Are you a member of the NPL? You know Mike Selinker and/or Mark Gottlieb? This is more a personal (for me) question than anything else. 
Does the word cruciverbalist apply to a solver or a constructor? (or both)
Is there software? (For constructing, not solving)
Why do mystery authors who feature crosswords have such awful puzzles? (I refer to Nero Blanc mostly because Parnell Hall is at least funny, even if his crossword puzzles suck.)
Shirley: I feel your pain – but they pay me to inflict it, not assuage it.
rjk: I’m pretty sure my boss would prefer that I not post the actual test. If there’s sufficient demand, I could write something similar for y’all. And then, what, email copies to people who were interested and start a spoiler thread for people to post answers?
Re: Henry Hook – nice guy, but I’m not a member of his fawning fan club. (The “New Yorker” profile was interesting, though!) I think too many times his answers are obscure, making the solving frustrating – and not in a good way.
astorian (we meet again, mon frere!) – thanks for an outstanding job of addressing those issues! You answered the questions far better than I could have. At this point, the two main conglomerates that are buying in bulk are Dell-Penny Press and Kappa (these two companies put out 99% of the newsstand puzzle magazines).
Also – thank you, thank you, thank you for emphasizing the need to get some practice in before sending out your first submission. Construction is both an art and a skill – and the skill part takes much practice to master.
Leaper – no, I don’t belong to NPL (National Puzzlers League), though I know Mark Gottleib (and a whole bunch of the other people). This is a personal choice – you can write it off to the difference between jaded professionals and enthusiastic amateurs.
Cicada – “cruciverbalist” refers to both – it just means “crossworder.” (Will told me the story once of the guy who coined it, but I don’t recall the details.)
Yes, there’s software – but I use the program at work, which was custom-written for us, so I can’t comment on what’s good. Perhaps astorian or someone else can.
My guess is that the puzzles in the books are so bad because a) the constructors are amateurs, and b) (and this is a guess, I don’t know) they don’t have a puzzle editor working on them – we do the tweaking and polish that makes the finished product the delight that it should be. For instance – constructing (writing the “fill” for the grid) and cluing are two completely separate skills – and most constructors are really bad at cluing.
Super Gnat – didn’t mean to ignore you, just providing evidence of my answer to your question, which is – human error can pop up anywhere.
The clues and answers are both checked carefully – but certainly a clue is somewhat more likely to have a mistake than an answer. This is because usually the clues are the main place where the editor is working – and because, with the cross, a typo is more likely to be caught in the grid because it will create two nonsense words on the cross. (For instance, if I type INSTANEC instead of INSTANCE, the word crossing the C and the word crossing the E will both be affected.) It is the case, however, that some constructors will eff up an entry, and it’s up to the editor to catch and fix these mistakes – which sometimes involves ripping out an entire section of the grid and rewriting it.
We do rely on electronic checks, e.g. against our data bases, to a certain extent, but every book is also proofed. The variety books (everything but the crosswords and word-finds) are checked by two separate people – a freelance test-solver, who looks for problems with the actual working out of the puzzles, and either my boss or myself – we do more of a traditional proof, reading clues for stylistic stuff, etc. Hopefully, one or the other, if not both, will catch problems with factual accuracy and spelling in clues. However – it’s a system that relies on human beings, and mistakes do make it into print. All we can do is try to minimize them.
Sheesh. Speaking of mistakes – the clause after the second dash in the second paragraph should be “and because, with the answer, a typo is…”
So do you ever get into a situation where you thought of a brilliant, original theme, and you’ve got the “long” answers thought up, but one of them comes out to be a letter too short or too long?
Have you ever painted yourself into a corner with the clues? That is, get a perfect answer grid going, but you develop to a spot where you can’t get the last few clues to make any known words? Is that when you come up with some bogus abbreviation or acronym to fill that last spot?
I suck at cryptics, but usually complete the NY Times crossword every Sunday. Is there anything I can do–other than, of course, do more cryptics–to improve my performance? I’ve always thought my brain doesn’t work the way it should to complete (or even start) a cryptic, and I want to know if there’s anything I can do to exercise that gray matter.
Is this a new book? I had a collection of Atlantic puzzles years ago. If this is volume 2, I’ll have to grab it.
Some questions: First, what are good reference works for constructors. I’ve got a lot of word list books, books of words with letters sorted in alphabetical order (good for anagrams) and some with lists of words that have say an A in letter 3 and an F in letter 5. My attempts at constructing haven’t ever gotten very far, and I wonder if any of these get used.
Second, how are non-word puzzles proofed. (Like logic puzzles, etc.)
Third, how are you at cryptics from England? I got a ton of London Times books years ago, but have a terrible time never having lived in England. I suspect I have an easier time doing NY Times puzzles having lived in New York.
KnowedOut – coming up with the right number of theme entries of the right length is abolutely one of the most frustrating parts of constructing – it’s all a piece of cake from there. (Ha!) Sometimes you can get around it by using your “not the right length” entry across (or down) the middle of the grid – maintain symmetry by having it in the pivot position. This only works, of course, if the entry you want to us is an odd number of letters.
