Ariadne’s Crossword Library, May 2026

ACL Grid: 8 mins; Meta: 2 mins [4.10 avg; 5 ratings] rate it

G’day from your resident Aussie meta crossword commentator, Ben, with another release from Ariadne’s Crossword Library. And it’s yet another guest constructor: Faren Roth, with her debut Ariadne puzzle. The title is “Double or Nothing”, and the meta answer is a popular children’s book series.

Nothing leapt out at me as I was filling in the grid, although I wasn’t really focused on the meta. However, once the grid was done, the first thing I thought to look at were the double letters. It turns out there are only 4 of these in the grid, across and down, which is a tricky thing to avoid while constructing

• 20A. {Choux pastry ball filled with custard} CREAMPUFF
• 39A. {Desserts often sold at taco trucks} CHURROS
• 50A. {Heihei from “Moana”, for one} ROOSTER
• 59A. {Fly like a bird like a human} HANGGLIDE

When reduced to singletons these letters spell FROG. Based on the title, and my knowledge of children’s books, do we now need to look for entries that are somehow missing the letters TOAD? No, but there are other themers (there is some symmetric overlap with the double-letter entries) that have clues that include a synonym of nothing; and these entries start with TOAD:

• 16A. {Competition that’s nil-nil, for example} TIEGAME
• 27A. {“None of the above” and “other”, for example} OPTIONS
• 42A. {It’s zero degrees if you’re facing north} AZIMUTH
• 68A. {Zip away (from)} DARTOUT

So that’s two meta mechanisms for the price of one! And what a delightful answer: I remember reading the FROG AND TOAD books when I was younger. My thanks to Faren for a fun double meta, and, as always, thanks to Emma for editing this series.