The crossword puzzles that solvers dig into every day are a combination of sweat, creativity and a knowledge of the basic rules of constructing, which is what making a puzzle is called. It would be ambitious, but we can test out whether the AutoFill feature in CrossFire can find something. Sorry. One nice thing is that the first Z could go in a long, nonfill slot. And those symmetry rules mean theme entries must be arranged symmetrically. VIGELAND: Good point. The asterisk before NUMBER asks the database to show us all phrases that end with NUMBER and begin with anything else. If you’re on a Mac like me, I highly recommend CrossFire, which has a nice grid-filling environment and, at $50, it won’t break your budget. David Steinberg edits the daily, nationally syndicated Puzzle Society Crossword. TAUSIG: Agreed — great lead for a theme. A player's cards during a tournament at a 2006 Rockford Charitable Games Association Texas Hold'em Tournament in Arlington Heights, Ill.

STEINBERG: Here’s the ambitious version of our final grid, without the test AutoFill: LAST: Great. Deb Amlen contributed reporting. Ben made a great point. Among others, I got PRIME NUMBER, FAX NUMBER and WRONG NUMBER. TAUSIG: Fair point. But that is not the best, because that model does not provide the funding for continual improvement or support in case of a problem. What if we cut off that section with one more black square above the L in PUZZLE PIECE?

To answer your question, I use CrossFire — although I got my start with pencil, graph paper and online dictionaries. Any words or phrases on your mind today that we can start with? And best of all, they make me laugh. Something like, “Song when reading a British raincoat catalog?” What do you like, Finn? If we want to avoid blocky three-letter word regions, our only options are under the N or U of NUMBER — while there are words that end with U, there are way more that end with N. So that’s a good place to go. That is Mr. Steinberg’s and Mr. Last’s challenge. You’ll also want to pay attention to the “Fill” tab, which will tell you whether or not CrossFire finds entries for your grid. If the theme includes a particular kind of pun, for example, then all the puns should be of that kind. YO-YO, DOLL, BARBIE, UNO, PUZZLE, JACKS …. The crossword puzzles that solvers dig into every day are a combination of sweat, creativity and a knowledge of the basic rules of constructing, which is what making a puzzle is called. Q.E.D., quality joke. “Themes should be fresh, interesting, narrowly defined and consistently applied throughout the puzzle. STEINBERG: Before we do that, though, let’s back up a little. And one of the most fun parts of brainstorming themes is seeing how far you’ve come from your initial ideas. Note that Finn put the name of the theme-answer-to-be, TRIXIE MATTEL, in all-caps, which is a common convention. In fact, without knowing it, we’ve already helped out the next set of constructors: The harder letters (think high Scrabble scores, like J, Q or Z) in our theme answers are tucked away, which means we can deal with them more easily — it would be much more constraining if both Z’s of PUZZLE PIECE were in the middle of the grid, where they would interact more with other theme entries. TAUSIG: Well, I like to brainstorm based on nothing more complex than the stuff that’s happening in my life. Let’s leave that black square question up to our fill wizards, Kevin Der and Paolo Pasco. Follow A to Z Teacher Stuff's board teaching: free printables on Pinterest. Ben Tausig is editor of the American Values Club Xword, a weekly indie puzzle that's totally your style. Starting Without a Template. LAST: Yup! CALL NUMBER is our only other 10-letter option, so in it goes.
Themes and theme entries should be accessible to everyone.”. Look at it: It’s like a “Hidden Figures” game for bad crossword fill. Jumping back to our toys, maybe we could make a theme around “puzzles,” since we are, after all, teaching people how to make a crossword puzzle. VIGELAND: Let’s go to two wonderful resources now, OneLook.com and XWordInfo.com/Finder, in order to look up other phrases that end with the word NUMBER. They’re all fine, but aren’t particularly funny. You don’t want to get too attached to any one concept, because there’s often a better idea around the corner. It doesn’t have as many bells and whistles as the Windows-only Crossword Compiler, though. Namely, the “game” aspect of our theme is in the word MATTEL. And with that, we’ve set up a grid we can hand off to Kevin and Paolo to fill! STEINBERG: Remember that we also we want plenty of space between theme answers … with all of that in mind, how’s this? TAUSIG: Yes, this theme feels thin.

There are way fewer three-letter words than four-letter words, which means our colleagues won’t have a great choice of fill, so let’s go with one of our other themers. There are even more complex searches you can do once you get the hang of it. Follow along as pairs of published New York Times constructors pass the creation of a crossword puzzle from hand to hand, taking us through the process of developing a theme, designing a workable grid, filling the entire grid and writing the clues.

If you’re going to split up one of the first words, you should really be doing it to all of them. AutoFill is notoriously fickle, though, and doesn’t have a human’s discerning eye for what makes fun fill. STEINBERG: We’re going to create a new grid with the default size of a daily puzzle (15 by 15), but switching to a Sunday-sized grid is simply a matter of changing the 15s in the “horizontal” and “vertical” boxes above to 21s.

VIGELAND: Can’t wait to see how this puzzle gets built up by the next team. If I want only four-letter words in the first position, I could type in “???? Mondays are generally closed off (note all the black squares around the edges), which tends to lead to smoother fill. TAUSIG: Sometimes, yes, but failure is so crucial to finding a good theme. Let’s watch them work it out. LAST: Well, I like the idea of having what’s now 25-Down contain the Z. More important, it feels one-dimensional to link phrases that contain toys with no further joke. VIGELAND: Speaking of toys and games, I was just watching the finale of “RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars,” which was won by TRIXIE MATTEL (12), and Mattel is of course a game manufacturer.

This is why we need people. And some changes are bigger — as I said earlier, we could attempt to remove the black square that’s giving you ulcers. Let’s take a quick aside to talk about mechanics. Back to our theme! Editing your grid in the “Summary” tab lets you see how many words and black squares — also known as blocks — you have as you’re working (remember, the maximum for a 15 by 15 in a New York Times crossword is 78 words/42 blocks). In any case, we now have a draft set: PUZZLE PIECE (11) TENURE TRACK (11)CALL NUMBER (10)MACBOOK AIR (10). ?.” I’m definitely glad we have our robot overlords to do those sorts of searches for us now. A third, brand-new option is Keiran King’s free, web-based crossword construction program, Phil. STEINBERG: There are a few ways to make a crossword puzzle, including the good, old-fashioned graph-paper-and-pencil method, but there are several excellent software programs that make designing and filling grids easier.


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