New York Times, Wednesday, April 5, 2017

This is my second crossword published in the NYT though it was actually the first one accepted. The impetus for its construction was the infelicity of having to enter the word AÑO in crosswords as ANO (for those not in the know the word ANO has a less-than-savory meaning in Spanish). I thought — let's make a crossword where the word AÑO is written properly!

I started by brainstorming words containing an ñ and experimentally intersecting them. I considered using the word EÑE as a revealer, but once I hit on having SPANISH and ESPAÑOL cross EL NIÑO there was no turning back. I expanded to 16 columns to simultaneously accommodate PIÑA COLADA (a central themer with an even number of letters) and provide just enough room for adjacent horizontal theme entries at lengths 6 and 9. Isolating each section of the grid in this manner reduced the strain created by having crossing theme entries.

Although the horizontal theme entries are symmetric, it would have been ideal to also have symmetry in the vertical themers. Unfortunately, there weren't enough options to pull that off.

As submitted, the theme clues did not use cross references. For example, SEÑOR was clued as [Man of La Mancha?] and AÑO was clued as [Year abroad?]. SPANISH and ESPAÑOL had the same clue, which alluded to but didn't explicitly mention the letter ñ. The new cluing is more solver-friendly though — especially for people without much exposure to Spanish.

Some other musings on changed cluing: As submitted, PEÑA NIETO was clued as [Obama's Mexican counterpart], which was true back in May of 2016 when the puzzle was written (how time flies!). Understandably, my original clue for COPERNICUS, which referenced young Doc Brown's dog in the movie "Back to the Future" didn't make the cut (maybe next time...). Finally, I'm not completely on board with the new clue for WOOT (to me its meaning is more hooray or yippee than wow).

Five special characters in the grid, reflecting the N with a tilde used in SPANISH. We've seen this concept before, but I like many of the touches Alex added. I liked having SPANISH as a revealer — without this, I don't know that I would have picked up on the theme — and I loved ESPANOL right next to it. It's hard to stack specific answers together, and it's even harder to do that when they're running through a themer (EL NINO). Very cool.

I appreciated the bonuses, COPERNICUS and GEOLOGISTS making for a science-y mini-theme. Given how so many people seem to dismiss science these days, I love the effort to pair up these long entries.

As a basketball fan, I love getting Dikembe MUTOMBO in the grid. As a Sonic fan, I hate Dikembe MUTOMBO. (His #8 seeded Nuggets upsetting my #1 Sonics was over 20 years ago. But my friends and I still can't joke about it.)

WOOT! made me smile — it's a slangy expression of exhilaration that my friends and I use. LT DAN did too, as I have fond memories of "Forrest Gump." But, I heard from a constructor friend that Will pointed out LT DAN in one of his puzzles as an undesirable dab of crossword glue. I quickly changed its assigned score on my list! It's so subjective, but Will is the final arbiter.

Good gridwork, especially given five pairs of theme answers, plus SPANISH as a revealer. With so much inflexibility within the grid, to get by with just some TNG (I'm a huge fan of "Star Trek: the Next Generation, but TNG is tough to figure out), IN A NET (sounds like a partial), SEP. Well, I didn't care for the combination of ERINNA (ancient poet) and IN AT in the lower right corner, but it was totally worth it to get that cool mash-up of SPANISH right next to ESPANOL / EL NINO.

Since I've seen this concept done a few times before, it would have been great to get something extra today. Not sure what that is, though.

Overall, the puzzle's solid execution still made for a fun solve.