The Smallest Pangram Grid

26 in just 43.

I’m gearing up for another interview tomorrow, knee-deep in Journal formatting issues, and not quite ready to do previews yet. So for today, I’m going to share a little gem I actually discovered a few years ago.

This is the smallest published crossword to include all 26 letters, to my knowledge. It’s the creation of Enrique Henestroza Anguiano, with some guidance from Sid Sivakumar, who challenged his public to create a clean 7x7 pangram and then posted the results.

I hope spoilers are all right after three years, but I just wanted to appreciate the beauty on display here. It has six seven-letter words, every one of them a delight—GAY BARS, QUIZ KID, BEYHIVE, EVACUEE, FLANKED, AIR TIME—and lots of color in the shorter words, too (BEV, FAX, XPS, DOW, DEW, CHANT, JEB, I’VE, SEE?). When the weakest entry is BAZ Luhrmann of 1996’s Romeo and Juliet, you’ve clearly done right by the cruciverbal gods.

Tomorrow: a set of smallish grids of my own…not to this standard, but fun in their way. See you then.