Puzzling Ink by Becky Clark

Author:Becky Clark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lyrical Press
Published: 2020-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Then the hard work began: All the rest of the entries. This was a lot of trial and error. Every so often she’d stop and ask the computer to fill in the grid for her, but until she fixed some entries on her own, it was an impossibility. Quinn knew that professional cruciverbalists would never deign to use the computer to fill their grid. It was a point of pride to fill with as little help from the computer as possible, but Quinn was: one, in a hurry; and two, barely professional. Besides, nobody was going to tattle to the crossword police on her.

She tapped the command to automatically fill the grid and let out a whoop when letters magically appeared in all the spaces. She couldn’t believe her eyes when one of the entries smack-dab in the middle of the grid was ins. To her, because of her dad, it was an obvious abbreviation of insurance, but maybe not conventional, so she wouldn’t clue it that way.

Now, all she needed was to write the clues, which she thought was the most fun.

She was pleased by her results and this puzzle might have been completed in record time. She never kept track of how long a puzzle took to create, because she rarely did it all in one sitting, but maybe she should start. She texted herself a reminder.

Quinn checked over her puzzle one last time. She verified some of the clues, like making sure she got the Steven Wright quote verbatim, and that a RONDEL poem actually had 14 lines. She clucked her tongue over some of the more obscure words like EBLIS and ARUI, but she didn’t have time for better entries. Besides, she reasoned, crossword enthusiasts knew a lot of obscure words.

She also didn’t have time to run it by Vera to edit. Generally, Vera didn’t have much to say about the puzzles. Editing was merely a formality to her. As she said many times when Quinn sought her opinion about the puzzle, “Our readers will let me know if there’s a problem with it.” Which was exactly what Quinn tried to avoid whenever possible. If Vera happened to ask why Quinn had uploaded a bonus puzzle to the website, she’d simply say she got excited about it, which was absolutely true.

The fact that Vera probably still wanted to interview her for an article about Emmett’s death also weighed heavily in her decision not to contact her. So far Quinn had seen only a short blurb online about the basic facts: Emmett Dubois died under suspicious circumstances, Jake Szabo had been arrested and sits in the local jail, Quinn Carr found the body. When the next print edition came out, there might be more, but no quotes from Quinn, if she could help it.

She uploaded the puzzle to the newspaper website and sent a quick email to the “Puzzle Corner” subscribers alerting them to the surprise bonus puzzle this week.

Then she waited.

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