7 Things I Learned Constructing My First Crossword

But first: here it is! I hope you enjoy it. Here I would normally go into detail about all the minor things I wish I’d done better/more in accordance with crossword-setting conventions, but that would make me a hypocrite, since I keep telling family members to stop talking their work down before other people have had a chance to see it for themselves.

(If, however, you do notice an error that prevents you from completing the puzzle, please feel free to let me know!)

So, despite the fact that I enjoy crosswords, cryptic and regular, and do them before bed every night, it honestly never occurred to me that I could write my own until I read an interview with a crossword constructor in Games: World of Puzzles magazine. That sounds fun, I thought. I like crosswords, and I like making puzzles.

I had a lot of fun making the above crossword, even though I also had a lot to learn. In fact, I still have a lot to learn, but here are the basics I figured out the hard way so far:

1. The first time you write a crossword, maybe try a regular one instead of a cryptic.
   Cryptic crosswords are my favourite, but because a) they include way fewer words/clues and b) every word/clue they include has to work with a cryptic clue, creating them is a bit more… fiddly than creating regular crosswords. Whether this proves my own novice status or my point, I don’t know, but the cryptic clues for my crossword took me a week or two, working 10-15 minutes a day. The alternate regular clues took me about 10 minutes total.
   
   1a. If you ignore that and try a cryptic, maybe don’t try a themed cryptic.
   Because cryptics have so many fewer clues, I felt like I had to make every word somehow fit my theme, even glancingly. This made it pretty difficult to compose a crossword that actually fit together and took up an appropriate amount of space. I still have more black squares than is conventional, but overall I think I did a reasonable job.
   
2. There’s a reason most crossword composers suggest starting with the longest words from the middle of the grid.
   I think I did reasonably because I tried SO MANY different versions. Each draft helped me learn something new, so, yada yada yada, none of it was a waste of time, but it turns out that my approach to the first draft (starting with the longest words in the centre and working toward the edges) was way more fruitful than my attempts to build later drafts from one corner and expand toward the opposite corner. It’s pretty difficult to come up with those long middle-of-the-puzzle answers when they have to fit established interwoven words in the corners.
3. Having graph paper is really helpful.
   I mean, I guess I could have drawn the vertical lines on regular looseleaf, but I don’t have the patience for that.
   
   Graph-paper diagrams are so much more helpful than free-form diagrams because then I can be sure the words intersect where I want them to and also make sure the puzzle has (as is conventional) rotational symmetry.
   
   3a. I should really have some graph paper.
   It’s useful for crosswords, graphing functions, playing Battleship… where are my leftovers from long-ago math undergrad classes?
   
   3b. Like, seriously, there is every other kind of paper here but graph?
   Linen paper for formal documents, iron-on T-shirt transfer paper, sticker paper, music transcription paper, card stock in six different colours, where did I even get all these?
4. Also helpful: pencil and a good eraser.
   Confession time: I fill out crosswords in pen. Yes, I’m that person! And I don’t care who knows it!
   
   Ever since our grade 5 and 6 teachers permitted us to work in pen instead of pencil, I haven’t looked back. I don’t like the smudgy mess pencil can become (no, I’m not left-handed, but that wasn’t enough to spare me at Hebrew school!), and I don’t mind crossing out the occasional error.
   
   However, it turns out there’s way more than the occasional error with crossword composition, and there’s very little room to keep writing corrections. A pencil-top eraser makes things much, much worse, but a proper standalone can refresh my metaphorical slate until the paper fibres wear out.
5. I can’t count.
   I figured it might be helpful for me to make lists of on-theme words organized by length. I was half-right. It was really helpful to be able to check my list when I wanted to start a new section of the puzzle.
   
   It was not helpful to learn that I miscategorized about 10% of the words I added because for some reason, my brain is very bad at actually counting the letters and sort of just goes by intuition instead?
6. Online platforms are really awesome.
   I got obsessed with tools like Crossword Tracker, and there’s no way I could have maintained that rotational symmetry or revised easily without Crosserville. Other fun tools, like Internet Anagram Server or Rhyme Zone, are easy ways to lose a couple hours.
7. Double-checking is important.
   Even after four drafts, I didn’t catch some of my mistakes in the cryptic clues until I went to write out the solutions. I was just absolutely convinced that two words put together spelled out a third, and they most definitely did not. I didn’t catch it until I was having trouble explaining the answer in my solution PDF. Whoopsie.

Overall, I had a ton of fun putting my first puzzle together. Now that I’ve got a taste, I feel like I might enjoy writing a few more when inspiration strikes. Also, I bought like three cheap graph-paper notebooks, so I’d better!