Constructor notes: Adventure Awaits

Jul 2 2024 - posts, constructor-notes

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.

(this area intentionally left blank)

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:

• Don't introduce more black squares than you have to.

• 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.

• 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 positioned NEVERWINTER such 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.

Swarm of Bees

Jul 2 2024 - reviews

As you've probably noticed, I'm experimenting with adding images to the beginnings of my reviews. The thought is that having the completed crossword alongside the text will help with the longevity of these posts, since if you're not there to solve the crossword the words are otherwise meaningless. Let me know what you think! Anyway, on to the normal review.

Oh boy is Puzzmo not giving me a break with the crossword lately. Today's was obscenely difficult. And I don't say that frivolously. There are some clues in this grid that are absolutely devilish, wordplay without the question mark that preserves just the barest thread of meaning.

Here, let me give you an example: "Bring to a tidy conclusion" (SEWUP). If you didn't fill TIEUP as your first answer I don't believe you. This clue is easily deserving of a question mark, or at least a "perhaps". My sewing is anything but tidy.

I'm not sure there's a theme here. I mean, there certainly are a lot of B's ("Swarm of Bees", by the way). But what do DUBBLEBUBBLE and BABYBACKRIBS have to do with one another? As far as I can tell, nothing. That's not to discount the impressive feat of starting every clue with a B, even if I didn't notice it until I read the post-solve description. I blame puzzle-induced tunnel vision.

I tried to be strategic with my hint usage, but you can't really blame me for feeling constantly tempted with clues like "Babushka, Yiddish-style" and "'But I'm a Cheerleader' director Jamie". I got lucky in that both of my hints were instantly attainable and helped me fill in some critical letters for BABYBACKRIBS. If anything I should've hinted earlier.

BBQRUB for "Brisket flavoring" is so non-specific it almost feels wrong. Not TENDER or SAVORY or CRISPY. Just BBQRUB. Nice. Has the constructor eaten a Brisket before? If it only tastes like BBQRUB I feel sorry for them.

"Baseball club" BAT also has me reeling in disbelief. If a bat is used for baseball, doesn't that disqualify it as a "club" because it isn't used as a weapon? Like, a baseball bat becomes a "club" in application, otherwise it's just a baseball bat. Look, I'm just trying to justify my time here, help me out.

Pet Names

Jul 1 2024 - reviews

This crossword destroyed me. I can't begin to explain how many squiggly lines appeared after I had finished entering letters into the grid, demonstrating my vain attempts to occupy each empty square with something, no matter how nonsensical. I think the more crosswords I solve, the worse I become at solving them.

I actually breezed through the first half of this grid, plonking HONEYBADGER and having an altogether good time. I made a couple mistakes, entering AWL instead of AXE for "Woodcutter's tool" and misremembering "Fitzgerald crowned the 'Queen of Jazz'", ELLA. I struggled a bit on EASYAS for "Marks of a bird course?" because the wordplay doesn't make any sense, a feeling that I stand behind even after reading the post-solve description where the editor explains it's a Canadian idiom.

The bottom half of the grid was where the real struggle began. On my first pass I was only able to slot POSIES, SALTED, and DRUG, and that was after reading all of the acrosses. My self-satisfied feelings of cleverness immediately dissolved into panic as I watched my time tick up, desperately searching for something to key into.

I was surprised that I couldn't slot anything for "Apt rhyme of 13-Across"; there aren't that many things that rhyme with SPA, and few of them aptly. In retrospect, AAH is kind of a BS word anyway, so I don't feel that bad about myself. It also doesn't help that I misspelled SARAN wrap as "seran", making "Hawaiian word for bigeye or yellowfin tuna" unnecessarily difficult.

Man, some of the fill in that lower grid is rough. AGITA for "Stress that you can't do anything to address" is kind of insane. Where does this word come from, and why should I know it? Either way, the real time sinks were 32A and 34A, with a couple of idioms that I just couldn't nail down. Not to mention the themer's pet name, SUGAR, that likewise vacated my mind.

Regardless of how this crossword went, it's a reminder that even after solving some 60 of these things every morning I can still be humbled by an easy puzzle. It's nice that Puzzmo's midi crosswords can pose such a significant challenge, even if most of it can be chalked up to my own inability.

(Your School Has No Gymnastics Team) This Is A Last Resort

Jun 30 2024 - reviews

I'm sure someone out there had a ton of fun with this crossword, but that someone was not me. This puzzle was packed full of FRINGE references, totally out of my league.

