I got some good feedback regarding the first Indie Round-Up, so here we are for round two.
- I was mostly emboldened to write this review based on my solve of Patrick Berry's variety cryptic
"Middle of the Road," which he wrote for the annual NPL convention. It took me over two hours to complete, so it's very difficult, and I know there are some who are turned off by cryptics, but...all I have to say is it's tough for me to think of a better puzzle I've solved in the last, say, five years. It's for sure a Top 5 All-Timer. I will
not go into details on the puzzle because to spoil it would be blasphemous. I'll just say there was about three
huge "a-ha's," to the point where I audibly commented "Oh my god." To borrow from Dave Eggers, it's truly a heartbreaking work of staggering genius.
In regards to cryptics, it took me forever to really take to them. Even when I knew the basic rules, it was still very difficult to understand the cluing styles, especially when liberties are taken by some authors. If you struggle with cryptics like I once did (and still do, to an extent), do yourself a favor and
not check out British cryptics, unless you'd like to go slowly insane. For beginners, stick to block cryptics and do many of them. I found Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon's block cryptics to be my primary entry to learning the ropes. I pored the New York Times Sunday variety archives (when I still subscribed to the NYT puzzles) and did most of Cox and Rathvon's work there.
Then I discovered variety cryptics and my appreciation of the art form really took off there. I did a lot of variety cryptics around 2012 because I was preparing to write one for my "Print Media Isn't Dead" meta suite that year. I find it similar to very tough themeless puzzles in that at first glance the task seems impossible to solve one of these. But chip away and chip away, and I find that once you hit the tipping point of a variety (once you grasp the gimmick and have enough letters in the grid to help you with the others), it becomes much easier to complete.
With "Middle of the Road," the primary mechanism of the puzzle entailed not disclosing word lengths, which increased the difficulty exponentially, and also involved unannounced blank squares in the grid, which certainly didn't ease things up any more either. So after the first hour, I may have had 90% of the grid empty - though I had made headway with nearly a half of the clues, I still didn't know how to accurately enter them into the grid. So it became partially a logic puzzle as well as a cryptic. Once I had made inroads with a few of the columns, though, the puzzle unfolded much more quickly after that. The last few mechanisms of the puzzle just blew the mind away. I still can't quite believe how Patrick pulled it all off so well
and made it appear so effortless. It truly gives me hope for the human race.
- Not an indie, but a relevant thought related to the above: I solved the Harper's variety cryptic when I was visiting my brother's on Friday. Terrible. Don't solve that puzzle if you want to get into cryptics. Richard Maltby, I assume,
likes to put garbage obscurities in his grids (because he does it about five times in every puzzle), and he's waaaay too stretchy in his clues. I mean, some of them are clever, but he has no respect for surface senses and he includes too many irrelevant clue words (in particular the bridge words from the literal to the wordplay clues). Berry's worst puzzle is at least ten times better than Maltby's best. Ugh.
- Back to business: I enjoyed Andy Kravis'
"Overlapping Universes" that he posted on July 8th. It's a small puzzle (11x11) whose theme is pop-culture-based, so some may not appreciate it based on cultural unfamiliarity. But I got a nice "a-ha" from it, both from a trivia standpoint and then from a crossword constructor's standpoint. Very nice.
- Chris King's site
Chris Words was a welcome addition to indie-land last year. Chris is a budding constructor whose skills have noticeably approved over the last few months. He has a set rotation offering themed, themeless, and meta puzzles. I thought his latest, "Themeless Eight," was a smooth solve with some clever clues. I especially liked the northwest corner, with the topical entry at 1-Across. Keep up the good work, Chris!
That's it for this week. I'll be on vacation all of next week and then I'm doing Lollapuzzoola the following week, so I'm not sure when the next Round-Up will be. Maybe a post-Lolla write-up? That's probably what I'll do. Talk to you then!
