New York Times, Thursday, October 3, 2013

In the print edition of the Times, the solution to this puzzle will be shown as SUCKS2BYOU, 2BORNOT2B, etc. For online, though, the solution shows "BB" in the theme squares, as we felt that's what solvers are more likely to guess. This was the playoff puzzle at last Friday's Westchester Crossword Puzzle Tournament. As I write this, I'm anxious to see how quickly (or not) the contestants catch onto the trick.

ADDED NOTE: Winning time for this puzzle at the 17th Westchester Crossword Puzzle Tournament, held last Friday in Pleasantville, NY:

1st — Bob Mackey, perfect in 8:36

2nd — Jeffrey Schwartz, perfect in 10:34

3rd — Glen Ryan, 11:56 with one error

I was delighted when I finally got some NYT acceptance letters this summer after four years of rejections. So you can imagine my shock when, only a few days before my 30th birthday, Will asked me if he could use this grid as the playoff puzzle for the Westchester Crossword Puzzle Tournament. My debut in the New York Times, AND I got to see many puzzle enthusiasts all in the same room solving it in real time — I couldn't ask for a better birthday present.

I originally submitted the clue for (TO BE) OR NOT (TO BE) as a revealer: [Famous dramatic words ... and a hint for this puzzle's theme], which I thought would be a good way of showing that some theme answers are TO BE, others are not, and you have to figure out what the OR NOT element is. I would have preferred that the revealer had been there, but it can be fun to let solvers interpret an answer as a revealer without being explicit about it (like Jeff Chen's STIR FRIES puzzle).

There were several other TO BE entries I considered using, like TO BE CONTINUED, HIP TO BE SQUARE, IT REMAINS TO BE SEEN, and the Weird Al song DARE TO BE STUPID. I actually built two different grids for this puzzle. The first one had some really great long fill entries, but I scrapped it because a) I thought there were too many short, crappy answers, and b) I didn't think an entry like CRABB would fly, especially since those B's held down a theme square. The lesson, as always, is don't hesitate to tear your puzzle down and start over if you think you can do better. The second version that you see here is much cleaner, so that's what I submitted.

I don't know if any individual puzzle inspired me to create this one, but I think the closest analogue might be Joel Fagliano's DOUBLE U puzzle from July 2012, which I thought was remarkably clever.

One last note: I think it's fitting that the NYT would run my puzzle on October 3, 2013, since that happens to be my late grandmother Edna's 100th birthday, and there's a funny crossword story about her too. When my mother Elaine was young, my grandmother came home and found that her daughter had completely filled in the answers to the crosswords in one of their puzzle books. My grandmother was astounded. "How did you do that?" she asked, stunned that her daughter might be a crossword-solving ace. "Oh," my mother said, flipping the pages to the end of the book, "they have all of the answers right here in the back. See?" Thus the legacy of puzzle-related deviousness in my family was born.

Fun debut from Evan! The eight special squares must be interpreted TO BE in the across direction and BB in the down; a whimsical interpretation of TO BE OR NOT TO BE. Cleverly done. At first I wondered if I was missing something, because I kept thinking it should be "TO BE" in the across direction and (blank) in the down. But then I decided I was overthinking things and kicked back with a COHIBA to shut up my stupid brain.

Well-constructed grid, especially so given that it's Evan debut. He's chosen really nice theme entries for the most part, with BORN TO BE WILD, SUCKS TO BE YOU, TO BE HONEST, and BRIDE TO BE standing out. The down answers containing BB aren't flashy per se, but almost all of them do a nice job. Esoteric foreign words like ABBE are usually something a constructor strives to avoid in a grid, but in something this ambitious, some trade-offs are usually required.

And the rest of the fill is pretty darn good; lots of sparkly stuff. Evan tosses in my man Geordi LAFORGE, who gets his second appearance in the NYT, making up some ground to the ubiquitous crossword ST:TNG personnel, Deanna TROI (31 appearances) and Lieutenant WORF (six). Hopefully his CHESS SET is a Star Trek Tridimensional one.

Like with most (non-Patrick Berry) puzzle, there are flaws. Aside from the typical ORI, HOSP, FAO, etc., I don't think Darrell ISSA is terribly grid-worthy, and the same goes for XENIA, OH, which mysteriously shows up with relatively high frequency (16 appearances in the NYT Shortz era, despite being a town of about 25,000 people). In general, I really appreciate what Will has done for the NYT xw in terms of fill (browse the pre-Shortzian puzzles to get a sense for what fill used to be like), and I applaud continuing motion toward better quality fill. Here's hoping we don't see ISSA again, until he does something worthy of fame.

More importantly, here's hoping we see more work from Evan in the future! One of the best debuts I've seen in a while.