It turns out crosswordese is universal. pic.twitter.com/ROIJmpdur9
— Alex Boisvert (@al_ex_b) August 21, 2013
I’ve been solving some French crosswords lately (well, trying to) and let me tell you, they are desperately in need of a Margaret Farrar-type figure there. Some things they have to deal with that we don’t:
- Unchecked squares! I had a recent puzzle where I was left with DAN_Y and there was really no way of knowing what the blank was going to be. I had to look in the back of the book.
- Two-letter words! This might not seem like that big of a deal to you, but (for example) you essentially have to know every symbol on the periodic table.
- Crosswordese! Oh, the crosswordese. You think we have it bad? How about Ili, Omo, Sen, and Oeta, to name a few. They also have to deal with words we thankfully haven’t seen in ages, like UNAU, AI(S), and the like. Maybe it’s just getting used to a new vocabulary, but it sure seems like a lot.
- Naturally, the crosswords are unthemed and asymmetric, but that honestly doesn’t bother me that much.
Anyway, as we hit the hundredth anniversary of the crossword, I just thought you might like to be thankful for how far our crosswords have come.
January 3, 2014 at 6:02 am
I didn’t know about Margaret Farrar’s contributions to American crosswords. Thanks!
January 26, 2014 at 2:13 am
French guy here.
>Unchecked squares! I had a recent puzzle where I was left with DAN_Y
I have no doubt it was DANDY.
>Two-letter words! to know every symbol on the periodic table
That depends on the author. Sport Cérébral’s authors tend to abuse them, but in my experience, the other authors don’t.
What are tough to solve are “chevilles”, which are meaningless words.
Here are a few samples:
Fin de peloton -> ON
Encrier renversé -> REIRCNE
A déjà commencé -> EROSIO
Chef de gare -> GA
Pris de court -> RT
Tête de turc -> TU
Emu et bouleversé -> EUM
>Crosswordese!
In your twitter grid, I noticed ESAU, but a few other ones are common, like OPE, IDA.
2 are particularly frequent:
IO: http://home.citycable.ch/cruci.com/definitions/io.htm
RA: http://home.citycable.ch/cruci.com/definitions/ra.htm
>Naturally, the crosswords are unthemed and asymmetric, but that honestly doesn’t bother me that much.
It’s because the first french grids were designed by famous writers.
They focused on the clues.
Here are a few brilliant ones:
ENTRACTE=Vide les baignoires et remplit les lavabos
NONAGENAIRE=Du vieux avec du neuf
STALINE=Feu rouge
DO=Demi-sommeil
Last note:
if you play with Sport Cérébral, then you cannot have a good idea how french crosswords have developed.
For beginners, you can play “Mots fléchés”, where the clues are in the grid. It’s funny and the clues need to be short.
For experts, they tend to play “Mots croisés”, but there have been a few new directions, for example with ADN (Albert Dag-Naud) from “Le Canard Enchaîné”, who creates “calembour”ed clues.
If you want to check really challenging grids, try these ones:
http://motscroises.org/archives/2004/Champ_francoph/Francoph04.htm
“Mots fléchés” only recently acquired a good reputation, due to excellent authors like Albert Varennes who create difficult grids: http://www.cruci2.com/definition/recherche_id2.php?auteur=Varennes