Tutorial: Grid Manipulation

Not all tricky puzzles require complicated wordlist shenanigans to successfully fill. Sometimes you can make your life a lot easier by simply manipulating the grid shape while constructing. Even if you're constructing a 15x15, it might be easier to fill by working on a larger canvas.

Tutorial: Stretched Squares

 Another use case for wordlist encoding is having single letters stretched across multiple squares. This is a slightly more cerebral spin on the mechanics outlined in previous posts.

Tutorial: Blank Squares

Another interesting challenge is when you have a word entered in one direction that should be treated as blank for its crosses. As a twist, the crossing answers can be valid both with and without the missing letter.

Tutorial: Schrödinger Squares

This post will cover a different use case for wordlist encoding: Schrödinger Squares. These are squares that can be occupied by either of two different letters to form a valid answer. 

Tutorial: Basic Rebus Encoding

This and the following posts will cover the mechanics around some simple encoding you can use when constructing advanced crossword themes. I'll start by going over a basic rebus example, but the core concept can be expanded to more complex use cases. 

Tutorial: Excel Basics

Before going into my advanced construction tutorials, I want to cover a handful of Excel functions I find the most useful for these exercises.