Solution - Cross Eyed

By Alex Irpan, Anderson Wang, and Nishant Pappireddi

This is a standard crossword, except in every clue, the letters within each word are scrambled. The first and last letter of each word are unchanged, based on the classic myth that you can jumble the middle letters of a word without hurting readability. As you may have discovered, this myth is only partly true. Longer words with uncommon letter patterns take more effort to read.

The crossword fill works the same way. Each word must be entered such that the first and last letter are in their original spots, but the middle letters may appear in any order.

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G
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G
O
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A
W
P
A
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U
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A
T
E
N
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D
A
N
O
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M
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B
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C
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N
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X
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F
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A
W
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M
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C
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M
A
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T
Across   Down
1  Most populated Scottish city - GLASGOW
8  Fluttershy, for example - PEGASUS
15  Alternatively - INSTEAD
16  Wtih San, a Texas city - ANTONIO
17  What could come after impeachment, but so far never has - REMOVAL
18  University with an ornithology lab - CORNELL
19  What farmers like Applejack make - PRODUCE
20  Travel booking company - EXPEDIA
21  Word with compact or jockey - DISC
23  Timmy that shares a voice actor with Twilight - TURNER
24  If you want to solve the puzzle... (part 1) (3 words)
29  Text encoding used in some art - ASCII
30  Count (on) - RELY
31  First word on a clothing tag - MADE
35  Third rock fprm the Sun - EARTH
36  Female pronoun - SHE
37  Princess, for example - TITLE
38  Fit well - MESH
39  It might involve reducing carbs - DIET
40  Someone captained by Shining Armor - GUARD
41  ...you'll need this (part 2)
43  _____ Ocean (John Luther Adams piece) - BECOME
47  Square - EVEN
48  Offers, as a hand - EXTENDS
50  What's improved by exercise - FITNESS
55  Cool, dazzling, or how Rainbow Dash would describe herself - AWESOME
56  Leader who resigned after Brexit referendum - CAMERON
57  Country with Dracula's Castle - ROMANIA
58  Writer's sketch - OUTLINE
59  Things Rarity makes - DRESSES
60  Rhode Island city where Bob Dylan "went electric" - NEWPORT
  
1  Hold - GRIP
2  Take point - LEAD
3  It's harmful, according to Dijkstra - GOTO
4  Six deliveries, in cricket - OVER
5  Food named for an earl - SANDWICH
6  Judge a book by its cover, maybe - ASSUME
7  The Everfree Forest, for example - WILDERNESS
8  Walk back and forth - PACE
9  Feeling experienced by those not at 26-Down - ANXIETY
10  They can be cyclic, dihedral, alternating, or symmetric - GROUP
11  Playground feature - SLIDE
12  Response to a doorbell ring - ENTER
13  Civil War faction - UNION
14  Sunny? - SOLAR
22  Popular takeout choice - CHINESE
24  _____ spirit - TEAM
25  Opposite of misses - HITS
26  See 9-Down - EASE
27  St. Louis landmark - ARCH
28  It's seen in the Mirror Pool - REFLECTION
31  French Sudan, once - MALI
32  Gossip - DIRT
33  Prefix wtih pilot or complete - AUTO
34  Biblical garden - EDEN
37  Two-dimensional simplex - TRIANGLE
39  "Well Seymour, I made it, _____ your directions." - DESPITE
41  Tax introduced by a constitutional amendment- INCOME
42  Critic's evaluation - REVIEW
43  Star Swirl's is notable - BEARD
44  Steve Ballmer, for the Clippers - OWNER
45  Aeolian and Dorian, in music - MODES
46  They're often dreaded by students - TESTS
49  An expert can sail all seven of them - SEAS
51  Email protocol abbreviation - SMTP
52  iPod mentioned in Friendship is Witchcraft - NANO
53  Knight's _____ - TOUR
54  Email folder - SENT

Upon filling out the grid, clues 24-Across and 41-Across are left over, and say "If you want to solve the puzzle, you'll need this." Unscrambling the corresponding entries gives "The answer is INSPIRATION".

Authors Notes

Derpy Hoeovs is aaoestcsid with mnay tighns: miffuns, mail dvrlieey, bneig araodlbe, and hnavig coerssd eyes. Atefr smoe bmosrnrtiaing, I landed on tihs idea. I don't sovle many cwordssros, so big tnkahs to Nhianst and Adrnsoen for hplneig darft cules and vnreyiifg they met csrsorowd sltye.

The gird fill was done uinsg Qxw, wtih a ctosum dotnicraiy mdae of all ptnuemirtaos of the 10000 most coommn words in the Glogoe n-grams dastaet. A nice sdie-efecft of this pzlzue is that the flil is fblxiele eonguh to aviod most crosrowsd-ese wodrs.

An oledr voesirn of the pzluze gave ltteer oedrr dtelircy, by mnkaig every N-letter wrod have an clue taht was N words lnog, wtih word oredr mtnciahg lteter oredr. Heeowvr, ligoc pilunzzg out the lretets was mroe fun, and rivomneg the cule lgenth rttrisoicen made it eesair to wrtie good csowsorrd cuels.

By copemtle aineccdt, My Llttie Pnoy: Puzelzs are Magic oealpepvrd wtih the 2020 Saente ienecamhpmt trail for Dnolad Trump. We fuond it very, very fnuny taht if the Stnaee had voted to cncoivt Turmp, we wloud have been fcroed to iusse errata for 17-Asocrs.