So I filled 1 Down shamelessly with slang I made up myself for the purpose of completing this crossword’s theme. What of it? Why shouldn’t I make up my own slang, so long as it’s inferable? In fact, as a solver I would rather have inferable made-up slang than the real but abstruse “modern slang” that seems ever more common in crosswords—slang current exclusively in some subculture that savvy solvers congratulate themselves for appreciating while the rest of us scratch our poor heads.
Nothing seems to me more likely to kill the fun of crosswords than this new idea, which I’ve seen in more than one place where crosswords are discussed, that the pleasure of crossword-solving comes mainly from the recognition of allusions in the grid to the interests of one’s particular in-group. In fact, the specialized you-know-it-or-you-don’t trivia one encounters in crosswords—whether botanical species or brand names, Russian rivers or social media fads, learned arcana or celebrity gossip—is not a merit but a blemish imposed by the constraints of the form and the limits of the language. Let’s all start being properly ashamed of it again.
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