For the Ubercross Abecedaria D, I flirted with a distributed kind of crossword, better known as the “Scandinavian” variety or “arrowwords” or “Pencil Pointers.” A sample grid is below. As you can see, it lets in some unchecked squares, though not as many as a cryptic crossword. More unusually, it’s got clues just sitting there in the puzzle grid, taking up the space we’d normally fill with black squares.
But I was getting a little tired of changing the form of the crossword each time (I’d already done that with B and C). I knew I didn’t have enough ideas to keep doing that all the way through Z, so I worried I’d be setting up false expectations if all the first four entries were in different forms.
Also, I wasn’t sure at what size the Ubercross would be printed or presented. If I sized the grid too small, the clues would be illegible…and I love my long clues, so anything not “too small” would end up getting pretty big.
With that idea put to bed, my best option seemed to be dictionary definitions. Early crossword clues used these almost directly, a lot more often than they do today. At the height of the crossword craze in the 1920s, dictionaries became the books most often stolen from the library, eclipsing the usual record-holder—the Bible.
(Yes, the “thou shalt not steal” book. But in their defense, maybe some of the thieves hadn’t gotten that far into it before making off with it?)
With an Ubercross-sized grid, I could fit definitions in as answers, not just as clues. But what dictionary would I use? Well, if you’ve done this week’s “small d” puzzle…then perhaps you’ve already guessed.