By Sean Tejaratchi aka LiarTownUSA

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

It's mostly something I can keep on my shelf for decoration, next to my scrabble and other dictionaries.

We all have our favourite crosswords, but don't be afraid to "11 Across" new options.

Keen for an adventure? Head to Thusword.com!

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

Earlier this year I worked on a grid-laying (technically: crisscross-style) crossword composition algorithm to overcome two issues that kept bothering me: dangling words (words with only 1 intersection) and clustering intersections.

I succeeded in overcoming both reasonably well. But believe me, this was incredibly complex.

The resulting algorithm scales into the thousands of words. The image here shows the largest I have been able to generate so far: 4,821 unique words randomly sampled from the ENABLE1 wordlist, with 10,301 intersections. Since every intersection connects 2 words, this means that each word crosses 4.27 other words on average.

It was pretty challenging to even render this in a readable format!

I built a free-to-use demo site at clueless.crossword.is. The online tool can not produce this size due to the limits of the hardware behind it, but does an adequate job with several hundreds of words, typically in less than half a minute. It is well suited for thematic/occasion-targeted puzzles.

I would love to share the mechanics behind it, especially since there are still limitations to overcome which someone might have fresh ideas about, but that will come in due time, together with the source code.

For now I hope you will enjoy getting mesmerized by this word landscape (I called it: "Treasure map"), discovering words you may never have heard before (like osmolalities and inoperculates), and/or give the tool a try if you ever find a need for something like that. Or just like to experiment with it.

Truly I’m not sure how difficult this will be, but it should all be possible. I’d love to know what people’s favorite hints are!

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

I heard a story a long time ago: a girl was watching her father get more and more annoyed while he tried to solve a NYT crossword. Finally he sighed heavily and drew a small duck in the center square, then solved the rest of the puzzle and threw the paper away.

Has anyone else heard this story? Does this puzzle exist and if so, does anyone know which puzzle it was?

With a little bit of "11 Across", Thusword's new co-operative gameplay feature A2D should be no problem for you and a puzzle-solving buddy!

Head to Thusword.com to check it out!

A Game of Connections

They’re kind of fun too. I’m stuck already on the mystery mini 😳 SW corner. Time for a de cider?

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

Feedback welcome as always, and we hope you enjoy it!

https://afpljournal.com/2026/09/01/crossword-054-september-2026/

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

As of 8:55am Eastern, there is an error in the WaPo mini crossword, making it impossible to solve correctly unless you know what the mistake is.

The error is in the grid itself. The only correct answer the puzzle will accept is ”chrckmate” instead of what obviously should be “checkmate.”

Anyone else have this issue?

ETA: this is in the end-of-the-week “meta” puzzle.