Paperwork
THURSDAY PUZZLE — Since you are reading this, I will assume that you, like me, are a word nerd.
Further, I will assume, if you are older than a certain age, that you, like me, were endlessly fascinated by the row of hefty, symmetrically-sized encyclopedias in your household. How else were you supposed to learn about the world, if not for the faux-leather bound pages of the World Book Encyclopedia, now online for anyone to peruse?
I spent a lot of time with those encyclopedias, partly for schoolwork — kids, we didn’t have the Internet in those days, so we looked things up in actual books, with pages and chapters and things — and partly because every time I heard a new word, it was the only way I had in my young life to learn about it. It meant that I had to find the correct volume, which constructor Todd Gross riffs on today in his delightful puzzle, struggling under the weight of it as I carried it to my father’s easy chair. I had to climb up on the chair, settle the heaviness of the tome on my lap and turn what felt like endless pages until I got to the entry I sought. Then, and only then, was I free to escape into worlds that went beyond my small life in the Bronx.
I loved those encyclopedias, and while I am now an official denizen of the Internet and feel quite comfortable doing my research there, I frankly feel a bit of loss that all it takes to look something up is a few taps on the keyboard of my cellphone. Everything you seek is on the Internet now, and while there’s definitely more information available, I still question whether it’s better information. As always, your mileage may vary.
Mr. Gross brings us back to those volumes today, and I think his idea is very clever. It’s not easy to find common phrases that could double as encyclopedia volume ranges that are oddly specific (“Encyclopedia volume on tailoring?” for MADE TO MEASURE) and then line them up vertically like the printed books. Also, while I liked the theme entries in and of themselves, I smiled even more when the “Aha!” moment hit me.
I even learned about METACOMET, also known as King Philip, who crosses the MADE TO MEASURE volume, but who just escapes making it in there. Other nice entries were MY SHARONA, UNHINGE, PAY TV and TIM BURTON.
Clue of the Day for me was not one that had a question mark. It’s still wordplay, but it took on a dangerously edgy bent when I first read it, and then was vastly relieved when I solved it. When I first read “White sheet” (for SNOW), my brain went directly to Ku Klux Klan. I should probably have that looked at.
Let’s hear from Mr. Gross:
Constructor’s Notes:
You may have heard the joke about someone who saw a book at their local library titled “How to Hug” and got all excited and checked the book out … only to find out it was a volume of an encyclopedia. Last October, I guess I was reminded of that joke, because I got the idea of trying to make a crossword theme out of phrases that could work as encyclopedia volumes. But in my case, I wanted to use more common phrases.
Originally I wanted this to be a Sunday puzzle, with one entry starting with A and one with the last word starting with Z (and many more in between), titling it A TO Z. Alas, there were no good phrases where the last word starts with Z, so I went with a smaller grid with fewer theme entries.
The trick was coming up with “{word} TO {word}” phrases that (1) were well known, (2) had the first word come alphabetically before the last word, and (3) had words that were close alphabetically, ideally (as with these four phrases) they would start with the same letter. So, BACK TO SCHOOL wouldn’t work because they’re too far apart, and HARD TO HANDLE has the words in the wrong order.
While creating the puzzle, I realized it would work better if I (1) put the theme entries in the puzzle vertically and (2) put the entries in alphabetical order left to right. That way, they look kind of like actual encyclopedia volumes on a bookshelf, tying nicely with the theme, and maybe giving a little extra bit of help to the solver.
Got The Knack of this one? Good, let’s dance on over to the Friday puzzle:
Your thoughts?
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