No Scrubs
by Will Eisenberg
August 2024
Crosswords and video games tend to feel worlds apart. And if you were going to pick a video game to compare crosswords to, you probably wouldn’t think Street Fighter. But a book about competitive gaming, especially fighting games, caught my eye and really made me think about my own approach to crossword solving.
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ACPT 2024: A Rookie Report
by Will Eisenberg
May 2024
What follows is a spoiler-free recap of my first American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. There have been plenty of stories from the ACPT this year, but I had more thoughts than I could fit into a Twitter thread, and I thought it might be interesting to share a log of what it was like to compete at ACPT—not just participate, but train for and attempt to do my best during the tournament, and not as an A division legend but as a (hopefully) scrappy rookie. Read more…
On Trust
by Will Eisenberg
September 2022
A puzzlemaker can strive to evoke many things: happiness, nostalgia, the feeling of being ‘seen,’ the joy of an “aha!” moment, and even frustration. But the ability to evoke these emotions from the solver is built upon a base of trust. This is because a puzzle offers the solver one fundamental proposition: It is going to take you some time to work out the solution, but it will be worth it. Read more…
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