Hello! I've revamped my blog and have made it purposely hideous. Please be aware that the last layout was accidentally hideous. I hope it still hurts to look at, but less than before.
This puzzle was made with my new Substack post about touch in the 2000s in mind. I've been finally feeling a bit creative again and figured it would be cool to release a puzzle in conjunction with my semi-academic work. I hope you enjoy both and that neither of them influence your opinion on how neurotic I may or may not be. Thank you to Mr. Joe Adultman for the test solve!
Substack, please let me embed my puzzle!!!!!!!!!!!
i'm tired,
xoxo meat
SPOILERS:
Hi! It's been a very long time. I am largely unwell, as is everyone else, even though I deeply wish this wasn't the case for any of us. I'm starting off this way because it generally feels like an important thing to actively acknowledge in a world that wants to sweep everything under the rug in the name of maintaining "normalcy" and, in turn, "productivity". I believe we'll all get through it one way or another because I believe in persistence and resistance, but it felt silly to "return" in a way and not address the giant stinky elephant taking a massive shit in the room. This is my first solo blog puzzle since 2023, and the world is, in countless ways, a much different place.
I was laid off in December (need a linguist? want a puzzle? hit me up!) and have been slowly regaining some of the creative energy that tech sucked out of me. I've been trying to make more themed puzzles (and more puzzles in general), and this one popped into my head about a week ago and I wanted to give it a whirl. I also still want as much """""pop culture""""" in these as possible because art and media are reflections of the times we live in. If puzzles are meant to be cultural artifacts, then they should also contain information about art and media.
all my love,
meaty xoxo
ps - as all academics eventually do, I started a Substack. Planning on writing more once my life slows down a bit!
SPOILERS:
hiiiiiii everyone! I've been feeling my creative juices coming back just a little bit, so don't get too excited, but I wanted to post this puzzle that I made back in July of this year for the second edition of Bridges, which is a zine put together by the Brooklyn Public Library's Justice Initiatives team, in conjunction with lovely friend of the show Kate Chin Park. These zines are distributed to incarcerated people throughout New York City and State, and it's been such an honor to contribute. The media that's accessible to incarcerated people is heavily monitored and there's even legislation about what kinds of media are/aren't available to incarcerated people. The Marshall Project provides a list of banned books in prisons by state, and I encourage you to take a look for whatever state you live in. Here is some legislation on of the kinds of media banned in New York State prisons and jails.
This is all to say - this puzzle zine is a necessary labor of love in a world that accepts imprisonment as an ethical thing to do to anyone, I'm glad it exists, and I'm hoping that there will be more editions of this zine in the future.
xoxo, meat
Hi all! It has been a very long time since I've posted on here, but puzzles have kind of fallen to the backburner of my life because things have just been so hectic, both personally and globally.
As such, Alex, aka Mr. Crossword Nexus, and I have been working on this puzzle for a very long time, but life continued to happen (and our first draft had a typo in it...which is par for the course when making acrostics at this point) and we finally got around to finishing this. I cannot tell you how long I had the tab with this quote in it just rotting in my Chrome window until I was like "Alex...do you want to enable this?" and he kindly agreed to once again enable me.
I asked Alex if he had anything he wanted me to put in this blog post, and he responded with this:
Hello!! I'm back with a collab with the puzzle wizard himself, Alex Boisvert. This cute lil' THEMED!! puzzle was originally submitted at [redacted] but honestly, I'm happier it's here because we did what we wanted to do with it.
Upon asking Alex if he had a little blurb he'd like to write up, he said, and I quote, "everyone is better off if i don't do one of these". Additionally, I asked Alex if he had any links he wanted me to post, and he sent me this. Thanks for the malware!
And, of course, a shoutout to Babka/Paprika/Dan for the test solve!
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Hi all! I feel bad for being MIA for a bit - work (and life, frankly) has been grinding my bones to dust, and doing research for a living means I don't always have the brainspace to do all the creative things I want to. I'm hoping to get back to doing more of the things I love very soon. I also unfortunately missed my second blogaversary, so consider this as my blogaversary puzzle. Love and miss you all, and go do something nice for yourself.
xoxo, schmeat
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Hi! It's my 29th birthday! Can you believe I'm older than ever before?
