Redd's Roster of Crosswordese: Do not read if you hate DRNO

which led me this this old related thread somebody started long ago

When MRT studies to the NTH degree, he gets a PHD and is henceforth called DRT.

LORI and TONI drank an ORANGE NEHI in front of the ELHI.

OUIOUI, SISI
ADIEUX, MES AMIS

LIEU EKE

LIEU EKE

We gotta go

I said
UIE UEY
UAE UZI
Me gotta go
YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH

🎵 UEY UDAY
thou little tiny child
WIFI UEY UDAY 🎵

WII OREO now

I said

WII OLEO

(To the tune of "Take a Letter, Maria")
Last night I was ONKP
Across from the APO
I was EYED up by a dog named OTTO
Who report to the NCO

I’m with YMP, don’t actually know why, actually I think I do know why, people complain about crosswordese so much, it’s kind of the DNA or building blocks of XWORDS. It’s like people complaining about cliched chord progressions or cliches in general: they can be problematic but they can also be used creatively, it depends.

I only started noticing the gluey fill when I was exposed to xword blogs (RP, xwordinfo), but they've never really been a huge impediment to my enjoyment, ESPECIALLY if a grid has interesting and/or long entries or wide open spaces.

I do like Jeff Chen's puzzles a lot though, and he's pretty dedicated to avoiding glue.

And he is the keeper of xwordinfo too I guess.

when you're filling up so much of the grid with letters it's unavoidable that you're gonna need these repeating mini-words, so i understand

but like, mel OTT has been dead for 60 years. bobby ORR has been out of hockey for 40. we're gonna be seeing USB long after that protocol has been deprecated. i have never actually seen ESAI morales in anything. so many of the acronyms are awkward reaches . . . i just wish the NYT were a little bit more ambitious with the possibilities, and i have to think that having the same editor for decades at a time doesn't help

I think people very much in the center of the scene avoid pointing out that Shortz is something of a tired drip but people slightly outside it don’t hesitate to say so

redd and mookie, I tend to grade for an overall average level of creativity, as opposed to requiring a complete absence of ERSE / ERNE / OTT etc.

Like, if a constructor can get something surprising like MCJOB or RUNDMC or POKEMON in there, I will likely forgive the occasional ALOU. I'm assuming it takes a lot of compromises to make an innovative word work in a grid.

However, if everything in a puzzle is rooted in the culture of 1950s Manhattan, then I get annoyed. I will still finish the puzzle - not least because I've learned all this bullshit trivia from doing thousands of puzzles - but I will be annoyed.

this would be a terrible word for reasons of age and obscurity but i would still like to see MCDLT sometime

pretty sure i've seen clara peller referenced before

I actually have heard whispers, well maybe heard is the wrong word, just sort of been in the big room at the ACPT when in the distance I seemed to see some insider or two talking quietly which turned out to be grumbling about successors to the throne. It was done very discreetly and my internal parabolic mic couldn't pick up any of it, but I asked someone later and they told me discreetly and in a roundabout nudge nudge way what that tiny Blow-Up moment I thought I witnessed was about.

Back to the topic at hand. Please forgive my POP PSYCH approach, but feel like people (excessively) grumbling about fill is partly or mostly really about their addiction to XWORDS not giving them the high it used to. Not saying, just saying. Is that all there is, as Peggy LEE sang.

Not every constructor is going to be the Crossword JESUS, sorry.

I can think of maybe one constructor who jumped out at me, that wasn't already some kind of name, well exactly one, Dan Naddor, who I came across while solving LATIMES puzzles.

let's make an ilx crossword

FUCKWASHINGAHAT is a handy 15 letters

Lol

https://wordplay.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/dan-naddor/
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-jan-07-la-me-dan-naddor7-2010jan07-story.html
https://crosswordfiend.com/2009/12/31/dan-naddor-in-memoriam/
which links to https://crosswordcorner.blogspot.com/2009/04/interview-with-dan-naddor.html

jaymc used to construct, not sure if he is still doing that.

i don't mind crosswordese but i'd like better clues!
As noted above, enough already with Mel OTT; how about "way, way too much" instead?

"nhl's senators on a scoreboard"

Right? My problem with a lot of fill isn't the fill – it's trite crosswordish cluing. (Cluing, by the way, is a great word).

My favorite 'regular' constructor is Zhouqin Burnikel. Among the standards I like Lynn Lempel and Jeff Chen, because everybody does and they're great. Trenton Carlson is the only regular whose name alone intimates that I won't have fun. Too many Qs and Js and Zs. Oh, and whoever wrote last Sunday's puzzle. I don't like that person either.

Whoops. I missed your post, ulysses. Coulda just written 'ditto.'

let's make an ilx crossword

Athlete who "knows" about uranium? = BORAD

2 x 33 + 11 = SEVENTYSEVEN

Greetings from Ditka? = BEARSAYHITOME

Rockist setting for a bicycle? = GEIR

Unlikely event = NOTGONNAHAPPEN

Dave Matthews Band pan = BADANDHATED

I constructed three blatant failures a couple years ago (https://spooky.camp/~evan/) and I did try to be as annoyingly creative as possible with my cluing

Atop benjies

thing occurring in a marsh, seven letters

FENHAPS

lol

ilx would be a boon to any constructor, FUIUD

there was this article critical of old white editors a few months ago
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/03/fight-to-make-crosswords-more-inclusive/608212/

especially this editor's note

MARIE KONDO wouldn’t be familiar enough “to most solvers, especially with that unusual last name.”

I was I could say I stopped doing them to take the high ground, but yeah, they basically occupy some ultimately bland middle ground with various tweaks now and then here and there to make them a wee bit edgier.

(Don't tell my kitty corner across the street neighbor I said that!)

kitty corner

too blatant a provocation, sorry

last sunday’s was pretty uninspired.

today’s themeless on the other hand is extremely pleasing.

americans once you crack tomorrow’s sunday nytimes crossword we need to talk about 82 across.

Haven’t done a Sunday in months.

Friend of jaymc’s and mine who posted on this board once for a minute or two had an interesting post on social media about his solving times the other day.

why not James Redd?

I stopped doing xwords regularly a few years ago and especially find Sundays a slog.

i only do sundays when i'm streaking; i can't say i actually enjoy them

tbh all i want are fridays and saturdays

B-b-but what about Thursdays?

dnw rebuses

there was a thursday a couple years ago where like the NW was normal, the NE downs were normal but the acrosses were backwards, the SW had normal acrosses but the downs were backwards, and everything in the SE was backwards. (i am probably remembering this slightly wrong)

and, well, that's quite a technical feat! also incredibly joyless to solve, particularly on the app

Really hated solving on the app in general.

And yeah, rebus+app=not a good look

::SPOILERS:: (sort of)
Tracer, re:82 across. No, afaik that is NOT a thing here. Maybe it's some bougie molecular gastronomy thing?