Could you help me make a crossword?

Cafe Society
1

Like many-a-doper, I do my fair share of crosswords. I know what a seed covering is called and the word for a fencing weapon and I understand what the question mark at the end of the clue means. I’m no pro, but I’ve been around the block.

Then I tried making a crossword. I had a long plane flight, a good theme, and some graph paper. Four hours later, I had a lot of eraser marks and not much else to show for it. I tried later in the week with a different theme: no dice. I’m buying a lot of pencils, though.

I know there are a few cruciverbalists on the Dope so I enlist their advice. How do you make a crossword? What tips can you give me so I can actually complete one? I know the general guidelines (15 by 15 squares, symetrical in nature, no sections can stand alone, etc.), but beyond that, I’m lost. I was starting with a blank 15 x 15 grid on some graph paper, fitting in, as best I could, my theme answers, and going from there.

Any help would be just grand.

2

Paging twickster!

3

Exactly.

4

Well, there’s your problem. You need white spaces, too.

I got nothin’. Anyhoo, among the tips I’ve read at various times:
[ul][li]Don’t start in the upper left, you’ll just end up putting yourself into dead ends. Start at the bottom and work your way up.[/li][*]Look for words that have common letters, preferably with alternation or near-alternation of consonants and vowels. SUCRALOSE is easy to place. BLITZKREIG is not.[/ul]

5

Wow. The best book on the topic is out of print and priced to kill. Worth tracking down, though – the man is a solid constructor and it’s the best intro to constructing I’ve ever seen.

For the rest – I’m actually on my way out – I’ll respond later.

6

twickster: Much obliged. I think there may be other constructors on the Dope, but my OP was a not-so-subtle way of, as Lionne said, “Paging twickster!”

Anyway, $100 is definitely steep, but for a guy that spends 8 hours a day in the backseat of a van, regularly, a crossword construction habit might not be a bad idea. I have to make sure this is less a whim than something I can actually get excited about. Some small success is needed before I let Mr. Franklin (plus shipping) out of my wallet.

Thanks for stopping in; I’ll, of course, check back.

7

I’m not going to be exhaustive, but here are some tips for getting started.

  1. Really good puzzles will have a theme, with at least three, and preferably more, long entries that are connected with that theme. Regular solvers know pretty much what I’m talking about with a theme, so I’m not going to get into it here.

Coming up with theme entries is its own kind of skill – keep in mind, for one thing, that generally you’ll need pairs of entries, since the grid will be symmetrical – if there’s a theme entry crossing the middle, however, that won’t (necessarily) be matched with another entry of the same length. So coming up with your theme, if you’re using one, is your first task – creating your list of theme entries. Easy to do themes include titles (song, movie, book), dog breeds, colors, professions, etc. – things where you’ve got a fairly extensive list of possibilities that you can choose longish (8-15 letter) entries for your theme list. Single best book of lists of “things” out there: Stephen Glazier’s Word Menu.

  1. Find a blank grid that you like the looks of and use it, instead of starting completely from scratch. I just spent about 15 minutes finding one to use for an example. Here is the one I came up with.

What are you looking for? A grid with not too many black squares; and a grid with long entries that are the correct lengths for your theme entries (see #1).

  1. Start by placing the most obnoxious of the theme entries. Say that for some reason one of your words was Bryan Ekers’s “BLITZKRIEG.” That’s gonna be the tough one to place, so put it in first.

Okay, look at our example grid. You’ve got four possible spots for it: 17 and 53 Across (17A and 53A), or 10 or 28 Down (10D or 28D). Try BLITZKRIEG in each blank and see where the Z falls.

In 17A, the Z would be the first letter in 18D, so you’d need a five-letter word starting with “Z” – not too tough. ZEBRA, ZAIRE, ZENDA, ZOOMS, etc., just off the top of my head.

In 53A, the Z would be the fourth letter in 43D, so you’d need a six-letter word with a Z in the fourth spot – a little trickier, but not that bad – GRAZED (or GRAZES), AMAZED, THE ZOO, etc.

In 11D, the Z would be the fifth letter in 25A, so you’d need a seven-letter word with a Z in the fifth spot. This is tougher – frankly, I need some help with this to come up with SNEEZED, DRIZZLE, YAHTZEE, PRETZEL. (Effin’ A, I’m out of practice.)

In 28D, the Z would the the first letter in 41A, so you’d need a six-letter word starting with a Z: ZIGZAG, ZENITH, ZIPPED, etc.

  1. Okay, so clearly some of these are easier than others – look at where the B and K in BLITZKRIEG would fall, also, before you place this word.

