Category Archives: General

Crossword Construction

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This past week I read a new book, Crossworld: One Man’s Journey into America’s Crossword Obsession. While I don’t think very many Americans have a crossword obsession, I have one, at least when it comes to the New York Times crossword, which I do religiously. (My favorites are the hard ones, Thursday through Saturday.)

It was a flawed but enjoyable book (here’s the first chapter), and it prompted me to take a step toward something I’ve always wanted to do: construct my own crossword. It’s been a mini-goal of mine to someday get a crossword published under my name in the Times, so I may as well start trying. Plus, it’s just fun.

I found and read some great crossword-constructing tips from constructor Tyler Hinman, and I’ve already begun making a puzzle. I’ve come up with a punnish theme and several theme entries, but my fill doesn’t seem to be working so far, so I might have to reposition the theme entries and start again.

This is something I’m doing for the sheer enjoyment of it, and it feels good.

My Words

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I’m hanging out at home today, waiting for the cable guy to come and give us cable TV. I haven’t been in a blogging mood lately, and work has been busy, but now that I have some free time I can catch up on some things I’ve meant to blog about.

I started taking a 10-week fiction-writing class this week. The first class, rather introductory, was all about words — particularly, nouns. He had each of us make several lists of nouns in different categories.

One list was nouns that we like the sound of. I wrote down velvet, damask, vanilla, silver, quinine and clasp.

Another list was nouns that we like looking at (the words themselves, not the objects). I wrote down xylophone, earthquake, kevlar, jackalope, reflex and exchequer. I guess I’m fond of high-scoring Scrabble letters. (Given more time, I might also have written down quizzical.)

Another list was nouns that we find personally meaningful. I wrote down sex, neurosis, isolation, pressure, time and space. Don’t ask.

Anyway, the instructor’s great — very friendly and easygoing. I like him. The class should be fun.

A Letter From London

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A Letter To The Terrorists, From London:

What the fuck do you think you’re doing?

This is London. We’ve dealt with your sort before. You don’t try and pull this on us.

Do you have any idea how many times our city has been attacked? Whatever you’re trying to do, it’s not going to work.

All you’ve done is end some of our lives, and ruin some more. How is that going to help you? You don’t get rewarded for this kind of crap.

And if, as your MO indicates, you’re an al-Qaeda group, then you’re out of your tiny minds.

Because if this is a message to Tony Blair, we’ve got news for you. We don’t much like our government ourselves, or what they do in our name. But, listen very clearly. We’ll deal with that ourselves. We’re London, and we’ve got our own way of doing things, and it doesn’t involve tossing bombs around where innocent people are going about their lives.

And that’s because we’re better than you. Everyone is better than you. Our city works. We rather like it. And we’re going to go about our lives. We’re going to take care of the lives you ruined. And then we’re going to work. And we’re going down the pub.

So you can pack up your bombs, put them in your arseholes, and get the fuck out of our city.