palordrolap ,

Or they could push for the sort of crosswords with more black squares (very common here in Britain) that rarely have anything bigger than a 1x1 intersection. There are other ways to challenge the solver.

Deebster OP ,
@Deebster@programming.dev avatar

I only do the cryptics myself - I like that you can be confident you have the right answer without waiting for the crossers to check your guess.

taiyang ,

Having been doing daily crosswords for a few months, ERAS has come up like, ten times.

x4740N ,
@x4740N@lemmy.world avatar

I'm having a mental stronk trying to figure out what the words on the bottom say

Pipoca ,

Crosswords have clues going across and down.

The words just use common letters so they're things puzzle creators wish were real words. They're not currently words.

_dev_null ,
@_dev_null@lemmy.zxcvn.xyz avatar

Ahem:

aerae: Latin, genitive/dative singular of aera

eni: Urhobo for 'elephant'

oreta: Latin, taxonomic genus within the family Drepanidae.

aroe: Rōmaji transcription of アロエ

oine: Danish, indefinite plural of øie

aen: Rōmaji transcription of あえん

enta: French, third-person singular past historic of enter

aete: Rōmaji transcription of あえて

Jackcooper ,

Those are all unacceptable crossword clues

Taylor 2025 effort would be an acceptable crossword clue

jxk ,

What does 'enter' even mean in French?

RustyNova ,

In means nothing. The french for enter is "entrer"

PlutoniumAcid ,
@PlutoniumAcid@lemmy.world avatar

oine is most definitely not Danish for eyes. That would be øjne, plural of øje.

stebo02 ,
@stebo02@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

aroe: Rōmaji transcription of アロエ

ok but that's just the Katakana transcription of aloe

shea ,

ha

moistclump ,

That’s why they use “oboe” so often eh

ZDL ,
@ZDL@ttrpg.network avatar

Imma need "xkcd explained" for this one!

Deebster OP ,
@Deebster@programming.dev avatar

These are all short words full of the most common letters, so will make designing crosswords easier because they'll be useful "crossers".

ZDL ,
@ZDL@ttrpg.network avatar

Oh, I see! Thanks!

stoly ,

But why references to musicians?

Deebster OP ,
@Deebster@programming.dev avatar

I assume it's just an example of how to create new topical words since it's a lot easier to name an album than to get a word well-known enough to be eligible for the dictionary.

The artists all seem to be big names so I assume it's their popularity rather than any history of quirky album names that's decided the list.

Soup ,

These specific musicians are referenced a lot by crosswords. NYT loves them, at least. Very “hip and with it”.

It’s kinda an inside joke, but that’s XKCD for ya.

stoly ,

Thanks, that’s what I needed

shneancy ,

I assumed it was because those musicians are popular enough that even if they released songs/albums with the title scheme akin to svnahshfhfbduj people would still buy them and know about them.

moistclump ,

Are we called crossers?

moistclump ,

Oh the crossword cross-er. Thought it was a cool new “puzzle head” term I hadn’t heard. Misread. I’m dumb at crosswords too.

randomaccount43543 ,

https://explainxkcd.com/2896

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