A CUT ABOVE THE REST

It is no exaggeration to say that today's puzzle is on par with the discovery of fire. Traveling bards will write epic tales and sing songs about the clever theme, the sublime execution, and the visual elegance comparable only to Baryshnikov at the pinnacle of his career. Jeff Chen is a Feynman-level ubergenius, no doubt possessing the most evolved mind since the inception of the primordial ooze, and has the ability to add comments into the "Will Shortz notes" box at his discretion.

This puzzle went through several dozen revisions on two completely different theme concepts. I started with the basic idea of making giant letters out of the letters themselves, i.e. a giant C out of Cs, I out of Is, etc. and noticed that some letters I could clue in a homophonic style (the formation of a giant C would require SEES, SEAS, and SEIZE, T would only require TEES and TEASE, and I would be easy with just EYES). Only the letters C I L T and U fit my criteria though, so what could I do with those? The word CUT came to mind. After some rumination, this led to my first submission, where each theme answer had CUT cut out of it, (CUT) ONES TEETH ON, e.g.

Well, that was terrible; a fourth-rate dirty rotten stinker. In the back of my head I knew it wasn't very good, but I sent it anyway (sorry, Will, I won't send in stinkers any more). Will politely said he didn't care for the theme and pointed out that my symmetry (up-down) was just too visually strange. Looking back on it, I see what he meant. It's important to learn the rules before you break them, and I won't be trying any more up-down symmetry puzzles (unless they're similar in nature to Kevin Der's Titanic puzzle).

Luckily, I'm too stubborn (stupid) to give up. Lying in bed one night, the phrase "a cut above the rest" came to me and I slunk out of bed. Five bleary hours later, I came up with my first skeleton, but it ultimately Titanic-ed. It had all sort of grid issues, a ton of cheater squares, and several areas I wasn't sure I could fill cleanly. So I tore it up and stuck it someplace lewd.

My tenacious idiocy caught up with me a few months later and I took another stab at it. I didn't want any individual Cs adjacent to the big C (and similarly with the big U and T). Filling around those three giant letters was tough enough without that constraint, and with it, I was lucky to get out alive after days and hundreds of possibilities.

Then there was the issue of the other themers. I was dead set against made-up sounding definitions; I wanted in-the-language phrases instead. Luckily CUT has enough different meanings that it only took a week or so to gather a good set ... except I included HAS A SIX PACK, which nagged me as "not like the others". Good thing Will balked at that and even gave a lexical reason why. Lesson learned: if it looks like poo and smells like poo, it likely is poo.

Back to brainstorming themers. I searched various thesauri, online sources, picked friends' brains, and finally came up with SNIDE REMARK. I don't think it's as strong as some of the other themers, but was glad that Will accepted it. A few more hours of rework and recluing and I broke the plane of the goal-line. I was so relieved I spiked my computer.

A final note on symmetry. Typically L-R symmetry is no harder to execute on than normal (rotational) symmetry, but I couldn't spread my themers out like usual. Needing all my vertical themers to be pushed to the bottom, I was forced to incorporate an enormous number of across answers which overlapped two themers. Filling the dang thing nearly broke me. I still cringe at TEN O and don't care for ERNES crossing ESS or CTRS or ASTR. But sometimes you have to accept a little subpar fill in order to make an idea work. Hopefully solvers found the trade-off acceptable.

THE REAL STORY!

Wanting another Sunday crossword, I summoned nefarious powers from the darkened netherworld (also known as Canada). To my horror, the dirt and clay outside my house trembled, clods bursting toward the sky. A horrendous form pushed through the surface, two arms of congealed earth atop a trunk of elephantine proportion. I had called forth a golem, a powerful being from Hebrew legend!

Luckily, I had just brushed up on my golem lore (if you haven't read Helene Wecker's "The Golem and the Jinni" please do, it's fantastic). I rushed outside with a scrap of paper with which to animate the creature and wrote "Make me a memorable Sunday puzzle, something a cut above the rest." Jamming it into its mouth, I stepped back with trepidation as the clay monster creaked to life. Golems, after all, have a tendency to go mad and start crushing things.

I followed the great hulk-beast as it tromped down the street to the local playfield. Scratching my head, I watched as it clobbered its fists into the grass, the earth shaking with each of its strikes. After a few minutes, I yelled, "What in blazes are you doing? CUT! Cut? Cut ..." My jaw dropped as I realized it was pounding the word C U T at the top of a gigantic grid. Genius — a literal C U T above the rest! As it finished its task, its eyes flashed a terra cotta red and it ran into the darkness, roaring about how it would smash out all life on earth. That wasn't so good, but its puzzle was.

So there you have it; that's how a Sunday crossword is made. And if you see a golem rampaging in the streets, I don't know anything about it.