As far as resorting to bogus entries to complete your “fill” – no, when you’re stuck, what you should do is rip out as much of the puzzle as you need to to make it work. The problem some people get into is trying to preserve what they’ve already done and just find a new word that’s w??b???s – nah, just rip it all out and start over. One possible tip – think about how you’re placing your theme entries. For instance, in a 15 (as we call a 15x15, or daily-sized, puzzle), two of your theme entries will probably be in the third line from the top and the third line from the bottom. Thus, your top theme entry will be providing the last letter for a bunch of words, and your bottom theme entry will be providing the first letter for a bunch of words. Pick which to put where – if one theme entry has lots of s’s, r’s, and t’s, put it at the top, and put the one with q’s, k’s, and m’s at the bottom. So if you get stuck – try swapping the position of your theme entries and see if that helps. By the way, practice counts on fill as well – after years in the biz, I can reel off a couple dozen four-letters-ending-in-“u” entries without drawing breath (menu, Peru, ACLU, lieu, dieu, et tu…). Having that kind of mental database definitely helps – and definitely only comes through practice.
Judith (love your username, btw) – the only way to get good at them, unfortunately, is through practice. It took me a few years. Emily and Henry have written a couple of how-to type books. I have what I think is an earlier edition of this, which offers a lot of tips and some easy-ish examples to practice on.
The only other suggestion I have for this is – when you’re stuck, put it down and come back later. I will get completely bollixed up in a cryptic, and then when I pick it up again a couple of days later, I’ll be “oh! doi! gotcha!” merrily filling things in.
Voyager – yeah, apparently – it’s got a 2003 copyright, anyway.
The single book that I use dozens a time a day is this. My copy is totally dogeared, taped together, scribbled in – “rode hard and put away wet,” as our Western friends would say. This book – known at the puzzle factory as “Stan and Dan” in honor of its compilers, Stan Newman and Dan Stark – is totally useful because it includes all kinds of two-word phrases, abbreviations, etc., that other books like it don’t necessarily have.
Logic problems get test-solved by going through the answer as given step by step and filling in a, well, fill-in grid (not the crisscross type grid that is usually provided with the puzzle). So, for instance, if the puzzle involves five people, and you need to figure out first name, last name, profession, hometown, and favorite color for each, I’d draw a chart that was five columns across – one each for first name, last name… etc. – and five lines deep, one for each person. Then you just start going through the answer, sentence by sentence, checking against the clues, to make sure that the answer works. Editing these puppies (which I did for a couple of years) can be a lot more challenging, since if the constructor effs up, you have to figure out where he or she was going, but it’s the same kind of process.
Other puzzles – it depends on the kind of puzzle. My instruction sheet to test-solvers runs probably five pages, since each type of puzzle needs different kinds of things checked. Some stuff we rely on the program running right – like the encoding of cryptograms – but even there, we know some situations where that won’t happen, so we spot check stuff like that. Other puzzles they do a complete solve. I have a group of freelancers I’ve been working with for years (and that’s an even harder group to crack than the editors, so don’t even ask) – it’s definitely skilled labor.
English cryptics I don’t care for either – they seem like a mix of cryptic and non-cryptic clues, and I can’t tell which is which. Plus, as you say, the whole cultural literacy thing is a problem.
Regarding puzzle-making software:
When I first started constructing puzzles, I was advised to buy a software package put out by Mel Rosen. At the time, it was state of the art, but numerous better packages have come along in the meantime.
I haven’t used it in some tiome, but the last software I used regularly was the Crossword Compiler, put out by Antony Kennedy. It’s very good and very flexible (google for “Crossword Compiler” and “Antony Kennedy,” if you want to learn more.
I know there are other good packages out there, but that’s the one I can vouch for, based on experience.
Also, this web site is well worth checking out:
The answer is “absolutely, yes” to both questions. It’s frustrating to come up with a good theme and then find that the best entries can’t be made to fit your preferred scheme. And every constructor knows what it’s like to get stuck in a corner where ancient, crossword cliche words like ESNE and ADIT and Melville’s OMOO seem like the only solution.
For dilemma #1, well, sometimes you have a little discretion in making things fit, and sometimes you don’t. You can include or exclude articles (a, an, the), change nouns from singlular to plural (or vice versa), anything to make a clever theme entry long enough or short enough to fit your scheme. But if you can’t… well, you have to abandon that entry, or find another, complementary entry the same length.
As for dilemma #2… well, there are still syndicates that use all the crossword cliche words, but NONE of the publications I ever sold puzzles to would accept submissions that made use of such words more than once in a blue moon. The best editors might overlook one cliche word in an otherwise clever and original puzzle. But use of more than one such cliche word will get your submission tossed, for sure. Even one might get you a thumbs down, if the rest of the puzzle isn’t particularly inspired.
So… suppose you’ve finished 99% of the puzzle, and all that’s left is a few spaces in the lower left corner. If you find that “ARIL” (seed covering) or EZIO (“South Pacific” star Pinza) is the only entry that will make the puzzle work… well, I’d suggest erasing everything you have in that corner and starting over.
I know, I know, it’s more work- sometimes a LOT more work. But what’s the point of finishing a puzzle right this very second, if you know it’s going to be rejected? Better to spend a few more minutes (or hours or days or…) and avoid annoying “crosswordese.”
Thanks, everybody! I’ll be trying to build a few puzzles and see how they go.