Fill Me In #228: Smoothness creates less friction.

This week, Ryan and Brian talk cryptics, metas, Cheez-Its, a mostly-good #NYTXW week, and a very special Contest of Now that you have to download (hint: it's a crossword puzzle).

Other links:

• Peter Washington's weekly puzzle
• The Nation (two links explaining cryptics)
• Patrick Berry's site
• Andrew Ries's site
• Linguistic Society of America

If you get bored, write something for the Fill Me In wiki.

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We're putting these words here to help with search engine optimization. We don't think it will work, but you probably haven't read this far, so it doesn't matter: baseball, crossword, crosswords, etymology, game, hunt, movies, musicals, mystery, oscar, pizza, puzzle, puzzles, soup, trivia, words