New York Times, Wednesday, November 18, 2020

When we linked up last year via social media to start making puzzles together, it was love at first Zoom. Within a few weeks, Ross had flown across the country to visit Amanda in L.A., and we spent a blissful three days making grids: on the sofa, in coffee shops, in the lobby of the historic Hollywood Roosevelt hotel. Towards the end of the weekend, the idea for a TWO PEAS IN A POD grid lodged itself in Amanda's brain as a way to commemorate our improbable puzz-based friendship. Ross needed little convincing. As if the story needed any more saccharine details, we even have a photo of us collaboratively placing the puzzle envelope into a blue mailbox.

Will and co. accepted the grid as you see it, but decided in final edits that CREVE / VEE was preferable to CREPE / PEE, given the rebus PP's. We offered to rework a few squares to accommodate CRETE / TEE (there's a TEED that would have needed to change), but it was too late to make changes. All this to say, well, CREVE isn't in our personal word lists, with apologies to the ~18,000 residents of Creve Coeur, MO. We also would have preferred to have TORI clued as a woman, but the editors felt the puzzle was a bit name-heavy and preferred to clue the entry as a word rather than a proper noun. Though Amanda loves women and has a brain that crumbles at the thought or sight of numbers, she conceded.

For more Rafkin-Trudeau grids, visit either of our puzzle sites: Brain Candy and Rossword Puzzles.

Spot-on representation of TWO PEAS IN A POD, two Ps crammed into a circle. I appreciated the zesty theme entries, too — STRIP POKER, WRAP PARTY, VIP PASSES, that's a great story right there! Even FLIP PHONES seem to be making a return.

I thought I'd be the only one who noticed the consistency of all the Across themers having PP split over two words, while all the Downs having PP within a single word. Not so! Jim Horne, who usually doesn't care about things like this, noted it as a mark of elegance. He also (correctly) predicted that I'd note it too.

However, today was one of the rare occurrences where he appreciated consistency more than I did. While I do like the tidiness of all the Acrosses working similarly, and the Downs too, there's no reason why they should. It'd be one thing if there was a reason for PP to split across Across entries, and another reason for Downs to work differently. As is, the consistency for consistency's sake didn't wow me as much as it did Jim.

I'd also have liked a less audacious grid layout. It's almost impossible to avoid compromises with a theme-dense, 72-word grid. The SE corner is telling. Anytime you have to resort to the common-letter-heavy ERESTU on an edge, it's not so great.

In the opposite corner, ROSTRA is an odd duck but reasonable. Less so: TO RENT? OHO crossing OH THAT? R AND R, never written like that outside crosswords? I understand the desire to make the puzzle feel heftier, but I'd prefer scaled-back gridwork. Maybe even run this on a Tuesday. Yes, it's rare to get a Tuesday rebus, but the circles make it an easy rebus — too easy for a mid-week puzzle.

Thankfully, Amanda and Ross did a great job selecting themers that snazzed up the joint, WHOPPER JR such a fun entry. Some sparkly bonuses, like MACH ONE, WEASELS, ALTER EGO (Ziggy Stardust was David Bowie? Blows my mind!), helped balance out some tougher entries like LYCEES and CREVE.