Okay, thanks!
xoxo, meat
KINDA SPOILER-Y THINGS:
34D (please read this it's fucking insane)
As many of you know, I'm a linguist. As many of you also know, I also live in my own head. It's noisy up here.
Before my spiel, I've included the image of what I'm lovingly calling The Language Sphincter so you can see how these different levels of linguistic analysis interact with one another, which will be relevant later on. The inner circles are the smallest units of analysis (at the sound level), and radiate outward to the largest units (at the capital D Discourse level). As you can see, none of these levels of analysis are entirely separate - they all inform and influence one another while still being discrete. For the sake of puzzles, I'm conflating orthography and phonemics, which is...close enough, A for effort, spiel for a different time.
With that being said, I've been thinking a lot recently about "crosswordese". Like, what actually is it? It's obviously not a language or a dialect (and really, where do we even draw the line between those? spiel for a different time) in the literal sense, like the "-ese" morpheme would imply. I do think we can all agree that it's something along the lines of "a set of words that we don't come across all the time, BUT are used frequently in crosswords precisely because their orthographic/phonemic patterns make them easy to slot into puzzles". But I've also come to the conclusion that "crosswordese" a very particular kind of objectification of language. (As a side note, I think any sort of classification is necessarily a project of objectification and creating markedness/difference, but, y'know, spiel for another time). I also want to say here that I mean objectification in the literal sense of "equating to/turning something into an object".
A crossword grid deals with language in a way that's almost counterintuitive to natural language in conversation or even writing. This marked material difference is even obvious in the way we capitalize fill - say, CATS (i.e., fill) versus cats (i.e. non-fill). It reminds me a bit of the mention vs. use distinction, which is a distinction between metalanguage (i.e., talk about talk) and non-metalanguage (i.e., talk itself), respectively. Grids' "mentioning" of a word reckon with words almost solely in an orthographic/phonemic manner and almost never in a semantic one. Ultimately, so long as you've learned to detect your English vowel and consonant patterns, you can fill out a grid relatively effectively, even without any semantic cues (e.g. a downs-only solve that fills the entire grid).
To me, sometimes, gridding (or even solving!) feels like not getting the full effect of language - engaging with a word on an orthographic/phonemic level is fundamentally not the same as engaging with it on a semantic/pragmatic level, as evidenced by The Language Sphincter. It would be obscene to say spelling a word is exactly the same as knowing what it means. I find that putting a word in a grid objectifies the word in a way - it treats the word simply as a pattern of letters, devoid of meaning-making context. Filling out a grid strips the word of its semantic/pragmatic meaning, removes it from any real context and chain of signification, and conflates the signifier with the signified. So what's the end result of that? It collapses, in a way, into a linguistic object whose sole purpose is to be an object. Grids and gridding necessarily turn words into trinket-like things that we, as solvers/constructors, tinker with until the puzzle is solved/created. To me, grids feel like kitschy junk drawers, in a way. (As a trinket lover, I mean this lovingly.)
Sometimes, this junk-drawer-ification is harmless as with words like EEL, EFT, or GNU. But what happens when words that denote culturally-specific rites/objects/people are rendered to trinkets, particularly with curt clues like "Arab leader" or "Japanese sash"? "Plains people"? What are we, as constructors, saying when we put these in grids at an orthogrpahic level and don't take the effort to flesh out the clues to provide culturally-sensitive context at a semantic level? What are we, as solvers, saying when we throw these into puzzles without fully reading the curt clues or understanding these words in a larger, cultural context? What are we actually doing when we recognize the orthotactics of a word and refuse to engage much further? My other issue here is also that the definition of "crosswordese" deals with word (in)frequency - so whose imagined vocabulary are we actually talking about here? I pose these largely as points of reflection, but I do think so much of "crosswordese" boils down to "language trivialization where white Standard English is the assumed metric". With this in mind, words like EMIR, OBI, and OTOE do not deserve to be treated solely as lexical objects that prop up the other fill in the grid.
