I love programming challenges — some of the most ecstatic moments in my life have come from working on difficult coding problems. One ...
read moreI love programming challenges — some of the most ecstatic moments in my life have come from working on difficult coding problems. One puzzle hunt challenge stands out, where the organizers left a tiny loophole in one of the instructions, and every team achieved the optimal 100 — except ours. Nothing can compare to that smug feeling you get when people yell how the #$%#! did you score 124?!
Oh yeah. Except for getting married. And having kids.
Now, if I could just score 124 on any parenting test.
Today's problem — discovering long words and phrases where all the letters are in reverse alphabetical order — is fairly trivial. The main challenge is figuring out how to smoothly translate letters into numbers in a data structure that allows easy—
Oh, right, you don't care. Better if I say it's magic and leave it at that.
It was much more of a challenge to figure out how to present as many interesting finds as possible. I was disappointed there weren't more long ones besides TOOK HEED and SPOON-FED. That meant featuring a bunch of 7s and even some 6s. It's notoriously difficult to create a smooth grid around a slew of shorties, but the theme might have felt too thin if I had packed in less.
I struggled mightily in the NW corner, unfortunately, the most important corner in most crosswords, since it sets the tone for the rest of the puzzle. I was already at a high number of three-letter words (editors balk at more than 22), so I couldn't break up PORSCHES.
I switched the theme answers and/or shifted their placements umpteen-thousand times, but nothing worked better than what you see. It pained me to use a partial as ugly as US DO, but at least I could use a great original quote from "Star Trek VI"! Ka'plagh, Starfleet scum!
Huh? "If you prick us, do we not bleed" is Shakespeare?
(insert WOOKIEE roar here)