New York Times, Wednesday, March 5, 2014

When I built the original version of this puzzle in late July of 2012, I was only a couple of weeks away from getting married and starting grad school. I figured that I would be too busy during the school year to keep building puzzles, so I tried to finish it as soon as I could. Unfortunately, I was not satisfied with the resulting fill by the time September rolled around, and I put the puzzle away for nearly a year before revising and submitting it. I highly advise against that, since there are so many talented constructors out there and there's always a risk that one of them will swoop in and take that idea from you before you get the chance.

I'm glad that no one beat me to the punch on this one. To me, the phrase I HAVE NO CLUE is a really good mantra for the entire concept of crosswords. Anyone who has ever tried solving a puzzle has probably uttered or thought those words after getting stumped by a tricky clue, so I wanted to build a literal theme on that idea. And to my knowledge, this is the first time that phrase appears as an answer in a major crossword — to say nothing of the phrase HELL IF I KNOW, which I thought would be just sassy enough that the Times might change it to HECK IF I KNOW.

One other note: Will changed a few of my letters in the space between 34- and 45-Across. I did not agree with the revision. You can see my original fill in that section — I'm biased because I'm a big basketball fan and think that Carmelo Anthony's nickname 'MELO is a fun entry, though now I wish I had submitted this fill in the first place. Regardless, I do have a lot of respect for Will as an editor and I'm very appreciative that he decided to run one of my puzzles so soon after my last one. He and I had a good conversation via e-mail about that small section and I'm glad that he has always been receptive to hearing constructor feedback. In the end, it's a small section of the grid and I'm still very excited to see my work in the Times.

Fantastic revealer today, one that made me Wish I Thought of That (WITT). I HAVE NO CLUE is such a nice in-the-language phrase which 1.) describes a quiet shrug and 2.) gives a perfect reason for leaving the themers unclued. I think this puzzle could have been done simply as all the themers unclued, i.e. "phrases which are equivalent to someone being left speechless," but the revealer is spot on and adds a great level of cleverness.

Evan's part of a new generation of constructors, bringing us into the digital age with freshies like GCHAT. It's rare that constructors can turn a five-letter entry into something cool, but this totally qualifies in my book. I don't personally use The Gchat (like The Google) because I find it hard to concentrate on anything when IMs are popping up. There's also the little reason that it scares me. I don't like my computer talking to me, thank you very much.

I had a little hitch during my solve in that I and ME were repeated in a 2/2/1 pattern, making it feel a bit uneven. Nitpicky, but I was left wondering if there weren't other appropriate phrases that didn't use either, or if it would have been better to leave out one of the I phrases (so it was a 1/2/1 pattern), or if all of the themers used I instead of ME.

HELL IF I KNOW sure is great though, reminding me of the old nugget, "What do you get when you cross a pachyderm and a rhinoceros?"*

Plenty of juicy fill, the JET SET, POKEMON (I may or may not have a stuffed Psyduck), STONE AGE, GET EVEN, even HEY YOU stuff really nice, adding a lot to my solve. It's offset by a modicum of partials and OTO/OTOS and ERI TU and MUS, but overall, the fill enhanced my solving experience. Good trade-off.

*Elephino.

Don't worry, I'm not quitting my day job.