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1. WASHINGTON POST NOVEMBER 18 2018 CROSSWORD LIGHT OPERA FULL
2. WASHINGTON POST NOVEMBER 18 2018 CROSSWORD LIGHT OPERA SERIES

Many thanks to Pete and the Post solicits your feedback. So far it looks good, so fingers crossed! The puzzles are undergoing a three-month trial, and the Post will continue if they get a good response. We would love to have the minis appear in the print edition.

WASHINGTON POST NOVEMBER 18 2018 CROSSWORD LIGHT OPERA FULL

We like to use a lot of cells in the Saturday meta answer, but there’s a limit to how many you can fit and still have a grid that’s not full of crosswordese.Īny chance of the minis appearing in the print edition? Do you take pride in trying to make as many of the cells AS POSSIBLE? in Saturday’s grid contribute to the answer? And sometimes Andrew sticks those words in just to throw people off. But we make sure that most three- and four-letter words are not part of the meta clue.

That’s one approach, and it might be effective on some puzzles. When it comes to the meta, my technique is based on spotting boring words like “for” and “over”. Over time, people that stick with the puzzles will probably not need them.Īs for a trickier set … our hands are full right now, but that definitely sounds like something we’d like to try in the future! So for newer people, we put in an option to ask for a hint. Crosswords and metas are really fun if you finish them, and not so fun if you don’t. Is it intended to draw in non-solvers? Do many people use the “hint” functionality? And is there any chance of getting a trickier set, maybe once a month?

In the short time we’ve worked together, he’s grown tremendously. We brainstorm possible metas, then he does most of the work creating the grids and clues. I invented the mini-meta concept, but the puzzles are the joint work of myself and Andrew White, a rising Princeton junior who’s been working with me on crossword construction during his gap year. This puzzle works well for them.įor me, this is a genuinely new kind of puzzle: who invented it? There are also people that enjoy the unique mental challenge of solving a meta puzzle, but might not have the time or inclination to solve larger grids.

WASHINGTON POST NOVEMBER 18 2018 CROSSWORD LIGHT OPERA SERIES

I wondered if there was a way to combine the two, and embed a meta in a series of minis. Not really … People seem to really like the quick solve that minis provide. Is this a pandemic phenomenon? Are you giving people more to do indoors? It’s a new kind of diversion and I spoke to Pete about it. Having solved a week’s worth of puzzles, they then identify some word or other from each of Monday to Friday’s grids and assemble these for a clue to a word that is hidden snaking through Saturday’s. Here, the solver does know the nature of the meta each time. Indie setters also provide this kind of thing, such as Pete Muller’s Muller Monthly Music Meta – and Pete is behind the Post’s series. There are conventions and types of meta, though: so it’s not so mad as it may appear.

And they may then notice that the initial letters of those titles spell out MORTAL. Then they may think to identify the relevant plays: Macbeth, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Love’s Labour’s Lost. In the example on the left, the solver may (or may not) notice that six of the longer entries – FIN D UNCANNY, D IAGONALS, CH ROME OXIDE, IN VIOLATELY, PUCKERS UP, MEM BER- OWNED – contain the names of Shakespeare characters. On Fridays in the Wall Street Journal, for example, there’s a box under the grid with a final mission. Wall Street Journal crossword, 9 April 2021