SEALED WITH A KISS

Lisa Bunker, of Exeter, N.H., is the author of two novels for young readers — Zenobia July, about a trans girl with a troubled past starting over with a new family and school, and tackling a cyber mystery; and Felix Yz, about a boy fused with an alien counting down to a risky procedure to separate them. Both were published by Viking. She also represents Exeter in the New Hampshire House of Representatives.

This is Lisa's sixth puzzle for The Times and her first Sunday

What a thrill to be back in the Times, especially with my first Sunday grid! I had five daily puzzles published between 2001 and 2006. In those days, that meant mailing Will a manila envelope and getting a letter back, and then running out on publication mornings to buy a paper to keep. I got away from constructing, but I recently rediscovered how much I love it, and I am delighted to find that a whole crossword community has grown up in my absence, with blogs and Facebook groups, and more. I'm excited to be part of it!

Here's my bio top-line, since I'm effectively new: I had a 30-year career in non-commercial radio. Currently, I'm self-employed as an author, with two recently-published novels for young readers featuring lots of LGBTQ+ content without that being the preachy point. I also represent my town of Exeter, N.H. as one of the first out transgender state legislators in U.S. history.

I came up with the theme for today's puzzle back in the 00's. That early version had symmetrical placement of the red squares, at the cost of some real stretches among the theme words and fill. I enjoyed the editorial process with Joel Fagliano, who gave me permission to abandon the symmetry and helped guide me, with patience and good humor, to this better final version. Kudos also to the editorial team for finding some excellent cluing opportunities I missed.

I hope this grid brings solving joy!

For years, I've been pounding the table that the NYT Sunday crossword is missing a huge opportunity to take advantage of color printing in the magazine. I love today's concept, incorporating the color red to represent RED rebuses in the print version. It's so smart to have the first rebus be REDR, as in "red R." I've spent a ridiculous amount of time brainstorming color concepts with lots of folks, and this is a true WITT (Wish I'd Thought of That).

Not only that, but the letters tacked on to RED change, spelling out a meta answer. RUBY LIPS doesn't feel like a jump-out-of-your-chair-and-praise-the-heavens final answer, but it's solid enough and appropriate for Valentine's Day.

Five years ago, I would have never picked this as a POW! There would have been way too many execution flaws that would have disqualified it many times over. It's fantastic that Joel helped Lisa along — Sunday 140-word puzzles are challenging to create. I wish he'd had more time to push her to revise a few more times. There are so many partials, abbreviations, tough foreign words, prefixes — everything that editors call out to avoid on their specs sheets.

I also wish RUBY LIPS had formed the shape of lips. That would have been mind-blowing. I'm not sure that's possible to do with a perfect set of lips, given the stringent constraint of placing eight crossing themers in fixed places, but even a rough shape of lips would have given this some Puzzle of the Year consideration. Along with much stronger execution, of course.

All those qualms are from the technician in me, though. That annoying blurghole sometimes has to take a swift kick in the pants from the solver in me who adores innovative, audacious ideas, especially those that take advantage of the NYT Sunday Magazine's huge advantage of color printing. Fantastic concept, Lisa!