Reddit reviews Vowelless Crosswords

Next up: crosswords. As you've noted, crosswords can vary wildly in quality depending on the publisher or editor. For a good portion of the last twenty years, ever since Will Shortz signed on as editor, the quality has generally been pretty good, and they're certainly hard to avoid if you go to a bookstore. I think it would be a mistake to say that they're the "best" crossword currently being published. Many people have noticed a decline in fill quality as of late, and when I solve, I get the distinct feeling that the puzzle is still meant for someone, on average, significantly older than me (I'm 31).

So here are some alternative crossword publishers for you to consider:

1. Peter Gordon. Gordon used to be the editor of the New York Sun crossword, which was arguably better than the New York Times on a day to day basis. Unfortunately, the Sun discontinued their crossword, so Gordon has moved onto bigger and better things. He has a pretty good online subscription service called Fireball crosswords that publishes an often very hard puzzle once a week by all sorts of great constructors. If diabolical, creative themes are your thing, I suggest giving Gordon-edited crosswords a try. The Fireball series has made its way into bookstores.
   
   Brendan Emmett Quigley: Maybe the most prolific current constructor, Quigley offers two crosswords a week at his website. He has a penchant for filling his crossword with words and phrases that are very topical. He also has a pretty good published book called Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll Crosswords
   
   American Values: The AV Club used to publish a weekly crossword, but recently cancelled that feature. Luckily, it survives in the form of the American Values crossword. What separates this crossword from the rest is its irreverence. Other crosswords will shy from a sex reference or from using the phrase ASSHOLE. Each crossword feels like it was actually written in the 21st century and not by your grandfather.
   
   Matt Gaffney: Gaffney publishes a crossword once a week at his website and has two collections of his website work published under the Mental Floss Crosswords banner. Gaffney's crosswords are a little bit different in that they have a "meta" answer. Basically you solve the crossword, but then there is a final layer that you have to unwrap to find the puzzle's final answer which is a single word or phrase. On his website, you have the chance to submit that answer for a chance at a prize. In the books, you're just doing it for fun. I personally think that the cost of these intricate puzzles is that the crossword fill suffers as a result, but it's generally fairly good quality (and because of the extra challenge, I don't feel as bad picking up a reference book or Googling).
   
   This really just scrapes the surface, and I could go on and on and on (I haven't talked about Frank Longo's collection of vowel-less crosswords or Evan Birnholz's new website Devil Cross or lots of other stuff. But this is a good start.