New York Times, Saturday, December 21, 2013

Todd:

Unlike our previous collaboration, this puzzle had a long gestation before being published. I submitted my original version in March of 2012. Will liked the basic idea, but didn't like about 9 of my original entries.

I mentioned my puzzle to David at Crosswords LA in May, and he wanted to see if he could improve on my grid. Turned out he could indeed: we submitted our revised version in June. After several back-and-forths, Will accepted our puzzle this August! We've had to wait almost 4 months for our centennial crossword to be printed ... it's hard to wait that long (ask any kid right about now)!

Finally, I'll note my original version had FUNICELLO at 16 Across, which is definitely more FUN than FUNGICIDE!

David;

It was a pleasure working with Todd on this centennial puzzle. The grid was a real challenge to fill because it not only had a themeless word count (70) but also contained four theme entries with rather unfriendly letter patterns (I'm talking about you, MCMXIII!), not to mention the FUN arrangement. Nevertheless, Todd and I were able to pool our resources and produce a fill we're both very proud of!

Happy 100th birthday to the crossword puzzle, which first appeared on Dec. 21, 1913! Today's puzzle is a modest celebration of Arthur Wynne's invention. The hollow diamond shape of Wynne's first crossword is retained in today's puzzle — with FUN in the appropriate spot no less (as the first three letters of 16A). In the print version of this puzzle, the original diamond shape is indicated with shaded squares. It's impossible to present shading in Across Lite, and it didn't seem worthwhile adding circles, so if you solve electronically ... you'll have to use your imagination.

Ah, oh great crossword puzzle, what would my life be without you? You've given me an obsessive hobby, an excuse to hang out with my wife when we first met, a community of supportive and uberinteresting people, and a creative diversion that takes my mind off of work.*

FUN idea today, superimposing the shape of the very first American crossword onto a now-standard grid. It even has the word FUN in the proper place (albeit hidden inside FUNGICIDE = a tiny bit icky IMO). And even though the word count is low enough to make it a themeless, David and Todd work in NEW YORK / SUNDAY WORLD, ARTHUR WYNNE, and MCMXIII. Neat to find a symmetrical set of themers.

With such a a wide-open grid and four locked-in themers, there are bound to be compromises. In terms of long fill, we get some goodness in the form of DALAI LAMA and GREENLAND, but also have the awkward SOLEMNER. These rarely used type of words aren't so harsh when they're shorter pieces of fill, but it's less than ideal when one of your long slots is taken up by something like this. As David mentioned, working with a themeless grid is hard enough, but when you take away flexibility by locking in four answers, it really ups the difficulty.

Neat concept. I would have liked a stronger tie-in to the original puzzle (besides just its shape) but I'm not sure what else there would be. Reproducing the entire puzzle would automatically saddle you with ugly stuff (construction was pretty primitive back then), and trying to extend the original answers into a 15x grid would likely have been impossible.

*For the sake of the big anniversary, I forgive the fact that you've cost me countless hours of sleep in marathon bouts of construction, you bugger.