I’ve mentioned before my ambition of taking my art form to a new level heretofore undreamed of, one from which I and my disciples can look down on our rivals and predecessors with scorn—as abstract painters long ago learned to do at representational ones, or atonal at tonal composers. I think I’ve hit at last on a promising idea—crosswords in which the words don’t cross. Such post-crosswords will allow me to break through the limits by which other constructors are sadly constrained, forced as they are to think up words that share letters with other words at certain crucial points, and to free myself to achieve—what exactly? I haven’t quite decided, but certainly something incomprehensible to those hidebound traditionalists who continue to think that crossing words is the whole point of crosswords. If you are yourself such a traditionalist, I pity you; meanwhile, however, here is what may be one of my last works you’ll understand, though its title hints at the coming transition.
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A crossword of mine will appear tomorrow, May 29, in the Los Angeles Times.