  2. Then place your next-hardest theme entry. Then the next-hardest. And so on, till they’re all in.

  3. Then start filling in the rest of the grid.

  4. Then check to make sure all your entries are real words.

  5. And that you’re not using any word twice.

  6. And that you’re not using more than one version of the word – singular/plural, different tenses of a verb, etc. – or noun/adjective forms (HERESY/HERETIC), related nouns (POET/POEM), etc.

  7. Not too many proper nouns (I don’t care for them).

  8. Get rid of “crosswordese” (ARIL, EPEE).

  9. And then check to see if you can improve crosses – TEN and TIP cross at the T? You can change that T to “H,” or, even better, “Z.”

  10. Then start writing clues, which is a whole separate skillset.

How long will this take you? Your first one? Hours and hours and hours. Make multiple copies of your blank grid because you’re going to erase holes in it. It takes a long, long time to get good at doing fill – and there’s no shortcut to it but practice.

One last book to consider getting: Stanley Newman and Daniel Stark’s Crossword Answer Book (or, as I call it, Stan and Dan). This is where I looked to find some possibles for 11D, above.

And that, boys and girls, is how you construct crossword puzzles.

8

You can scour the “describe it in three words” thread for word clues.

Garfunkel fellates Simon = artichoke

9

twickster: My, my. Thanks a lot. Some of that I was doing instinctually (such as making sure themed answers were the same length), but #3 was especially helpful, as was the suggestion to use a previously constructed grid—I think some of my problems on the previous one were because I simply wasn’t able to visualize how certain areas connected with the puzzle as a whole.

I’m going to take the puzzle for another spin tonight and, if I fail spectacularly, I will be back for more tips. In the meantime, again, thanks. My grandma is especially grateful, should one of these work out.

10

If you’re interested, there is a 2006 documentary called Wordplay which is about Will Shortz (NYT Crossword Editor) and crossword puzzle competitions. In the movie, an editor gives a little bit of basic insight on creating puzzles.

11

And, if you know who you’re looking at, you can see Mel Rosen, Dan Stark, and Stan Newman at one point or another! :wink: (Not me, though – I wasn’t at the tournament that year.)

12

Oh, I’ve seen that movie. In fact, that’s where I got the only tips I was operating on, which, as noted, didn’t get me far enough.

Unfortunately, I had no idea who I was looking for or at, unless it was a celebrity or Will Shortz. He has a fantastic, 80s-era Trebeck or modern day Judge Joe Brown mustache.

13

I would totally do him. Knowing he must be an absolute nerd only makes me want him more.

14

Here’s another tip:

Often, when a constructor is coming up with a theme for the longer entries, he/she will use a long quote that continues through all of them, with the clues being “Part 1 of the quote,” “Part 2 of the quote,” and so on.

Please resist the temptation to do this.

15

Ugh. I hate those. The theme I was trying to work in was “Hidden Costs” with the long answers being:

  • GrapeSoda
  • OpenCell
  • Scent of a woman
  • Neurosciences

I thought those were pretty legit. Unfortunately, my crossword is essentially those words and a lot of eraser marks. I’d guess that it’s probably an intelligent move, even learning just once from my original failures, to make the long, theme answers in such a way where they can cross in a symmetrical way, so that you can have long down & across clues. Mine didn’t and it forced me to cram them in and, then, hey: didn’t go so well. Is that a good guess on my part or is more just a problem I happened to run into?

16
  • GrapeSoda
  • OpenCell
  • Scent of a woman
  • Neurosciences
    Nice! You need to pair them off, though.

You can match “open cell” with “scentofa” and clue it "___ Woman.

You may need to come up with a different “neuro” word to get a nine-letter entry; and/or change Grape Soda (9 letters) to Grape Sodas (10 letters) or Nehi Grape Soda (13 letters).

Then find a grid with the sizes of the long entries you need and proceed from there.

17

Ack–I had “open cells” originally (plural) so it was 9 letters & paired with Grape Soda. But I hadn’t even thought of “____ Woman.” I’ll assume this stuff just comes with practice, but I’m pissed for not having thought of that, after nearly a decade of morning crosswords. For shame, for shame.

In fact, if we do “____ Woman” along with pluralized “opencells” and “neurology” then everything’s 9 letters. That’s a good remedy for me to try tonight, maybe…

18

No – “Scent of a” is eight letters.

Keep in mind they don’t have to all be nine – you can do two eight and two nine and be perfectly okay on symmetry – one pair will be the acrosses and the other the downs.

19

…eight, nine. I mean, who’s counting? Oh that’s right. I’m supposed to be. Got it. That was pretty sad, all told.

20

I imagine the real cross word comes when you yell “FUCK THIS SHIT!” in frustration after working three hours and being stopped by your inability to build a word around “–QV-BICP–”.