#Wallstreet journal crossword editor tv

A lucky few get jobs editing the puzzles for large newspapers or for publishing houses. 'Most people who want a career in puzzles also have to do proofreading, editing, and so on. 'I'm not sure of the exact number of puzzlemakers in the US, but those who do it full-time (including editors) is a very small number - probably not more than several dozen.' 'Almost nobody makes a career solely constructing puzzles, and I think it's safe to say that nobody gets wealthy that way' 'I'm also asked, 'Which comes first, the words or the clues?' The words in the grid come first.' 'For most people, puzzlemaking is a side job' I would typically try to work ahead of schedule so that when writer's block did hit, it wouldn't put me behind deadline.' I have rarely been in that position, but when I was, it's true that writer's block could sometimes be an issue. 'I have a great deal of respect for the constructors who have assignments where they have to release puzzles every week with fresh, original themes.

#Wallstreet journal crossword editor tv

For example, Daily Celebrity Crossword has a different theme each day, such as TV Tuesday and Sports Fan Friday, and that gives me a starting place for brainstorming what the puzzle should be about. 'Most of the time, I have a theme to begin with, or at least an area. I can usually complete a simple puzzle in a matter of hours, whereas a medium or hard puzzle could take a day or two.' 'Writer's block could sometimes be an issue' I've had puzzles take me mere hours to create I've had others take weeks. 'How long a puzzle takes to create depends on a lot of things - the size, difficulty level, whether there are any particular constraints, and so on. In a harder puzzle, you want those ambiguities, and you also want to throw in some wordplay to keep solvers a little bit off-balance.

In an easy puzzle, the goal is to make clues without multiple possible answers (a 5-letter word for 'Fast' might be 'RAPID or 'QUICK' or 'HASTY' or several other things). After the grid is done, then it's time to clue. 'Difficulty level should come from the cluing, not the words in the puzzle. Sometimes, as with the Daily Celebrity Crossword, you want everything to be solvable even by someone who has never solved a crossword before other times you can have the vocabulary be a little more difficult, but you never want it to be truly obscure. 'The goal is to have every word in the grid be something that the solver will recognize. This is not always easy - you want to make sure that you don't have too many places that will be tricky to fill in later, or where you'd have to resort to hard words to fill it in.' 'The next step is filling in the rest of the grid' 'After the puzzlemaker places the theme entries into a grid, they then decide where the rest of the black squares should go. 'The first thing that a puzzlemaker has to do is come up with theme answers that will fit properly in the grid, since all crossword grids have symmetrical patterns. 'Puzzles typically begin with the 'theme' - the thing that the longest answers in the puzzle have in common. 'Here's how the puzzlemaking process works.