New York Times, Wednesday, October 18, 2017

JOHN: Not long ago, Will Shortz found out that I solved the puzzle daily and thought to link me as a "Celebrity Collaborator" with Brendan Emmett Quigley, one of his best puzzle constructors. By good fortune, at the time I was shooting DADDY'S HOME 2 in Boston, where Brendan lives. He and I met for dinner in a South End restaurant, just to get to know each other. A hyper-alert, excitable man, Brendan could barely contain himself. Before the main course even arrived, he lurched down, took a laptop out of his bag, and began my lightning-quick education in how to construct a Times crossroad.

Our first challenge was to come up with a theme that reflected my public persona and profession. We hit on one that I thought was pretty clever, involving a rebus of the word "act": "infraction", "factotum", etc. That was when I learned just how involved Will Shortz was in every single Times crossword: Brendan ran the "act" rebus by him, and he damned us with faint praise and said that we could do better.

In a few two-hour sessions in my Back Bay hotel room, with Brendan pacing around and staring at the traffic on Commonwealth Avenue, we hashed out the puzzle that appears in the October 18 edition of the New York Times. Brendan taught me volumes about the dark mysteries of puzzle creation as if he were giving me a backstage tour of the Met Opera House after a production full of dazzling stage effects. Our handiwork arrives about four months after we finished it, a period when I have had to keep its clues a secret from all my puzzle pals. This has been a task even harder than creating the puzzle itself. I'm that excited and that proud.

I hope you enjoy solving it one tenth as much as I enjoyed creating it. Well, co-creating. I'm nothing without the remarkable Mr. Quigley.

BRENDAN: It was a joy to work with John. It felt at times that he was tackling this project much like a method actor would tackle a juicy role. He went from learning about the characters in the crossword world and their philosophies behind puzzles to taking this information and imbuing it with his own experiences to make a puzzle himself. He had a hand in everything from theme development to grid construction to cluing.

In regards to the grid, I spaced the theme answers in a way that each corner would have flexibility, and so we crammed them with as much theater-related content as possible. KATISHA is possibly my favorite answer that's appeared in all of my puzzles this year, and it was all John.

Celeb puzzle! I've been a huge fan of Lithgow since his "3^rd Rock from the Sun" days. Fun to get a puzzle that plays on his profession — acting terms redefined in kooky ways. CURTAIN CALL as a drapes-buying decision, CAST PARTY using the "person" definition of "party," etc. And so much acting-related filler material!

I wasn't familiar with SUMMER STOCK. Apparently it's a generic term for any theater production that only happens in the summer? We have a local company that does "Shakespeare improv" in a nearby park — I keep meaning to check it out.

I enjoyed some of the fill in the grid, particularly the long bonuses of SPITTAKE (I seem to remember a lot of SPITTAKEs on "3^rd Rock"!), CATFISH, PINE NUTS, even the DOLPHINS with their perfect season, including a Superbowl victory. (Take that, 2007-2008 Patriots!)

I did feel like the grid contained a lot of crossword glue, though. Starting with some ATRAS, ETA, AAR wasn't bad. Toss in some STLO, SECCO, I DON'T, and the crosswordy ERNES, though, and it felt like A HEAP of stuff. (Not sure why A TAD feels fine to me but A HEAP doesn't …)

And then there was the KEYES / KATISHA crossing. Yikes! Perhaps educated solvers should be expected to know Daniel KEYES ... I buy that. And I appreciate that a reference to "The Mikado" fits right in with this celeb collab. But wow, is that a tough name for us laypeople. Rough crossing, tough to get correct.

As with most crosswords, it's a game of trade-offs. Four themers are easy to work with, but it's not at all simple to work a bunch of great bonuses into the fill. Then when you strive to put in more quasi-thematic material (references to theater in this case), it strains the grid mightily. Overall, I would have preferred a smoother end product with fewer bonuses, but I can understand the trade-off here, given the nature of this celeb puzzle.

I like these types of "redefinitional" puzzles. The Isaac Mizrahi one worked better for me, since some of today's themers didn't quite jibe — hard to imagine anyone describing a stage departing by saying the stilted "STAGE LEFT." And a fly fisherman might be a CASTing party, but not really a CAST PARTY.

But overall, so much fun to see one of my favorite actors make his crossword debut, with a profession-specific concept. Love BEQ's description of John tackling this project ... if "method cruciverbalism" isn't a thing, it really should be!