{"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":"

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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,"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"],"yoast_head":"\nDear Will Shortz, - Landguppy Productions<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/landguppy.com\/blog\/dear-will-shortz\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dear Will Shortz, - Landguppy Productions\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I love doing crossword puzzles. 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