Sunday Puzzle

It's Sunday again, and you know what that means—time for me to rip off the puzzle segment from NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday!

Mustachioed enigmatologist

extraordinaire, Will Shortz

If you're a newcomer, each week on Weekend Edition Sunday, Will Shortz (the hardcore crossword puzzlers' almighty God) comes on the radio to do three things: share the solution to the previous week's puzzle, invite a winner who entered the correct answer to play another puzzle (usually word-related) on the air for word-nerdy prizes, and present everyone with the next week's puzzle (answers due in by Thursday afternoon via the WES website if you want a chance to play on the air).

Note: I never post the solutions on this blog…at least not before the submission deadline. I see lots of keyword traffic coming from people looking for the answers, which is at best impatient, and at worst, cheating. For shame.

Now without further ado, here's this week's new puzzle:

Create a 4-by-4 crossword square with four four-letter words reading across and four different four-letter words reading down. Use the word "nags" at 1 across and the word "newt" at 1 down. All eight words must be common, uncapitalized words, and all 16 letters must be different.

Click here to see the original puzzle posting, check the answer to last week's challenge, listen to the segment, or find the link to enter your answer.

I Cry on a Treadmill

Unimportant facts: it's Gymuary day nine. My body's pretty beat so I decided to just speed walk on the treadmill for forty minutes and catch up on some back podcast episodes of The Archers (the super long-running, super nerdy BBC Radio 4 rural-set soap opera that I accidentally got addicted to about five years ago) whilst fulfilling my promise to go to the gym every day this month.

Important! I finally caught up to the January 2 Archers double-episode. I'm way behind, so this shouldn't be a spoiler for any other listeners. Holy shit! Helen gets preeclampsia during the party at Lower Loxley and the baby is delivered by emergency C-section six weeks early! Oh, the fear! But they're fine! It's a boy! Amy's a hero! Helen and Tony finally reconcile! Hoorays! Then OH MY CRAP! Nigel falls off the roof! And he DIES! Oh, the blood-chilling SCREEEAM! Poor Elizabeth! Poor David, who'll surely be guilt-stricken for pressuring Nigel into getting the stupid sign taken down that night! Poor Lily and Freddie, suddenly fatherless and already prematurely stressed by their own inherited poshness!

So many exclamation points, and I am not an exclamatory person!!!

And don't think I'm above crying on a treadmill at the YMCA in front of two dozen relative strangers. Then I had to walk home across the icy sidewalks in bitter winter wind, trying not to slip and fall myself…oh, the trauma! This will take some time to recover from. And to think I'd been so eager to see where Fallon and Harry's romance might be heading… Oh Ambridge, you surely do know how to kick off a new year.