New York Times, Wednesday, December 9, 2020

OWEN: It's crazy to me that last Friday marks one year since I cold emailed Jeff to see if he would be interested in co-constructing. As a long-time solver, I had tried my hand at making puzzles only a couple of times before, mostly for fun. Collaborating with an experienced constructor was a great way to learn, and I'm so grateful to Jeff for helping me think through my many theme ideas. He and I worked on a couple of puzzles together, eventually getting this one accepted last summer. As a first-year engineering student in the middle of finals week, I'm thrilled and honored to be making my debut today.

This theme came to me while I was living in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and it went through several iterations before becoming the set you see today. We initially considered DO THE LIMBO as a revealer, but going with LIMBO allowed us to open up the grid a bit more. It was fun to go down to 72 words and include so many long bonuses like 9D, 24D, and 31D. I'm happy to see that some of my clues made the final cut, especially the ones for 22D and 39A. I'm also very grateful to the editorial staff for their many edits and improvements.

Thanks so much to Jeff for his insight and expertise, and to everyone who encouraged me with this endeavor. Hope you enjoy!

I am a devotee of the New York Times crossword and have been doing them everyday for decades. I don't always solve them completely but most of the time. We moved to Denver after living on Long Island for 25 years and have the Times delivered daily. Even though I have the app I much prefer doing the puzzle in the actual paper.

Our son Matthew had told us he was working on proposing to his girlfriend Rhea and was thinking of doing it before her mid December birthday in Curaçao. On December 8th we received a call from him from NYC. He had decided that he would propose to her on Wednesday December 9. They had met in New York and it felt right to him. We were very excited.

On Wednesday morning I retrieved the Times from our front porch and read through it with breakfast. As is my routine I then started to solve the puzzle. When I answered 22 down with "RHEA" I thought it was very neat that her name was an answer on the day Matt was going to ask her to marry him. When I got back to solving 14 down and it was "MATTHEW" I was blown away! (I did solve the whole puzzle that day.) To have both of their names in the puzzle and close together on the day they became engaged is absolutely amazing. We have already framed the puzzle and will be giving it to them.

SET THE BAR LOW? UNDERACHIEVE? Wow, this sounded like a terrible, or at least terribly pessimistic, puzzle. Glad that I didn't skim over Owen's email. The concept tickled me, Owen coming up with in-the-language phrases that perfectly described the LIMBO steps.

He proposed STAND TALL as a final themer, but that's not how you do the LIMBO. The correct answer is FALL FLAT. At least, the way I do it. Followed by CALL THE DOCTOR.

It would have been great to make a LIMBO stick out of black squares toward the bottom of the puzzle, with a person LIMBOing underneath, but it was not to be. I did enjoy working with Owen to weave in some subconscious LIMBOesque fill, like TONED IT DOWN and SAGGIER. And of course, BEMOAN the fact that attempting to do the LIMBO makes this old chap's GLUTEI AROAR.

Why does the proximity of GLUTEI and RECTOR make me laugh?

Talk about setting the bar low.

P.S. I worked in MATTHEW and RHEA intentionally. Now, I expect their firstborn ... unless they can guess my name! Bwa ha ha! What, they guessed it's Jeff? Darn it.