Creating a new Ubercross sometimes feels like doing all my best work in an invisible ink. How many people will experience it as a filled-in grid? Should I increase the number of people who do?
For me there's something beautiful and magical about a completed crossword grid, and that's true whether or not I'm the one who's filled it in. There's always a certain art to how the words fit together, the intricacies of different parts of the language meeting in those spaces. One of the reasons I do Ubercrosses, in fact, is that I was hypnotized by crosswords’ beauty and motivated to take it further if I could.
I really want to share that beauty with you, and I worry sometimes that the immense challenge of actually solving one Ubercross sector, let alone the whole Abecedaria, will be an insurmountable gulf. A puzzle that can't be solved at all is a failed puzzle. Is my puzzle close enough to unsolvable to meet the same definition?
But at this point in the project’s development, I think there’s an equal argument for leaving the answers to you to discover. Unsolved, these grids can be vast, mysterious mountains. Perhaps they’ll be a test for the speed-solver seeking glory. Or maybe they’ll be a balm for the quiet soul who needs a constant companion in distraction from the cares of the world.
Any piece of art has its meaning decided by the consumer. And I don’t want to step on your freedom to discover this one’s meaning for yourselves. I’ll still hint at the themes with the “small letter” puzzles and the occasional “spoiler” post…I can’t quite help myself there. But the finished grids…for 2023 at least, those will be for you to finish, not me.