Let's just skip the title gore and dive straight into the grid. The bottom half stacks two Boomer references: MISTERTIBBS, a 1967 role for a movie I know nothing about, and PENORPENCIL, a supposed "Consideration for a crossword solver", if the last time you solved a crossword was before the advent of the internet. These lovely spanners cross no less than TOR, MURPH, VESTEE, ALASNO, and two normal words that are clued insanely: MERE ("Maman, formally") and CAMP ("2019 Met Gala theme"). I tried my best to solve this grid without hints but the fill did me no favors.

Lots of clues in this grid try to incorporate humor but only serve to misdirect. Take "Professional org. for punk-ass book jockeys", ALA. What makes the librarians "punk-ass"? Does the constructor mean punk? Looking up "punk-ass" in the dictionary, I get "obnoxious, stupid or otherwise unworthy of respect". What is the constructor trying to say here? ^[1]

I struggled with "Sweatband spots" for a hilariously long time because I wanted FOREARMS to fit so badly. Recognizing that "spots" refers to a plural and seeing that FOREARMS didn't fit, I thought "wait, where else on the human body are there more than one of a thing where you can place two sweatbands?" Turns out that the plural is referring to multiple people (FOREHEADS). Fair enough.

Despite my problems with the bottom half of the grid, the top half went fairly easily. THINGAMAJIG was a huge help, a very easy plonk compared to the rest of the puzzle. I'm also a big fan of SCREENAGERS, though maybe not so much the clue accompanying it. I think this is where the title comes in, with 30-somethings playing High Schoolers in the movie Bring It On. Yeesh, kind of a deep cut.

I did have some trouble with REGRAM, since I'm unfamiliar with the word (and the platform), but the clue gave me enough to puzzle it through. Puzzmo really wants me to buy into the whole Twitter/Instagram culture. I thought we've all agreed that social media is a bad thing?

The right side is a little rougher, with ONT, SGTS, CIGS, and VANE. Firstly, I don't think ONT is a real abbreviation. Is this meant to be "ointment"? VANE really should be weathervane, but for some reason it's OK to shorten it because crosswords.

Anyway, hope you folks had a better time with this puzzle than me.

Beautiful Junky Mess

Jun 29 2024 - reviews

Oh do I feel like a fool after this puzzle. It's a hard puzzle, don't get me wrong, but I completely butchered the clues that the constructor intended to misdirect. I fell for every one of the traps!

My first pass through this crossword I only managed to slot GEICO and GAB. And even then, I spelled GEICO incorrectly (it's a C, not a K). Things did not get much better from there. I was doomed from the start.

In my naivety, I slotted CARDS for "The Magician's deck" and MOAN for "React to a romantic gesture, maybe" (a little raunchy for your average crossword, but what do I know?). I think my critical thinking skills were sacrificed in my desire to get something on the board. Especially because the spanner references are completely meaningless to me (I never watched Sesame Street as a kid, go figure). ELIMINATES and ILOVETRASH were easy enough to put together after I struggled through the surrounding fill, but I stood zero chance on ALEXADEMIE (who?) and STREGANONA (wat). Hint me, please.

I think most of this crossword is pretty great. I enjoy being at the butt end of a clever misdirect or good wordplay, even if it makes me sound like an idiot when I type out a review. What I don't like are some of the crosswordese phrases that I can never remember, like the clue for NIXED, "Put the kibosh on". Or, how about the made-up word OPPO for "Dirt on a political rival"? You can't convince me that people actually say this stuff. "Pickleback, e.g.": is this even English?

LEVI as "Name on a jeans tag" also has me a little salty. I originally dismissed LEVI as an option because the tag is "Levi's", emphasis on the S (I'm even looking at a pair of jeans right now to double-check). So I guess the "name" part of the clue is supposed to denote that it's not the tag verbatim, but the man himself, Levi Strauss. To which I parry, that's just unnecessarily confusing! In a hard crossword like this one I don't need the constructor making it even harder with some artificial ambiguity. Maybe it's just a me problem.

Anyway, if I were still tracking Taylor Swift references this last week would've been a gold mine.

Air-Borne

Jun 28 2024 - reviews

What a struggle! I had a really hard time with this puzzle, but mostly not in a good way. I think there's a lot of extra difficulty for those unfamiliar with some of the spanner clue references, as I was.

I finished the crossword, read the blurb, looked at the crossword again, looked at the blurb again. There's no theme here, right? There are four words that span the entire grid and intersect in a pleasant way, and each one has something to do with the constructor's favorite TV shows. But by "something to do with" I mean the barest of references, like saying VOICEACTOR is a reference to "Avatar: The Last Airbender". It's clear the grid was seeded with four spanners, but apart from that there's nothing tying it together.

