The World's Longest Crossword Puzzles

Or Longo-est?

I came to giant crosswords mostly as an outsider to the field, and I still feel like one, all these years later. That was partly the plan. With occasional exceptions like the New York Times’ end-of-year “Super Mega,” the traditional market isn’t focused on really big puzzles, and due to technical restrictions, the blogosphere is even less so.

But there is one guy who’s about as well-established in the traditional markets as you get who’s devoted a lot of time and energy to giant-crossword-making, and that’s Frank Longo. His puzzle books have sold more than five million copies, and while he’s best known for sudoku, he’s got 91 published crosswords with The New York Times as well as other markets. He invented the “Spelling Bee,” one of the NYT’s other regular word games. (And we used to hang out on Facebook a bit…dude is one great Scrabble player.)

In the field of giant crosswords, he’s done a 29x29 grid for the American Crossword Puzzle tournament and did the first “Super Mega” crossword when the Times introduced its year-end giant puzzle section about six years back. He also did one of the first modern-day themeless Sunday grids in the Times.

But his real record that’ll likely stand the test of time is The Longest Crossword Puzzles, featuring two grids that unfold…and unfold…and unfold. Both have a central entry running through most of the grid: one is Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy, while the other is a key part of Kennedy’s inaugural address. Both are nine squares high: the longer of the two is 966 squares long. That’s more than seven times the length of my Ubercross C-Spot. Even my puzzle in progress is only 625 squares long (albeit also 625 high).

I probably could beat “The Longest Crossword” in sheer length if I made it my focus, but right now, that seems like an unworthy goal. I doubt I could shift from easier answers (at the left of the grid) to harder ones (at the right) as gracefully as Frank. (And he’s just too nice of a guy for me to want to snatch that laurel.) No, he can have this dimension; I’m going to focus on the two-dimensional plane.