Bonnie Eisenman’s January 2, 2026 crossword for Puzzmo did something really interesting in its 1-across entry. Let’s talk about it!
Puzzle Spoilers:
Puzzmo: January 2, 2026 by Bonnie Eisenman
(Lesser spoilers) New York Times: July 21, 2022 by Anne Marie Crinnion and Eric Bornstein
(Lesser spoilers) Bewilderingly (blog): “Well That Was Anticlimactic” on January 2, 2022 by Will Nediger
The Subject Matter
The part about this puzzle I want to discuss is almost not a spoiler, given that it occurs in the 1-across clue: [Core muscles exercised at the cores of 15- and 30-Across] – ABS.
This entry alludes (pretty plainly) to the fact the theme answers contain exercises to workout your abs: namely, CRUNCH and PLANK.
For this type of revealer, a conventional choice might have been to have ABS at the very end, as the last horizontal clue (in this case, that would normally be 38-across). That would have been my instinct, at least. But Eisenman subverts this norm. Why?
Changing the Solver Mindset
One consequence of this choice, I think, is that it drastically changes the solver experience.
When I think of the conventional set-up – with a revealer as a final clue – I think the goal is to bolster the satisfying conclusion of the solve. You provide the puzzle with a satisfying “Aha” moment, a sort of exclamation mark of completion.
But Eisenman’s 1-across revealer curates the vibe for the entire solving experience, not just the end. As Puzzmo editor Brooke Husic writes in the editor’s notes: “Maybe it got you thinking about the circled letters before you even encountered their clues.” As a solver, I can say that solving ABS early on made me anticipate these theme answers more enthusiastically.
Put another way, the early revealer compelled me to consider the themers more deliberately throughout my solve — and I think it’s actually much more of an accomplishment than it may seem. For easier puzzles, more experienced solvers (and yes, I think I’ve earned the right to call myself one!) sometimes enter this “flow state” of solving, where they’re filling the grid so quickly and effortlessly that they don’t even register the theme until they look at the completed grid and go “Huh, I guess that was the theme. Nice.” Then onto the next. Ask them five minutes later, and they might not even remember what the theme was.
Meanwhile, this puzzle’s theme stayed at the forefront of my mind as soon as I solved 1-Across. Additionally, I like how the revealer doesn’t necessarily “spoil” the theme answers – I certainly didn’t solve them immediately and I still had to do some work to solve them – but I was still much more conscious of how they related to the puzzle at large.
Joining the Discussion, Please Welcome… Alfred Hitchcock?
The difference in approach — between the conventional last-word revealer versus this puzzle’s 1-across revealer — is somewhat reminiscent of a video of Alfred Hitchcock I saw just a few days ago, in which he’s illustrating how audiences engage with surprise vs. suspense.
Below is a transcribed portion of what Hitchcock says in the video:
“Four people are sitting around a table talking about baseball, whatever you like, five minutes of it, very dull. Suddenly, a bomb goes off, blows the people to smithereens. What have the audience had? Ten seconds of shock.
“Now take the same scene and tell the audience there is a bomb under that table that will go off in five minutes. Well, the whole emotion of the audience is totally different, because you’ve given them that information…. Now the conversation about baseball becomes very vital, because they’re saying to you: ‘Don’t be ridiculous! Stop talking about baseball! There’s a bomb under there!’ You’ve got the audience working now.”
To me, the options Hitchcock is weighing — between the brief, energetic “surprise” and the longer-burning “suspense” — are at the crux of this puzzle debate. To be fair, I feel like there are a lot of ways a puzzle can include tension and feel “suspenseful” to a solver, and they’re not all related to the theme. But it could be interesting to reconsider the theme as a sort of a sequential “plot” of a crossword, and as a result try to use some story-telling wisdom in the puzzle’s architecture.
I don’t think Crossword-Solver Hitchcock would necessarily hate ending revealers. But I think “The Master of Suspense” would at least appreciate the 1-across choice in the puzzle we’ve been talking about.
Final Thoughts
Okay, I’m not necessarily advocating that we put all of our revealers at the beginning of the puzzle. After all, there’s definitely still value in the surprising “punchline” of a concluding thematic entry that ties a bow on the whole enterprise.
But it does make me feel like there’s a decision worth considering here, rather than just mindlessly slotting a reveal in the bottom right corner. In the crossword sphere where puzzles are often evaluated by their themes by editors, I’m attracted to the idea of nudging solvers to engage with these themes more actively as well.
Of course, then one is forced to wonder wonder about when exactly it’s appropriate to incorporate this type of early revealer versus not. I don’t exactly know the answer, but below are a few questions that I think probably affect this choice (each of which could likely garner more thought in a future post):
- How do puzzle titles play into this idea of suspense? Do solvers engage with title “revealers” in the same way as a thematic 1-across? (n=1: I often overlook titles.)
- Are early revealers more appropriate for shorter/non-pun entries, which may have a less satisfying “surprise” factor?
- Do center-line revealers (with themers above and below, like in my December 3, 2024 NYT puzzle) sort of “split the difference” between surprise and suspense? Is this a good thing?
- On that note, is it worth giving more consideration to the effects of mid-puzzle but non-center revealers (like this July 21, 2022 NYT puzzle by Anne Marie Crinnion and Eric Bornstein)?
As a final note, there’s one puzzle I couldn’t stop thinking about while I wrote this. So here’s “Well, That was Anticlimactic” by Will Nediger.
Additional ideas? Anything I missed? Feel free to comment your thoughts!