Tag Archives: Crosswordese

Let’s Play Crossword Bingo!

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Crossword.

If you solve enough crosswords, you’re bound to encounter some words more often than others.

Maybe the word has grid-friendly letters or a letter pattern that facilitates editing. Maybe it’s an otherwise obscure item that crosswords have kept in the zeitgeist.

Or maybe it’s a just three-letter word with vowels on either end, be it a female sheep, a tavern drink, a mine find, or fury, and that corner just won’t be completed without one of them.

Some solvers find fault with those words, the constructors who use them, or the outlets that publish puzzles featuring them. Other solvers, however, find fun ways to acknowledge their ubiquity.

For instance, a reddit user under the handle “atleasttheresmusic” created a bingo card based on words that crop up regularly in The New York Times crossword:

xwd bingo 1

Not only did they hit some classic examples of crosswordese, but they even managed to categorize their entries, highlighting crossword tropes like “short, poetic words” and the frequent use of abbreviations.

Between the bingo card itself and the many suggestions shared by fellow puzzlers in the comments, I couldn’t resist taking a crack at making a crossword bingo card of my own:

xwd bingo 2

As you can see, I’ve also organized the columns by category; from left to right, there’s abbreviations, names, vowel-heavy words, 3-letter entries, and non-U.S. terminology.

I couldn’t fit every entry I wanted to — EKE/IKE fell by the wayside, as did EWER — but I managed to jam a fair amount of crosswordese and personal pet peeves onto the card. Plus, given how often ALEE and ALOE appear, they’re basically a free space in the center of the card.

So how did I do, fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers? What words should I have included? Did the cleaner card created by “atleasttheresmusic” win out over mine, or did we both succeed in having some fun at the expense of crosswords?

And, most importantly, how quickly would you get BINGO if you used one of our cards? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you.

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View a Clue: Crossword Characters Answers!

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A few weeks ago, we brought back one of our trickiest recurring features: the View a Clue game!

If you recall, I selected ten fictional characters that commonly show up in crossword grids — some have become crosswordese at this point — to see if the PuzzleNation audience could identify them from pictures.

Without further ado, let’s give it a shot!

#1 (4 letters)

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[Image courtesy of Heroes and Villains Fandom.]

Answer: ODIE, loyal and drooly companion of Garfield and his owner Jon Arbuckle

#2 (4 letters)

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[Image courtesy of Pinterest.]

Answer: ASTA, beloved dog of film detectives Nick and Nora Charles in the Thin Man series

#3 (3 letters)

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[Image courtesy of Redbubble.]

Answer: REN, from Nickelodeon’s Ren & Stimpy

#4 (4 letters)

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[Image courtesy of Disney Fandom.]

Answer: SMEE, Captain Hook’s right-hand man from the Peter Pan stories

#5 (4 letters) [I’ve included two possible characters for this one.]

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view fcc 5b

[Images courtesy of E! Online and Wikipedia.]

Answer: ELSA

#6 (4 letters)

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[Image courtesy of Hulu.]

Answer: EYRE, more specifically Jane Eyre

#7 (4 letters)

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[Image courtesy of Amazon.]

Answer: IGOR, the assistant of Dr. Frankenstein

#8 (5 letters)

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[Image courtesy of Soap Central.]

Answer: ERICA, more specifically Erica Kane of All My Children

#9 (4 letters)

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[Image courtesy of Getty Images.]

Answer: AHAB, Captain of the Pequod from Moby-Dick

#10 (3 letters)

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[Image courtesy of Warner Bros.]

Answer: RIN, as in Rin Tin Tin, the famous Hollywood dog

How many did you get? Let me know in the comments below! And if you have ideas for another View a Clue game, tell us below!

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View a Clue: Crossword Characters

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Welcome to the latest edition of PuzzleNation Blog’s most visual feature: the View a Clue game!

I’ve selected ten fictional characters that commonly show up in crossword grids — some have become crosswordese at this point — and I want to see if the PuzzleNation audience can identify them from pictures. It’s a visual puzzle I call View a Clue!

Without further ado, let’s give it a shot!

#1 (4 letters)

view fcc 1

#2 (4 letters)

view fcc 2

#3 (3 letters)

view fcc 3

#4 (4 letters)

view fcc 4

#5 (4 letters) [I’ve included two possible characters for this one.]

view fcc 5a

view fcc 5b

#6 (4 letters)

view fcc 6

#7 (4 letters)

view fcc 7

#8 (5 letters)

view fcc 8

#9 (4 letters)

view fcc 9

#10 (3 letters)

view fcc 10

[All image credits will be posted with the answers next week.]

How many did you get? Let me know in the comments below! And if you have ideas for another View a Clue game, 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!

Puzzly New Year’s Resolutions

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happy-new-year-2020-with-lights

[Image courtesy of Dayfinders.]

It’s a new year, and with a new year comes new resolutions and goals, born from the welcome idea that the slate has been wiped clean and the next 365 days are full of possibilities.

