Tarun Krishnamurthy author page

This puzzle was made during the summer break right before my senior year, accepted on Halloween, and is now in publication just a few days after I graduated from high school. The timeline goes crazy for sure. I will be heading to San Diego State University in the fall as a neuroscience major in the Honors College, which I am so stoked for.

Back to the puzzle. The revealer is REESES PIECES, with entries having three groups, RE ES ES, found separately in them. However, even with this seemingly tight constraint, there were a great deal of entries that fit that criteria. And so, I decided to make the theme even more restrictive by not allowing plural endings as the majority of entries ended in ES to act like a plural, like TRES LECHES CAKES. This only resulted in the three entries you see in this grid. Looking back at it, I could have changed the grid layout and theme entry placement slightly to make the overall solve a bit easier, but I am glad that it still found a home here nonetheless. I am especially glad to miraculously include TEEN as the last Across entry in the puzzle and that the Games team kept the personal reference I included in its clue.

If you're interested in collaborating on a puzzle, feel free to reach out to me via Discord @quackerdeezles (yes, I made this name when I was in elementary school, lol) or email me at tarunlive@live.com.

Lastly, I would also like to mention the Crosscord Discord server. We've got a wonderful community of solvers and constructors alike, and they are the sole reason I have grown in crossword construction. Come say hi! And, as always, thanks for solving!

Hey, Crossworld! I'm a 16-year-old rising senior in high school based in Seattle, WA. I have been constructing for roughly a year, and I am thrilled to publish my New York Times debut and be on the list of teenage constructors! Besides constructing crosswords, you can find me playing percussion instruments and listening to dubstep music.

I first became fascinated with crosswords in late 2022 after stumbling upon a video of the final round of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Having always enjoyed puzzles like mazes and word searches since an early age, I found crosswords to be the perfect new challenge. After solving a few and perusing various crossword sites like XWord Info, I was surprised to find that many other constructors like Jeff Chen and Sarah Sinclair live here too, which gave me even more motivation to be a part of this growing crossword community in my hometown.

The motivation for this Times puzzle's theme arose from another puzzle published in 2023 that utilized a similar concept called grammagrams—words or phrases that can be phonetically expressed as a sequence of letters. I wanted to go further and then settled on C-N-M-N-E, or SEA ANEMONE. I assumed there would be a huge list of theme entries that I would have to slog through, but the theme was pretty tight, so it all worked out. And with 59 theme squares, the puzzle surprisingly filled cleanly, with two bonus down answers that I appreciate.

I am grateful to the editing team for keeping the fill the same and retaining most of the clues. I am especially glad for HOLI to be featured as I am an Indian-American. I hope I can include more references to my cultural background in my future puzzles.

I hope you enjoy the crossword!