New York Times, Tuesday, December 14, 2021

I'm a 25-year-old South African working in international development. I'm delighted to make my New York Times debut. Constructing started as a lockdown hobby last year, and it's been a pleasure learning about the extremely passionate crossword world.

I'm particularly happy that this puzzle is my debut because I've loved flags for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, my parents bought me a "Flags of the World" card game, and I spent hours asking anyone who would listen to quiz me on which flags belong to who. I also love grids with a graphic element, so I'm pleased to have brought that in as well.

I hope you all enjoy!

PS: If there are other (South) African constructors reading this, I would love to connect!

After decades of staring at country flags for various puzzlehunt puzzles, I'm embarrassed to have never realized that NORWAY, SWEDEN, FINLAND, and DENMARK's flags have something in common: the NORDIC CROSS. Fascinating to read up on the history behind it. I had no idea how many countries used it, either.

I'm still unclear why the NORDIC is a cross turned on its side, though. Don't our SCANDINAVIAn friends know about crossword rules? You can't make a sideways cross in black square grid art using regular symmetry unless you also include a reversed image (we've colorized the crosses below). The reversed cross is how 50% of flags appear, but it does look ... reversed.

Mirror symmetry (left-right) won't work, either.

Up-down symmetry would allow for a perfect NORDIC CROSS flag image, but Will Shortz does not care for up-down, saying it "just looks weird." To that, I say, turn your head 90 degrees, squint, get your eye drops, hop on one foot …

Okay, it is a bit weird.

However, I would have loved an exception today. Featuring a single middle NORDIC CROSS to mimic the flags would have been incredible.

FINLAND / NORWAY and DENMARK / SWEDEN interlock almost symmetrically. Not quite, though, so I wasn't enthralled by the prices to pay, notably ENTHRAL in an early-week puzzle (where there's already some oddballs like LOWNESS and EGGIEST).

I appreciate being gently nudged to learn more about the NORDIC CROSS. Cool idea, and with a central cross of black squares, this would easily have been this grid art fanatic's POW!

Coincidental discovery is common in science, and coincidental theme ideas happen in crosswords too. Ross Trudeau published Six Flags Europe on his personal site a couple of weeks ago.