My point is an epistemic one as much as I feel it's an ethical one: I'm personally becoming less and less concerned with "fairness" in my (blog) puzzles. So much of "fairness" in crosswords hinges on solvers being able to deduce the words in a grid based on their orthotactic patterns and rendering them as lexical objects. While this is a highly impressive skill, it doesn't engage solvers in the way I would personally like to engage people who solve my puzzles. I want you to interact. I (not that I am a Cultural Arbiter of Cultural Arbiters) don't mind if a word you've never heard is "road bump" in your solve - in this age of information, it is a learning opportunity. You can reveal the letter or the word, and you can look it up during your solve. In fact, you have my blessing to do so! The mindset of looking things up being "cheating" feels ridiculous - any kind of assumption that we all know everything all the time is not only unrealistic, but keeps us from being active, curious, cultural participants. Knowledge is a collaborative project, and I believe in your ability!
(P.S. - I'm also in no way saying I've been perfect about all of this either! However, writing this all out has really helped me get my thoughts together, which means I can be more thoughtful about all of this moving forward.)
xoxo,
schmeaty
P.P.S. - someone (I forget who!) posted about how fun it is to make a quick little diagonal grid like this. They were right! If you remember the tweet/who it was, please let me know so I can credit them.
P.P.S. - Update - it was Brooke!
Anyway, this puzzle was sitting in AmuseLabs because I didn't want to look at the grid in CrossFire anymore so I chucked it over there and forgot about it. Until now, muddafuckas!!!! No test solve because I am punishing you all with my hubris instead. Okay love you, bye!
xoxo,
schmeaty pie
KINDA SPOILER-Y THINGS:
fullscreen | no .puz, sorry buds!
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Hi again! I am so tired. I am a husk. I am a shell of a husk.
But enough about me!
...Just kidding. More about me! I'm SO excited to announce that I'm on Lil AVCX's constructor roster for 2023! Isn't that wild? Lil ole me? In your inbox? We love to see it. If you haven't already, you should subscribe. Like now. Like right now. We also have some lovely friends of the blog on the roster too, including Dob Oblino and Lila Goldenberg. But truly, this is a stacked roster and I'm thrilled to be in such talented company.
The puzzle below was my submission puzzle, which I really enjoy and I hope you do too. Bone apple teeth!
xoxo,
schhhhhmeaty
KINDA SPOILER-Y THINGS:
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Hi!!! Hiiiiiiiiii!! It turns out that having an intellectually rewarding job also drains you of all your creative energy. I'm very grateful for my job and enjoy it, but I also really do miss making crosswords for all you beautiful freaks.
There's a good chance this puzzle is a little bit rough around the edges - I didn't bother having it test solved because it's late and I'm a raccoon and I didn't want to bother anyone. However, if you can't solve it easily, I'm going to make it a You Problem, dear solver.
Just kidding, it's everyone's problem now.
(also, the correct clue for 18A is not reflected in the .puz file because CrossFire loves to censor me, a genius. Please refer to the clue for 18A in the grid below, because it is the correct one.)
xoxo,
schmeaty pie
KINDA SPOILER-Y STUFF:
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I honestly don't know what the fuck this puzzle is (other than pretty NSFW), but it's been sitting and rotting in CrossFire and I figured I would finish cluing it up while I was kinda loopy off some antihistamines. So, just...keep that in mind.
I've also decided I'm going to post ridiculous music for y'all to solve my puzzles to so I can put you into the frenetic headspace that I want you in when you solve these - I'm curating an experience. With that being said, I secretly have a huge soft spot for gabber and hardstyle, so that's what you're getting. It might be what you get from now on, who knows.
This wasn't test solved, can you tell? (Don't answer that.)
xoxo,
meat
(PS - it's been brought to my attention that the puz file for this just crashes AcrossLite, which is fucking funny and also a testament to my power. I have no idea how to troubleshoot that, but check out this crossword scraper!)
SPOILER-Y THINGS:
SPOILER-Y THINGS:
(CW on both these links for discussion of linguistic racism) 49D, Mike Mena's explanation of 49D
