The art of themeless puzzles
Variety is the spice of life, they say, and that’s especially true for the Midi crossword! In a month’s worth of Midis, you’ll see two or three themed puzzles and one or two themeless puzzles. The last week of each month will always feature a themeless puzzle. A themeless grid can have longer answers. As in any puzzle, you’ll find some shorter fill holding it all together, but there will also be playful phrases like DANCE MOVE or YOGA CLASS and clueable, fun answers like CROCODILE or AUBERGINE. Themeless puzzles also allow for more wordplay and question mark clues, though in the Midi version, you’ll see only a handful of those. The rest of the clues will still be on the gentler side. Also, you may see unusual, funky grid shapes that you wouldn’t normally see in a themed puzzle. There are no restrictions about moving black squares around to accommodate the marquee entries and to give you something visually appealing. I’d argue that themeless puzzles are the highest form of art in the crossword world. Visual puzzles with a post-solve overlay are artistic, sure, but the art that appears is a bonus and can feel superfluous to the solving experience. Themeless puzzles pull in a wider array of clues and answers than themed puzzles, and they can feel like a more complete test of knowledge. The best types of puzzles will draw from art, history, politics, geography, science, sports, movies and music. A puzzle may ask you to fill in a W.W.E. wrestler and a 19th-century French painter in consecutive answers, for example. Of course, a themed puzzle will do this, too, but the presence of a science- or sports-related theme can monopolize solving headspace. Themeless puzzles often have more wide-open grids that leave solvers amazed at how a constructor filled such spaces. The art of filling a 4x10 area in a themeless can feel more artistic than filling the smaller 4x4 chunks you’d encounter more often in a themed puzzle. Try out today’s themeless.For a chance to win $25 off in the New York Times Store, take the 10 letters highlighted in green after solving each puzzle this week and unscramble them to reveal a two-word phrase. The phrase should be entered with no spaces as a promo code at checkout. Solve The Puzzle
About this puzzleOne thing I’ve been favoring more when constructing puzzles lately is using funky one-word answers as opposed to phrases. For an eight-letter slot where the first letter is K, I may have opted for KEEP IT UP in the past. Now I might try to fit in KANGAROO, since there are more exciting clue options. A spoken word answer usually gets a spoken word clue, and it can be challenging to calibrate the difficulty level to the day of the week. If I included KEEP IT UP in a grid, it might get a clue like [“Don’t stop now!”] on both a Tuesday and a Friday. However, KANGAROO might be [Outback marsupial] on a Tuesday but [Jumpy sort] later in the week. It’s easier to peg a clue to the proper difficulty level with answers like this. Multiword answers still provide the most variety and spice to a puzzle. For example, I was recently working on a grid where I was deciding between ADAMANCE and AD AGENCY, and it was a pretty easy choice. Adamance, despite being a perfectly legitimate answer, is pretty boring, as far as crossword answers go. Ad agency, on the other hand, is more fun and can get an interesting clue. In today’s puzzle, I was pleased with the triple stack of grid-spanning entries — all fun, clueable answers that make me smile. As a solver, I’d try to pick off the shorter fill to give you toeholds into the longer (and trickier) answers. I’m happy to get a few scrabbly letters in there, too, with three K’s and one Q. The letter Q is easily the hardest to work cleanly into a grid. There aren’t many answers that end in Q, so filling usually starts around that letter. Even if it starts a word, it is usually followed by a U, further limiting what can go into the grid. Hope you enjoyed Midi week! Starting next week, Midi puzzles will drop weekly on Mondays. Enjoy!
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