{"id":216,"date":"2009-09-09T22:51:29","date_gmt":"2009-09-10T03:51:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beekeeperlabs.com\/xwdblog\/?p=216"},"modified":"2009-09-09T22:51:29","modified_gmt":"2009-09-10T03:51:29","slug":"puzzle-113-the-good-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beekeeperlabs.com\/xwdblog\/2009\/09\/09\/puzzle-113-the-good-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Puzzle #113: &#8220;The Good Earth&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><applet mayscript name=\"CrossYYYs\" code=\"com.beekeeper.xwd.CrossYYYsApplet\" codebase=\".\" archive=\"https:\/\/beekeeperlabs.com\/CrossYYYsApplet.jar\" height=\"461\" width=\"560\"><param name=\"puzzle\" value=\"https:\/\/beekeeperlabs.com\/puzzles\/TheGoodEarth.puz\"><param name=\"singleClueColumn\" value=\"true\">\n<a href=\"https:\/\/beekeeperlabs.com\/puzzles\/TheGoodEarth.puz\"><img loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Puzzle #113\" src=\"https:\/\/beekeeperlabs.com\/puzzles\/TheGoodEarth-small.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"328\" height=\"442\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<\/applet><\/p>\n<p>Occasionally people ask how long it takes to make one of these puzzles, and I&#8217;m never quite sure because I build them gradually over the course of several days.  This time around, I went ahead and timed myself.  The rough numbers are as follows:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Generate theme concept: 3 days (not full time)\n<li>Turn theme concept into a set of theme phrases: 30 minutes\n<li>Generate grid and fill around those theme phrases: 1 hour\n<li>Write clues: 4 hours\n<\/ul>\n<p>Total: 5 1\/2 hours plus a few days thinking about theme possibilities.  I could have grabbed a ready-made grid from a library somewhere and used any one of several programs to automatically fill it in half a second, but the results would reflect the lack of human effort and judgment.  I could also churn out clues in 5 minutes by using a library of canned clues, or 1 hour by simply being less creative, but much of the art of a good puzzle is keeping the clues fresh and original.  (Opinions may vary on how well I succeed at this.)   Some puzzles definitely take longer: I always allow at least 8 hours just in case.  And, of course, a really complicated theme can get arbitrarily difficult to develop and\/or fill.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Title<\/strong>: The Good Earth<br \/>\n<strong>Difficulty<\/strong>: Wednesday<br \/>\n<strong>Download<\/strong>: <a title=\"Across Lite puzzle\" href=\"https:\/\/beekeeperlabs.com\/puzzles\/TheGoodEarth.puz\">Across Lite<\/a> or <a title=\"PNG image puzzle\" href=\"https:\/\/beekeeperlabs.com\/puzzles\/TheGoodEarth-large.png\" target=\"_blank\">printable PNG<\/a> (w\/ <a title=\"PNG image solution\" href=\"https:\/\/beekeeperlabs.com\/puzzles\/TheGoodEarth-solution.png\" target=\"_blank\">solution<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Occasionally people ask how long it takes to make one of these puzzles, and I&#8217;m never quite sure because I build them gradually over the course of several days. This time around, I went ahead and timed myself. The rough numbers are as follows: Generate theme concept: 3 days (not full time) Turn theme concept [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beekeeperlabs.com\/xwdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beekeeperlabs.com\/xwdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beekeeperlabs.com\/xwdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beekeeperlabs.com\/xwdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beekeeperlabs.com\/xwdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/beekeeperlabs.com\/xwdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":217,"href":"https:\/\/beekeeperlabs.com\/xwdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions\/217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beekeeperlabs.com\/xwdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beekeeperlabs.com\/xwdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beekeeperlabs.com\/xwdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}