"Professor Magus, I'd like to present my research on today's crossword."
"All right, Steve, but I would hope that you won't make your usual complaint about Roman numerals."
"Well, um....Okay. I'll leave that part out. Today's puzzle had only 27 black squares. That was good. That meant that the puzzle contained 198 letters. There were 30 E's, 25 A's, 19 R's, 15 S's and 12 I's. Those five letters comprised more than half of the fillable grid. Today's crossword is typical. Puzzle creators rely too much on words with common letters. They should challenge themselves to use more words with a J, X, Q or Z. In Scrabble, those are the letters with the highest point value. If crosswords were Scrabble games, these guys would never win! They play RETREAT for seven points? Okay, I play JAZZ for 29 points! I want to see more creativity in crosswords and not so many of the most common letters. Ummm...you really won't let me mention the Roman numerals? No? All right, I'm finished."
