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And the inverse is true - if I don’t know a proper name but Will does, then he can vouch for its legitimacy and maybe its worthiness for a puzzle. SHORTZ: It’s clean enough, and I think people should know enough of these proper names that they can figure this out.įAGLIANO: One thing I’ll mention about our process of reviewing a grid is that if Will doesn’t know a proper name, but I do, then sometimes it can slip by. That could be troublesome for some solvers. I do know her, of course, but it does bother me to have two long names running parallel to each other. SHORTZ: Hmm, and next to it is DANA SCULLY. Well, I’m going to expose my ignorance, but I don’t know who she is.įAGLIANO: She’s an actress. UP is an inconspicuous word.Īnd OLIVIA MUNN. Not the thing, but the answer! ANTE UP … wasn’t there another answer with UP in the puzzle? Yes, MEET UP. SHORTZ: Looking Down … OIL FUTURES, well, I kind of like that. Clean, clean, clean.įAGLIANO: There’s nothing obscure, not too many proper names, everything seems fair for the solver. PEATS is an odd plural, but really, the Acrosses look great.
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Let’s ask the constructor to look at that area again.” When we’re done, this helps us to visualize potential issues: “O.K., there are a lot of minus marks in this one corner - this is an area that needs to be revised.” Or, “This crossing between two obscurish names - that’s going to be a problem.
Crossword editor software mods#
So as Joel and I look at this grid, we would just go row by row and column by column, checking the entries: CELT, EACH, MODS and the rest.įAGLIANO: Yeah, so we look at all the Across answers first, and then all the Downs, making minus marks for answers we think are subpar, check marks for answers we like, exclamation points for “Wow!,” question marks for things to be looked up and sometimes written comments. We ask for submissions on paper rather than by email because it’s easier for us to examine the whole grid at once, and to mark up the manuscript with pluses, minuses and other comments. SHORTZ: If we like a theme well enough, then we look at the puzzle’s fill. CALL NUMBER is maybe my favorite theme example, because both key words in the answer are used playfully in the clue. Here, PUZZLE PIECE is still about a PUZZLE, although here it’s changed a little from a jigsaw puzzle to a crossword, so there’s a little twist there. SHORTZ: In an ideal puzzle, all the key words in the answer are not referred to in the clue. For example, TENURE TRACK has nothing to do with a song, which is good. One other asset of the theme is that they’ve placed their base phrases pretty far from the eventual things they’re cluing. And here, the synonyms are all placed as the last words, which allows the solver to have some expectation - O.K., the next theme answer is going to involve some synonym of “song” at the end and another word at the beginning. One thing we’re always looking for when we’re reviewing themes is whether or not the idea is handled throughout the puzzle in a consistent and clear way. My least favorite of the theme entries is definitely MACBOOK AIR, because AIR is a rather unusual term for a song.įAGLIANO: Yeah, what I think is done well in the theme is the parallelism. But I’m liking the theme better now that I’ve seen the clues that Robyn Weintraub and Brad Wilber wrote to go with it. SHORTZ: Well, when I first saw the theme, honestly, I wasn’t sure it was my cup of tea.