So, uh, I gotta be honest…
The N in “Ubercross Abecedaria N” also stands for “not my favorite.” There had to be at least one section I was a little “meh” about as I finished it, and this one’s elected.
I like a lot of it, including answers like CHA(MILLION)AIRE and EXTINCTION-LEV(EL EVEN)T. I like some of the number trivia I found, like the fact that 343 is (3+4)3.
But in my opinion, T-the-constructor put too much faith in T-the-clue-writer when it came to coming up with interesting clues for “298,” “939,” and “301.” (Or, rather, 3OI.) The percentage of numbers with interesting trivia attached—or at least, interesting trivia that can be guessed by non-mathematicians—turned out to be smaller than I believed when I designed this one.
It didn’t help that I stuck to the usual crossword rule of “no two-square answers.” This normally doesn’t exclude anything too interesting, but a lot of the numbers that have some pop-culture relevance are often two-digit. Pluralized numbers like “52S” (“Weeks in a year and cards in a deck, e.g.”) could make up the difference a bit, but those are on the awkward side.
My back-up plan was always to put in some simple math clues. For “298,” “939,” and “301,” respectively, I could offer “(153 × 2) - 8,” “666 + 273,” or “7 × 43.” I ended up leaning on that back-up plan more than made me comfortable. No one minds doing a little arithmetic for a number-themed puzzle, do they? Gosh, I hope not.
Some experiments don’t work out quite the way you’d like them to. That said, I’m not always even the best judge of my own work! It’s possible that the people who actually solve this puzzle (those elite few) will consider N their favorite section, or more likely, that they’ll put it in the middle somewhere.
Arithmetic clues may feel too much like homework for some solvers, but they have two redeeming features: (1) they exercise a part of your brain that you don’t often get to flex with crosswords, and (2) pretty much anyone can figure them out, without having to Google anything.
In fact, some cross-puzzles offer almost nothing but arithmetic clues, with just the occasional bit of number trivia thrown in. These cross-number puzzles are a distinct but parallel tradition to the wordplay-and-vocab puzzles I know best. If the arithmetic clues seen in N are indeed your speed, might want to check some more of those out!
Next: Guessing at the future of encyclopedias.