New York Times, Thursday, December 6, 2018

Hello Crossworld! I'm Sophia, a junior at Carleton College studying computer science and math, and I'm beyond hyped to have my first puzzle in the NYT. I'm a Seattle native, musical theater geek, competitive bridge player, and the worst cook you've ever met. I've been solving crosswords with my family for as long as I can remember, and constructing on and off since high school.

This puzzle came together fairly quickly compared to others I've written — I finished a draft of the grid just a few hours after thinking of the theme. Originally, KITTYCORNER was the only revealer — It was truly a stroke of luck that I noticed in the midst of filling the grid that LITTERBOXES both fit symmetrically and described the same gimmick.

This was my first NYT submission ever, so I was truly stunned when I got the yes from the editing team (well, after a quick reconfiguration of the NE corner!) Since I write crosswords nearly exclusively for my non-puzzle obsessed classmates, my cluing tends to skew easy and modern, so thanks to the team for upping the difficulty level. Looking back on this puzzle, I do wish there was some more snazzy fill: DON'T PANIC is my favorite entry in the grid.

Enjoy the puzzle, and I hope to be here again soon!

Debut! Sophia got in touch with me earlier this year with a bridge (the card game) related theme, and we ended up working together on a Sunday puzzle (still in progress, but Will, I think it's a really good one!). Then I found out she lives just a few blocks away from me, here in Seattle! I love how crosswords can bring people together. Hopefully one day she and I can play some duplicate bridge together (apologies in advance for my inevitably horrible blunders).

Today, Sophia riffs on KITTY CORNER, placing kitty CATs in the four corners of the grid. I wasn't sure if LITTER BOXES was that good, thematically, but I suppose cats do tend to have their LITTLE BOXES placed into the corners of rooms.

(I wondered for an embarrassing amount of time if I had missed some sort of double rebus, with CAT in one direction, and POOP in the other.)

It's unusual to go above 78 words, the max for 15x15 puzzles (this one is at 80). Will rarely allows this, because it tends to mean that there will be too much short stuff in the grid, and not enough longer snazzy fill. Sophia did work in some good long material — ALAN ARKIN, BEACH TOWEL, CALIFORNIA, DON'T PANIC — that's pretty good. But there is a huge amount of short answers, making my solve feel choppy.

And don't get me started on ITER and ILLY. Oofly.

I also would have liked a couple of long CAT answers, like CATTLE DRIVE or CATTYWAMPUS or BELLED THE CAT or THE QUEEN OF SCAT, etc. That would have been much more difficult, calling for giant corners, themeless-esque in design. Tough, but doable.

As part of our collaboration in process, I noticed that Sophia had some difficulty with certain types of grid areas, so I gave her a copy of my word list. It seemed to have helped, as the grid is now in a state that I like a lot — she did some strong work.

Knowing that, I'm curious to see what she could have done on today's puzzle if she took another stab at it now, what with better tools allowing her to be more ambitious.