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Such a Lyrical Tease, This Fresh Crosswordese
Ah, crosswordese. The double-edged sword of cruciverbalism. Crosswordese is the catch-all term for those words that appear frequently in puzzles, and for the most part, only in puzzles. That’s not to say they can’t also be in common use, or part of everyday pop culture. But they definitely show up more often in crosswords than casual conversation. In the past, we’ve featured rhyming works that…
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Answers to the Punny Costume Challenge!
Halloween has come and gone, but the creativity and the glorious puns remain. Before we get into the answers to our latest edition of the Punderful Halloween Costume Game, I want to share a few crossword-themed costumes from over the weekend that we were shared online. The first was this spooky crossword t-shirt, which solvers filled out at the party! And it featured lots of Halloween…
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The Crosswordese Champion?
Crosswordese is an omnipresent part of crossword discussion online. It’s a scourge! It’s annoying! It ruins the solving experience! Can’t constructors just somehow avoid these particular three- and four-letter combinations, no matter how convenient or crucial they are to the grid?! Rarely a week goes by without a Reddit post dedicated to the subject or a prominent complaint about some aspect of…
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How Outdated Is Too Outdated in Crosswords?
In today's blog post, we discuss obscure and outdated entries in crosswords!
One of the biggest complaints levied at crosswords in general involves the vocabulary often employed to fill the grid. Whether you call it crosswordese, obscure trivia, outdated vocabulary, or intentional gatekeeping through language, it’s a problem some solvers never overcome, contributing to a negative, exclusionary reputation for crosswords. Let’s talk about the two extremes first. I genuinely…
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Crosswordese in a Random Picture
In today's blog post, we find crosswordese in plain sight!
It’s always fun when you encounter crosswordese in the wild. By definition, crosswordese involves words you only see in crosswords, so a real-world encounter is a rare and curious thing.
Someone posted the following picture on Reddit, in a post titled “How NYT constructors dress, presumably.”
(It differs wildly depending on the constructor, by the way.)
At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be…
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View a Clue: Crossword Characters
In today's blog post, we have a new edition of our View a Clue game!
Welcome to the latest edition of PuzzleNation Blog’s most visual feature: the View a Clue game!
I’ve selected ten fictional characters that commonly show up in crossword grids — some have become crosswordese at this point — and I want to see if the PuzzleNation audience can identify them from pictures. It’s a visual puzzle I call View a Clue!
Without further ado, let’s give it a shot!
#1(4…
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An Ode to Crosswordese
In today's blog post, we celebrate crosswordese with one solver's poetic tribute to these peculiar grid-fillers!
Ah, crosswordese. Rarely a day — or a puzzle — goes by without at least one example of crosswordese making its presence felt.
For the uninitiated, crosswordese consists of words that appear frequently in puzzles, but not nearly as often in conversation or common use. My favorite variation on that definition is “words that crop up a lot in grids but are otherwise pretty useless.”
We’ve had some…
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The New Capital of European Crosswords?
In today's blog post, we turn to Estonia for some surprising crossword news!
First, it was Lvov, Ukraine: a city that created a crossword spanning the entire side of a 100-foot-tall residential building.
Now, another country in Eastern Europe is making bold choices with crosswords in mind: Estonia.
[Image courtesy of Encyclopedia Britannica.]
Crosswords are a global phenomenon. We’ve featured puzzle books from Europe on morethan one occasion. So, naturally, each country…
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