Spoiler Sat.: The Anything-Goes Crossword

But where's it going?

Normal crosswords have normal answers. Mostly. A few theme answers might stretch the imagination, but only because they’ve been transformed by some simple, consistent wordplay. Here’s a couple of LA Times theme clues and answers from just yesterday:

• Phrase on a card in Desert Monopoly?—DO NOT PASS GOBI

• Doll with many advanced degrees?—GENIUS BARBIE

You can tell how this goes. A syllable sounding like “B” is added to the end of a common phrase. Then the clue is changed to match.

“Something Different” crossword answers are…different. There’s no “common phrase” they invoke, and “imaginative” answers aren’t confined to a few spots—they’re most of the grid! They’re also called Anything Goes or anything-goes puzzles, and seemingly anything does.

Here’s a sample from 1985, by Merl Reagle. Some of my faves here include I GIVE KEMO SABE HELP, I’M AN EDGY GAL, ORSONIC, TRAM GETTERS, MAGNET SALESMEN, I DO SOLO WORKS, EYES EYES EYES, YAMMERING ERITREANS, NY TIMES TALK, and PAPA COATI.

Thanks to Dan Feyer for making these accessible to a modern audience. As Feyer discusses, this puzzle genre was created by Henry Hook, first published by Merl Reagle, and most often published by Trip Payne—three high achievers in the field.

Writing anything-goes clues isn’t as tricky as you might expect. I DO SOLO WORKS is “One-man band’s boast.” Often the “different” answer consists of two normal parts, so you just combine the normal clues for each of those parts. YAMMERING ERITREANS becomes “Clamorous folks of Asmara” and PAPA COATI “Head of a [South American] mammal household.” (It was 1985, we still had a few gender-role assumptions to move past.)

Despite its illustrious pedigree, the anything-goes puzzle has always been a niche genre. For years, it seemed like only Payne was keeping the flame alive. More recently, other puzzle scenesters have taken it up, including Gizmo Thwomp, and Frisco17. The anything-goes format allows the use of fewer black squares than even a themeless, and below, Thwomp takes that idea as far as it can go:

In most entries, Thwomp combines three or four different answers, which calls for similarly combined clues. MY DISC-EYE SIRENS is “the group of sailor-killers i keep on hand. they see with cds attached to their face. they're pretty cool, i guess, but they keep trying to drown me so i wear noise cancelling earbuds.”

Thwomp also says, “This is a record-setter, demolishing the previous record of 17” black squares in a 15x15 crossword. Like everything on Thwomp’s site, that statement’s a little tongue-in-cheek. But as one ridiculous record-seeker to another, I salute them!

Speaking of cheeky constructors, one can argue the subversive Et Tu, Etui uses anything-goes with every puzzle. Sometimes it takes a normal-seeming answer like MINOR AXIS and gives it an anything-goes clue. “The major ax isn’t my favorite, but the ___”…MINOR AX IS.

I feel like crosswords are more beautiful for having this crazy cousin at the family reunion. I love the imagination of it, the spontaneity. A constructor could start filling in AMERICAN _ _ _ _ _ _ and end it almost any way they wished. AMERICAN ENERGY: “Under Biden, it’s going more solar.” AMERICAN BURGER: “July 4 cookout item.” AMERICAN SPIDER: “It catches flies in the land of the free.”

So I came to think the Ubercross Abecedaria wouldn’t be complete without an anything-goes section. I started looking forward to it. Crossword constructing gets easier and easier the bigger your word list is. So surely a puzzle that allowed all sorts of borderline nonsense would be easier than usual, right?

How hard could it be?

Ha.

Ha, ha…ha ha ha…