Belated again, and two of the most interesting news bits this week have been covered by Amy (the video crossword and the Rex Parker-produced/Patrick Blindauer-edited American Red Crosswords). Plus, a lot of attention’s still focused on the regex crossword we showed off last week. So what’s left?
Some low-level tension plays out between mystery-solving couple Booth and Brennan on the recent Bones episode “The Friend in Need,” and a poor, innocent crossword gets caught in the crossfire:
Cheer up, Booth, you could be as cruciverbally challenged as this guy.
Portugese crossword scholar Sergio Barcellos Ximenes has put all his work in one easy-to-access place.
The Nation discusses letter banks in cryptics.
If you agree with its point or can swallow your disagreement, you might find an interesting rhetorical use of the Times crossword in this essay on taxation.
Whereas this tweet finds something far more sinister in a common, borderline-crosswordese grid answer.
Can a crosswordese answer go mainstream again? Pretty sure URALS has. Sympathies for the meteor damage, but at least there were no reported fatalities.
And finally, for Wheel of Fortune devotees, Vanna White’s style moments.
Another interesting article about crosswords appeared this week in the Toronto Globe & Mail:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/crosswords-a-10-letter-word-for-obsession/article8728544/
Finally got around to doing that regex crossword. Very tough, yet solvable. Interesting puzzle type, since each cell operates under a unique set of constraints. Anyone know of any others like it? Might have to take a crack at writing one myself, but I have no idea how one would go about ensuring that there’s a unique solution.
I can almost guarantee that there are none more like it. The Mystery Hunt, where this puzzle originated, tends to contain many one-of-a-kind puzzles…or, quite often, first-of-its-kind puzzles.
Guess I’d better get to work then…
A correction to the above: the Bones episode is scheduled to air February 25, and did not air last week as I previously thought. The above clip is a preview.