Transcript of “Crosswordese and Crossword Lore”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. I mentioned at the top of the show that I wanted to talk about a book about crossword puzzles. It’s called Crossword Ease, A Guide to the Weird and Wonderful Language of Crossword Puzzles. It’s by David Buxpan, who is a crossword puzzle constructor himself, and his work has appeared in places such as the New York Times. And this book is all about crossword puzzles, their history, and the language particular to crosswords. And it has a lot of interesting trivia, and there are loads and loads of tips to sharpen your puzzle-solving skills.
Now, the book itself takes a little bit of getting used to, and I’m going to try to explain it. The text is straightforward, but every couple of sentences or so, one of the words will be in boldface in all caps. And then nearby in the margin in much smaller letters will be actual crossword puzzle clues for that particular word. So the book itself is kind of a puzzle. It’s kind of meta in that way. That sounds like just the thing that a puzzler would make. Yes, yes, it really does.
And so you can read the book straight through if you want to, but it’s a whole lot more fun to stop at those bolded words and check out the clues in the margins. For example, at one point, he happens to use the word sand, S-A-N-D, and it’s bolded. So you go to the margin and you’ll see the word sand along with the clues that have been used for that word in actual published puzzles.
And in this book, there are a couple of clues for sand, one of which is beach blanket with a question mark. Right, sand blanketing the beach. Okay. Right. And the other one, which I really love, is ocean lining. Oh, yes, of course. It lines the floor of the ocean. Yeah, it’s brilliant. And again, you have to think about these words in a totally different way. It’s an exercise in creativity.
So this book will help you understand how crossword constructors think and how they come up with some of those amazing puns and those clues that just make you smack your forehead once you figure them out. And for those of us who are crossword novices, there are whole sections on crossword ease itself. That is, all those little words that keep showing up again and again in crossword puzzles, which are really useful to know. They can really make doing those puzzles a whole lot more enjoyable. You know, you get a little toehold in the puzzles with those little bitty words.
So the book is called Crossword Ease. It’s by David Buckspan. That’s B-U-K-S-Z-P-A-N. And I should also add that he’s constructed a dozen progressively difficult crosswords that he includes in this book. So you can try out your skills right there.
Well, we will link to that book on our website at waywordradio.org. And if you’ve got some orts or want to talk about all the vowel-rich words for lava that are used in crosswords, well, we’re your people.
