This is the crossword puzzle thread

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.

There were like 10 really bad puns in that column. And I usually care for puns!

i always mix up myrna loy and mina loy

(if the latter was a little more well-known i bet her name would be in a lot of crosswords)

Q: Should I start a crossword blog, in which I post crosswords I've made? (Submitting to newspapers is a drag.)

Y

I was thinking I could post the puzzles in iPaper so they could be easily printed out.

If you did this, it would have the added bonus of finally making me set up RSS feeds, which I am starting to feel like an old man for not having bothered with

Also, I wanted to say that despite doing Tausig puzzles every week for a couple years now, I still can't remember whether Mr. Kweli's first name is TALEB or TALIB.

39A in the av club puzzle today, the clue was "characteristic of some raunchy humor". i had RA_INESS and i really wanted to put RAPYNESS (RAPINESS?).

Puzzle fans should take a look at yesterday's NYT. It's pretty impressive from a construction standpoint. I'll send you a .puz file if interested.

i was having a lot of trouble w/ it for a tuesday! but yeah its a good puzzle

sweet, i will do it. i'm the only one at work today. :D

i kind of hated yesterday's NYT puzzle. :/ Mondays was tough, too.

Some of the fill was lame, but the gimmick made up for it.

i finished it. as i was doing it i was like "i don't know guys, i really don't like some of these clues/answers, what's so great here..." and when i had a couple of spaces left i cheated and looked online for the theme. then my brain exploded.

In the end, it's yet another "Look what I DID! (64A)" puzzle, where we are meant to admire the constructor, not enjoy ourselves while solving. Why not build a crossword museum and hang the completed grid on the wall? Then everyone can ooh and aah, and we can bypass the agony of having to fill the thing out ourselves, under the mistaken assumption that it might be entertaining.

^^^kind of agree with rex the crossword guy's take on it

i dont understand what he means tho--i mean what is an example of an enjoyable crossword

my guess is he means when it seems like a puzzle has a lame fill--and yesterday's had lots of lame fill IMHO--just to satisfy a gimmick or whatever, then it's not enjoyable

but here's his whole take on it

http://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/2008/12/tuesday-dec-23-2008-joe-krozel-arizona.html

there's definitely a difference between getting the answer to a hard clue and going "nice, that's really clever/funny" and "making up words won't help you".

i dunno--doing xwords like that for me can be like reading really beautifully constructed novels or stories--the joy in the reading/doing comes in that sort of oh wow look how perfectly structured this thing is

its like trying to figure out the mystery while youre reading the story--who cares if the method/motive/whatever is improbably or corny, the fun is in the figuring out

i like a good theme in my crossword with not too much trickery/corny-ness. but what do i know, i can barely finish a wednesday

i just finished it, its pretty boring--i mean its straightforward and not very irritating, but im not gonna remember it like ill remember yesterdays