
An amazing crossword puzzle - superchink
http://kottke.org/11/07/an-amazing-crossword-puzzle
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zwieback
Cool. My dad is a big crossword puzzler. When I was a kid I asked him if he
thought it was possible to start with a wrong word and then finish the whole
puzzle. We both thought the odds would be tiny but then he decided to design a
puzzle that could be done two ways consistently.

He worked on it like a maniac for a few weeks and then came up with two
puzzles, one with North/South (or maybe East/West) themes, one with
Goethe/Schiller themes (this is all in Germany.)

The clues were a bit contrived and I don't remember how big the puzzles were
but he submitted them to the weekly "Zeit Magazin" which runs a popular puzzle
and published it in the New Years issue.

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flixic
These crosswords are called "schizophrenic", and there are more examples here:
<http://www.xwordinfo.com/Schizo>

Truly brilliant.

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mtogo
From the Guidelines:

 _Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they
found on another site, submit the latter._

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superchink
I kinda liked that the explanation was hidden behind another link, but it led
to a literal violation of the guidelines, and for that I apologize.

I'll strive to do better, but hopefully I can be forgiven.

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nolanw
This puzzle is mentioned in the lovely documentary Wordplay[1], which
ostensibly follows a cadre of competitors in a year of the American Crossword
Puzzle Tournament. Well worth a watch, and I believe it's on Netflix.

[1] <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0492506/>

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cycojesus
It's easy to call it amazing now... I'll be amazed when I see a proof that the
auther of this traveled through time or something.

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kens
You need to click on the "Click through to see how they did it link" to see
why this is cool.

They used ten ambiguous clues so "CLINTON ELECTED" and "BOBDOLE ELECTED" were
both valid solutions to the puzzle. For instance, the down word intersecting
the intial C/B is CAT/BAT with the clue "Black Halloween animal".

Since they publish the solution the next day, they can publish the right
solution no matter which way the election goes.

[edit: I didn't downvote you, btw]

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cycojesus
Mea maxima culpa -.-

I upvoted you both for my sin.

What can I say, I have one of those extra-short attention span...

When opening the link I first thought maybe the black squares pattern was a
game-of-life automata and thought "that'd be clever if it was that, added
bonus for related words and definitions" and then my blood just boiled so fast
when it turned out (wrongly) to be such a basic predicted-afterward parlor
trick that I didn't bother noticing the link... (I'll dig myself a bit deeper
but I can't help it but say that this click-on-the-link-to-get-the-meat trick
is annoying me too, but that's another story (go ahead, I have 64 more karma
bits to loose before the ground))

