New York Times, Thursday, June 11, 2015

Will asked me to revise this puzzle twice. The first time was to clean up some ugly fill, but the only way I could rework the words was to change a theme answer to one with less pop (LARGEMOUTH to AVERAGEMAN). Will liked the cleaner grid, but asked that I keep LARGEMOUTH in, and, after I added two blocks, I was able to do it. Through such attention to detail, Will in effect polished the puzzle while allowing me to do all the work myself, which I greatly appreciated.

I came up with this theme after solving a puzzle with an embedded-word theme and seeing if I could think of a new one. I was thinking Wednesday for this puzzle, because the theme didn't seem tricky enough for Thursday. But I'm guessing the shape of the grid swayed Will toward the more difficult day. He said he would toughen up some of the clues, and now I think it fits Thursday quite nicely, even if the theme isn't so out-of-the-box.

An example of a toughened clue was that for ANTS. Mine was the tepid "Wingless creatures related to wasps," and it became the crisp "Mymecophobe's fear." While most of my clues were basically kept intact, the clue changes made the puzzle better. My first priority is to create an enjoyable solving experience, and I hope this was just that!

I'm a former journalist, schoolteacher, and business owner, and now I teach yoga. Crosswords are a hobby. I am thrilled at having my NYT debut!

Debut! Neat arrangement of six themers, five of which contain a HIDDEN GEM, i.e. the word GEM is split across two words. Cool to see a rare grid pattern, with two of the theme answers flipped vertically and incorporated into a triple-stack of nine-letter words. Some great material in those stacks, INDULGE ME / TEA LEAVES / LAY TO REST = a great start to the puzzle.

Lewis uses a Z-pattern in his grid, which helps immensely in filling. Note how you can almost isolate the lower right corner, not having to worry much about how it connects into the rest of the grid.

The drawback is that it's all too easy for solvers to get stuck in one of the corners. Even flipping two pairs of squares in the stairstep — shifting the block after EVENS to the left, and the block after MESA to the right — would have helped puzzle flow immensely. Would have made construction much harder, though.

Speaking of hard constructions, LARGE MOUTH over DODGE MONACO is a rough arrangement. You have to find two words at 21-A and 22-A that facilitate smooth fill in that region — very tough. Not surprising to require DEREG / ERG and CAPT / ETHNO to hold those sections together. As much as I like low-word-count puzzles, breaking up BEDMATE might have helped smooth things out.

Loved the clue for EARS: [Ones catching some waves] referring to sound waves. Beautiful!

Will has mentioned that all he's looking for in a Thursday puzzle is something that's harder than a Wednesday. I can see where he's coming from, but I personally like to have a bigger bang for my buck, an a-ha moment that's worthy of the struggle in battling through the grid. Even having different GEMs hidden in the themers — OPAL, ONYX, RUBY, whatever — would have been a nice touch toward Thursday-worthy-ness.

Incredibly difficult to come up with something innovative every Thursday, but I think that's what many people have come to expect.