New York Times, Thursday, April 14, 2022

NARAYAN: For over a decade, I lived the life of a quasi-single Indian-American dad in Texas with a live-in Chinese mother-in-law (no, this isn't the failed pilot for a sitcom!). Soon after she moved in, I was banished from the kitchen. I was happy to oblige because she was a brilliant cook who soon learned to cater to my Indian tastes and vegetarian restrictions. Her English wasn't very good, but it was far better than my Mandarin, so that became our medium of broken communication.

One day, she offered to make "calm" soup for dinner. I had no idea what that meant, but I figured it had to be good ... but even after soup was served, I couldn't see what made it (or me) "calm". After a few more instances of this, I realized that she was actually saying "com", not "calm". Of course, that makes even less sense. She was puzzled by my questions about the contents of the soup, so she brought me a can of com. That's when it hit me: between her poor command of the language, her less-than-perfect eyesight, and poor kerning on the can label, she had misread "corn" as "com". And a therne was bom!

I shared this theme with Ashish, and we batted around possibilities like "burn" for "bum", "garner" for "gamer", etc. Once we had enough fodder for a puzzle, Ashish came up with a bit of brilliance for the revealer: "from stem to stern" offered a clean way to tie it all together.

Brilliant. Lowercase m looking like r + n smashed together? That's a strong concept in itself. Combining this with the perfect revealer — FROM STEM TO STERN — makes it a constructor's gem. Praise the benevolent Crucivera, goddess of crosswords, for her magnificent gift!

Excellent theme phrases, too. It'd be all too easy to use dictionary definitions that are unsatisfying to uncover, like if [Burns] had been the clue for OVERCOOKS IN THE OVEN. I'd be happy to get SPINNING WHEEL or BRASS SECTION in a themeless, and WHAT A GOOD BOY AM I is straight out of a nursery rhyme.

SCOTTISH POET did feel like an ODD SOCK compared to the others. Is GERMAN COMPOSER crossworthy? How about SOUTHEASTERN BOXER? I'd have preferred a sizzling (pun intended) phrase like GOES UP IN SMOKE for [Bums?].

Not easy to deal with 12-letter themers in the middle, surrounding a 13-letter middle entry. We try to avoid "cheater squares" whenever possible, but adding black squares at the U of USTA and S of ORES can enhance visual appeal. Yes, it's subjective, but pyramid blocks can be so eye-catching.

People ask me all the time what editors are looking for. It's a tough question to answer since most editors say they know it when they see it. If I had to put some words to it, I'd use fresh, interesting, surprising, indescribable ideas. This one hits all of those criteria and more.