Jiahe Men author page
1 puzzle by Jiahe Men
with Constructor comments
See the 2 answer words debuted by Jiahe Men.
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Hello to all the lovely people of Crossworld from Singapore! It's been a dream of mine to have one of my puzzles published in The New York Times, and I'm overjoyed that, after countless rejections, it's finally become a reality!
I've been a fan of crosswords for about three years now, having first been exposed to them from the Minis all my friends were playing in class. From there, I started cutting my teeth on the full-size puzzles from the archives released every week, and eventually decided to get a subscription to access the daily crosswords. Before long, I began creating puzzles myself, a process I found strangely therapeutic and (not so strangely) time-consuming.
While I knew the direction I wanted to take this puzzle's theme fairly early on, getting a workable grid with acceptable fill was one of the most tedious things I've ever done. I'm relatively happy with the final result, having been able to include some decent bonus long entries, but at the cost of a glut of tired, short fill. I'm glad that some of my clues that I liked were kept mostly intact (specifically 16A and 29D). I was also sad to see some go: [Tot lot?] at 28A and [Many a bathroom production] at 14D.
I'm forever indebted to the kind souls on the Crosscord server who tolerated my queries regarding the legitimacy of more "peculiar" words that appeared as fill options, and for kindly agreeing to provide test solves with amazing feedback. I'd also like to thank the Times puzzle editing team for their patient guidance throughout all the submission and editing back-and-forth.