My favourite crossword clues
What I've learnt writing publishing my crossword (that couldn't fit in a Youtube video)
I’ve been editing and publishing my own version of the New York Times Mini crossword, which you can play right now!
You can watch an all encompassing look at some of my thought processes in the Youtube video I made about it, so I wanted to spend some time in this blog post going through some extra thoughts that I couldn’t fit in the video.
It’s happened more than once now that when me and my friends have gotten drunk they have started playing my crossword (Without me asking them to, I might add). I think puzzle solving is an incredibly underrated community activity, especially in the realm of crosswords and trivia where sometimes people just don’t know the answer. Thinking about it, a kind of pub trivia, group solve, slightly drunk, speed crossword game would be incredibly fun. These impromptu playtest sessions have given me some unique insights that I thought I would share here.
I don’t say this anywhere in the video, but fundamentally, my goal as a crossword writer is making my players feel smart. It would be very easy to write a bunch of impenetrable clues that no one can get so that I can feel smart, but why would I then bother sharing it with everybody. Some of the most satisfying moments as a game designer is when you can see the cogs turn in a player’s mind, as they trace the exact series of steps you wanted them to as they come to the answer.
In saying all that, I have had too much fun watching my players squirm and struggle with a clue that straight up makes no sense. I thought I would include a few of my favourites here.
"A josh"
This one is great because it plays with capitalisation. I am not talking about anyone named Josh, but a josh in a colloquial sense (joshing someone, pulling their leg). What makes this hard is the fact that “Legpull” as a phrase in not really all that common. Additionally, compound nouns and two word answers are some of the hardest to solve, especially for novices. Players would have LEG_ULL filled in, but not know what could fit in the last word, as they try and solve it as if it was one word, LEGRULL, LEGLULL, LEGGULL. In some ways, I actually prefer the mini crosswords to full sized crosswords, only because there are more one word answers that you can fill in like a Wordle. If you had solved _NT_, even without a clue you could deduce that it was either UNTO or INTO.
"Melbourne coffee order made with a double ristretto shot"
After completing the crossword for the day that this clue featured in, my friend texted me, “It was so lovely to see my coffee order appear in today’s crossword”. I don’t think many other cities do magic espresso, and even within Melbourne it isn’t exactly the most common order, but I have placed a great deal of importance in including specific regional references. Lots of my friends play the New York Times Mini and the Connections, and all of them bemoan hyper specific American references. Of course, As Australians we understand a lot of American references just through the cultural osmosis of watching American media. Most Australians could name the first US president, even if they couldn’t name the first Australian prime minister. But still, sometimes it feels unreasonable for me to know what a “Pink Pearl” Eraser is (we call them rubbers in Australia). I think the New York Times has really failed to step up to the international fanbase it has garnered. Keeping with tradition, I think the full sized crosswords have every right to be America – or even New York – specific, but it would do the rest of the world well to make the other games a little bit more internationalised.
"Like some jeans and most suburban housing"
I’m including this clue in this list just because I’m very proud of it. I think it’s cute, clever, and tricky in exactly the way I’d like all of my clues to be. It’s a bit of wordplay that requires you to put two disparate parts of your brain together. And the reaction to when people solve it is always entertaining. It’s halfway between the groan of a dad joke and the self satisfied smile of smelling your own fart.
"An ouchie or an owie"
This word featured in one of the hardest 6x6 puzzles I had written. In order to set expectations, I’ve given each puzzle a difficulty rating of one to three chillies. The New York Times use the day of the week as their difficulty setting, with Saturday being the hardest and Monday being the easiest. This fact is kind of replicated in the mini crosswords. All the minis are the same difficulty, except for Saturday which is a 7x7 and therefore harder. I would love to do a similar system, except for the fact that I am only usually posting two puzzles a week. In the future, I will probably go to one puzzle a week, publishing a 7x7 or 9x9 on the sunday.
As I touched on in the video, difficulty is hard to measure as the person writing the puzzles. For example, ROCOCO is obvious to me, but that’s only because I did fine art in highschool.
It is now a bucket list item for me to have a crossword published in the New York Times. I have some 60 odd years to achieve this goal, but I foresee it being quite difficult, given the prestige of the Times. Also, if anyone at the Times is reading this, why not consider hiring me to work on software. I would move to New York and work 11 hour days.