OK, so I’ve been trying to get good at crosswords, because often times during the day I have nothing to do so I need something to fill in a few minutes here and there, so I took to photocopying the crossword from the daily paper (the place I work at puts out a few copies of the paper, so I bring the crossword page to the photocopier so I only have to carry a small folded piece of paper in my pocket.)
Today’s crossword gave me some trouble, namely the kind of trouble where I know that the answer for one area HAS to be right, yet only if that one letter from it that carries over to the across clue were different, then I could fit in this word that perfectly matches the other letters there and the clue.
What I have done so far can be seen Here. (if that’s too small to read, let me know.)
Case in point. Look at 1-down (Mia of soccer) . Clearly, the answer is Hamm, right? And hey, it even fits for 14-across and 17-across (acts and mooshupork.) But the problem arises with 20-across. The clue is “Dispense, as justice.” If we look at the spaces for 20-across, and the last two letters, ‘dishout’ would fit perfectly…but because of ‘Hamm’, the first letter is an ‘m’, not a ‘d’.
Also, 1-across would be nice if the answer was ‘Hare’ (long-eared critter.) And hey, the a fits for a good answer for 2-down (skin cream ingredient, ‘aloe,’) yet, 14-across is ‘acts’, not ‘alts’. And ‘Hare’ would also work for 3-down if I could put ‘riot’ in for 3-down (hilarious character.) But again, ‘acts’ is getting in the way, and I don’t know of a word that is ‘interali_’, which would be the result if I used hare, aloe, and riot instead of act.
The next issue I had was with 18-down. The clue is ‘accumulate for later use.’ The first letter is ‘h’, and five letters, so it must be ‘horde’, right? And hey, if ‘dishout’ was the correct answer for 20-across, then that ‘o’ is in the perfect spot…but nope, the last three letters are ‘ard’. ‘A’ from 23-across (secretive fraternal group, clearly ‘masons’,) ‘R’ from 27-across (fairy tale ending word, ‘after,’) and the ‘D’ from 32-across (small hills, ‘mounds’) 27 and 32-across also fit perfectly with the rest of their area of the grid, so they MUST be correct, so what the fuck is 18-down?
Oh, and I realize now that excema (21-across) isactually spelled eczema, so that clears up the one issue I thought I had with 22-down and 21-across, and I also know that 29-down is ‘tuningfork’. When I first did it, for some reason my eyes told my brain that 29-down stopped at four letters, so I was left wondering what the hell a ‘tuni’ is. 
) Inter alia is another very common answer. With those two and jai alai you should be able to do just about any puzzle…
