HOW SWEET IT IS!

Michael Paleos, of Oyster Bay, N.Y., is chief of staff at a major investment bank. He started solving crosswords at a young age, but only got hooked on them after discovering the archive of puzzles in the New York Times app. "After doing enough of them, I started wondering what it would take to make one, and down the rabbit hole I went."

This is Michael's second crossword for The Times, and his first Sunday.

Hi again, Crossworld! Excited to be back with a second puzzle, and especially psyched to publish my first Sunday. Very sweet, indeed.

This puzzle started as a 15x15 weekday puzzle, where I set out to find some grid-spanning themers to create a visual effect — the original theme set was PEANUT BUTTER CUP, MARSHMALLOW PEEP, CADBURY CREME EGG, and PEPPERMINT STICK. I was happy to find four solid 15-letter entries but didn't love that some were brand names and others weren't.

Then I noticed that two of the four were Easter candies, so I went searching for a third, but the best I could come up with was CHOCOLATE RABBIT. Close, but I couldn't get behind it in the end. "Chocolate bunny" feels so much more in the language and the fact that CHOCOLATE RABBIT had never appeared in a puzzle before convinced me that I was stretching. (Imagine my amusement when it debuted last month.)

Back to the drawing board. After a few dead ends, I started exploring the idea of allowing the stripes to include black squares, and it blew the whole thing wide open. Even after applying the constraints that the themers had to be a) words or phrases that could be clued in non-candy ways, and b) actual candies (no gum or mints) there were still plenty of options to work with. So many in fact that it practically demanded to be made into a Sunday puzzle. I had never attempted a 21x before, but it felt like the right time to try.

The final hurdle was the placement of the revealer. It became clear early on that it would need to cross some themers. The fixed vertical stripes didn't allow much room to maneuver, but eventually I saw that I could cross MOUNDS with CANDY at the D. That created a symmetrical 6-letter theme slot, second letter R. I went back to my candy list and had a Hail Mary moment while scanning the 6-letter entries, and there it was — the linchpin of the entire puzzle, and my favorite candy bar at that! You could almost hear an audible click. Or maybe it was a crunch.

I have to say — as gratifying as the "aha moment" can be as a solver, it's nothing compared to the moment when a tricky construction crystallizes into a reality.

Despite the original plan to make this an Easter puzzle, I hadn't intended for the final product to be tied to a holiday. Hats off to the Times editorial team for making the connection and running it today.

Neat visual, CANDY STRIPEs throughout the puzzle. I hope the NYT prints the background of the theme squares in red — the Sunday Magazine has such potential to employ color.

I liked that Michael

1. arranged his themers so neatly, and
2. chose candies that can be clued in non-candy ways (try that with M&Ms or ALMOND JOY).

Solid gridwork, too. Filling around six grid-spanning themers is hard enough, but when you break them up, forcing black square placements right off the bat, it becomes even harder. I didn't care for the aggregation of ERI LAE NEU ACI — too much of one type of gluey bit becomes noticeable — but overall, the result was better than I imagined. Ending with about an average amount of crossword glue for a NYT Sunday is an accomplishment when the constraints are stringent.

Hard-core solvers like myself might find it to be a boring solve, but sometimes we have to suck it up and recognize that occasionally the wider solving audience could use a softball; a "hey, I finished the Sunday NYT!" victory dance. I challenged myself to solve the themers without the benefit of a single cross, which turned out to be a fun experience.