles.

This state of affairs made us wonder whether applying for the job at The Nation made any sense. Would we want to create puzzles of a kind that we ourselves do not enjoy solving? But further reflection convinced us it would be worth a try. One of the things that swayed us was the example of Frank Lewis, who had a broad and loyal following that extended over many decades. In other words, he had achieved something unique among US constructors of black-square cryptics. What was his secret? Could it be the fact that his style was well outside the US cryptic mainstream?

Ad Policy

Straight and Narrow

Joshua Kosman and Henri Picciotto on June 28, 2012 - 7:33 PM ET

[First off, links to the current puzzle and solving guidelines]

The other day we heard the behavioral economist Dan Ariely talking on the radio about his new book, The Honest Truth About Dishonesty. One of its themes is that people’s dishonesty can vary across a wide spectrum of behavior, depending on the circumstance. That in turn got us thinking about cheating in solving crosswords. Is there even such a thing? And if so, what are the parameters?

At a first approximation, of course, cheating on a crossword is like cheating at solitaire—unless you’re enrolled in a competition, it’s a contradiction in terms. Solving a puzzle is something each of us does for our own enjoyment, in our own way. Any technique I use to solve a crossword is no business of yours, and vice versa.

Solver's Disposition

Joshua Kosman and Henri Picciotto on June 22, 2012 - 5:13 PM ET

Henri: When you’re solving a cryptic, it can be fun to argue with the constructor in absentia. In our weekend breakfast solving group, for instance, we used to have ongoing arguments with Frank Lewis, The Nation’s cryptic constructor, year after year, decade after decade. In our imagination, we composed a letter that kept getting longer and longer, listing our objections to his clues. This was all in fun, and as much as we complained, we still had fun solving his puzzles.

Joshua: I’ve written those letters in my head myself, more than once. But I never would have considered sending one. What would be the point? Solving puzzles you don’t enjoy, or that go against your personal aesthetics, would be a bore. If the puzzles are that bad, your time is better spent doing something else.

Henri: That’s true. When I pick up my solver’s pencil, I try to put away my editor’s pen. Of course, it’s also fun to solve a puzzle where the clues are so consistently elegant that there is nothing to argue with. The obvious example is Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon’s variety cryptics, which appear monthly in the Wall Street Journal.

Keeping It Inside

Joshua Kosman and Henri Picciotto on June 14, 2012 - 7:30 PM ET

[First off, links to the current puzzle and solving guidelines]

A classic Monty Python sketch concerns a meeting of the Royal Society for Putting Things on Top of Other Things. That, of course, is simply silly. But as cryptic crossword constructors, we do often feel like a local chapter of a hypothetical Society for Putting Things Inside Other Things.

One of the first things we check for when writing a cryptic clue is to see whether the answer word can be read as one word (or word part or anagrammed word) within another. There’s a certain purity and elegance about container clues that makes them a delight to construct and to solve. For one thing, containers often break the entry at unexpected and entertaining places that do not correspond to the entry’s etymology. For another, there’s a clarity to the way the wordplay works that is evident and pleasurable to even a beginning solver.

Loosening Up

Joshua Kosman and Henri Picciotto on June 7, 2012 - 7:06 PM ET

[First off, links to the current puzzle and solving guidelines]

We’ve been writing a lot on this blog about the world of British cryptics, particularly in contrast with the American scene. There are a couple of interrelated reasons for that. One is that cryptics are more widespread and more popular on the other side of the Atlantic; they’re found in five daily newspapers and in other periodicals. Even people who may not solve them regularly are often familiar with their workings. (It’s no accident that cryptics are often referred to over here as “British-style” crosswords.)

The second reason is that there’s a vibrant and ongoing discussion among British enthusiasts about the art of cryptic clueing—innovative approaches to wordplay, debates over the aesthetic merits of this clue or that. These are the hallmarks of a living and developing culture.

The Chicken and the Egg

Joshua Kosman and Henri Picciotto on May 31, 2012 - 6:53 PM ET

[First off, links to the current puzzle and solving guidelines.]

There’s an old joke among crossworders about the solver who meets a puzzle constructor for the first time and says, “I’ve always wondered how you go about creating a crossword. Which comes first, the grid or the clues?”

For ordinary crosswords, of the sort you find every day in the New York Times and other newspapers, this is an amusingly nonsensical question. Creating a grid in which every letter is checked (i.e., appears in two different words) is a task with enough constraints to keep a constructor on the alert. (For more on the different kinds of grids, see our blog posts on square patterns and diagram construction.) So all a constructor can really do is build a sound diagram, and then proceed to write clues for all the entries.

Cryptic Parlor Game

Joshua Kosman and Henri Picciotto on May 24, 2012 - 9:51 PM ET

[First off, links to the current puzzle and solving guidelines]

The charade is a basic type of cryptic clue in which the entry is broken up into consecutive chunks. These are then defined one after the other, with the definition of the whole coming first or last. This is not unlike the parlor game of charades, or the classic verse charades. For example, from Puzzle 3227:
GORGONZOLA Ugly female novelist makes cheese (10)