Rebuses are a big part of the crosswording scene, so I knew at least one of the Ubercross Abecedaria sections had to do something with them. I had other ideas for R, though. For a while, I thought a rebus theme might fit into S or W, but I finally settled on putting it into the N section.
A rebus is any writing where a single sign—or square—stands in for multiple letters.
In the example below, from a recent NYT puzzle, the rebus square reads as “E” for HEADER and “MC” for SWIM CAP. Because E=MC…squared. (Sheldon Polonsky, May 10, 2023)
There are (basically) two kinds of rebus, the alphabetic kind and the phonetic kind.
Alphabetic rebuses are more popular in crosswords, which tend to focus more on playing around with letters than sounds. In a number-themed alphabetic rebus, you might see things like NE(TWO)RK crossing GO(T WO)RD—NE2RK, GO2RD—plus FLAGS O(F OUR) FATHERS, SPLI(T EN)DS and suchlike—FLAGSO4FATHERS, SPLI10DS.
Phonetic rebuses are based on sounding things out—finding the “2” homophones in TUTORING and TOO MUCH, the “4” in FOR ME? and SEMAPHORE, the “6” in BASICS—and of course, any words and phrases that include the actual numbers like TWO-FACED and WHEN I’M SIXTY-FOUR are also fair game, as they’d be in an alphabetic rebus. 2TORING, 2MUCH, 4ME, SEMA4, BA6, 2FACED, WHENIM64.
The Ubercross Abecedaria N uses both. And what’s more, it also uses a little leetspeak. Leetspeak is a form of typing “slang” popular among gamers in the young days of the internet: it revolves around the substitution of numbers and punctuation for their lookalike letters.
Or to repeat that last part in leetspeak, “17 r3v0lv35 4r0und 7h3 5ub5717u710n 0f numb3r5 4nd 50m371m35 punc7u4710n f0r 7h31r l00k4l1k3 l3773r5.”
Or to take it further, “!+ |23\\/01\\/35 4|20|_||\\||) +|-|3 5|_|85+!+|_|+!0|\\| 0|# |\\||_||\\/|83|25 4|\\||) 50|\\/|3+!|\\/|35 |>|_||\\|(+|_|4+!0|\\| |#0|2 +|-|3!|2 100|(41!|(3 13++3|25.”
Doing even the first kind of full leetspeak was a bridge too far for me. But there is some precedent in crosswords for allowing the letter I to “work” as the numeral 1, while the letter O reads as the numeral 0. You sometimes see crossword answers like IOI clued as “Introductory class,” which makes no sense until you realize they’re intended to be read as “101.”
We’re talking about two signs that can be indicated with one single line, and two others that can be indicated with a circle or ellipse. I had confidence that you, the solving public, could work it out from there.
Still, combining the 1/0 thing with phonetic rebuses and alphabetic rebuses…plus some answers that were just straight-up numbers…all things considered, it’s kind of a lot.
But then, I needed a lot to get any rebus to work at Ubercross size. Most rebuses have only so many answers that work for them. The rebus that started the Shortz era, for instance, was a color-themed one. Plenty of words and phrases contain RED, from A(RE D)ONE to I’M SCA(RED), but finding three that contain INDIGO and aren’t too “on the nose” is a challenge. I wouldn’t exactly relish doing this on a grander scale and having to come up with twenty more!
The three “INDIGO” answers here, besides the RAINBOW in the middle, are MOOD INDIGO, a Duke Ellington song, the INDIGO GIRLS band, and the INDIGO SNAKE, the longest serpent native to the U.S. Not too bad, but of the three, only the Indigo Girls are something I would’ve mentioned in casual conversation. At least before I married a snake-lover.
Tomorrow: confessions of an imperfect designer.