Showing posts with label Ari Halpern. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ari Halpern. Show all posts

Friday, December 7, 2018

"Listen!" by Ari Halpern

Constructor's Comments

Thrilled to have my second crossword appear on the Puzzle Society page!

About the puzzle:  I have always loved crossword substitution/omission themes that have a revealer based on reparsing a word or phrase . . . themes like visa (V is A), floss (F loss), or story (S to RY).  When pondering theme ideas for a new puzzle, I always find myself going back to this basic wordplay.  In my growing list of ideas, I knew that the word not could be reparsed as no T.  However, I never seriously considered continuing with this notion because surely the idea of omitting a T in a phrase had been done before.  One day, during a discussion with a friend, the phrase seen but not heard was used in describing someone else.  In the back of my mind, I reparsed it as seen but no T heard.  A lightbulb went off, and I realized I could construct a puzzle where Ts were "seen" but not actually "heard."  In googling the origin of the phrase, I discovered that the actual phrase was seen and not heard.  That, however, did not change the meaning for my purposes, so I continued with the construction of this fun puzzle.  Hopefully, in solving, you had that aha moment that the central revealer should provide!


Monday, July 16, 2018

"Shoptalk," by Ari Halpern

Constructor's Comments

I am so excited to have my first puzzle appear on the Puzzle Society page!  The idea for this crossword hit me one night when I was watching some awards show.  The host kept talking about the honorees.  It was one of those instances where he used a word so much that it began to lose meaning.  Suddenly it sounded like he was saying HONORESE, like a language that the award winners spoke amongst themselves.  In designing the puzzle, HONORESE was meant to be a theme answer, as this was the seed of the puzzle and my favorite entry.  Unfortunately, due to word length and symmetry restrictions, I just couldn’t get it in there.  Happily, the other entries were just as cute and more workable.


Editor's Comments

Being the first editor to publish a new constructor is always an honor—welcome, Ari!  Today's theme may be simple, but I got a chuckle out of these imaginary specialized languages.  The idea also feels novel, which hits on one of my favorite things about having an open market:  the diversity of theme ideas I receive.  Not all the ideas I receive ultimately pan out, but I love being able to run a daily crossword where you never know what's going to come next.