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.