Forum > General Discussion
Three-letter words
margoc19:
Is there a limit to how many three letter words can be in a 15x15 grid?
mmcbs:
Simon & Schuster has a hard and fast rule - no more than 12. For othrers, the fewer the better, and you'll probably get some pushback it if you go over 20.
johnmartz:
I was wondering this myself recently, and did a quick survey of the last few NYT puzzles. The September 4 puzzle, a Wednesday, has a whopping 28 3-letter words in it. That week's Monday puzzle has 21, and the Tuesday has 24. The Thursday and Friday both have 11, and Saturday has 17.
mmcbs:
That puzzle with 28 3's got dinged by the reviewer for that, but it was an oh-so-cute novelty theme, and obviously the fill didn't much matter. When you look at that puzzle, you find ONO, OTT, RTE, CEO, ALT, EEL, ADA, MTA, ORK - pretty crappy fill IMO. So if you come up with a theme that's as clever as that, no one's going to worry about how many three letter words you have (or in this case what they are).
Sometimes the theme forces a high 3-letter word count, and that's often forgiven. But I think the point is, you should design your grid to minimize the number of 3-letter words given the theme set you're working with.
margoc19:
Very helpful, thanks everyone!
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version