Rules of thumb for crossword construction
“Do editors have rules on how many three-letter words you can use or how many black squares you can use in a crossword?” — Anonymous From Christina: There aren’t hard-and-fast rules about either of these things, but we do have some general rules of thumb that we often follow. For three-letter words, our main concern is that we don’t want all of them to really jump out at solvers. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a three-letter entry, but the problem is that, inevitably, most three-letter words have been in crossword puzzles many times, and it’s hard to come up with fresh clues for them. Many three-letter entries end up being abbreviations and acronyms, and this does bother us more — we try to avoid too many entries that aren’t real words. Imagine two 15x15 grids, with 78 words. One of them has 25 three-letter words, but almost all of them are real words: HAT, CUP, MAN, CAT, PIT or similar. The other has just 15 three-letter words, but almost every single one of them is an abbreviation or initialism: SSN, QBS, TSP, STP, AGN, MMA, RDA. We might end up favoring the grid that has more three-letter entries if they don’t jump out because they’re fun entries to clue. That said, we generally would consider a puzzle with 20 or more three-letter entries as being heavy on short entries, and it would still most likely count as a ding against the puzzle. With black squares, there are certainly reasons to break the rules, but a common rule of thumb is that there should be no more than 40 black squares in a 15x15 grid or 80 in a 21x21 grid (roughly 18 percent of the total squares). We typically don’t like the black squares to jump out at us in a negative way. Having too many black squares in a grid can make it feel as though we’re cheating the solver out of squares to fill in. If 25 percent of the squares in the grid are black, the average word length is going to be much lower than in a grid with fewer black squares. Sometimes a puzzle might have black squares that are actually part of the theme somehow, and in those cases we might allow higher black square counts. For instance, sometimes black squares actually represent letters or rebus squares, so the actual word count is lower if you imagine them being replaced by those words or letters. Or, sometimes the black squares might create grid art that hints at the theme in some way. Most of our rules of thumb, and even our strictest rules, can be broken if there’s a good enough reason.
Solve Friday’s Crossword on Easy Mode!
In today’s Wordplay column, Deb Amlen writes about what to do when you don’t mesh with a puzzle. For expert hints on today’s puzzle, read her column. Were you able to solve the Friday puzzle with Easy Mode? We want your input! Share your experience with us on the X platform, on Threads or by email. A Quick Cool-DownHow fast can you solve today’s Mini?
Get a ClueMy favorite clue from last week is 48-Across from Saturday, Oct. 18. Think of “spirals” as a noun instead of a verb here. 48-Across: Spirals out of control?
How are we doing? Thanks for playing! Subscribe to New York Times Games. If you were forwarded this newsletter, you can sign up to receive it regularly here. P.S. The answer to Get a Clue is TORNADOES.
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