Some fun crossword news to start: This April, I’ll be Puzzmo’s mini-constructor-in-residence! And no, this isn’t an April Fool’s Day joke – though it all still feels like a dream that I’m tasked with writing 30 mini crosswords for this project. (Whether that dream ends up being a nightmare is too early to tell.)
It was initially a daunting task to write a puzzle for April 1. Not only was this crossword going to be my first mini of the residency, but also (as I was also all too aware) my puzzle was expected to fit in within a grand tradition of particularly wacky April Fool’s Day crosswords. And at the same time, I wanted the puzzle to be exciting and accessible to a broad spectrum of solvers.
Ultimately, I decided to try out a puzzle concept which I had seen but never personally constructed before. The resulting journey had its share of twists and turns and retracing steps, and resulted in some interesting decisions and considerations that I’ll elaborate on after the break. Read on at your own risk!
Spoilers (click for solving link):
Puzzmo: “Enunciate, Please!?!” on April 1, 2026 by Henry Lin-David
Beginnings of an Idea
As I was trying to develop a puzzle concept, I looked at a lot of different puzzles for inspiration. Oftentimes this meant revisiting crosswords that I remembered for being particularly tricky, though I did try to find new puzzles too. That’s actually how I ended up working through many of Malaika Handa’s 7xwords project, where I was reintroduced to the “vowelless” puzzle.
(Note: It seems like the project included 2 vowelless puzzles, one by Ryan McCarty and one by Max Carpenter. I *think* the one I encountered was the Max Carpenter puzzle.)
I pretty soon felt there were a lot of benefits to the vowelless genre – where the crossword entries must be entered with only consonants (so if the answer is “crossword” you’d fill in the letters CRSSWRD). I thought that it would provide a fun change of pace for all types of solvers, one where they’d have to think about words in a nontraditional way.
However, there were also some challenges with this idea. On the one hand, the vowelless genre has existed for years and so there were plenty of puzzles to study. But as I looked at more puzzles, I felt like I might need to rethink some of the conventions. Two of my main worries were the following:
- Being Forthright — Vowelless puzzles don’t really “sneak up” on solvers; in other words, you usually go into the puzzle knowing that it’s a vowelless puzzle. But I’d be creating a puzzle for solvers who are expecting a standard mini crossword, and Puzzmo’s crosswords don’t have “pre-solving notes” to give hints about the upcoming crossword. How could I make sure that solvers ended up on the correct page?
- Puzzle Difficulty — Vowelless puzzles are generally aimed towards more experienced solvers, since 1) the lack of vowels makes in more difficult to enter/read/understand words in the grid, and 2) these are the people who are more likely to seek out novel crossword challenges. How could I make this puzzle accessible to a wide level of solving abilities?
Signs of Promise
To address the issue of “being forthright,” I decided that the best way to “reveal the game” would be in the 1-Across clue – it’s the natural starting point for solvers, so I could be relatively certain that they wouldn’t miss it. (I came across this idea from a Puzzmo crossword by Bonnie Eisenman earlier this year; and I also wrote a previous post about the concept.)
What I settled on was the following clue: [A, E, I, O, and U (all of which have been omitted from this grid!)] – the answer of which is “vowels,” or (following the vowelless format) VWLS.
I was happy with this solution for a couple of reasons. I felt like this clue/entry combo “justified” the fact that the puzzle was a vowelless crossword, while still being an active and rule-following part of the puzzle.
Additionally, I liked how this entry was somewhat of a “gimme” – it very unambiguously, I think, points to the answer of vowels/VWLS. I felt like that answer could act as a nice confident foothold for solvers as they progressed to other clues, which I hoped would make the entire puzzle more solvable.
More Items for Consideration
Throughout the construction process, I tried to keep in mind certain elements that might affect the puzzle’s difficulty and enjoyability. Below are some of these factors:
- Single-Word vs. Multi-Word Phrases – I sometimes forget that multi-word crossword entries are a lot tougher for early solvers than single-word entries. Puzzmo does offer an option to add bars within the grid (which denote where the word breaks are). But I ultimately decided that multi-word phrases compounded with the vowelless nature of the puzzle might threaten to be a bit too tricky for first-time vowelless solvers.
- Consonant Nature & Density – Obviously in a puzzle with only consonants, those letters are pretty important! So I wanted to prioritize words with a high variety and quantity of consonants, since I felt like this would result in a more satisfying solving experience. It’s a big reason why the final grid included consonant-heavy words like “march”/MRCH and “shrink”/SHRNK.
- Words Starting with Vowels – I had a sense that it would be more difficult to solve words beginning in vowels than words beginning in consonants. But at the same time, I thought that these entries would create some variety within the puzzle. Ultimately I decided to include a couple of vowel-first entries, provided I also tweaked the cluing to be relatively gentle (like [Uses a plus sign] for “adds”/DDS) or even outright state that the entry begins with a vowel (like [The E in EV] for “electric”/LCTRC).
- General Cluing Difficulty – I generally tried to make my clues more on the easier side, though I still wanted them to feel varied and interesting. While some clues ended up being pretty straightforward, I did try to infuse some interesting imagery and moments of fun (for instance: [Grapple on the mat (regulation) or in the mud (traditional)] for “wrestle” or WRSTL).
- Hint System – Puzzmo offers a hint system that solvers can press for extra help on an entry. I thought this could provide a little extra support to those who needed it, so my idea was that each hint could offer the full letter pattern of the word with filled-in vowels. (So for LCTRC, the hint reads [E _ E _ _ _ I _].) I think this idea turned out even better than I had expected, because Brooke & the Puzzmo team managed to change the button to read “Get the pattern” – letting solvers know exactly the type of help they were trying to get.
A Survey of Grids Past and Present
I ended up making the grids essentially “by hand” – i.e. without any software help. Perhaps I could have tried to create a vowelless wordlist to use, but I fell victim to a combination of not trusting my computer skills and deep-seeded hubris.
Anyways, enjoy the following trip down memory lane of past puzzle drafts, along with my commentary.
Altogether, this was a fun new puzzle variant to try out! I’m really enjoying the mini format as a lower-stakes way to conduct some personal crossword experiments, and I’m very thankful to Brooke Husic at Puzzmo for giving me this unique opportunity to make minis for a wide audience.
I’m also excited to continue thinking about interesting puzzle ideas,and how to make them accessible to a wide audience. There’s so much cool stuff to appreciate in crosswords, so I’m hoping that some of my excitement is contagious – especially for people just starting out their crossword journey.
That’s all for now! Tune into Puzzmo every day this month for a new mini crossword by yours truly, and expect another blog post later this month as well!
Do you have additional ideas? Things I missed? Feel free to comment your thoughts!