As is my wont, I was doing the USA Today crossword puzzle this morning, and I noticed a couple of peculiar clues. 56 across was “Rand of ‘Atlas Shrugged’”, and 73 across was “‘The Fountainhead’ novelist Ayn”.
Does this strike anyone else as lazy construction? I mean, sure, there’s not really any other way to clue the answer AYN, but they could have done “With McNally, an atlas” for RAND. Or clued the two together, like making 56 across “With 73 across, objectivist writer”. Or tweaked some of the words so that the same puzzle didn’t contain both AYN and RAND.
There’s another possibility, however: nowadays, the software for constructing puzzles is so good, it can do 95% of the work for you.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the constructor created the 3 or 4 long, themed entries and made up the clues for those… and then just let his software package fill in both the rest of the entries AND the clues, which he already had in a pre-existing database.
Which, really, is just a special case of “lazy constructor”. Even if you’re using one of those programs (and the best crossworders don’t), you still ought to at least go over it once to make sure there aren’t any awkwardnesses in it.
The “initials” clue are often found in TV crosswords. It’s not particularly lazy; it’s just that they often have two-letter words in them (because the people doing them want them easy). So you ask for someone’s initials.
But I prefer cryptic crosswords, so this sort of laziness doesn’t occur (the one exception is the New York Times, but that also avoids the easy clue).
I don’t think that’s quite what wheresgeorge04 was complaining about. It’s not just that they’re initials, but that they’re giving away half the answer. You could also do “Actor who played so-and-so (initials)”, or the like, without giving the answer half away.
But isn’t the Monday puzzle designed to console those of us who weren’t able to complete the Saturday puzzle? The repeats struck me as peculiar, but was grateful just to complete the damn thing.
True, but the crosswords in our TV section used to be filled with things like “Carrey’s monogram” or “Brando’s towel markings.” It’s not laziness, but just setting the puzzle for the ability level of those who fill it out.