anyone want a cat-family themed crossword i made? it is of medium (maybe hard) difficulty
@wallhackio Hey I'm in this!!
If you want to see our puzzles they're at https://hollymcfarland.com/crosswords :)
@amy whao :o
@wallhackio I liked your puzzle :) I did have to take a lot of reveals ha ha, there were things I don't think I was ever going to get (tbh the unchecked squares are pretty rough :p) and a few tense issues that tripped me up, but I enjoyed it :)
I didn't get the joke with the circled letter clues until after the solve but that's on me ha ha, I should have figured that out sooner :)
@amy i didn't realize unchecked squares are a bit of faux-pas. good to know for the future
@wallhackio @amy what is an unchecked square
@aescling @wallhackio A letter that's only used in one word
@aescling @wallhackio (So named because if you're unsure about it, you can't "check" it by getting the word that goes the other way)
@wallhackio Yeah, they're like
You will see them occasionally but they have to be pretty strongly justified. Either a theme that uses it somehow (e.g. the NYT crossword from March 6, 2022 https://nyxcrossword.com/2022/03/0306-22-ny-times-crossword-6-mar-22-sunday.html) or grid art. You'll generally see them used only with very easy clues or in a way that allows you to check your work some other way, without a crossing answer (e.g. if there's an unchecked square in a word that's a palindrome, you can mention that in the clue, or do what the linked NYT puzzle did and have a word made out of the unchecked squares together, etc etc)
In cryptics (UK-style puzzles) unchecked squares are completely normal, but that's because the clues work completely differently; every clue provides two ways to get to the answer, so they're effectively "self-checking" :)
@amy @wallhackio the circled letters took me a long time lol
🐊
@amy @wallhackio woah I'm in this one too
@wallhackio Sure :)