Or well-known phrases. OREO : When my father was a young man, he would often go down to the corner store and use his weekly allowance to purchase this delicious treat. And now, in his elder years, my father looks back upon these weekly purchases with a wry, misty fondness — for, in many ways, they represent the fleeting and impetuous nature of his own childhood.
Like most publications, newspapers can be sued for libel at the drop of a hat — even in crossword puzzles. Especially in crossword puzzles. Otherwise, you could be held personally liable. Our annual advent sale continues with six brand-new bundles just for you! Step One: Get the right technology First things first. Step Two: Come up with a theme Like the gooey center of a deep-dish Chicago-style pizza, the most important part of any good crossword is its theme.
Of course, when coming up with a theme, there a few rules you need to follow… Rule One: Make the theme entries symmetrical. Pretty sneaky, huh? I started mailing them into the New york Times, they were getting rejected left and right, but finally I broke through and Will Shortz, the editor, the Guru of Puzzles, is a good friend and mentor now, and I've been writing for the Times and other major newspapers ever since. This is the size of the daily puzzle in the New York Times crossword. Sundays 21 by Monday's the easiest day of the week and Saturday is the hardest.
The first thing you need to do when writing a puzzle is come up with your theme, a bit of wordplay that will run throughout the puzzle, and because I'm a magician, I'm going to make the theme of my crossword playing cards. So my goal is to hide 10, Jack, Queen, King, and Ace inside other words. After you've come up with your theme you'll have to write down the long answers, and these are parallel in length. So, if you have a 10 letter answer you'll need another 10 letter answer. If you only have one 13 letter answer, that's fine, it can go right in the middle of the grid.
And it's like this in every puzzle, open up the newspaper and you'll see rotational symmetry. So in the case of this puzzle I have marquee name, I'm going to put that right in the middle of the 15 wide grid, that's 11 letters.
You can see that queen is contained there. And now to put in the black squares. We call this particular shape a Utah. And I'll play another one on this side.
You don't wanna put too many black squares because the words get smaller and the puzzle is too easy, which is why on a Friday and Saturday there are fewer black squares and there's lots of white space, lots of long words, which makes the puzzle challenging. Zac Efron will have a triple stack here like this, and I will do one more, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, up here.
Life-jacket gets us our Jack. And because that's ten letters long I've decided to do skin graphs, we'll do the plural. Put in a back square here, and another one down here. So, we're good with Jack and King. We have a lot of options for t-e-n, ten can be buried in a number of words because Zac Efron is eight letters, gotta find a suitable one for this corner. Split end. They make you a calmer and more focused person. Becoming a good solver is about understanding what the clues are asking you to do.
Look at me. I do The New York Times crossword puzzle every day, and I once tried to shoot a basket on the wrong hoop when I was on my 6th grade basketball team. Crossword puzzles are not about intelligence, they are about keeping your mind nimble and knowing what the sneaky trickster Will Shortz is asking of you. Show Will Shortz who's boss by attempting the puzzle! It's fun, really!
There is no shame in missing an answer or not finishing the puzzle. The key is learning what you missed. The more puzzles you solve, the easier it gets. Try these clues that are designed to be easy for most people: 1. Ready for another mini? The Mini Fill-in-the-Blanks Try this puzzle, with all fill-in-the-blank clues, and watch your brain work in ways you might not have expected:. Now what do you do? Still not sure looking things up is fair? Solve it any way you like. Solve With a Friend Tip: Solving with another person can work to your advantage.
Are you ready to take your solving a step further? Words to Know Clue: A crossword clue is a hint that the solver must decipher to find the answer that is then entered into the puzzle grid. Fill: A general term for the words or phrases that fill a crossword. The Mini Tenses Read carefully!
What would be the answer for these two clues? The Mini Part of Speech How well do you know your parts of speech? Try this mini on for size. If a clue is plural, the answer has to be plural.
The Mini Plurals See if you can keep your plurals matching. The Mini Cross-References Get some practice on these clues. The Mini Partners Partner up with this mini. Some of the signals you see might include: Abbr. The Mini Abbreviations Can you tacking this mini, briefly? Words to Know Constructor: The person who creates the crossword puzzle. Occasionally, left-right or mirror symmetry is used instead.
Cracking the Harder Clues. Puzzles are a kind of nonthreatening way to remind us that there is still mystery in the world. Here are some more clue types to conquer:. More Clue Types Clues With a "? But what if we told you that the answer is a four-letter word? Can you think of any other way the words in the clues can be used? On the surface, you might think that the clue is asking you about the current events you read about in the newspaper, but think: What other kinds of currents do you know?
The answer is five letters long. The Mini Question Marks Any questions? The Mini Quotes and Brackets Ready to have a conversation with your crossword puzzle? Try this one. Talk about tough cluing. This type of clue requires careful reading. Not this time.
The answer to that clue is RED. Depending on the puzzle, it might also be MET. The Mini Veiled Capitals Time to practice again. Watch out for those capital letters! Solvers either love rebuses or they hate them. The Mini Rebus Read up on how to put more than one letter in a square above and then practice with this mini puzzle. Remember, question everything. He says it fooled everyone! Still stuck? Bear with us. Not to worry, it took us a long time, too.
Sure it could. You Can Do It! Take this quiz to familiarize yourself with some of the more common obscure crossword entries. Bonus: Crossword Themes. And once you nail one answer in a puzzle's theme, figuring out the other long answers is usually much easier.
Crossword themes range from vaguely comprehensible to hellishly complex. Time to make a list of all the one-word TV shows I can find. The phrases I settle on need to be symmetrical in length so they can offset each other in the grid. The only exception is an entry going across the middle of the grid, which provides its own symmetry. Did I miss any good ones? Let me know in the comments if so. Black square placement is next, guided by some long-established rules: Entries must be at least three letters long, so no TV Guide -style two letter words allowed.
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