Length

The grids I used on four of last week’s five puzzles all had something in common: they contained eight six-letter entries, which is a lot for a small crossword grid.  This was on purpose. Why? Because six letters is what I call “breakout length” in crosswords. Entries of three, four, and five letters are extremely common, of course, and there are relatively few of these words in the language due to their short length. This means the same ones get repeated all the time in puzzles – ERA and ERE, ERIE and ARIA, EERIE and ARENA – you know the ones […]