Tokelau All Star posted:

Going through the 101 Puzzles in Logic and Thought book posted a while back. I don't know where the hell to even begin with this one.

DontMockMySmock posted:

And a few puzzle videogames from my Steam library:

Tiggum posted:

I was very much enjoying The Talos Principle, until it started throwing too many timing-based puzzles at me. I get extremely frustrated when I know what to do but I fail at doing it quickly enough.

DontMockMySmock posted:

The Talos Principle was pretty good, had a few clever bits, but it had a little too much boring repetition of puzzle ideas and a little too much bullshit for me to recommend it unqualified. I really enjoyed the storyline/writing though.

Unkempt posted:

Hey, crossword and particularly NYT crossword solvers! If you saw a clue reading

'Natural logarithm that equals one'

with the answer

LNE

would you think:
a) That's some good original cluing there! or
b) That's horseshit, keep your math out of our word games?

Tiggum posted:

If you like this kind of puzzle, the game Sherlock is just that but in visual form. There's also a bunch of other, similar puzzle games on that site.

Captain Hygiene posted:

That's some good original cluing there, but I've also spent way too much time doing math to be trustworthy.

Unkempt posted:

... and crossword submitted. That's my 4th try and they haven't taken any yet so we'll see how that works out. Going to put my last effort here if anyone wants a go, and if you can guess what they objected to in this one you'll win a shiny Internet point because it sure as hell wasn't either of the clues I thought might be a bit crap.

PhantomOfTheCopier posted:

They didn't like 1 and 21 across?

ps AND 17/47 with the same clue (and same answer?)?

Captain Hygiene posted:

That's awesome. I'll give it a try if I can figure out a doable way since I don't have printer ink at the moment.

I've been doing a ton of crosswords lately and have been thinking about puzzle design. Is this all manual creation? I have no idea how people put these things together, especially once you start getting into more complex grids and things like the cleverer NYT Sunday puzzles that mess with the format.

Unkempt posted:

They all have different answers, but it was actually 47 they objected to. I think they like stuff like using the same or related clues for different answers, it turns up quite often in late-week NYT puzzles.

DontMockMySmock posted:

What's objectionable about that? It made perfect sense to me.

quote:

We're sorry to say that this puzzle wasn't one of the few selected for publication. It's solid work overall, but the bar for themeless puzzles is extremely high these days due to our large backlog of submissions. Themeless entries should be familiar as standalone words and phrases, so answers like ROMAN ONE HUNDRED, while inferable and cleverly clued, wouldn't be accepted.
 
We appreciated the opportunity to review your work, and we look forward to seeing more of your submissions in the future.  

quote:

But I do have an objection to its partner, 17 across; it should be lower-case c.

Unkempt posted:

They all have different answers, but it was actually 47 they objected to. I think they like stuff like using the same or related clues for different answers, it turns up quite often in late-week NYT puzzles.

https://www.jmviz.dev/Phil/

is the one I've been using, it does default weekday/sunday NYT crossword grids with the usual symmetry, it has a dictionary that gives you suggestions for blank entries and it pumps out a properly formatted pdf for submissions when you're done. All very handy and the right price.

sephiRoth IRA posted:

Making crosswords is fun! There's actually a pretty neat series the NYT put out on how to create crossword puzzles. I've also linked a specific article on tools which I found was helpful.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/crosswords/how-to-make-a-crossword-puzzle-the-series.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/11/crosswords/how-to-make-crossword-puzzle-grid.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article -> we'll cover tools in a minute

Initial caveat: I'm just some dummy, there are probably people here much more successful that just don't happen to be in the thread atm. This is my process, it's probably suboptimal

1. Starting your crossword

I generally start my process by thinking up stupid puns. The goal being to come up with a theme, not necessarily for the puzzle as a whole but just for the major clues across the board. Wordplay is frequently involved, but it's not that way for every crossword, obviously. I just like coming up with wordplay puzzles for the major clues. For example, on a recent puzzle I decided I wanted to explore spoonerisms.

Here is the key clue that gives a hint to my starred or theme clues:
A certain slip of the tongue... or a hint to 19-, 31-, and 41- across? (10) SPOONERISM

I came up with three clues that would serve as my wordplay clues:
A crazy person.. or a funereal foundation? (10) - CASKETBASE
Tend the front lawn... or increase the vicar's headcount? (11) - GROWTHEMASS
Use the plumbing... or rock the castle? (11) - SHAKEATOWER

Notice that I had to balance my clue numbers - two clues with 11 letters, and one with 10 to offset my key clue.

2. Building the grid

Once I had the basic theme, it was time to start building the grid. There's a lot of different ways to construct grids, but my favorite tool for actually building the final product is a free online applet called Phil : http://www.keiranking.com/apps/phil/. In terms of ease of construction, phil is awesome - it can even export in proper formats that can be submitted to places like the NYT. I like Phil because you can also download both a PDF export but also the crossword file itself, so you can load your work back into Phil and continue even though it's all online.

