DOING A DOUBLE TAKE

Christina Iverson of Ames, Iowa, is a stay-at-home mom with an almost-2-year-old and a child on the way. She started solving puzzles only in the summer of 2018. She found it was an easily interrupted activity when her baby was constantly waking up in the evenings. Also, "Crosswords met my need for something more intellectually stimulating than reading ‘Goodnight Moon.' " Soon she made it a goal to have a puzzle published in The Times.

Her collaborator, Jeff Chen, is a writer and professional crossword constructor in Seattle. They met through Jeff's daily column on the website XWord Info.

CHRISTINA: I feel I can't take much credit for this one. It was the fourth collaboration I did with Jeff, and the first Sunday grid we've done. The theme idea was Jeff's, during a really long brainstorming session over email (easily over a hundred emails). Because of all the constraints and the mirror symmetry, the grid skeleton was a real challenge to make with fewer than 143 words (3 more than the typical max). I took many stabs at it, but Jeff came up with this one.

This was one of my first times filling a Sunday grid, and it was a beast! I couldn't believe how hard it is to fill a grid like this without any duplicates. Just when we thought we had a version we liked, we'd catch another one. Verbs like "run "and "eat" pop up in so many phrases, and with different tenses, they can be hard to catch.

Jeff and I have different methods of filling a grid, and I learned a lot from his style. He is highly methodical, and holds off on decision making until looking at every possible way to fill each section. I feel very lucky to have gotten the chance to work with him.

JEFF: Christina is being modest. An idea that comes out of a deep brainstorming session belongs to both people, 50/50. I often tell budding constructors that volume is an important factor in coming up with a good crossword theme, maybe one out of 20 concepts being a decent starting point.

Note that I said "starting point," not "idea." I find that the best constructors are the ones willing to work through difficulties and put in the time to let that seed of an idea grow into something crossworthy, and Christina is a perfect example.

A-HA, GOTCHA JEFF! You always snootily points out the flaws in others' work, and look at today's grid! AMTS, BSA, HST, MAI, MER, SASE, SYS, XIS. That's not clean! I THOUGHT YOU WERE A STICKLER FOR CLEANLINESS IN GRIDS, WISEGUY!

It's a fine point, sir. (I say "sir" with confidence, as 99.72% of my outspoken haters are mansplainers. Also, "sir" is best said using air quotes.) Even though this count of gluey bits is lower than the NYT Sunday average, eight is usually too high for me, even if they are all minor.

It doesn't even seem like the grid would be that hard to build, right? Three long entries, plus six pairs of shorter ones? Any doofus could build that grid! However, having six pairs of short entries means that you have to spend a ton of your black squares separating them. We had to deploy so many precious black squares separating LEVITES and MOUSSES (on both sides), for example.

Well, fine. Couldn't you have gone to a higher word count, like you often chide constructors about?

Will and Joel were kind to let us push up to 143 words, three higher than the max. It is true that we could have gone higher, but that would have meant taking out some goodies, like NO PEEKING, REDDITORS, GEE WHIZ, PINE LOG, etc. It's only rare constructors who can make a 144 word puzzle feel interesting.

Hopefully Christina and I landed on a decent balance of color and cleanliness, and that the theme makes it all worth it. It'll be interesting to see how many people write in with comments like LET ME EXPLAIN EXACTLY WHY PITCHY DOESN'T MEAN EITHER "CONCISE AND TO THE POINT" OR "DESIROUS" YOU FRICKIN MORONIC "SIR"!

(PITCHY without the C of CASTOR = PITHY, and PITCHY without the P of POLLUX = ITCHY)