Working Through Travel Guide Crossword Clues
I've been solving crosswords for years, and the travel guide category shows up more often than you'd expect. Publishers like Frommer's and Fodor's have been around long enough that older puzzle constructors assume you'll recognize them. That means a clue like "Big Name In Travel Guides" is usually aiming for one of those two answers. The standard answer here is FROMMER. Sometimes it's listed as FROMMER'S depending on how the grid is set up. FODORS works too, though constructors tend to prefer Frommer because the possessive gives you a cleaner fill. I should note that LONELY PLANET pops up occasionally, but that's three words and takes up more letters, so it shows up less frequently in standard grids. Here's what most solvers miss: constructor preference matters more than popularity. Frommer's has been a crossword staple since the 1950s. Arthur Frommer started publishing his budget travel guides in 1957, and by the time crosswords were regularly featuring them in the 1960s and 70s, the name had become puzzle shorthand. Fodor's started even earlier, in 1936, but constructors seem to gravitate toward Frommer's because the apostrophe-s provides a single-letter addition that fits tight grids.
One edge case I ran into recently confused me for about ten minutes. The clue read "Travel Guide Brand With 4 Letters" and every answer I tried was wrong. I kept writing FODOR and ROMER and MODER, but nothing fit with the crossing letters. Eventually I realized the puzzle was using MOONS — Moon Travel Guides is a real publisher, just not a big-name one. It was a NYT Mini, and those constructors love throwing in niche brands because they require fewer letters. I should have caught that faster, but my brain was locked into the big names at that point. When you're stuck on these clues, start with letter count and crossing letters before guessing. If the answer needs seven letters and your crossings support F-R-O-M-M-E-R, go with it. If it's five letters, consider FODOS or MOONS instead. The tricky part is that some clues intentionally mislead by using wordplay that points toward a different meaning of "big name" — like a famous person who also wrote travel books. But in the vast majority of cases, especially in American-style crosswords, they're just asking for the publisher name. There's a common pitfall where solvers overthink these clues by looking for clever wordplay when the constructor just wants a straightforward trivia answer. If the clue has no indication of a pun or double meaning — no question mark, no obvious wordplay markers — treat it as a straight definition. That alone will save you time on about half the travel guide clues you encounter.
Another thing to keep in mind: British crosswords operate differently. They tend to use much shorter, more obscure travel guide references, and sometimes the answer is a single word like DK (Dorling Kindersley) or even AA (the Automobile Association guides). If you're solving a UK-style puzzle, don't assume the American big names are the only options.
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