(Photo credit: Balsavor)
I’ve made it to Devil Cross Puzzle #10! And I made it to the end of the school year. And somehow, I didn’t go crazy doing either.
Rather than spend the whole time celebrating, I thought I’d jump into a larger conversation about crosswords in general — specifically, what fill is bad fill? I recently reread Tyler Hinman’s blog post from a couple of years ago about his perception of declining fill standards in mainstream puzzles, and it got me thinking about creating my own road map about fill which I’m super-creatively titling Fill I Try To Avoid. I’ve posted variations of this list on other blogs, but I think now’s as good a time as any to post it to my own website.
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Fill I Try To Avoid (roughly in order from most offensive to least offensive):
1. Obscure Word crossing another Obscure Word (what Rex Parker terms a “Natick“).
1A. Uninteresting obscurities (i.e. South American water bug genus).
1B. Some completely made-up word or phrase. BLUE CAR, EAT FISH, BUY A DRESS, etc.
These first three are pretty obvious puzzle-killers. I know there’s bound to be disagreement on what constitutes an obscure answer. Solvers come from a wide range of backgrounds, and besides, one person’s mystery is another person’s gimme. But I still think two rules of thumb apply: first, if it’s not interesting to you in real life, it probably won’t be interesting for the solver to figure out. And second, if you have to ask if an answer is too obscure, it probably is.
Moving on….
2. Variants. You know, entries like IGLU or AMEER. I hate these with a passion. They only exist to make the crossing answers fit because nothing else will do. If you have to go with one of these, it’s almost certainly worth rebuilding your grid so that you don’t need it.
3. Random Roman Numerals. I usually try to avoid all Roman numerals, although low numbers that you’d see on a grandfather clock or in the U.S. Constitution like VII or VIII are less egregious than the really random ones like CMLIII.
4. Uncommon abbreviations, initialisms, and acronyms. Something like OBAD. (short for the the Old Testament book Obadiah) or JAS. (short for James)
5. Prefixes/Suffixes 5 letters long or longer. ENTERO-, ASTERO-, CENTI-, -PHILE, etc.
6. Partial phrases. Things like A DAY or HAVE A. I’ve really grown to dislike these. Most outlets won’t accept partials longer than 5 letters and editors often discourage constructors from having too many of them in a single puzzle, but even the ones 5 letters and under still make me wince.
7. Repeats of common words (like HIT and HIT UP). This one is actually a puzzle-killer in most cases, though I’ve seen some puzzles break this rule if the fill is particularly challenging or if a theme warrants it.
8. Uncommon foreign words. One of the more popular examples I can think of is ESEL.
9. Nominalizations. These are words which take verbs and turn them into bizarre nouns by adding -R or -ER at the end and the definition is just “one who [verb]s.” For instance, a STANDER is one who stands, and a HOPER is one who hopes.
9A. Words which arbitrarily add RE- or BE- to the beginning (RETAPING, REHINGE, BEWIG, etc).
9B. Words which turn verbs into strange adjectives by adding A- to the beginning. Some of them, like ABLAZE, are okay, because you might actually use that one in a sentence. But once you start getting into AREEL and AGASP and ATIPTOE territory….
9C. Words which create bizarre past tenses, like NOED.
9D. Plurals of Convenience. I don’t mind plurals of common nouns and verbs, but I do mind the ones which are completely arbitrary. The worst examples I can think of are plural first or last names (LARRYS, OTTS). See a pattern here? Everything in #9 involves adding letters to words where you shouldn’t.
10. Using ONE’S in a phrase where it’s usually a different pronoun. This most frequently comes up in the case of quad-stack puzzles, where the O-N-E-S makes a grid-friendly combination in a 15-letter answer (like in the phrase A LOT ON ONE’S PLATE). As Amy Reynaldo once explained, though it is part of a well-known phrase, the ONE’S bit isn’t desirable because you’re far more likely to use YOUR (“A lot on your plate” rather than “A lot on one’s plate”).
11. 4-letter prefixes/suffixes (ENTO-, -ETTE, -CRAT, -ENES, etc).
12. Timeworn crosswordese (ERN, OLEO, ESNE, etc)
13. Repeats of incredibly common words (A, THE, TO, IN, etc).
14. 3-letter prefixes/suffixes (TRI-, MIS-, -ICS, etc).
I don’t doubt that other constructors have their own lists like this, and people are certainly welcome to disagree with the placement of this list’s entries (some people don’t mind partials at all, or hate 4-letter prefixes much more than I do). I’m open to debate, so feel free to suggest your own additions to the list, or challenge me on the merits of what constitutes bad fill. And of course, this list says absolutely nothing about what makes for good fill. That’s a whole ‘nother conversation.
I also want to emphasize that my point in drawing up this list isn’t to say that I’m a saint in this regard. I, like every other constructor, have used some of these types of answers before — I had AREAR in one of my New York Times puzzles earlier this year. Almost every puzzle relies on some less-than-stellar entries to hold up the better answers in a grid. There’s at least one violation of my list in today’s puzzle, in fact. But the goal, obviously, should be to minimize these little pieces of dreck. I think if you need to break open the emergency glass and use one of them, it’s way better to steer towards the bottom of this list than the top.