So with that in mind, I think the fill is low quality for a themeless. Some of the answers had me literally scratching my head, "I guess RTE is an abbreviation for route..." For others I just ignored the clue and relied on the crosses, like ORTO stacked on top of WELT: "El ___ lado (the other side, in Seville)" and "World, in German". Zero information gained. And that's just one corner, I haven't even talked about SHU, EBON, or NARY.

As for the spanners, I'm familiar with half of the show references in this grid. Unfortunately for me, the two I'm unfamiliar with are the two intersecting in the upper-left corner with the trickiest clues. Originally I slotted NEWSCASTER for 12A: "Greg Davies' role on Channel 4"; I had a ton of blanks in the upper-half of the grid and I desperately needed something to go on. In retrospect it was a pretty lucky guess, overlapping with ASTER in the upper-right corner and allowing me to finish that side out. I wasn't so lucky on the left side.

The upper-left corner destroyed me. I didn't know HAGIA from "Instanbul's HAGIA Sophia Grand Mosque", so I didn't have any free letters. I also slotted ICANT instead of IWONT for "You're asking too much of me!" and IKR instead of SRS for "i'm not joking, fr fr." I don't regret my choices here, I feel like both ICANT and IKR are totally viable substitutes for the given clues. Just the luck of the draw, I guess. I might've fared better if I had alternated between acrosses and downs, doing a first pass with acrosses definitely led me astray. Eventually I gave up and hinted both 12A and 3D, revealing my mistakes and finishing out the grid.

It's a bummer to have to hint the focal point of a grid like this, but hey, I tried. Watching my partner immediately plonk GOSSIPGIRL on her attempt made me feel alone in my pain.

X-Linked Traits

Jun 27 2024 - reviews

Today's theme is a lot of fun to puzzle through, way better than your run-of-the-mill apt pair. Even though the themers aren't proper words/phrases that you'd see in the wild, they fit together perfectly thanks to the shared vertical cross at 15D.

The theme is hard to coin a phrase to, but something along the lines of "words separated by X's" probably fits the bill. The three themers FUNXGAMES, LATINXGREEK, and WOMENXMEN include both an opposition (FUN and GAMES, LATIN and GREEK, WOMEN and MEN) and a word that includes an X: XGAMES, LATINX, XMEN. All three are positioned nicely with 15D: XOXOX.

The majority of my solve time was dedicated to puzzling out the theme, particularly LATINXGREEK. I caught on to the X pattern quickly because 15D's clue is a dead giveaway: "Sweet sign-off written with alternating letters." Figuring out the other two components in each themer wasn't so easy.

The lower-left corner posed a bit of trouble because I slotted DIMLIT instead of LOWLIT for "Like a space made romantic with candles." In theory they're interchangeable but you'd have to try really hard to convince me that LOWLIT is a better fit for that definition. It doesn't help that I couldn't for the life of me remember the answer to 23A, "Demon in Japanese folklore" (ONI). I was kind of just scrambling around in that corner, revisiting definitions and peeking at the themers. Finally I committed to 25A and discovered WOMENXMEN, revealing my mistakes.

The rest of the grid is kind of boring, honestly. I think the constructor held back on more interesting clues because they wanted to ensure the themers were nice and solvable for crossword plebs like myself. The result is some extraordinarily average definitions littered about the corners. You know, the kind of stuff like "Newspaper VIPs" for EDS, or the timeless "'Let's chat again soon,' over text" (TTYL). It's not a big deal because the theme holds its own, but working through most of the fill today was robotic.

black cat vibes

Jun 26 2024 - reviews

Today's zany themeless brings us on a journey through anecdotes and quirky characters with a grid in the shape of a donut. The real puzzle is figuring out what information is actually useful in the various walls of text that this crossword calls clues.

For real, some of the clues are paragraphs. That Björk quote in particular was a real test of my reading comprehension. For all of the other clues, the rule is to disregard the parenthetical (unless you care about the constructor's favorite students and feelings towards printers). I don't get much out of these kinds of personal interjections, they rarely help with the clue and more often distract or mislead.

Despite my qualms with the cluing style this themeless has some good fill. ATEIT is a personal favorite, with SNOOPING and STARSIGN a close tie for second. The gradual reveal of ENTHRONE (I was a little surprised that this was an actual word) is very satisfying while circling the donut with new answers. The difficulty curve feels just right.

Skipping past the quirky clues, I do have a few highlights. I liked the grossness factor of "Verb associated with volcanos and zits". It works well since my mind applied the word to volcanos first and then compared it to zit afterwards: "I guess volcanos ERUPT... oh, eww." The clue for STARSIGN is genius and reminds me of living in San Diego, "Oh, mine? I'm such a Libra!" Grammar nerds rejoice at FRAGMENT, "This verbless sentence, for one." Clever.

