New York Times, Friday, November 13, 2020

SAWYER: I met my wife Natalya in 2012. We established a tradition of solving the Saturday NYT crossword. After deciding to propose, my most romantic option seemed to be publishing a crossword in the NYT containing the message.

I started constructing, first by hand, then with a phone app. Every MTA trip commuting to work, I'd be rearranging entries, with NATALYA#MARRYME the only fixed part of the layout. After months of work with little to show for it, my friend Meg introduced me to Ashton. I apprenticed under him and James Mulhern, and among many valuable lessons, they taught me about the timeline of publication. So by the time I had created a proposal puzzle that could be mistaken for an NYT themeless, I secretly replaced the week's puzzle with mine in Across Lite, and Natalya solved it in March 2017. My heart was pounding when she said, "Wow, my name is in the puzzle! We should take a picture!" After she filled in MARRY ME, I knelt next to the coffee table to finalize the delivery of the message.

She said yes! We went on to get married in 2018, with the proposal puzzle on display to be solved by our wedding guests, including Ashton. After that journey proved so successful, Ashton and I decided to try a collaboration. I seeded his corner with one of my very favorite phrases, NO WORRIES, and my corner got started with PRESS SEND, a phrase that Natalya often uses. I ended up finishing off the southwest, and I'm particularly proud of the rich Scrabbly short fill under the long diagonal. I find it poetic that Ashton and I now have a puzzle to share with the world after he helped me construct a puzzle that was designed to be solved by exactly one person.

Colloquial phrases are among my favorite themeless marquee entries. IM ON A ROLL and NO WORRIES, with LETS DANCE playing in the background? Sawyer (congrats on your debut!) and Ashton are indeed on a roll!

When I first hear the term LINEARA, I could not wrap my head around that sequence of letters. I knew it had to be right, especially since all those vowels would be useful to constructors, but it's tough to decipher the space (LINEAR A) if this language isn't something you've already deciphered.

The grid layout ... it's tough to make mid-length material sing, and stuff like ENTER IN, EMOTION, TOWAWAY didn't provoke much dancing. There was also so much short material (4-6 letters) concentrated in the middle that I bogged down while trudging along the center diagonal.

Overall, though, I enjoyed this themeless, especially what with SCHNOZ, EASY AS PIE, WHOLE HOG, and the awesomely bizarre PRESSSEND as highlights. So many ESSes blurring together!