New York Times, Tuesday, November 14, 2017

You can thank Eddie, my grand-nephew, for this puzzle. As a precocious 5-year-old, he would ask Uncle Jerry for periodic "challenges." These were often math and science related, but were sometimes pure word puzzles (his favorite type? — crossword puzzles, bless his heart). One of the challenges I gave him used the gimmick behind this puzzle's theme, but in narrative form. He solved it in no time flat and then challenged me to incorporate it into a crossword. I promised him I'd try.

My first attempt was conditionally accepted by Will, if I could freshen up some of the fill. After my several failed attempts at that, Will suggested that I get some help from a collaborator. Jeff had helped me with my very first puzzle the year prior and graciously declined any co-authorship credit back then. I saw this as an opportunity to both reconnect with Jeff and proudly share a byline. His remedial work on this was, unsurprisingly, masterful, and we received prompt acceptance. Thank you, once again, Jeff!

This is my last crossword, at least for quite a while. After an unexpected run of beginner's luck, during which four of my first eight submissions were accepted (three by the NYT), I promptly went 0-for-my-next-9. I suspect I may have shot my load. More importantly though, after having lots of fun with this for a good 18 months, I felt it was time to focus on another of my post-retirement bucket list items: writing a book. I've been hard at work drafting, and hope to publish next year, a "competition documentary" memoir about senior softball. Who knows, it may even include a baseball-themed crossword or two that were casualties of that 0-for-9 streak — I'll get them in print one way or another!

In any event, I hope you enjoy solving this one.

Jerry got in touch with me after several submissions and resubmission to Will and Joel on this idea. I was lukewarm on the triply-doubled letters concept, as I had seen it once or twice before, but Jerry hooked me onto the project with the magic words: "Will thinks it might just be too hard to fill a grid like this with high quality."

I'm so darn predictable!

Jerry's original grids definitely had too much crossword glue for my taste, but more importantly, there weren't enough themers for my taste (four, plus TRIPLE DOUBLE), and some of them didn't hit my ear well. HEEL LOOPS I wasn't familiar with, but that did appear to be a real thing. WOOD DEER was the one that threw me. It took a lot of Googling to find enough examples of famous WOOD DEER carvings to be able to shrug it off as passable.

Even then, I felt like the puzzle needed more meatiness. A quick Python script helped uncover a few more, including one that I wish we could have incorporated: QUEEN NOOR. Ah well.

Putting the grid together took roughly eight hours over two sessions. I kept on ending up unhappy with some little corner, some piece of long fill, or both. For a while, I wondered if Will was right — even more so now that I had added two more themers to the original set.

I've had some luck with stacking themers for high-density puzzles, so I experimented with that. When I hit upon the arrangement you see, everything seemed to test out well. Plus, three themers in the top and three themers in the bottom makes for a double of triples … or TRIPLE DOUBLE!

(Sort of. More or less. If you squint a little.)

The rest of the grid was just a matter of trying out a few hundred possibilities in each corner. Not so bad.

I'm still not 100% sold on WOOD DEER, but if you aren't either, the other themers will hopefully help you forget it!