That’s as true for puzzle solvers and constructors as it is for anyone else. On Twitter, I’ve seen puzzlers resolving to tackle every NYT crossword, or the daily Sudoku, or simply the jigsaw puzzles in their closets.

The folks over at the Crossword Puzzle Collaboration Directory (which is closing in on its two-year anniversary, by the way!) have also been sharing their puzzly resolutions. Writing clues faster, finishing crosswords or getting them submitted, improving the quality of their grid fill, publishing a cryptic or a themeless, and submitting to new editors or outlets were among the many worthwhile resolutions proposed.

There were also some marvelously open-minded suggestions, like employing proper Chinese PinYin to spell Lao-Tzu/Lao-Tze “Lao Zi,” or pushing for entries like NAAN, ROTI, DAL, and others to be considered acceptable fill, not crosswordese.

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And as you might expect, I have a few puzzly resolutions of my own.

In the coming year, I resolve to:

  • get through the backlog of puzzles that has slowly accumulated over the past year
  • keep track of the number of puzzles I solve each month
  • organize my voluminous library of puzzle books
  • (and complete the unfinished ones)
  • (and probably donate a bunch of the ones I haven’t touched)

Have you made any puzzly resolutions, fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you!

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An Ode to Crosswordese

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crossword1

Ah, crosswordese. Rarely a day — or a puzzle — goes by without at least one example of crosswordese making its presence felt.

For the uninitiated, crosswordese consists of words that appear frequently in puzzles, but not nearly as often in conversation or common use. My favorite variation on that definition is “words that crop up a lot in grids but are otherwise pretty useless.”

We’ve had some fun with this peculiar subset of the language in the past, whether we’re constructing grids full of crosswordese or challenging our fellow PuzzleNationers to identify examples of crosswordese in our View a Clue game.

Personally, I always enjoy seeing people work crosswordese into puzzly poems and stories. A few years ago, we stumbled across The Cruciverbalist’s Ball, a poem that packed loads of crosswordese into rhyming verse.

And now, another intrepid puzzler has contributed a puzzle poem for the world to savor. Writer, musician, and programmer Julian Rosenblum crafted a work he calls “An ODE to Crosswordese” and he managed to fill every line with all sorts of words you’re only likely to encounter in a crossword grid.

Enjoy!

An ODE to Crosswordese

The EMIR who went to ETON said AHA to James AGEE
“Point your EPEE O’ER toward ERIN and we all can sail ALEE”

Brian ENO drove an EDSEL; Arthur ASHE, a GTO
Raced from ASTI down to AGRA beating ASNER and DAFOE

“My ETUI contains an ATRA,” said the AGA to the ROI
That’s when ODIE said to ASTA, “this AIOLI is A TOI!”

Now the ONE L who’s in ONE A met the SUPE in MMI
Back when OLAF ate his OLEO and ELSA taught ELHI

If your I BEAM needs a T NUT then call OSHA, do it STAT
If your ARIA needs OBOE, try A MINOR or B FLAT

Each time ENYA visits ELBA she brings ORCA from OMAN
The YSER’s no match for YMA who serves EDAM with ELAN

On AER Lingus, trust the ETD; EL AL, the ETA
If your RTE is SSE, PANAM is AOK

Though you’ve NE’ER refueled at ESSO, seen an ERNE, or met Mel OTT
They’re ingrained in your AORTA like AMO AMAS AMAT

What did you think of the poem? Did any of your favorite bits of crosswordese make the cut? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you!

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The New Capital of European Crosswords?

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First, it was Lvov, Ukraine: a city that created a crossword spanning the entire side of a 100-foot-tall residential building.

Now, another country in Eastern Europe is making bold choices with crosswords in mind: Estonia.

estonia-map-boundaries-cities-locator

[Image courtesy of Encyclopedia Britannica.]

Crosswords are a global phenomenon. We’ve featured puzzle books from Europe on more than one occasion. So, naturally, each country must have its own concept of crosswordese, the curious and strange vocabulary that seems to exist only in the world of crosswords.

In Estonia, the editors behind the puzzle magazine Nuti compiled a list of ten towns and villages that frequently appear in their crosswords. Names like Aseri, Uulu, Erra, and Leisi were among those chosen for the fan vote.

But the winner by a landslide (162 votes!) was…

Aa.

estoniaaa

[Image courtesy of Pohjarannik.]

Yes, that picturesque coastal village in the north of Estonia we all know and love. Where you can see such sights as the Aa manor house and, I kid you not, a sand beach.

According to the 2000 census, the population of Aa was 190. There were nearly as many votes for the village as there are people living there!

And yes, I’m still calling it a landslide victory. The next nearest place, Aseri, had 89 votes. That’s nearly half! The lowest, Erra, garnered only 17 out of the 517 votes cast. That’s a landslide in my book.

Congratulations to the people of Aa. Can’t wait to see how you change the world of Estonian crosswords!

[Check out the original post that inspired this one, a New York Times piece by the marvelous Deb Amlen.]

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