New York Times, Saturday, April 8, 2017

WWIIVET was the seed for this one, a curious string of letters I saw in a D-Day article a year or two ago. Not only is it bizarrely fun to have a *WIIV* series of letters, but I have a feeling that there are plenty of WWIIVETs who are avid crossword solvers. I thought it would be awesome to give a shout-out to the greatest generation.

If you're not already a daily reader of XKCD, you're missing out. And Randall Munroe's book, "What If?" is amazing. If anyone out there is still trying to find me a birthday present ... (cough cough).

While I love puzzles featuring stuff that personally interests me — chemistry, basketball, bridge, books, physics, etc. — it does nag at me that such a narrowly-targeted puzzle will probably go over poorly with people that are much older than me, much younger, more cultured, more academic, etc. So when I build themeless puzzles, I try hard to sprinkle in at least a little for all types of people. Hopefully with ROB A BANK, ANTIGONE, ROOT BEER, FOLK ART, DEADHEAD, and the aforementioned, there's *something* that made you smile.

I love a challenge, and another 62-worder seemed like it might occupy me for a while. After deciding on WWIIVET as the seed, it shouldn't be that hard — after all, I've used a similar wide-open pattern before. Heck, two times even! Surely I learned enough about this overall pattern that I'd be able to finish a solid grid in a week or so.

Fast forward to five months later ...

Huge props go to Will and Joel for the clue of the puzzle, [Head scratcher?]. I struggled mightily with that upper right corner, only settling on what I thought was a dull WOOL CAP because it allowed me to work in some fun stuff like ANTIHERO, TEASER AD, SWATCHES, and DUELIST. But I wasn't happy about letting a precious 7-letter slot go to waste. It's a good lesson for me to learn — I shouldn't have dismissed WOOL CAP so quickly as irredeemable. My (scratchy wool) cap is tipped to you both, good sirs.

I debated over the inclusion of XKCD for the longest time as well. As much as I love the strip — Randall Munroe, if you're reading this, YOU'RE MY HERO! — if a solver doesn't know it, he or she has no way of piecing it together. Ultimately, I figured inclusion might be a way to get even more people reading it, and I'd just have to make 100% certain that the crossing answers were easily gettable. Hope that worked out for people.

So glad Will kept my "Rabbit of Seville" clue!

'Nuff said.

If I told you how much I admired this puzzle, you'd probably accuse me of in-house bias, so I'll stick to factual observation. This is the third NYT puzzle using this grid pattern. The first two are also by Mr. Chen.

Jeff and I both admire XKCD. You may know that XWord Info has a Crossword Blogosphere page that pulls recent blog posts from RSS feeds on several well-known sites. About a year ago, for no reason other than our own amusement, XKCD was added to that mix.