The trick was to shorten in by removing a brand of tea from the answer, and letting it read down off that across entry, rather than inside it. вЂњSpill the TeaвЂќ by John Lieb and David Quarfoot featured longer entries than would fit in the given spaces. One example was Patrick BerryвЂ™s brain-melting Puzzle 5 from the 2016 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, вЂњChanging Lanes,вЂќ where answers zigzagged across the grid.ДЄ less complex puzzle with a similar gimmick appeared in the 2019 Boswords tournament. In those puzzles, entries donвЂ™t go the way youвЂ™d think, bending or taking unexpected twists in the grid. Still, those puzzles followed the standard across and down rules. Walker and Quarfoot designed the puzzle so that each of those clues had three possible correct answers - for 26-Across: ROWDIER, WORDIER, and WORRIED all fit the down clues - meaning there were a staggering 27 possible correct solutions!

It was up to the solver to find the anagram of each rack that fit the grid. You see, clues 26-Across, 36-Across, and 44-Across all featured seven letters, like a rack in Scrabble. Constructors Kacey Walker and David Quarfoot combined some considerable Scrabble skills and a dynamite crossword grid to create an amazing puzzle. The puzzle вЂњpredictedвЂќ the outcome of the election quite cleverly by allowing for either CLINTON ELECTED or BOB DOLE ELECTED to read out, depending on how the solver answered seven down clues.ДЄrguably the most impressive one IвЂ™ve ever seen was published in 2014. The most famous example is the 1996 Election Day crossword. Other puzzles, known as quantum puzzles, feature multiple possible answers in the same space. For instance, one ATM represented WON in SMALL WONDER and DINAR in ORDINARY. Plus, the across and down entries that shared an ATM had different currencies in their entries. The puzzle actually had little ATM graphics in various grid boxes, and they represented different currencies concealed in the theme entries. One impressive example that comes to mind is Andy KravisвЂ™s вЂњCurrency ExchangeвЂќ puzzle from the 2019 Indie 500 puzzle tournament. The exact puzzle escapes me, but I can remember a crossword where two down entries all had rebus squares, so instead of one film title in that down entry, two would fit in each. Other times, you can get whole strings of them. Sometimes, itвЂ™s only a single square in a themed entry where multiple letters fit. The most common form is the rebus puzzle, whether multiple letters can be placed in a single grid square. Other constructors find fresh ways to pack more into a grid than expected. Extra letters served not only as вЂњbumpsвЂќ along the otherwise smooth sides of the grid, but spelled out various bumps, like RAZOR, SPEED, and GOOSE. Some constructors have literally gone outside the box, creating puzzles where letters of answers are placed beyond the grid itself, as in Sid SivakumarвЂ™s American Values Club crossword вЂњBursting With PrideвЂќ a year or two ago (with the letters LGBTQIA+ appearing in sequence).Д«yron WaldenвЂ™s Fasten Your Seatbelts puzzle from the AVC crossword in 2019 also extended beyond the grid. Over the years, crafty constructors have found ways to push the boundaries of what you can do with those iconic grids of black and white squares. TheyвЂ™re the rules every solver expects to be in play when they sit down to solve a crosswords. These are the fundamental rules, NewtonвЂ™s three laws of crosswords. No matter what sort of symmetry is involved or how the grid is constructed, there are generally three accepted rules of crosswords: ItвЂ™s when the standard accepted rules of crosswords no longer apply. So, what do we mean by that? Well, essentially, grid manipulation is our catchall term for the most devious arrow in the constructorвЂ™s quiver. And theme gimmickry will be the subject of a future post.Д«ut today, weвЂ™d like to focus on grid manipulation. WeвЂ™ve spoken about clue trickery loads of times in the past, and no doubt will again. Now, there are all sorts of ways that constructors can play with solvers, but all told, they seem to fit into three overall categories: clue trickery, theme gimmickry, and grid manipulation. You also start to learn some of the constructorsвЂ™ tricks. You learn cluing tropes, like question marks indicating wordplay or quotation marks indicating informal speech or exclamations.

You learn vocabulary, both words that are simply new to you AND words that are common to crosswords. There are a lot of things you learn as you solve more and more crosswords.

Panoply crossword clue