11 Down
I’m always thrilled to get emails like this:
- Rich notes that some of these are clever, but overall, the puns don't grab him enough for a yes. We’ll pass, I’m sorry to say.
- Rich notes that there's some nice work in your grid, but the theme doesn't grab him enough for a yes. We'll pass, I'm sorry to say.
- It's a cute idea, but the theme is too short. We require a minimum of 35 theme squares. Even if the theme were heftier, it's a bit too basic for Rich's taste. We'll pass, I'm sorry to say.
- We avoid pejoratives in our puzzles (admitting it's insulting doesn't rescue the entry). We’ll pass, I’m sorry to say.
And, my personal favorite in the “We’ll pass, I’m sorry to say” songbook:
- Rich says thanks for this one, but this might even be a copyright violation, a chance Rich is not willing to take. We’ll pass, I’m sorry to say.
Despite what I may have said in the past about being irked by rejection, I get a little thrill every time the L.A. Times, Newsday, or the Chronicle of Higher Education emails me to shoot down another one of my crossword puzzles. I’m reminded that these are the big leagues, that I’m submitting original crossword puzzles to nationwide publications, that actual adults are taking time out of their days to copy and paste a rejection email to me. And they’re forced to personalize these emails, based on my puns being too lame, or my copyright infringements, or my use of “pejoratives” (the term in question was “four-eyes,” which I feel like the world could have handled). I have a Google Form entitled “Crossword Spreadsheet of Broken Dreams” that catalogues the puzzles I’ve submitted (often more than once) to real American newspapers. It’s a sea of red squares; these crossword editors (that’s a real job) set high standards, and very often I don’t meet them.
Constructing crossword puzzles is a very niche hobby, perhaps the only hobby more nerdy than solving crossword puzzles. My mom has been tackling the New York Times Sunday puzzle for ages, and after enough years of helping her out with the tough clues, I started to think — in the naive way that only teenagers can — “I could do that.” Constructing puzzles has turned out to be much harder than it looks, though. (We crossword constructors love to throw around the word “constructing” because it makes us sound very fancy.) Filling up a grid with words that are actual words is a ridiculous task on its own, and coming up with the themed answers is even harder. In one of my first puzzles, the theme was palindromes, and all of the long answers read the same backwards and forwards. Things like:
What may be pinned on a royal uniform- GATEMANSNAMETAG
Only pain reliever on the shelf- LONELYTYLENOL
Cats approaching an advanced age- SENILEFELINES
Sign at a sold-out fruit store- NOLEMONSNOMELON
That. Took. For. Ever. And then the L.A. Times, Newsday, and the Chronicle all gleefully sang “We’ll pass, I’m sorry to say.” And another puzzle was relegated to obscurity (obscurity in this case is my mom printing out my puzzles and solving them herself), which is kind of poetic.
I keep going, though, for a couple reasons: 1) I’ve never met anyone else who does this. 2) Every once in a while, my puzzles manage to slip through the cracks; I’ll be published in the Chronicle of Higher Education in February. (Don’t worry about remembering; I’ll be constantly talking about it for the next four months.) 3) I think the Blognonian might be a nice outlet for the pile of spat-on puzzles I have on hand! Y’all can handle pejoratives and copyright violations, right?
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