Achievement Unlocked

"Become a world record holder."

As of today, the Guinness World Records site has recognized the Ubercross Abecedaria as the world’s largest crossword puzzle.

This has been a long, lo-o-o-ong campaign for me…its origins go back nineteen years, through the 50x50 Ubercross Fiddy, the 125x125 C-Spot, and other tinkering. My interface with Guinness still has a record of my first two applications with the C-Spot, submitted five years before I tried again with the Abecedaria.

Some thank-yous are in order—to Janice, who was my regular sounding board throughout; to Monica Marier and Kiki Canon, who edited a representative sampling of clues; to Sara Cole, who edited the clues for an earlier iteration; to Antony Lewis, who helped me adjust his software to make the larger sizes possible; to my mother, father, brother, and sisters-in-law for their love and support; and to everyone who sent me notes of appreciation or encouragement (or just left them online for me to find!), especially Dan Feyer, Will Shortz, Paolo Pasco, and the Butter No Parsnips team. I’m sure I’ve forgotten someone: sorry in advance!

I’m not done with megacrosswords yet—the “Ubercross Weird Al” is shaping up—

—but I’ll probably not do anything else on the Abecedaria scale again!

I thought I’d have more to say on this occasion, but words fail me. Thanks for listening. Up for today is more work on the Journal and an essay piece I’ve been meaning to put together for a while, and it just seems like now is the right time. I won’t be able to share all of that here, but I’ll tell you a thing or two about it…tomorrow.