It's All On the Table

Greg Slovacek is a software engineer from San Francisco. This is his first published crossword. He finds puzzlemaking similar in a way to programming — both involve problem-solving within constraints.

He enjoys puzzles that have layers to be uncovered, which is certainly true of today's.

My biggest surprise in constructing this puzzle was that, as a software engineer, I did not write a custom program to help myself. Maybe I should have!

In the beginning, I found plenty of potential entries containing suits and ranks, and the deck felt stacked in my favor. But as I made choices deeper into construction and raised the stakes, I created more mind-bending constraints. Changing even one card could mean all bets were off, and my tools didn't help much with multi-valued cells. While I found HEART, ACE, TEN, and KING easy to work with, the other values were much trickier! Was there no limit to how much work this would take? Still, the challenge was exhilarating, and I was all-in. I made lots of my own low-tech aids, including tables of good and bad entry patterns I could consult to avoid playing with an unwinnable hand. Even so, I flushed a ton of grids in the process.

My favorite themers I wish could have worked were F(ACE)BOOKSTAL(KING), GET(SEVEN), and ALIEN(QUEEN) but .. it wasn't in the cards.

Thanks to Kevin Der, whose construction advice and persistent prodding helped me make this puzzle about as good as I possibly could, and to my wife Jamie, who endured the late nights and inconvenient distractions while I obsessed over cracking this nut!

Jim here, sitting in for Jeff Chen who knows when to hold 'em, & etc.

I think I understand this one.

Step one is to figure out there's a rebus trick going on related to playing cards. Each rebus square has two parts corresponding to the value and suit of a card. The Across answers define the value (TEN, QUEEN, etc.) and the Down answers define the suit (CLUB, HEART, etc.)

For example, 1-Down and 8-Down will use the suits. 1-Down [Pop culture sister site of The Onion] refers to the web site AV CLUB, and 8-Down [Aplenty] means IN SPADES.

But 22-Across will use the values, so [Plant with clusters of tiny white flowers] is QUEEN ANNE'S LACE.

The square at the start of 22-Across will be QUEEN reading across and CLUB reading down, so the card is the Queen of Clubs. Similarly, at the end of 22-Across, it reads ACE going across and SPADE going down, so the card is the Ace of Spades.

Look at the grid. It explains this better than I can.

In Texas hold 'em, each player is dealt two cards face down, and then (eventually) five more cards are dealt face up in the middle of the table. (The detailed rules and terminology aren't important for this puzzle.)

The four Across answers near the top and bottom with two cards each represent hands dealt to four players sitting around a table. The top-left player has a Queen and an Ace. Combining with the center cards nets a pair of each. Two pair isn't bad.

The top-right player has a Two of Hearts and a King of Clubs. Not much going on here.

The bottom-left has an Ace of Clubs and a 10 of Spades. With the center cards, this player gets a Full House — two Aces and three 10s. Great hand.

Unfortunately for the others, the bottom-right player has a Jack and King of Hearts. Combining those with a 10, Queen, and Ace of Hearts from the center cards makes a Royal Flush — the best possible hand.

Over the years, there have been many attempts to combine crosswords with games like Chess or Pool or Clue or even Bowling. I admire the audacity of this attempt to combine with Poker. It's a lot of work to figure out that some random squares represent playing cards. Let's hope you love card games.

UPDATE: We've been asked how to enter the rebus values into the grids. We're not the NYT but I took a look at what their code accepts. For the Queen of Clubs, you can enter any of these options: "QUEEN", "QUEENOFCLUBS", "Q", "CLUB", "C", "QUEEN/CLUB", "CLUB/QUEEN", "Q/C", or "C/Q". The easiest would just be either Q or C, both of which work.