On the LA Times Spec Sheet for crossword submissions, there’s a tiny passage you might have overlooked (I sure did):
“Daily puzzles should have at least 4 theme entries, with a minimum of 40 theme squares. Two- or three-entry themes will be considered in an open, low-word-count Friday-style (hard) puzzle.”
(Via cruciverb.com.)
This was a jolt for me — especially since I had submitted a puzzle with just three themers a couple of months ago, and was looking forward to hearing back! (And unfortunately, it was not a “Friday-style” puzzle. Curses!) But there’s something more interesting here, beyond my (soon-to-be-rejected) puzzle submission. I had never even considered that three-entry themes might be that much inferior to four-entry themes. Certainly not enough to be banished six days a week from the pages of the LA Times.
And it’s not like many other crossword venues have this rule. In fact, the USA Today Crossword publishes a fair share of three-entry themes, like Zhouqin Burnikel’s August 4, 2021 puzzle “IT’S NOT THE REAL THING. [Note: You’ll need a subscription to solve.]
So what’s up, LA Times? Why don’t you like three-entry themes?
The Danger With Three-Entry Themes
Here’s my (perhaps lukewarm) take: The most exciting part about a themed puzzle… is the theme! (Is that obvious? Maybe.) But at least now the problem is clear: The fewer theme entries, the less exciting the theme, and the worse the puzzle is. Case closed!
Kidding – kind of. But at the very least the fewer theme entries, the more work each entry does to justify the theme. Or put another way, having fewer entries raises the stakes for each entry to be interesting in its own way. And yet, regardless of how many theme entries your puzzle contains, you should want all of your entries to be good. So shouldn’t it be harder to maintain fill quality with more entries?
But one important consideration to make is that good entries don’t just fit well with the theme — they fit well with each other. This seems important: it’s maybe not simply about the quality of the entries (though that’s definitely a must). If solving crosswords is like eating food, we ideally want all the ingredients to taste good together: to complement each other’s flavors without being overpowering or out-of-place. The entries might taste great, but having just three entries requires a delicate balance — otherwise, it threatens to accentuate the smallest inconsistencies and conflicts within the ingredients.
For instance, what if we have the following simple theme set:
Theme: American League Baseball Teams
- TEXAS RANGERS (12)
- TORONTO BLUE JAYS (15)
- CHICAGO WHITE SOX (15)
- HOUSTON ASTROS (12)
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On first impression, this seems like an acceptable variety of teams. But things get more complicated when we try to reduce this list down to three. If we cut TEXAS RANGERS or HOUSTON ASTROS, our set has two three-word entries (CHICAGO WHITE SOX and TORONTO BLUE JAYS) and just one two-word entry, which causes that two-worder to stick out a bit. Meanwhile, if we remove TORONTO BLUE JAYS or CHICAGO WHITE SOX from the list, we’re left with two Texas teams (the Rangers and the Astros) and one non-Texas team. One of these entries is destined to be the odd team out.
It’s not like these situations are the end of the world. But I think that as a solver, I might feel like these three-entry baseball theme sets are a bit unbalanced — at least more unbalanced than the four-entry counterpart. On the other hand, I’d personally have an easier time accepting two Texan teams (or two three-word teams) if there were two other entries, rather than just one.
When Three-Entry Themes Work
With that in mind, let’s revisit Zhouqin Burnikel’s August 4 puzzle: IT’S NOT THE REAL THING.
[Warning: Spoilers ahead. If you have a USA Today Crossword subscription, you can find the puzzle at the link.]
Okay, so here’s a recreation of the completed grid:
It’s a simple theme, where all of the theme entries refer to things that are fake:
- 17a. [Garden hose material] – SYNTHETIC RUBBER
- 36a. [Beads on some wristlets] – IMITATION PEARLS
- 56a. [Water storage sites] – ARTIFICIAL LAKES
This set showed me something that I hadn’t realized articulated to myself: In a three-entry theme set, the details of the entries should either be all similar, or all different.
Consistent aspects among the entries in the puzzle above:
- Each entry contains exactly two words, and follows an adjective + noun structure with the “fake” word being the adjective (which excludes entries like KNOCK-OFF HANDBAG and ART REPRODUCTION).
- The word meaning “fake” takes up roughly half of the entry (which excludes phrases containing the words FAKE or FALSE)
- The entries are all plural (or in RUBBER’s case, a material that is incapable of being singular, since SYNTHETIC RUBBERS sounds odd, and somewhat uncouth)
As for variety among entries, I think the most obvious aspects concern the physical attributes of the objects. Let’s look at size: IMITATION PEARLS are tiny, ARTIFICIAL LAKES are huge, and SYNTHETIC RUBBER is somewhere in the middle — particularly since its clue references a “garden hose.” There’s variety in texture too: hard pearls, flexible rubber, and flowing water. Ultimately, it’s hard to find many similarities between any of the entries, which is both aesthetically pleasing and also reduces any possible feelings of solver’s deja vu.
Final Thoughts
Of course, maybe the LA Times’s rule is just an arbitrary requirement. Maybe their editors just have a vendetta against the number 3. Regardless, I think the rule is helpful in appreciating the unique difficulty that three entries poses: Fewer entries might seem like less work, but it can result in far more scrutiny over the entries themselves. It’s a delicate balancing game, but certain puzzles show that it can pay off — as long as we don’t expect it to be easy.
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Grid Alchemy 