Once you get into the swing of it they become a little easier, but, one error on the grid could screw up the entire crossword!

When editing crosswords, the thing I hate telling people the most is that they've spelled a name/word incorrectly on the puzzle, because that involves a major rework.
So please check the spelling of all words!

Yes, I don't mind having to tell people that the clues must be tidied up, or whatever, but sending those notes that mean half the puzzle must be destroyed is very unpleasant.

To give a different view from the author side, the potential for error in quizzes seems endless, whereas a crossword is a mathematical formula for cryptic and a question/answer formula for standard. Doing the grid is clearly another story and one I've never tried right through and haven't had a chance here, but once done would hope I'd have far less chance of drifting off with the clues and facts as they are far simpler than quiz questions and following facts.

I'll add I don't think I'd edit a quiz for mainly the above reasons, but having done crosswords since I could write more or less have already picked up slews of errors from the barely noticeable to the glaring in crosswords here (all fixed since) as they really do stand out. Playing lots of Scrabble helps as well as people sometimes try to pull a fast one on you (like swapping a played letter when you're on a toilet break) and you need sharp eyes to pick them all up.

>> Playing lots of Scrabble helps as well as people sometimes try to
>> pull a fast one on you (like swapping a played letter when you're
>> on a toilet break)

good grief
mate, take 'em straight to the gallows, and they don't pass go!

I've just started writing crosswords and I've come to enjoy writing them as much as writing quizzes. The editors are extremely helpful and with the Internet it's pretty easy to find clues for filler acronyms or whatever you need. I'd have to say that writing the clues themselves is the hardest part about crosswords, you don't want to give away too much or make it too difficult. I'm still a little confused about how to hint abbreviations and nicknames and such. I guess for acronyms you just have to indicate after the hint that it's an abbreviation and the hint shouldn't make it a dead giveaway. So "George Washington's land (abbr)" is a much better hint than "United States of America (abbr)" for the answer USA. Nicknames are more difficult to clue. I was wondering how others clue in nicknames. If I was going to do the answer "Abe" for a crossword, would it be better to say "16th president (nickname)" or just "16th president"? I feel for that one just "16th president" suffices, but if for example the answer was "Agent Zero" for a crossword, I think it'd be better to clue "Wizards star (nickname) (5,4)" than just "Wizards star (5,4)" because the latter would probably have people think the answer should be Gilbert Arenas or Caron Butler. Any thoughts y'all?

you could always say "Grandpa Simpson" for Abe... or make it sort of a double clue like "was cartoon Grandpa the 16th President"
That gives people 2 chances to get it right, if they don't know one, they may know the other.
I wouldn't know who was 16th President off the bat, I'd have to look it up for the order.

Your clues need to give players an idea of what form the answer takes.
For example, for 16th president, it would be fair to expect the answer to be Abraham Lincoln, so 'nickname' is definitely needed in the clue.
If you were looking for his last name only, then you need to specify that too, either in the clue itself or in the hint.

One mistake that many puzzle writers make has to do with verb tenses, or confusions between verbs and nouns.
They often express the clue in the past tense, 'Raced', for example, but then the answer is present tense [RUN] when, according to the clue it should be [RAN].
Or, the word might be the noun [HIKE] for example, but the clue is phrased in verb form 'Walking in the woods'. The way the clue is stated, the answer should really be [HIKING], not [HIKE].
In this case, the clue should read 'A walk in the woods'.

Having followed this discussion with some interest I have decided that I can find enough ways to get correction notes on quizzes without starting on crosswords. I'm sure the editors will be delighted to know I won't be bothering them in that particular area for a long time to come, if ever!

Hi

This is a question that I was hoping to ask also, I too have a Crossword which I would like to create and was trying to figure out at which point I would be able to do this.

I think that jp1991, for example, was granted the Crossword creation facility when he had authored approx. 26 quizzes, by the looks of it. Is that a standard figure or does it depend on other factors?

Is it an automatic function within the system?

t_s

It is indeed an automatic function, and even we editors don't know how it works- only Terry does! All we do know is that quiz quality is even more important than number of quizzes online.

Chrisw

Many thanks for your reply :-)

I guess I will just have to hope that the quality of my quizzes are good enough and that I make some more in due course also.

t_s