The Week In Crosswords

The week’s juiciest items read like the sequel to last week’s. The newly-renamed American Values Crossword succeeded in raising enough money for its next year of life, with the help of some mainstream media coverage and a little boost from its erstwhile sponsor, The Onion AV Club. (“AV” stands for “Audiovisual” in the latter’s name, meaning that “American Values” is a cute retronym.)

But at this writing, nobody’s gone for the highest-level rewards: the Brendan Emmett Quigley-penned song or the Ben Tausig home visit. A couple of contributors have purchased the right to get work published, though, for $500 ($400 after contributor pay).

The new New York Times puzzle page didn’t exactly roll out smoothly on Monday, with the Times feeling the need to label it “a first effort” on Tuesday. “Not without its hiccups,” wrote gaming site Polygon. But still a step in the right direction, and probably an inevitable one.

Ninth-century “word cross” found in an old Bible.

The Guardian interviews Gordius in his 45th year of contributing crosswords to the paper. “Are their ratings never very good? (8,3,4)” really is a great clue for STANDARD AND POOR.

The Nation gives cryptic constructors’ perspective on the “Big Four”– the Scrabbliest letters in the alphabet.

Touted as “like if crosswords and Sudoku had a baby,” the fill-in-the-blank game Unolingo reports that it’s gaining ground on the app charts. The data about its popularity isn’t too specific, but the game is interesting enough to be worth a look anyway. And Puzzler World 2012 3D, which we reported was on its way a couple of months ago, is now here (and reviewed).

And finally, Ulrika Jonsson of British television fame discusses her love of crosswords in the 41:30-48:00 portion of this broadcast (hat tip on this one to pannonica).