American Crossword Puzzle Tournament

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. And Grant, I have a crossword puzzle clue for you.

Shoot.

I’m looking for a four-letter word. It ends with the letter D.

And the clue is, it moves tirelessly. Any guesses?

It moves tirelessly. Does that mean without tires or it means without tiring?

Oh, gosh. You’ve already halfway figured it out.

I don’t know the answer, though.

But that’s the thing with crosswords, isn’t it?

There are all these puns and near puns and the use of homographs and homonyms and, boy, I don’t know.

Yeah, exactly.

Four letters into the D and means moves tirelessly.

Tirelessly, without tires.

You’re right.

What is something that moves without tires and ends in a D?

And maybe goes down a hill during the winter.

Oh, a sled.

There we go.

Isn’t that great?

Yeah.

That’s good.

That’s a great one.

I’ve got one for you.

Okay, bring it on.

All right.

It is seven letters.

I don’t know what the last letter is, but I can give you the last letter.

The last letter is a G, and it means the close of a day.

The close of a day.

It’s not evening?

It is evening.

Well, that was easy.

Yeah, but you know where I got it from?

Where?

The world’s first crossword puzzle.

Really?

Yeah.

You found the world’s first crossword puzzle?

Yeah, it’s on the website of Will Shorts.

NPR puzzle master Will Shorts.

Funny you should mention him, Grant.

Right.

Since you and I will be appearing at this year’s American Crossword Puzzle Tournament with Will.

And I should mention, too, that at this year’s tournament,

You will be doing the play-by-play color commentary during the finals.

The pressure’s on, Grant.

I tried a couple last week.

Oh, no.

I got like five of them.

Five of the answers, or you did five puzzles?

Five answers total.

Five answers total in one puzzle.

I worked on it for like a half an hour.

But you know what my big impediment is, right?

No, what?

My resistance to puns.

You’re probably thinking about all this obscure technical jargon anyway, and it’s some simple answer like evening or something.

I’m actually looking forward to the convention because I suspect that these are our people, Martha.

Yes, they are our people, Grant.

And I got that one clue about the word sled from the website Crossword Ease.

That’s E-S-E dot com.

And I’m going to toss you some more of those later on in the show.

So don’t go to that website.

And in the meantime, if you have a question about language, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

Thank you.