New York Times, Monday, March 13, 2023

SAM: I used to write novels. Hours and hours each day, sitting in front of a computer, moving words around, so when it became clear that I had gone past my expiration date in that field, constructing seemed like a good fit for my particular, if peculiar, set of skills. And I've done a bunch of these now — all co-constructed with Jeff Chen, who I see as the Ted Lasso of crossword puzzles (knowledgeable, supportive, encouraging) — but "Mocktails" was an especially valuable learning lesson: solving should be a fun, enjoyable experience! Challenging, sure, but no showing off, forget the snark — keep it light, playful, and ultimately satisfying. Which, whatever day of the week we're aiming for, is not an easy task. Hope we achieved it here.

As a side note, how fitting to see that one of the entries is [Top-selling Girl Scout cookies]. It's that time of year, after all, and there are four boxes of these in the freezer and another at my ... wait, make that half a box .... Nope, sorry. Hey, did you know that you can also eat them frozen?

Anyway, my wife buzzes through these crosswords every day and is the one who first got me interested. Next big challenge for me is to one day beat her in solving. Or in tennis. Or pickleball. Scrabble. Ping-pong....

For some reason, I'm craving lamb rogan josh.

Sam is an excellent example of someone who gets theme development. My rule of thumb is that it takes maybe 20 ideas to come up with a glimmer of a seed of a wisp of an idea. Most people fall off well before that point, but not Sam. He regularly sends me batches of concepts, and while I usually craft a response that hopefully sounds more polite than "Bah, humbug!" there's occasionally a peek of notion of a trace of something interesting.

I wish I could say that when Sam sent me this concept, I knew from the start that it would get accepted. I did estimate that there was a 95% chance that some editor would take it, but—

I meant to say that I knew for sure and that everyone should always listen to me.

(I wasn't. They shouldn't.)

It's so much fun for me when a co-constructor's skills have developed to Sam's level. It used to be that I'd always build the grid skeleton, testing it out to make sure it was flexible enough to be filled with color and cleanliness, but Sam is now in the driver's seat. This makes it possible to have rewarding higher-level discussions, like if the cheater square below RIM is worth adding or not.

Or why I can't be Roy Kent instead.