Daddies

Jun 25 2024 - reviews

A cute apt pair with a couple of dad-imals. The two themers are PAPABEAR and OTTERPOP, words that include a synonym for father (POP/PAPA) and a kind of animal (BEAR/OTTER). The cuteness helps me forgive that PAPABEAR is just a bear that's a father, whereas OTTERPOP is a completely different kind of thing. Not a huge deal. It does strike me as funny that the terms papa and mama are uniquely tied to bears. A cultural echo of certain fairy tales, perhaps?

This grid flowed easily for me, save for the upper-left corner. Here's the deal: I've been a Rotten Tomatoes user for many years now and I have always thought that the green symbol was VOMIT. Like the "this movie was bleeeeeh" kind. So imagine my confusion when I slotted VOMIT instead of SPLAT. In retrospect maybe SPLAT fits nicely with the whole tomato, fruit-throwing theme, but a part of me still kind of prefers the straightforwardness of movie-induced barf.

Speaking of barf, I've got an axe to grind with the clue for ENE. "Half-wind across from WSW on a compass rose." Look, I get it. You've got a group of nonsense letters and your only option is to compare it to a compass direction. It happens to the best of us. But don't try to make your compass flipping special. "Half-wind across", what does that even mean? I just completely disregarded this clue knowing that 99% of the time there's a directional reference the goal is to flip it. Don't stick lipstick on a pig.

I had an inkling that "The 411" was going to be DEETS but I held off on slotting it until I had filled more of the crosses. I just couldn't trust that the constructor was actually going to do it. I love that they did. DEETS is up there on my list of favorite cheese, the kind of eyeroll-inducing terminology I can throw into a conversation and count the number of groans. Respect.

The constructor mentioned that Otter Pops have an endearing backstory in the post-solve notes so I found myself taking a look at the Otter Pops Wikipedia and stumbling into this fascinating note:

In 1995, National Pax had planned to replace the "Sir Isaac Lime" flavor with "Scarlett O'Cherry". A fourth-grade student in Costa Mesa, California learned of the change on the company's World Wide Web site, and organized a petition and picket with his cousins against it; a Stanford professor wrote in support, calling it "Otter-cide". Told the change was final, the protest continued as planned, in the rain. The CEO relented, keeping it, despite it being the least popular flavour.

Props to Sir Isaac Lime, I guess. I love that the editor calls the Otter Pops website a World Wide Web site. When was this article last updated?

Stationflow

Jun 24 2024 - reviews

A grid in the shape of a thing, where that thing is a map of an escalator in a transit center with an elevator for wheelchair accessibility. A unique setting for a crossword puzzle, no doubt.

In all honesty, I didn't know what the whole ELEVATOR-CORRIDOR thing was until my partner explained it to me. I suppose it makes sense, though in my defense living in a small city in CA there hardly exists a transit system, let alone one with escalators. Perhaps the map would've more elegant if the ELEVATOR and CORRIDOR sections were connected by more fillable squares. As-is there's a 3x3 block of black squares that split up the flow.

Anyway, more of a nit than anything else. It's a cool, unique theme that makes for a fun solve. The cluster of three-letter words in the ELEVATOR path was the first thing I completed, each one is very easy in comparison to the rest of the grid. With ELEVATOR out of the way and a couple of crosses filled on the right side, I was able to get ESCALATOR without much issue and start making some good progress on the rest of the puzzle. It was both fun and interesting how the shape of the crossword influenced my solving flow.

CORRIDOR was my last fill, since I lacked answers for some of the more esoteric trivia. "'Cyrano de Bergerac' has five" in retrospect is a classic "I know a play, by the way" kind of clue. "Kinshasa street" for RUE I had to Google around to figure out (and arrived at the word for "street" in Lingala). Deep cut. How about RMS for "Abbreviation in an apartment description"? I have no idea. Anyway, since I didn't understand that this grid was a map I just went with my gut and slotted CORRIDOR because the letters fit.

The Puzzmo editor always praises anecdotal clues and I can't help but feel the complete opposite. I really dislike every clue she called out, e.g. "I once unsuccessfully tried to catch fish with one designed for catching butterflies". Don't care, didn't ask. How about some wordplay instead, something that is totally missing from this grid?

There's a cuteness factor to the cluing that I can respect but can also say clashes with my preference. If you like it, you like it. I did appreciate the shout-out to KORRA in 3D, a great show even despite the awful love triangle injected into it by Nikelodeon execs.