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READ Archives:

 

Read Archives

Hear Me, Hear Me!

This is where I’ll place archives of past commentary ranging from pithy to pissy. Most are puzzle-related news and events, but you never know when a mini-essay, book review, or general rant may also be archived.

If you want to see the books I've written, take a look at my Bookshelf.

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In Praise of Vowels

Vowels are the peanut butter of language. They hold the consonant-baked bread together, and they make language a whole lot nicer to listen to. Vowels are especially vital in crosswords; in fact, about half the words in a crossword must begin with a vowel.

The problem is, most of the words in our language begin with consonants, so any short word that begins with a vowel is seen a lot in Crosswordland. This explains the overabundance of OONAs, OMOOs, and ULEEs, as well as the ginormous number of clues that have been written about ARIAs, OREOs, OLEO, and Mount ETNA. 3-letter words are even worse, and it’s almost impossible to write a fresh clue for Brian ENO or Yoko ONO anymore (there are 320 clues for ENO and 445 for ONO in the Cruvicerb.com database as of this writing).

Still, we learn to accept such things and move on, loving vowels in spite of their repetitive nature. They are outnumbered 5 to 21, after all.

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Lollapuzzoola 3 Declared a Rousing Success

The crossword tourney known as Lollapuzzoola 3, hosted by podcasting luminaries Ryan Hecht and Brian Cimmett, took place on August 14th in Jackson Heights, Queens. Over 100 competitors attended, and when it was all said and done, there were a some winners and some non-winners (early results can be seen here. It was an incredibly fun day with some highly inventive puzzles and more Oreos than should ever be in one place at one time. Here is a link to the puzzles if you want to try them (there's a four-part, non-competitive one by me called "Ball Game"). Tyler Hinman's "Lucky Sevens" was my personal favorite, even tho I couldn't finish it in time.

And now: picture time!

(Mouse-over to see the captions)