New York Times, Monday, January 2, 2023

When my friend Erin Rhode who I worked with when we ran the 2014 MIT Mystery Hunt ("Alice Shrugged") got a puzzle in the NYT, I instantly put it on my bucket list. My first submission in 2016 wasn't great, but the NYT team kept sending helpful feedback throughout the years. I submitted a handful of puzzles a year, had three puzzles published by the LAT, one at Universal, and finally after 38 rejection emails, I got an acceptance email while I was in airplane mode on vacation due to Murphy's Law.

This theme came to me in my sleep. I am such a workaholic that I often write songs in my dreams; this is the first time I came up with a puzzle theme in them. I first searched phrases that were *B*U*B*U* but was pleasantly surprised to find that my favorite ones had BU together. You will find few other usable answers if you search *BU*BU*, so it was a miracle the theme answers worked lengthwise with each other... in fact, you could say it had to be them!

Clue-wise, I am happy that my terrible pun (58-A) was kept, and I always try to include a clue my nephew & niece will be able to solve (29-D). Plenty of other music/theater words also appear, which makes sense, given my career.

Speaking of, you can find me on FB/IG/Twitter/TikTok @sethbhdotcom. Please visit sethbh.com to learn more about me. I wrote the score to the award-winning off-Broadway musical, "Love Quirks" which ran 3 months last summer, and we're in the process of licensing the show, so if you know a theater or college that adores 4 person quirky musicals about love, send them my way! There's also my sitcom pilot: "Every Day a Little Seth", 3 soon to be 4 books, some hilarious music videos, my podcast "Millennials are Ruining the World? an Xennial perspective", pictures of my cats, my travel blog, my "selfie" with Barbra Streisand and more!

Before I go, I just want to thank everyone who does puzzles and everyone who writes puzzles. I am so honored to be a part of this community. I want to thank Jeff and Jim for running this site. I even want to thank Rex, but I'm writing this before he tears my puzzle apart, so I reserve the right to take the thanks back... I want to thank everyone at the NYT especially Wordle's own Tracy Bennett, for her encouraging emails through the years. Thank you to Erin for inspiring this bucket list item, to my ultimate test solver Melanie T. Morgan who I compete with daily for NYT puzzle times, and also my previous test solvers Staci and Aaron, for their early encouragement. Thank you to my family and friends for their undying support and of course, my wife and cat, Joni. And finally, thank you to the Academy... oops, sorry, wrong speech!

I stared at the revealer for an embarrassingly long time, wondering why the theme entries had not one but two sets of BUs. Sure, B U are homophones for BE and YOU, but you be damned if there's no rationale to explain … wait … 2 explain! IT HAD 2 B U is a clever reinterpretation of IT HAD TO BE YOU.

There's a fine line between stupid and clever: Jeff the former, Seth the latter.

Seth used a layout that features many more 6-letter slots than usual. Check out the sheer quantity of colorful mid-length material like BOOMER, ESPRIT, ORCHID, SAFARI, TAURUS, TURBAN. Getting WARMER to a snazzy solve!

I would have loved at least a pair of long bonuses, though. Moving the blocks above BABKA to the right would have opened up an eight-letter slot, for example. That might have resulted in lesser fill in the SAFARI and BIG IF slots, but a pair of 8+ letter bonuses offers so much pizzazz.

You could even experiment with removing the black square between NOEL and NIGER to weave in a 10-letter bonus. It would have to go through three themers, but the letter combinations are friendly.

Hilarious ATE clue … now that my daughter has moved past the phase of telling the "seven ate nine" joke 789 times an hour.

I enjoy when a Monday theme offers up something more than usual. Hopefully, newb solvers will jump to the 2 BU conclusion more quickly than I did.