194. Word Play 4: Good Grids
The Allusionist
Helen Zaltzman
4.7 • 3.8K Ratings
🗓️ 13 May 2024
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Exciting things have been happening with crossword puzzles in the US: more constructors, more outlets to get puzzles published, clues and answers that would never have appeared even a few years ago, and puzzle packs raising a whole lot of money for charities and humanitarian causes.
You hear from crossword constructor extraordinaire Erik Agard, Juliana Pache of BlackCrossword.com, Rachel Fabi of These Puzzles Fund Abortion, and Adrian Johnson from Puzzles for Palestine.
Get the transcript of this episode, and find links to more information about the people, puzzles and topics therein at theallusionist.org/grids. This is another instalment in the Word Play series about word games and puzzles; previous episodes include the history of anagrams, and turning words into games.
Content note: there is one Category B swear.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman, with Martin Austwick of palebirdmusic.com.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the illusionist in which I, Helen Zoltzmann, search for the hidden meaning and language. |
| 0:11.0 | Shuffle those letters around. |
| 0:13.0 | G |
| 0:10.2 | G Aou algae? |
| 0:16.0 | That's it! |
| 0:18.0 | It was staring us in the face this entire time. |
| 0:22.0 | Welcome to another installment in the Word Play series about word games and word puzzles. |
| 0:27.5 | This episode is about crosswords. |
| 0:29.5 | Crosswords have come up a couple of times before in the show. One of the very earliest |
| 0:34.0 | episodes was about how British-style cryptic crosswords work and in the 2017 episode |
| 0:39.8 | In Crypt Decrypt, I covered the Lollopazula Crossword tournament in New York City. |
| 0:44.3 | Today we hear from some people doing some very cool stuff in crosswords in the USA. |
| 0:48.6 | Content note there is one category B swear. By the way, if you're in the UK you can listen to the |
| 0:56.6 | illusionist on BBC sounds and while you're there you'll find so much more to listen to |
| 1:01.1 | in this genre edututainment, infamusement, you know, where you receive |
| 1:06.3 | shots of facts down the ice luge of fun audio diversions. |
| 1:11.2 | Like Crowd Science, the podcast where they answer your questions about science with the help of smart people from all around the world and |
| 1:17.9 | discover extra surprises along the way. I've been asked a lot of questions in my time a lot and still I've never thought of some of these |
| 1:25.8 | What was the time that the first clock was set to and some questions I've never found an answer to like what's the best way to make a decision? |
| 1:33.8 | I don't know. |
| 1:35.4 | And questions I would love an answer to, like can we find a cure for dementia? |
| 1:39.6 | I've been learning about anxiety behavior in animals and how we humans bite our nails to |
... |
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