{"id":129,"date":"2010-05-06T22:05:56","date_gmt":"2010-05-07T05:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/letterstofamouspeople\/?p=129"},"modified":"2010-05-06T22:05:56","modified_gmt":"2010-05-07T05:05:56","slug":"dear-will-shortz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/dear-will-shortz\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Will Shortz,"},"content":{"rendered":"

I love doing crossword puzzles. My late grandmother used to do them when I was a small child, always in pen. I’ve never done one NOT in pen. When I was pregnant, I gauged how much my brain had shrunk and when it was back to normal by whether I needed help with the Sunday crossword. (It really does shrink during pregnancy and takes about six months post partum to regain its previous mass. The study <\/a>was done by the Royal Postgraduate School of Medicine in 1997.) At full capacity, this brain doesn’t share crosswords.<\/p>\n

But there’s something that doesn’t sit well with me. I’m tired of the same old typical crossword clues in every crossword. You know the ones I mean: Mine entrance — adit; Common chemical ending — ene or ide. Then there are the era specific ones, usually related to some song or movie from the 1950s or 1960s. I know that my grandmother could have answered those. Same with the Latin clues. But if you want to bring a new and younger group of crossword puzzlers into the fold, you’re going to have to update your clues, even if the answers are the same.<\/p>\n

Here’s a dare: do a crossword that does not include a single clue that a crossword puzzler would recognize as a clue they’ve seen a zillion times before. Blue dye — anil; War theater — ETO, or USO if it’s a cryptic clue. Please stop giving clues that are references to archaic crazes and the ephemera of bygone days.<\/p>\n

I love solving crosswords, especially hard ones. When I lived in Ireland, I struggled to do the Irish Times <\/em><\/a>cryptic crosswords. I never finished one, but if I got 10 clues right, I was thrilled. I know that writing a crossword is hard. But I know you’re the best editor out there, so if anyone can do it, you can.<\/p>\n

Have a great week. Make the next one really hard. And punny. I like when you do punny.<\/p>\n

Lisa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love doing crossword puzzles. My late grandmother used to do them when I was a small child, always in pen. I’ve never done one NOT in pen. When I was pregnant, I gauged how much my brain had shrunk and when it was back to normal by whether I needed help with the Sunday…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[215],"tags":[252,309],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-fan-mail","tag-crosswords","tag-will-shortz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}