Turkish Crosswords
Crosswords look beautiful, if done right. It’s indeed a work of art.
Crosswords are very popular in Turkey as they are published daily in many newspapers. I think we can increase the quality by a few restrictions, included below. These restrictions are from The New York Times crossword rules.
Restrictions
- No 2-letter words
- Many crosswords use the trick of using 2-letter words, such as “Bir nota” (A note) or “Plutonyum simgesi” (Symbol of plutonium). These are easy ways to fill the crossword, but they are not fun to solve. They are also too repetitive and not creative. Creativity is another point below.
- Not including the answer in the question
- Diagonal symmetry (see below)
- This makes the crossword look beautiful.
Diagonally symmetric crossword1
- Creativity
- Questions like “Bir ilimiz” (One of our cities) are not creative and lack beauty.
- Using the same question again and again is not creative also. It gets boring and turns into memorization.
- No leaving of trailing blocks (blocks that are left alone in a row or column, see below)
A trailing block because there is no 'down' question for it.2
Comparisons
I’ve started comparing the newspapers’ crosswords with the restrictions above.
| Newspaper | Date | Type | 2-letter words | Answer in question | Lack of creativity | Trailing blocks | Matching words | Block symmetry | Creative question | Points (out of 10) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cumhuriyet | 12/12/2023 | Çengel | + | + | + | + | + | - | + | 6 |
| Milliyet | 12/13/2023 | Kare | + | + | + | + | + | + | - | 6 |
| Hürriyet | 12/14/2023 | Çengel | + | + | + | + | + | - | - | 5 |
| Sözcü | 12/15/2023 | Çengel | + | + | + | + | + | - | + | 6 |