It’s fun when you write a creative one and it makes it through. “I know a lot of them will probably be changed based on what day the puzzle is going to run and the audience. “The clues are not something I feel too married to,” says Crinnion. The clues are not written until all the words in the puzzle are done, and they are often edited by the publication. You need a word with an ‘e’ in the second slot and a ‘w’ in the sixth spot, or something like that, and it will tell you all the possibilities.”
Actual crossword puzzle maker software#
The software will suggest what word can actually fit in the puzzle. I have a word list that is ranked and that helps fill in the other various spots. You want to create enough space to separate the theme answers and leave some room for fun, bonus long answers. “You have to create space between them and put black squares in to break them up.
“If you have long answers overlapping each other, it is very difficult to fill in with actual words,” says Crinnion. The art of putting a puzzle together starts with a 15-by-15 blank grid for Crinnion, and creating the long answers. “I often work on it in small chunks over multiple days, but sometimes I get super excited and have a very clear idea and it does not take that long,” says Crinnion. The puzzles can take Crinnion anywhere from ten to 40 hours to complete. In recent years, the themes have gotten incredibly creative.”Ĭrinnion’s theme words all had homophones to streets and roads, such as Olympic gymnast “Aly” Raisman, and “rode” horseback. “A theme usually consists of four to five answers in the grid that are longer words and phrases that somehow are connected in an interesting way. “Monday through Thursday puzzles generally have a theme, which is typically the style that I construct,” says Crinnion. 31 and had the revealer answer of “CHANGING LANES.” Anne Marie Crinnion recently had her first crossword puzzle published by The New York Times. From the time Crinnion submitted the puzzle to the time it was published took about nine months, although she found out three months ago it had been accepted.Ĭrinnion’s puzzle appeared on Monday, Aug. “The odds are against you,” says Crinnion, who has also had a puzzle appear in The Wall Street Journal and is currently working on one for The Atlantic. The Times crossword puzzle is the gold standard in the intensively competitive crossword world and receives hundreds of submissions a week, for only seven spots. I started to think about fun ways that words connect and that leads to a fun theme idea, which leads to an interesting puzzle.” From there, we created a good word list and ranked words and got a computer program that makes the formatting a lot easier. Making that got both of us interested, and we found out it is actually something fun to do. “It wasn’t really a true crossword puzzle, as it wasn’t formatted nicely or have the rules in place for a New York Times puzzle. “A few years ago, I had the idea of making a little puzzle for my boyfriend as a gift,” says Crinnion.
The end of August was quite eventful for Anne Marie Crinnion: she started her doctoral studies in psychological sciences at UConn, and a crossword puzzle she wrote appeared in The New York Times for the first time.Ĭrinnion, who is studying remotely this semester from her home in Villanova, Pa., started solving crossword puzzles towards the end of high school and began doing the famously challenging Times crossword on daily basis as undergraduate at Harvard.
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