To Journal of Wordplay contributors…and would-be contributors!…
I’m sure the holidays were distracting for a lot of folks. I know they were for me! But with the new year afoot, I need any submissions you might be working on. The usual pattern would make the deadline January 20, but since those holidays may have slowed us all up, let’s make it February 1. You can send material at tcampbell1000@gmail.com. I’m looking forward to seeing it!
Putting together The Year in Crosswords, I have to use a few sources in moderation, because they produce so much crossword-related stuff that if I linked to it all, I’d unbalance the rest of the article. One of those sources is The New York Times, another is The Guardian. And this year one of those sources…was me!
Along with updates about the Ubercross Abecedaria, I tried to set down a few things that I thought would be useful to the crossword community, solvers and constructors alike. So before I start looking forward again, let’s review…
Around here, I started a quick history of the ideas that led to the UA (never called it that before, feels weird) and beyond.
I did a long series on cryptic clues that started here, including both well-established clue types and a few ideas for new ones. There was a shorter series on quote crosswords beginning here.
There were reviews of the narrative crossword, the trivia crossword, the transformational crossword, the anything-goes crossword, the Schrödinger crossword (with a few more digressions on the subject), the pangram crossword, the marching bands and the circular crossword, the metapuzzle, the snake charmer, the lipogram crossword, crossword wordlists, and Matt Ginsberg’s clue database. (That last one deserves to be in the year roundup—I’ve added it.)
What do Wordle and Connections have in common? The “Phew!” And they’re both owned by the NYT, unlike the scrappy Oh, My Word! and Cine(2)Nerdle. I’ve written a lot about the latter, and as it continues to develop, I’ll probably have a bit more to say.
Non-Abecedaria record-setters: Sid Sivakumar’s smallest-ever pangram crossword, and the simplest crosswords.
A quick snapshot of my life—and greatest rival—in Scrabble.
Personal accounts of my time at ACPT and Lollapuzzoola.
Tomorrow: Taking things a bit easy by sharing a popular video.