Phil can generate patterns for you, but you can also go in and selectively edit squares to be black and white. Symmetry is turned on by default, but you can definitely turn it off to build weird grids for custom purposes. For my spoonerism puzzle, I generated a few patterns to see how they caught me and finally settled on one that I could change up a bit to fit my big answers.


Notice I left myself with some issues - namely filling in these monster-sized clues at the top left and bottom right of the grid. But that's okay, that's future me's problem. First things first, jam my theme clues in.


Now it's time to build off those and get the puzzle complete. I usually just start typing words and building up the grid from those, using my own wits to come up with most of the clues. I admit, however, I am no genius, and need help with the corners. To note, Phil will only help you with construction, it doesn't have the solver abilities of other (paid) construction apps. What is a solver? It's a neat bit of programming that will look through a dictionary and come up with a set of words that fit the constraints you give it. As you can imagine, you can't really apply this to an empty or even partially complete whole grid, as it's way too open in terms of possible words. I only use solves for the corners, and then only when I really get myself stuck.

In terms of paid constructors, I like crossfire: http://beekeeperlabs.com/crossfire/. Even without paying for Crossfire, you can still (for free) use their powerful solver.

Here's a screenshot of my filled grid in Crossfire - I axed the top right corner to show the context I gave the solver. With the "quick fill" option you see there, Crossfire will pop in (if possible) words that will fit the constraints. What's cool about Crossfire too is that as you type it will suggest words/letters that fit your constraints without actually needing to use the Quick Fill.





3. Writing clues

I love writing clues. Once you have all your answers, you can use your wits to make the puzzle as difficult or as easy as you'd like. I usually make a first pass and have either my wife or one of my smarter friends edit them for me. I don't always make sense, and part of it is making sure you're not being so coy that people will think you're an rear end in a top hat.

Some examples:
hard:
Convincingly diverting (10) - DISSUASIVE
Traditional Vietnamese garment (5) AODAI

That second one? It's a bullshit clue / answer. One of my big challenges is that the solver will give me awkward, difficult words. Your options are to blow up the grid or roll with it. So sometimes you're just going for whatever the dictionary definition of a word is, like ERSE : Gaelic Language

Easy:
Garfunkel of folk fame (3) - ART
The A of an IPA (3) - ALE

And there's many in between. I find that I am good at coming up with individual clues, but trying to come up with a difficulty bell curve is tough. Typically I end up having four murder-hard clues and then overcorrect with something like "first three letters of the ABCs"

One puzzle in particular I'm trying to work out involves two different sets of star names (Rigel, Vega, Betelgeuse, Sirius) and having two pairs of them cross in different parts of the puzzle. I then plan on making another major clue using these "starred" clues - ROMEO AND JULIET WERE THIS (11) "Star Crossed"

For the starred clues, I came up with dumb stuff like "First name in horror (BETEGEUSE)" and "Last name in crime (VEGA)". It's fun to have multiple connections rolling through the puzzle. All told, this process can take a long time, hours, to get everything put together, and even then it's not always the best-constructed puzzle.

4. Submitting your puzzle (for money!)

I someday would love to get a puzzle accepted by the NYT. You can submit puzzles to a bunch of different places. Note that they have specific submission guidelines, so make sure you follow those: https://www.nytimes.com/article/submit-crossword-puzzles-the-new-york-times.html

So yeah, that's building crosswords for you. As I mentioned there's many ways to do it but this is how I do it. I'm sure some purist somewhere with their worn down pencil and notebook is freaking out

Unkempt posted:

... and crossword submitted. That's my 4th try and they haven't taken any yet so we'll see how that works out. Going to put my last effort here if anyone wants a go, and if you can guess what they objected to in this one you'll win a shiny Internet point because it sure as hell wasn't either of the clues I thought might be a bit crap.

Captain Hygiene posted:

I did it, I finally created my very first crossword puzzle

Captain Hygiene posted:

burexas.irom posted:

I've been tinkering with another design I had in my head for a while, it's more of a gag than a puzzle but eh, someone may have some fun figuring it out.

burexas.irom posted:

Thanks, this is the first version that I (likely wrongly) thoguht was too obvious.



In any case, it's the topological equivalent of "I ❤️ TOPOLOGY".

Carthag Tuek posted:

Yeah I did a couple on paper but they're a pain to type even on a computer lol.

I figured out who reads who of the professions

pre:

Each have 3 options, and we know the Poet is reading a Play, so we cross those both horizontally and vertically.
We also know the Novelist is not reading History, so cross that:

     Hist Poet Play Nov
Hist   ·         x      
Poet   x    ·    √   x  
Play             ·      
Nov    x         x   ·  

This leaves only Poems for the the Novelist to read, and thus the Historian must read a Novel,
leaving only History for the Playwright:

     Hist Poet Play Nov
Hist   ·    x    x   √  Historian reads Novel
Poet   x    ·    √   x  Poet reads Play
Play   √    x    ·   x  Playwright reads Historian
Nov    x    √    x   ·  Novelist reads Poet

We know from earlier that Adams is reading Davis & Brown is reading Clark, but I still can't figure out how to tie the names to them though. I must be overlooking some hint...

minato posted:

I have no idea what it is. I briefly looked at it, but there were too many possibilities to explore