Things Are About to Get Cheesy In Here
Chalk it up to some legen-dairy cheeses to be a huge part of crossword puzzles.
Rebecca Tulis
3-Down in Monday's puzzle was [Cheese similar to Monterey Jack] yielding the answer COLBY.
Crosswords contain a lot of food, but not a whole lot of cheeses. They tend to have longish names (MOZZARELLA, CAMEMBERT, GORGONZOLA, PROVOLONE) which makes them less likely to appear in a grid.
The most common crossword cheeses are EDAM, BRIE, FETA, and GOUDA. It's easy to see why: they're all short words with lots of vowels, and, until the emergence of actresses Brie Larson and Alison Brie, there was no good non-cheesy way to clue any of them. SWISS also has good letters, but can easily be clued without reference to the food.
The most popular six-letter cheese in puzzles is ASIAGO, with its many vowels making it relatively easy to fit into a grid.
The late great crossword writer Merl Reagle once created a whole puzzle, "Truly Cheesy Puns," filled with dad-joke humor like [Cheesy actor?] cluing RICOTTA MONTALBAN and, circling back to what started us on this path today, [A doctor's cheesy advice?] was TAKE TWO OF THESE AND COLBY IN THE MORNING.
Can you top Merl's cheesy puns? Try it by tweeting them to #beastxword. Please only tweet the dairy best ones you can find.
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