New York Times, Wednesday, October 21, 2020

It's a dream come true to be making my debut in The NY Times. I received the acceptance email last December while eating breakfast burritos with my friend on a trip to San Diego. Coming from the breakfast burrito desert that is New York, I was confident that our visit to cojito's would be the highlight of my day, but clearly the editorial staff had other plans.

This was my third submission to the Times, and I truly could not have gotten to this point without the incredibly helpful feedback from Will, Joel and Sam on my first two rejections (and my next few after this one was accepted). I also want to give a shoutout to the crossword collaboration group on Facebook and specifically Erik Agard who steered me in the right direction for this puzzle by advising me to make each theme answer valid as a stand-alone phrase (nixing my original idea of CANNES OF WORMS). On that note, I welcome aspiring constructors to reach out with any questions or just to talk shop — you can find me in the aforementioned Facebook group.

Debut! Great to see yet another new constructor this year.

Homophones are in the top five theme types new constructors ask me about, and puns on nationalities are in the top ten. We've seen a ton of these over the years — searching for an obvious one like CZECH in our Finder (type in *CZECH*) uncovered half a dozen instances of this one alone, including ones from 2001, 2002, 2017, 2019.

It's a well-worn idea, but as with other tried-and-true approaches, there's usually room for another, if you add in something new.

I like Dory's goal here, aiming for multiple layers of consistency, of 1.) always using a city homophone, 2.) making those cities start a solid phrase, and 3.) having the homophone be a direct substitution, i.e. no loosey-goosey wordplay.

He did great on the first two criteria, but I had to think about the third. Some Americans pronounce CANNES as in "can of beans," but I've always heard it like "The Wrath of Khan." Some French friends confirmed that it was most definitely the latter, though they took umbrage at my comparing Cannes to Khan Noonien Singh.

Something got lost in translation.

Fantastic bonuses. A new constructor treating us to FANFIC, TELETHONS, EVIL WOMAN, KUMQUAT, DOG SITS, LOCAL NEWS?

I CANT EVEN!

All the wealth did come at a price, though. Adjacent long downs like TELETHONS / EVIL WOMAN often require trade-offs — GTE UNA, plus EPEE CAEN WEI in the opposite corner isn't great. I'd have asked Dory to dial back the snazz factor, aiming for more smoothness. Perhaps splitting TELETHONS, or doing something else to reduce the size of those SW / NE corners?

It's also more elegant in a theme like this, to avoid other cities in the fill: AGRA, GENEVA, SOCHI, CAEN. Not a must, but eliminating these Cannes make the themers pop.

Overall, a puzzle type I've seen too often to be memorable, but I did appreciate Dory's efforts to elevate through consistency and sparkly bonuses.

Homophone themes are tricky.

Jeff is sure the French city is pronounced KAHN. I've only heard KAN, even when I was there. Wikipedia agrees with me (French: kan.) Merriam Webster agrees with me (preferred pronunciation kan, but to be fair, also accepts kän.)

Case closed? Maybe if you're a Parisian, but in France, the further south you go, and the closer you get to Italy, the more people tend to follow the Italian tradition of pronouncing every vowel. Cannes is right on the Mediterranean, very close to Italy. This native speaker adds the very French sort-of "uh" semi-vowel. So, we're both wrong.