Constructing a Cryptic: Grid Design

~ Stella ~ 2 Comments

Now that I’ve been part of the AVCX cryptic editing team for a few months, my mind is always on looking out for people who have potential to make cryptics. There’s a lot less material out there if you’re trying to figure out how to construct an American-style cryptic than for vanilla crosswords. I think back to my own first attempts at cryptic-making and they were pretty cringe-worthy. (I would like to publicly apologize to Joon Pahk and Patti Varol in particular for what I sent them back in the day.)

So I’m using this series of posts to crystallize my thoughts on cryptic construction so that new constructors can learn from it. You’ll notice I’m putting this info up here on Tough as Nails, not anywhere affiliated with AVCX: That’s because these are my personal thoughts, not to be taken as editorial standards, and not everything I do will apply to every constructor. YMMV.

Designing the grid

YMMV right here! Grid design in vanilla crosswords has never been my strong point, and my MO in cryptics is always just to borrow something that someone else has already done. I simply do a Google image search for “cryptic crossword” and pick a grid that has entries of the correct length for my seed entries. Some principles for beginners when grid-picking:

  • Carefully look over the grid to make sure that it follows the below standard conventions, which apply to most places you’d be submitting your puzzle. Just because you find a grid on the Internet doesn’t mean it follows the rules! Ask me how I know.
    • No two “unchecked” letters (i.e., letters that are part of only one word) should be adjacent to each other
    • At least half the letters in each word are checked
    • Three-letter entries should be avoided; some markets disallow them altogether, others allow them in very limited quantities
  • Longer entries are much harder to clue than shorter ones. If you don’t already have a clue in mind for a long entry, a more manageable first grid would be one that doesn’t have entries longer than 10 letters. 

This is a grid that I have used quite a bit that works great for beginners. It’s nothing but 5s, 7s, and 9s, lengths that generally produce entries that are manageable to find good wordplay for.

A 21x if you wanna: “Crossing the Pond”

~ Stella ~ 7 Comments

One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2022 has been to work myself up to constructing 21x puzzles comfortably. For those who think I’ve done that plenty already, I have not, at least not all the way: In my years as half of the Daily-Venzke constructing pair, I did all the cluing and much of the theme generating, but none of the gridding. And thus I’m not nearly as experienced a gridmaker as some people believe I am, and making a big ole puzzle is something that still intimidates me and that I’m not always sure how to do. It’s something I WANT to do, though, since the market for 21x has so much less competition than 15s. Hence, my resolution to systematically teach myself how to do this.

Where I am with my New Year’s resolution is that I’ve studied a number of 21x grids to see what they have in common re: theme entry placement, and I have tried generating a theme set that matches the lengths of theme entries in a grid that follows a pattern I’ve noticed, placing the entries in that grid design, and filling the grid around it. I’ll do that again a few times before I try designing a grid on my own. With these efforts, I’m generally not coming up with the most interesting themes since I’m not looking for practice on theme generation and if I come up with a theme I think is awesome, I’ll save it for when I’m better at making a grid so I can try and sell that puzzle. From time to time I may throw one of the puzzles I make on this site if I think it doesn’t suck.

The above description does NOT apply to the puzzle I’m posting today. I like this theme a lot, enough so that I made the puzzle back in late 2020 when it was even more of a slog for me to try to make a 21x than it is now. I tried selling it a couple of different places, but editorial consensus seems to be that the theme is a little too esoteric for most. But hey, this site is Tough as Nails and that’s what you all come here for, right? So here’s the puzzle, and I’m going to caveat: My inexperience in 21x gridmaking will be evident. I hope you enjoy it anyway, should you choose to give it a go!

21x – “Crossing the Pond” – Across Lite

21x – “Crossing the Pond” – PDFDownload
21x – “Crossing the Pond” – SOLUTIONDownload

Announcing the Oneth-of-the-Month Mini Cryptic!

~ Stella ~ 5 Comments

As many of you know, I’m an evangelist for cryptic crosswords. I make them for The Browser and The New Yorker and I’ll soon be editing them for the AVCXpansion. And of course there’s #crypticclueaday and the #crypticcluecontest on Twitter.

I’ve been really gratified by how many people have told me that the daily clues on Twitter have helped them understand cryptics a little better–that solving an entire puzzle was too intimidating, but one clue at a time was totally doable, especially with explanations come Friday.

I’ve been thinking for a while that just as mini (5×5) puzzles have brought lots of solvers into the fold in the standard-crossword world, the cryptic world desperately needs minis as a gateway drug, er, way to get more Americans to try this wonderful puzzle type. It is likely that at least one market will do this in the not-too-distant future, but I’m getting impatient. So here’s one from me, with the promise that I’ll do at least one a month this year!

If you’ve never solved a cryptic before, start with my Decrypting the Cryptic posts, which explain the various clue types:

If you’ve never solved a cryptic before and you give this one a try, please do let me know in the comments. If the evangelism works, I want to know about it! There are only six words in this puzzle, so YOU CAN DO IT!

Mini Cryptic #1 – Across Lite

Mini Cryptic #1 – PDFDownload
Mini Cryptic #1 – EXPLANATIONSDownload

Cryptic media circus!!!!

~ Stella ~ Leave a comment

Can’t believe I forgot to post it here! For those who don’t follow me on social media, I had a really big cryptic Sunday: three puzzles published on one day, two of them cryptic debuts. Solve ’em here:

I also did an interview with The Browser in which I discuss cryptics and look swole (free to watch).

A cryptic for you!

~ Stella ~ 2 Comments

Once Nate became the first person to put a cryptic puzzle on my site I thought, okay, okay, it’s finally time to do one on the site also! As a few of you have requested, it’s a 13×13 puzzle, so a little smaller and easier to deal with than most published puzzles.

Cryptics won’t be a regular feature on the blog; given that I’m already putting out free themelesses and a ton of cryptic clues on the regular, I’d like to get paid for making full puzzles!

Although it may seem that a cryptic must be easy to construct given the small number of words in the grid and that only about half of the letters have to be checked, to me they’re quite a bit harder. You know the stereotypical question about “What do you do first, write the clues or come up with the answers?” that people ask about standard American crosswords, and that it indicates a complete lack of understanding of the construction process? It’s not a silly question at all about cryptics. You’ve got to be thinking at every step of the word-choice process whether that word lends itself to good wordplay in a clue. (I learned this one the hard way, when I filled my first few cryptics with words I found very interesting, as I would for a themeless, but then realized I couldn’t break them up into bits for cluing, which led to some very tortured anagrams.)

End aside; here’s the puzzle! I’m on vacation, so I won’t be checking the comments to this page much, but please do @me on Twitter if you have something to say.

Oh yeah…I realized I didn’t write any explanations for this one (the solution grid is just the solution grid). Will try to get to that when I return from my vacation, which is very much needed.

Not-Tough as Nails Cryptic #1 – Across Lite

Not-Tough as Nails Cryptic #1 – PDFDownload
Not-Tough as Nails Cryptic #1 – SOLUTIONDownload