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Margaret Petherbridge Farrar (March 23, 1897 – June 11, 1984) was an American journalist and the first crossword puzzle editor for The New York Times (1942–1968). Creator of many of the rules of modern crossword design, she compiled and edited a long-running series of crossword puzzle books – including the first book of any kind that Simon & Schuster published (1924). [1]
Roman numerals: for example the word "six" in the clue might be used to indicate the letters VI; The name of a chemical element may be used to signify its symbol; e.g., W for tungsten; The days of the week; e.g., TH for Thursday; Country codes; e.g., "Switzerland" can indicate the letters CH; ICAO spelling alphabet: where Mike signifies M and ...
The agencies were sometimes referred to as alphabet soup. Libertarian author William Safire notes that the phrase "gave color to the charge of excessive bureaucracy." Democrat Al Smith, who turned against Roosevelt, said his government was “submerged in a bowl of alphabet soup."
The objective, as any other crossword, is to determine the proper letter for each cell; in a cipher crossword, the 26 numbers serve as a cipher for those letters: cells that share matching numbers are filled with matching letters, and no two numbers stand for the same letter. All resultant entries must be valid words.
The number of words in the answer is not given in the clue—so a one-word clue can have a multiple-word answer. [ 28 ] The theme, if any, will be applied consistently throughout the puzzle; e.g., if one of the theme entries is a particular variety of pun, all the theme entries will be of that type. [ 9 ]
Crosswordese is the group of words frequently found in US crossword puzzles but seldom found in everyday conversation. The words are usually short, three to five letters, with letter combinations which crossword constructors find useful in the creation of crossword puzzles, such as words that start or end with vowels (or both), abbreviations consisting entirely of consonants, unusual ...
The Chambers Dictionary is consulted, together with Chambers WORDS and Chambers BACKWORDS to find combinations that will fit into the grid. Finally, the clues are composed in the order that the words appear in the grid, starting with the first Across clue. He deliberately avoids tackling the most interesting-looking words first.
The term four-letter word serves as a euphemism for words that are often considered profane or offensive.. The designation "four-letter" arises from the observation that many (though not all) popular or slang terms related to excretory functions, sexual activity, genitalia, blasphemies, and terms linked to Hell or damnation are incidentally four-character monosyllables.