A Crossword on Nerdosity in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture
When creating this puzzle, Arizona's Poet Laureate and Regents' Professor Alberto Ríos taped his glasses, mussed his hair, and began speculating about the speed of the Millennium Falcon. In other words, he was knee-deep in geek culture.
The clues and answers are brimming with references to sci-fi, YA lit, fantasy, and comics, and feature dorks, goobers, heroes, brainiacs, maniacs, loners, bumblers, and world-class nerds from all walks of life.
So: don your thinking caps and wizard hats—and happy solving.
→Try the interactive version!
Across
1 Snoopy's owner (2 wds)
7 So cool, all you need to say about him is E=MC²
9 National Public Radio
10 A nerd does well on this in school
11 And
13 Atkinson played a bumbling one named Johnny English
14 Opposite of nay
16 Terra
18 Most famous Vulcan (2 wds)
19 Shakespeare's Nerd of Denmark
20 Focus intensely on
21 Wizard Granger's first name
22 This kind of Kid had a Diary
23 Molecule with double helix
27 SpongeBob has what?
28 L'Engle's Time had this in it
29 His cousin Goober took over for him in Mayberry
Down
2 She lived at a farm called Green Gables
3 Neptune and Uranus are these kind of giants
4 Michael Jackson's rat in film
5 In a galaxy far, far away, these were happening among the stars
6 Lightning-marked wizard of Hogwarts (2 wds)
7 Boy detective Leroy Brown's nickname
8 Asimov's 3 Laws book (2 wds)
10 The Enterprise made this kind of voyage through the stars
12 Bart's sister (2 wds)
13 Dr Cooper on Big Bang Theory
15 Chocolate chip cookies made him Famous
17 Ribonucleic acid
19 She was an 11-year-old spy in NYC's upper East Side
22 The Triffids were killed by this simple liquid that came from the sea
24 You don't tug on Superman's what?
25 White dressing for white bread
26 Red, painful bump near eyelid