Collision Courses

Sam Donaldson is a law professor at Georgia State University, teaching Property to first-year students and Federal Income Tax and Trusts & Estates to upper-division ones. He's been making crosswords for The Times since 2008. Typically his grids have lots of lively vocabulary.

Sam writes, "This is one of those puzzles where solvers might not realize the theme until after they're done, so I wanted the process of getting to the finish line to be as enjoyable as possible."

This puzzle idea started when I realized BUMPER CROPS could be visually depicted in the grid as two crops "bumping" off a common letter. From there I researched many different lists of crops and started pairing answers that contained common central letters that would also feed into longer entries. Sometimes the pairings came naturally and worked easily (like CORN and TOMATO) and others proved restrictive (hello, OAT and SQUASH).

I think my favorite feature is the use of two revealers. Originally I had just BUMPER CROPS in the middle row. At some point I realized FRANKENFOOD could also be a suitable revealer that I could maybe use instead, saving BUMPER CROPS for the puzzle's title. But then I thought of COLLISION COURSES as yet another revealer, so when I saw that FRANKENFOOD and BUMPER CROPS were both 11s, I decided I wanted to use both of them as revealers and save the longer COLLISION COURSES for the title. I was happy to get the central fill smooth enough so both revealers could be close to the center, leaving me more room to make the fill work in the each of the corners with the theme entries.

The hilarity in [What might prompt a run for congress?] is worth a POW! all by itself. There wouldn't be such a huge divide if there was more LIBIDO in Congress!

I miss the days when Sam used to live close by. Always so warm and funny, Sam has such a neat variety of interests. Inspired by his baking birthday cakes for his nieces and nephews, I bake my kids' birthday cakes. For some, I've declared I NAILED IT, and some are worthy of Nailed It! Frankenfood is right.

I enjoyed the dual revealers, both FRANKENFOOD and BUMPER CROPS hinting at the interplay between pairs of foods. Each one uses a different element of wordplay, too. BUMPER CROPS was my favorite, since in an alternate universe, I spend all my time hustling in pool halls. I enjoyed seeing the foods bump into each other and carom off.

FRANKENFOOD was less direct since it needed the word "crossings" in the clue to show relevance, but forming those six crosses was still cool.

One ding that may make you say I'm a ding-a-ling: it's easy to find these sorts of crossing food possibilities since there are so many foods to choose from. Additionally, BEET and CORN are easy to incorporate, not nearly as impressive as SQUASH. I'd MOVE MOUNTAINS to feature some longer ones like PLANTAIN.

It's usually best to avoid big ol' honking corners — few enjoy working hard only to uncover SMUGGER DYAD EDESSA, and SNERT is no comics ETOILE these days. I'd have been fine losing GIFT HORSE, breaking it at the H, thus making the SW and NE much more tractable.

Sunday 21x21 puzzles are so time-consuming that you have to work to keep solvers engaged. That doesn't have to be through an amazing theme, since great bonus fill or a-ha-inducing clues can also achieve that goal. Today's puzzle is a great example of sheer quantity of cluing wordplay making for so much fun — NFL TEAM as a "hiking group" is worthy of a touchdown dance.

Great puzzle for casual Sunday solvers.