About

I started this blog because I wanted to share a few advanced crossword construction techniques. I also wanted these to be accessible to everyone, so there's no coding knowledge required - everything is done entirely in Excel with just a few basic functions. And since these tricks are based entirely on wordlist manipulation, they should work regardless of which software you prefer.  I think the written posts should be sufficient, but I'll also be supplementing them with a couple tutorial videos, just in case.

For people who don't have time for long, boring posts with Excel screenshots, here's the TLDR: you can encode your wordlists with numeric characters to accommodate various gimmicks like rebuses, blank squares, stretched squares and Schrödinger-style letter swaps.

If you do happen to get stuck or need help brainstorming a theme or have any other feedback/suggestions, feel free to drop me a note at:

see17across@gmail.com

I will also be periodically posting new puzzles here, lets say on days ending in a 17. But not always. And maybe sometimes on other days.

Thanks!