Round-bit crossword clues can help you quickly and accurately find answers to cryptic puzzles. Enter the answer length and pattern for optimal results.
Your puzzles have become much more vibrant since I began solving for you ten years ago, with far fewer crosswordese clues and much greater vocabulary use – I really admire this trend!
About the Puzzles
If you have enjoyed our puzzles and want them to continue, consider contributing just $1 or $2 via Venmo (@theBEQ), PayPal, or reaching out – not required, but all contributors will get two bonus Sunday-sized thank-you puzzles in return!
Are You Like Us and Wonder About Puzzle Creation? A New York Times crossword creator — known as a constructor — recently took to Reddit in order to answer some questions on their craft, creating an informative yet fascinating thread of answers about it all that’s worth perusing.
Compilers provided mixed answers yet still offered helpful insights into their process. They noted that they preferred creating hard, themeless (also known as freestyle) crosswords because it felt “almost akin to creative writing.” Furthermore, despite finding and testing themes for cryptic crosswords being challenging due to familiarity with creating them, perhaps due to having more knowledge about creating them now than previously. Interestingly, though, the process of producing a New York Times cryptic was much more labor intensive than creating regular puzzles.
About the Creators
Most Times puzzle solvers don’t devote too much thought to crossword construction, yet many still marvel at brilliant or challenging clues and wonder how constructors come up with their tricks. Recently, one such constructor took to Reddit and answered many of our queries in a long thread; here are a few highlights from it all.
About the Constructors
The puzzle constructors who publish in The New York Times aren’t an amateur collective. For freelance constructors, having one published is considered an honor comparable to earning Michelin stars or scoring ten perfect 10s on the gymnastic vault. Their acceptance rate rivals that of top colleges across America; Michael Berg (A94) had to wait 14 years before seeing one accepted by NYT!
The Times is committed to diversifying its puzzles, clues, and constructors. Everdeen Mason, its editorial director for games, has created a fellowship to assist potential constructors in overcoming any steep learning curves and transitioning into professional construction.
This fellowship is one of the ways the Times hopes to attract more women and people of color into its ranks, while in 2021, launching another project to increase the accuracy of its crossword puzzles through collaboration with experts from languages, fields such as sociology, or other specialties.
As a constructor, your goal should always be to produce something fresh and new; however, that can sometimes be easier said than done. When working with grids that have “debuted” before in the Times puzzle section, specific entries may become dull over time; CRINGING may have appeared years ago in one of their puzzles but no longer seems fitting for today’s grid.
Constructors often discover fresh ideas while traveling, researching, or conversing with their colleagues and friends – hence the expression, “a fresh mind finds a fresh puzzle.”
Constructors aim to please puzzle editors; otherwise, their puzzles won’t be published in The Times. While The Times works closely with constructors to perfect their submissions for publication, ultimately, editors make the final call on every request made available for consideration and make their decision based on that information alone.
Some of the constructors featured in this issue were former students of mine, such as Alex Eylar – an expert at creating black-and-white grids in San Francisco – while Ted Kern is a retired fire protection and electrical engineer who lives in Rye Brook, NY, while Byron Walden is a professor of mathematics at Santa Clara University.
