This is the crossword puzzle thread

Results 1 - 10 of about 615,000 for lge large.

i think i have seen it before on t-shirt order sites and such, sml med lge, but wheneveri see "lge" i think "lg electronics"

Google agrees with you.

aww @ this week's av club puzzle

Funny, too!

ugh, crossword pet peeve = "mikes" as a fill meaning "microphones". second time i've seen it.

better than "mics"?

it's always weird when ya do the puzzles in some random newspaper that only seems to feature puzzles made by a Computer, and both puzzles on the same page have the same stupid filler words on the same day

oh that gets my blood boiling, i tell ye

no, "mics" is correct.

I prefer "mics" myself, but as I once pointed out on some other, long-forgotten thread, "mike" predates "mic" in Webster's by almost 40 years (1924 vs. 1961).

huh. but no one writes "mikes" anymore except noobs, and i like my crosswords to be current!

"mics" should be reserved for talking about acid

Robbins Library (Arlington, MA) presents master crossword constructor Will Johnston on Thursday, April 24 at 7:00 p.m. He will provide a fascinating look at the craft and art behind the puzzles you see in newspapers and on the web every day. Johnston, a nationally published constructor and moderator of /The New York Times/ online crossword forum, will demonstrate and discuss creating puzzle themes, making diagrams, filling them with interesting words and phrases, and writing both tricky and straightforward clues.

You'll walk away from the event with new insights to enhance your own solving, and renewed appreciation of this addictive pastime.

The event is presented by the Cruicverbalists of Boston. For more information, visit http://www.bostoncru.org.

Two new-ish puzzles on Flickr (Casuistry has already done them):

Up All Nite
Around the World (technically themeless, but a slight theme began to develop anyway, which explains the title)

If anyone wants them in Across Lite format, let me know and I can e-mail.

"bro" was an answer in yesterday's NYTimes xword bros

What was the clue?

Pal

I just sent a puzzle to Tribune Media Services. Hoping for a bite soon...

The theme fills on Up All Nite are terrific (the second one in particular). (And the fourth one in particular.)

Thanks! I liked those, too. The third is a bit of a stretch, I know. B.T. said the puzzle "didn't quite work" for him, so I'm not sure if it's worth shopping around or not.

I did Up All Nite, I really liked it. It was more challenging than some of your earlier ones. The only one I thought didn't quite make sense with the clue was 43A, but it's cute and was one of the first theme answers I got anyway.

Keep at it, dogg.

I wanted to make a puzzle called "KKK Meeting," in which all of the fills would have three Ks in them. (Alternate title: "Three Strikes, You're Out.") I came up with an extensive list of possible fills (NEWYORKKNICKS, KNICKERBOCKERS, RIMSKYKORSAKOV, KICKBACK, KAKIKING, KANKAKEE, KNOCKKNEED, KICKTHEBUCKET, KIRKPATRICK, LIKECLOCKWORK) but couldn't get the grid to work. Problem is, once you introduce all those Ks, you have to go the other direction with them, too. (Fun fact: four Ks = KNICKKNACK; five Ks = KNOCKKNOCKJOKE.)

Actually, I may have spoke too soon. I think I know how I could make it work now.

If you're going to call it "Three Strikes, You're Out", then you can use fills like NEWYORNICS, RIMSYORSAOV, ICBAC...

Oh oops xpost unless you just noticed that.

That's not what I was thinking, but that's a fantastic idea.

Goddammit, I just wasted the whole day making that puzzle.

Mmm... well, I won't tell your boss if you don't.

tausig's "theme theme" puzzle this week was fun.

Yeah, I just did that this morning.

I need to make some more puzzles, but themes come to me so sporadically.

Okay, here's a general question. Sometimes you'll see a clue like "Is crooked" and the fill is CHEATS. Would it be appropriate to turn it around, though? -- i.e., the clue is "Cheats" and the fill is ISCROOKED? I can't remember ever seeing something like that as a fill before.

The alternative would be to turn ISCROOKED into a fill in the blank, like if there was a song called "Everyone Is Crooked" and the clue would be "Everyone ________" -- but I'm under the impression that fill-in-the-blanks of longer than 5 letters are generally frowned upon.

This might be better off asked on the Cruciverb listserv, but I'm sort of intimidated to post there.

I think your best bet would be to write a clue with a similar grammatical structure as the fill, right? Bad example: clue ISCROOKED with something like "has been known to cheat."

Actually a better example for ISCROOKED might be "takes bribes"

Yeah, I like that better, too, although there are a number of fills I can make starting with IS, so it doesn't have to be CROOKED necessarily. I've just rarely seen that construction in a puzzle before, so it seemed a little weird.

I can't recall seeing IS in an NYT puzzle, but I'm almost certain they'll use constructions that are essentially the same thing -- HAS something, WAS something, etc.

The answer is: This is highly frowned upon. If you have a phrase for a fill, it should be a phrase that occurs naturally (exception: you know, special themed puzzle answers where breaking the rules would be appropriate), not just some sentence fragment. So, ISCROOKED is a really bad fill -- but the fill-in-the-blank clue is probably the best way to clue it.

Don't think I've asked this before - it may be simple but I'm terrible with cryptic crosswords. There is a book called "Landscape Painted With Tea", which is apparently a crossword clue. Does anyone know the answer?

(Note: I haven't read it for years so the answer may even be in the book at some point, and if so then please excuse my extreme denseness.)

There's a whole other thread for cryptic xwords. Does the title say the number of letters (as such clues traditionally do)?

Ah well, this is all moot, anyway, as I've discovered that I fucked up my grid. This after staring at the thing for like three hours yesterday -- somehow it didn't occur to me that that square in the middle was only part of an across fill, not a down fill. Usually my software program picks up on errors like that. Oh well. Back to the drawing board.

lol @ slate

http://www.slate.com/id/2198171/pagenum/all/#page_start

I resent the conflation of crossword puzzlers with sudoku solvers.

Btw, I just got a rejection e-mail from Will Shortz's assistant. :/

keep at it, maybe the next one will be from shortz!

It was actually a nice e-mail: "Will did appreciate seeing your work, tho."

what a shitty article

Mention a frequent obsession of puzzle people, the NPR "news quiz" show, Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me! (Or, as I call it, "Wait Wait ... Please Kill Me!")

i know that wwdtm is pretty corny but dont show your hand and reveal yourself as the corniest motherfucker on the planet with a joke like that

Sorry: Doing puzzles reflects not an elevated literary sensibility but a degraded letter-ary sensibility, one that demonstrates an inability to find pleasure in reading. Otherwise, why choose the wan, sterile satisfactions of crosswords over the far more robust full-blooded pleasures of books?

i was just thinking a few days how even though i read books all the time, that doesn't usually force me to make connections, remember information, and think creatively like xword puzzles do. totally different things, not mutually exclusive (duh).

Also books don't get me to think about an EWER or Myrna LOY nearly as often.

Also also finishing a book feels pretty pedestrian next to the triumph of finishing an xword.

Sorry: Doing puzzles reflects not an elevated literary sensibility but a degraded letter-ary sensibility

...says the guy who just made a pun. Also, by "elevated" I think you mean something like "bourgeois"? But I haven't read the article.

I have long said that there is more poetry in the NYTimes xword than in the average poem.