The Week In Crosswords

Ben Tausig’s already-linked piece on the economics of the crossword business is must reading for anyone who wants to understand the current state of the industry. Related: be careful sharing ideas for puzzles on social media…

The boy genius of crosswords, David Steinberg, is now crossword editor of the Orange County Register associated papers (with a larger circulation than the Register‘s own Sunday edition). Want to submit a crossword to this new market? Here’s how.

Also seen in this blog before: “The history of AOL, as told in New York Times crossword clues,” Patrick Blindauer’s new puzzle suite, Las Vegas Puzzlefest, a fresh batch of indie puzzles and “Technology and the Times Crossword.”

Not reported on this site, however, was Matt Gaffney’s guest crossword for Brendan Emmett Quigley on Friday, a 16×15 grid just a few letters shy of the unheard-of, nigh-mythical quintuple pangram. Dream the dream! Gaffney also recently published an introduction to metacrosswords on About.com.

The Daily, Rupert Murdoch’s iPad-only newspaper (with crossword feature), is officially dead. The Guardian and The Daily Beast perform the autopsy. But The Daily Mirror has a new app, featuring a pop-up crossword. And Tim Rowell thinks it won’t repeat The Daily‘s mistakes.

Also, the Nook HD comes pre-loaded with Astraware Crosswords, along with such other apps as Pandora and Spotify.

What’s really remarkable about Laura Osnes’ recent crossword appearance isn’t that it happened on her birthday, but that the answer used LAURA, not OSNES.

Alan Connor takes a look at crossword culture and publishing in India.

Sherlock Holmes bonds with a possible sexual liaison over their mutual crossword addiction in “The Long Fuse,” an episode of Elementary viewable here.

Finally, remember six weeks ago, when a study suggested physical exercise and not crosswords was the best medicine for the brain? The makers of this little headband would also like to compete for that title.