Jennifer Hoelzer author page
1 puzzle by Jennifer Hoelzer
with Jeff Chen comments
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| I | D | L | E | H | O | O | C | H | L | A | C | K | ||
| C | E | L | L | O | N | T | H | E | F | E | N | C | E | |
| K | N | E | E | L | E | D | A | L | L | E | G | E | D | |
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| M | U | S | T | S | E | E | S | A | T | O | D | D | S | |
| I | N | A | A | S | S | E | T | S | P | R | E | E | ||
| S | M | U | T | S | T | A | I | D | S | E | M | I | ||
| H | A | T | E | R | A | L | L | I | N | A | O | K | ||
| A | N | E | M | I | C | Y | E | S | A | N | D | N | O | |
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| T | A | N | G | E | N | T | P | R | O | B | O | N | O | |
| B | L | E | A | R | Y | E | Y | E | D | U | P | O | N | |
| A | D | A | M | O | V | A | T | E | L | U | R | K | ||
| R | A | R | E | N | E | W | E | R | A | S | A | P |
Not your everyday Wednesday puzzle! Not getting the jist? Not me! Not after a long think, anyway. Not one Across clue doesn't not not start with "Not." Not too shabby to get something completely different!
How does one even go about creating something like this? Our clue search finder or Matt Ginsberg's clued database might be a good starting point — the latter contains a nearly comprehensive listing of every entry and associated clue for most of the major publications, along with some indies. Some coding would let you pull out every entry whose clue at least once started with "Not" into a specialized word list. That wouldn't cover thousands of entries that have never been clued starting with "Not," though.
Interesting to only clue the Acrosses in this way. I'm curious enough now to figure out how doable it might be to have every single entry clued with "Not" at the start.
(Not an insubstantial amount of time later ... Nnot that easy, as it turns out.)
I would have loved some revealer to help me achieve a sharper aha moment — maybe something like NOT A GOOD START? Not an exact science, finding a wickedly sharp way to help solvers flip on the lightbulb.
"Not again" is something I say frequently, given how often the same genres get rehashed. Not a bad thing to get something fresh and interesting, especially in a debut.