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Today’s offering is a tough, 66-word themeless — my personal record low for a word count. Hopefully my fill stayed pretty clean in the process. Enjoy! There will be a new puzzle on June 6 (that’s a Friday — I’m posting it early because I’ll be away that entire weekend).
Apropos of my comment on the last puzzle, be careful what you ask for; you might just get it. I like your list of fill to avoid. My personal peeve is (are?) too many pop culture references, although I realize tastes differ and I’m an old fogey at this point. Today’s 1D/16A would have been problematic, except that 22A was almost a gimme and I’ve at least heard of 1D, so 1A (courtesy of 3D & 4D) made her (right?) come to mind. Similarly, never heard of 23D, but that was only one small piece in a section that otherwise called for other knowledge, so it was not a big stumbling block. Fun puzzle. Thanks for the habanero.
Yeah, that was something I didn’t really talk about too much. There are always going to be some pop culture figures or old opera singers that solvers don’t know — it’s impossible to account for everyone’s knowledge bases to make a completely air-tight definition of Obscure and Not Obscure. My hope is that at least every crossing is something a solver can infer.
Amen.
Was it in the movie Wordplay where Merl Reagle inveighs against words nobody every actually uses, like APER? I can’t think of any of his other examples, but we all see them all the time. I’d also add to your list of perennials the poor old Hawaiian goose. And I think SANTA ___ (ANA, of course) is pretty lame.
Nice puzzle. The pop culture references didn’t give me much trouble, but when I do an ancient historical Will Weng or Eugene Maleska puzzle, it’s their current (back then) pop culture references that trip me up reliably.
Thanks. I don’t remember what Merl said in “Wordplay” about that, though I do remember he said that ENEMA would have helped him out of many a jam, and that’s an entry I wouldn’t mind using in my puzzle. Then again, I have no breakfast test.
No no no! Don’t diss my nene.
Your post reminds me that independent constructors are free from the specifications of mainstream puzzle publishers but they ultimately need to develop their own sets of standards based on personal aesthetics. The most obvious departures from the mainstream seen in indie fill are R-rated words and phrases and very new, possibly ephemeral, references to pop culture. I also see the occasional mainstream-dealbreaker entry in an indie puzzle of the 1A, 1B, and 9-group variety, though indie constructors often mitigate the problem with a clue hint (“hidden in ONESELF”) or create a net gain with an editorial aside (“Yeah, I know it’s a terrible entry but I needed it for the crossings”). Your list of to-be-avoided fill is basically aligned with industry standards. Can you think of any personal pet peeves that are different from the allowances of other indie constructors or mainstream specifications, such as Peter Gordon’s “no ETUI” policy?
For myself, I’ve developed a strong enough aversion to partial phrases and #9-level nominalizations that I pretty much refuse to use them now where I might have been okay with them a year or two ago.
And while I agree that my list probably matches a generally accepted standard, I still think that a lot of mainstream puzzles rely on things like variants and random Roman numerals too often for my taste.
Not as tough as Brad Wilber’s Saturday Newsday, but hard enough to make me work; and thank goodness the crosses were familiar enough to allow me to grasp the two or three things I never heard of!
Thank you, and keep it up.
Whew, barely made it out of that puzzle alive. Tough as nails for me, but killer as usual. Figured out the misdirection in 35D almost immediately, but had CNOTES forever and that corner just would not happen. Didn’t help that I confidently plonked down ELSTINKO at 53A and did not want to see it go.
Thanks for the thought-provoking post as well. I mostly agree with the contents and order of your list (and am in full agreement that Naticks should top the list), although I’m more or less ok with prefixes/suffixes (even up to 5 or more letters) if they’re not stupidly obscure and don’t take over the puzzle, and I’m generally not too concerned with dupes. I try to avoid both of these, of course, but I’ll take some beautiful stacks with a dupe over bland corners any day. Often, I won’t even notice them as a solver, especially when they duped word has a bit of a different meaning in each entry.
In general, my rule is: good, enjoyable fill > fill that sucks but won’t prevent anyone from finishing the puzzle > fill that sucks and might prevent people from finishing the puzzle but can be saved with a hint in the clue (say, the old “hidden in…” or “anagram of…”) > fill that sucks and can’t be saved (Naticks, too many unfamiliar names, variant spellings of already obscure words, etc.)
Thanks. 35-Down was probably my least favorite answer in the grid — at one point I had a better answer there, but I realized halfway through cluing the grid that I had duped a word in 28-Down in that corner, so I felt I had to change it.
I agree with your rule of thumb. As some people over at Rex’s site have been saying, the better a theme is, or the better a group of fun, marquis answers is, the less one tends to notice the little bits of gruel that pop up; conversely, the less one enjoys a theme, the more those crappy little answers stand out. That’s probably true, although some crappy answers really stand out to me no matter how good the rest of the puzzle is — like variants, and RE- or BE-completely arbitrary words.
Really enjoyed the puzzle. My favorite clue was for 54A.
Some nice clues, too many pop refs probably. This one was hot and nearly burned me but I survived. Thanks for the puzzle. Hope the finals want well.