Constructor notes: Adventure Awaits
Jul 2, 2024
Adventure Awaits is a midi (11x11) D&D-themed crossword that I just finished putting together. Before I start diving into the details, go ahead and give it a solve. It'll help to have some context as I elaborate on the components of its construction. Go ahead, I'll wait.
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Okay, crossword solved. Let's talk puzzles.
The idea for this crossword started with one of the spanners: BALDURSGATE. I
had recently finished Baldur's Gate 3 (incredible, BTW) and felt that it became
a big enough name in the gaming community that it was worthy of a puzzle. That
said, I wasn't really sure where to turn for the other themers. The most obvious
approach is other D&D cities, so I started thinking of some names that could fit
the bill. Waterdeep is a big one, a classic setting for many campaigns. Sword
Coast is the general region, maybe not quite what I'm looking for. Neverwinter
is less known, but then again there's a game named after it called
Neverwinter Nights. That's
it: games featuring D&D cities! And so the idea was born.
Now, most acceptable crossword themes have a secondary element that adds a little bonus intrigue to the solve. Unfortunately I couldn't think of anything to tie the two cities together. Instead, I opted to sprinkle in lots of D&D references into the clues and work extra hard on the fill to compensate. Maybe not as clean as some other puzzles, but I think it works.
But before diving into the fill, the next component of a crossword is placing the black squares. I started by inserting the themers equidistant in the grid, picking a grid size that lets them span 11-squares across. I then introduced black squares with the goal of segmenting the grid into corners and cutting down on the overall length of words. The goal at this stage is solvability, reaching a point where my crossword software can fill the grid with words that offer lots of possibilities.
There's no real rhyme or reason to the introduction of black squares other than a few key guidelines:
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Don't introduce more black squares than you have to.
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Segmenting a grid into corners is always a friendly option for a constructor, since it neatly divides the grid into groups of smaller words that only intersect the themers once or twice. The more themer intersections, the more difficult the fill because the themers are are fixed throughout the process.
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Look for tricky letters in your words (in my case, the W in
NEVERWINTER) and use black squares to your advantage. I know that W is a common ending letter, so I originally positionedNEVERWINTERsuch that the W is bordering a black square. I did not want it to be in the middle of a word.
Pinwheel shapes are really common in crosswords thanks to the convenience of
segmenting a grid into discrete corners, so I try to deviate from that pattern
as much as possible. I also like to fit as many long words as I can,
particularly in midis because they often lead to interesting words. That
technique really worked out for me because it eventually led to TRAVELPLANS
and MARTIALARTS, two spanners that do a great job supporting my original
themers. I stumbled upon these spanners by complete accident.
With solvability achieved (and by that, I mean a healthy amount of possible fill that my crossword program can quickly provide), the next step is to start experimenting with fill. This step always takes the longest for me, I often find myself going down word selection paths that end on some bad crosswordese or otherwise impossible words, causing me to delete the initial seeds and start fresh. There's also some wiggle room here to add more black squares if the fill is being difficult. For example, I added two more while filling because I couldn't otherwise arrive at words that I actually liked in the corners.
With fill, I start by reading through the suggested list from my program and
select a word that's within theme. Something like ARROW, where I see relevancy
towards D&D (arrows being a core component of many D&D classes) and tolerable
conditions for a solver (an arrow can be clued in many different ways and is
very common in regular speech). From there I experiment with different word
sequences, selecting my favorite for the next fill and repeating for the rest of
the corner. As is often the case, the first few selections end up with really
bad results, like EMU, EDDA, or the other dregs of your wordlist. When this
happens, it's best to go back a few words, try some different combinations, and
continue to experiment until the entire corner has a consistent quality.
Once you repeat this process a few times you start to notice contentious spots in the grid, areas where a word will often be awful due to the position in the corner and the intersection with your themer. A good approach is to start the corner with that word. Try to maximize the quality of your hardest word, and often you'll arrive at nicer fill at the easier edges.
In the case of Adventure Awaits, I really struggled with the upper-left corner.
Nothing was feeling quite right, I was constantly arriving at bad fill no matter
the technique. What finally worked for me was actually swapping my two themers.
Originally I had BALDURSGATE first, NEVERWINTER second, because I thought
ending on a W would make for easier fill. After swapping their positions, I had
no problem finding something I liked for the upper-left corner. Sometimes you
have to drastically change the plan to compensate for the reality of your
wordlist.
I'm not sure whether it was due to my themers or my black squares, but every
corner in this crossword was pretty difficult to fill. It's not normally this
bad; I had to revisit every corner probably 10 times before I found something
that I could qualify as acceptable. Even then I had to make some concessions,
EDDA, SGT, EMTS, and AGESA being some egregious examples. That's just
how the cookie crumbles.
Let's talk about some of the happy accidents that occurred during the fill. My
favorite surpises were TRAVELPLANS and MARTIALARTS, two full-length spanners
that appeared spontaneously from my wordlist. They both fit the theme
beautifully while maintaining a solid final grid score. I was really fortunate
to just stumble into these and their positions, I wish I could say that it was
premeditated but it was all luck. Once I saw them in the wordlist as potential
fill, I doubled down on them, making sure that I worked the corners to fit.
EMUS and EMOS kept popping up in the upper-right corner and I was not about
to concede to either of those words. It took so much tweaking to arrive on
something else, and that something is EMTS which is honestly not that much
better. But hey, at least it's not EMUS.
With the fill completed, the final step of construction is cluing. There's no
secret formula for this step. By the time you're filling the grid, you probably
already have a rough idea for potential clues. Maybe you have a few words that
are reserved for wordplay (e.g. ARROW), or some that are simply proper nouns
(e.g. EDDA). Either way, it's worth looking up some of the trickier words to
make sure that you're cluing them appropriately, that is, matching tense or
case. Other than that, the process is going from word-to-word and thinking of
something clever, cute, funny, or easy.
Speaking of easy, one thing I try to do in my first cluing pass is to seed easy
clues. The goal is to maintain a balanced difficulty, I want at least one or two
gimmes in every corner (at least for an average difficulty crossword, like this
one). If the corner is particularly esoteric (looking at you, EVAL vs.
AGESA) I'll lean easier, avoiding wordplay and cleverness. An initial
easy-clue pass is a great starting point for a grid because it lets your
imagination run wild for the rest.
It's hard to know whether or not a crossword is solvable until you have someone unfamiliar with the grid playtest it. Until then you're really just guessing, who knows if "Earth, according to sci-fi" is as obvious as you think it is when initially writing it. Everything that you clue is done with the prerequisite knowledge of the answer, there's no way to breach the gap in solvability that accompanies a blank canvas. So grab a playtester or two and watch them run through the grid.
In my case, playtesting revealed some serious painpoints around EVAL and
AGESA, which I had originally clued as two programming references. That's just
too much programming for one crossing. I laxed EVAL by rewording it as
"Assessment, for short" from "The E in REPL", making it more generally
approachable. I also noticed that NEVERWINTER is much less well known than
BALDURSGATE, so I tried to make the upper-left corner easier to compensate,
making PAIN an absolute gimme so that the wordplay in PATHS and ARROW is
easier to guess.
And that's about it! Thanks for following me in this construction journey. If you're wondering what the title is referencing, check out this hilarious Joel Haver video: Playing an RPG for the first time. Till next time.