The envelope flap caught the edge of my thumb with the precision of a razor, a micro-betrayal that left a thin, stinging line across my skin. I was in the middle of sealing 17 different submission folders, each containing a grid that had taken me upwards of 37 hours to refine, and the sudden iron scent of blood was not part of the morning’s planned architecture. My name is Simon M.-L., and I construct crosswords. To the uninitiated, this looks like a quiet hobby involving dictionaries and coffee, but to those of us in the thick of the black-and-white cells, it is a high-stakes wrestling match against the limitations of the English language. This paper cut was just a reminder that even the most abstract puzzles have a physical cost. I stared at the crimson drop blooming on the corner of a 15×15 grid, a Sunday-sized beast that I had titled ‘The Entropy of Seven.’ It felt erroneous to let the blood dry there, but then again, perhaps it added a layer of authenticity that my digital compiler could never replicate.

The Soul-less Efficiency

There is a core frustration in my industry that few outsiders grasp: the soul-less nature of algorithmic optimization. Today, anyone with $47 and a laptop can download software that fills a grid in milliseconds. You provide the theme entries, and the machine spits out a mathematically perfect arrangement of letters. It avoids ‘obscurity’ and maximizes ‘scrabbly’ letters like Z and Q. It is efficient. It is clean. And it is utterly, devastatingly boring. When a machine builds a puzzle, it lacks the rhythmic pulse of human frustration. It doesn’t know why a specific three-letter word like ‘ANI’ is a blight on the solver’s experience, or why the intersection of two obscure European rivers is a cardinal sin. We call that a Natick, and a machine will hand you a hundred Naticks without blinking its binary eyes. I spent 107 minutes yesterday just trying to remove a single ‘ETUI’ from the bottom-left corner because I knew my solvers deserved better than a word that hasn’t been used in common speech since 1927.

The Necessity of the Wall

The contrarian angle here-the one that keeps me up until 3:07 in the morning-is that constraints are not the enemy of creativity; they are the sole reason it exists. People think that having infinite choices makes for better art, but they are flawed in that assumption. If I give you a blank page and tell you to write something beautiful, you will likely freeze. But if I give you a 15×15 box, tell you that every word must interlock, and specify that 17-Across must be a pun about ancient nautical navigation, your brain catches fire. The friction of the constraint creates the heat of the idea. Without the wall to push against, there is no leverage. I’ve seen builders try to circumvent these rules, adding 37 black squares to make the fill easier, but it always feels like cheating. It feels like a structure without a soul.

The friction of the constraint creates the heat of the idea.

The 107-Degree Triumph

A History Filtered Through Grid Coordinates

I often find myself wandering off into tangents about the history of the form. Did you know that the first ‘Word-Cross’ was published in 1913? It wasn’t even square. It was a diamond. And back then, people thought it was a passing fad, a mental illness disguised as a game.

By 1927, there were doctors claiming that constant solving would lead to a breakdown of the nervous system. Sometimes, with the paper cut on my thumb and the 117th iteration of a Tuesday puzzle staring back at me, I think those doctors might have been onto something. There is a madness to it. You start seeing words in the grocery store and immediately checking if they are ‘grid-friendly.’ You see a sign for a pharmacy and think, ‘P-H-A-R-M-A-C-Y, that’s eight letters, could I use that as a vertical anchor?’ It’s a way of filtering reality through a 15×15 lens.

The deeper meaning of this toil isn’t about the solution. Most solvers finish a puzzle in 7 to 17 minutes and then throw the paper in the recycling bin. The ‘solved’ state is the least interesting thing about a crossword. The value lies in the struggle-the bridge between the constructor’s intent and the solver’s intuition. When I write a clue, I am trying to have a conversation with a stranger. If I make it too easy, the conversation is patronizing. If I make it too hard, it’s an interrogation. I have to find that sweet spot, that 47-degree incline where the climber feels the burn but knows they won’t fall. I want them to experience that ‘aha!’ moment, the tiny explosion of dopamine when a cryptic clue finally clicks into place. That moment doesn’t belong to me, and it doesn’t belong to the computer. It belongs to the space between us.

The Admission of Defeat

Yesterday, I had a disagreement with another constructor about the use of ‘cheater squares.’ These are black squares that don’t change the word count but make it easier to fill a difficult corner. He argued that as long as the puzzle is fun, the ‘purity’ of the grid doesn’t matter. I couldn’t disagree more. To me, every cheater square is a small admission of defeat. It’s a white flag. If I can’t fill a corner with 17-Across and 1-Down without resorting to an extra black block, then I haven’t worked hard enough. I haven’t found the right path yet. It’s a stubborn perspective, I know. I admit that my adherence to these self-imposed rules borders on the obsessive, but what is art if not an obsession with the invisible? The solver will never know I refused to use a cheater square, but I will know. The grid will know.

My thumb is still throbbing, the paper cut a sharp reminder of the physical world I usually ignore while lost in my dictionaries. I look at the 777th cell I’ve filled this week and realize that I’ve spent more time in this imaginary space than I have talking to actual people. It’s a lonely craft, in a way. Simon M.-L. against the alphabet. But then I think about the person who will sit down with this grid in 37 days. They’ll be on a train, or having a quiet breakfast, or hiding in a breakroom. They’ll see 17-Across, they’ll chew on the end of their pen, and for a split second, they’ll be inside my head. They’ll see the trap I set and they’ll find the way out. That connection is worth every erroneous letter and every drop of blood on the bond paper.

That connection is worth every erroneous letter and every drop of blood on the bond paper.

The Beauty of the Dead End

We live in an age where everything is being smoothed out. Algorithms suggest our music, our movies, and our career paths. They want to remove the friction, the ‘wrong’ turns, and the agonizing dead ends. But the dead end is where the learning happens. The agonizing fill is where the constructor proves they are human. If we automate the puzzle, we aren’t just losing a game; we’re losing the proof that humans can create beauty within a cage. I’d rather have a flawed, hand-built puzzle with 17 obscure references than a perfect, machine-tooled grid that feels like it was whispered by a ghost.

As I reach for a fresh envelope-carefully this time-I think about the next grid. It will be a 21×21. It will have exactly 37 theme squares. And it will be a nightmare to build. I can’t wait to start.