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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1487 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for October 15, 2025

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Yeah, this is why I never got into crosswords either. I think it's like blank poetry or leetcode - in theory there's a big space of possible puzzles, but in practice they're written to conform to very specific formats. Let me know if you find any crossword that isn't like that.

in theory there's a big space of possible puzzles, but in practice they're written to conform to very specific formats.

There are only so many ways to cram a bunch of words together and have them all be actual words. The bigger the grid and the smaller the dead space, the fewer options there are for the possible words. The infinite possibilities start to shrink rapidly.

Aside from that practical limitation, the audience for crossword puzzles apparently loves atrocious answers, so puzzles are written to please them. One I did had the clue "lived like a single man," and the answer was "batchedit." I had never heard that phrase, and it's awful (why does it have a "t" in there when "bachelor" doesn't have one???). I cannot imagine ever hearing someone I know use that phrase. Searching the phrase online, though, and puzzle fanatics can be found screaming in delight at how creative it is. So when puzzles are written to please balloonheads like those, it's no wonder so many puzzles have insufferable clues and answers.

Rex is unimpressed with BATCHED IT.

Ever looked at The Listener crossword in The Times? It makes a cryptic look like a child's word search.

I tried to find an example but I can only find pictures of finished puzzles without the clues. Looks like there are some follow-alongs on YouTube.

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