Flying Colors

Rafael Musa, of San Francisco, is a software engineer at Airbnb. This is his third crossword for The Times.

The idea for it came from a giant 57/58-Across at the intersection of Castro and Market in San Francisco. "I was stuck at a light looking at it and thought — could this be a crossword puzzle? Turns out, yes, it can!" He adds, "This one is very special to me as it's running 10 years, almost to the day, after I came out for the first time."

As Will mentioned, this puzzle is very special to me as it's being published almost exactly ten years after I first came out. My 17-year-old self had no idea what was in store for the coming decade, but a Sunday NYT crossword celebrating pride didn't even feel like a possibility.

It can take a village to make a crossword puzzle. I owe Rebecca Goldstein immensely for suggesting the 21x20 layout with the corner staircases after I'd complained about struggling to lay out 14 (!) theme entries. Adam Wagner and Michael Lieberman were great sounding boards for theme ideation. I'm lucky to have this many crossword besties to rely on.

This puzzle has the dubious honor of having the shortest longest entry of any Sunday in my recent memory, with two 11s and then no entries longer than 9. I always hope to incorporate longer bonuses, but frankly, it's miraculous this grid worked at all. The short theme entries had to be in a set order, with pairs in the same row, and rows vertically spaced as evenly as possible ... and also forced black square placements. Anywhere I tried to include PRIDE / FLAG immediately became ultraconstrained … It really was a labor of love and patience.

This one is for all my trans, gay, queer, bi, ace, lesbian, etc. baddies out there. I love you so much <3

I love color in the Sunday Magazine, and these six colors at the start of Pride Month are picture-perfect. We've seen some pride flag puzzles before, but solvers have always had to imagine the colors. The impact is much stronger when it's all out there in technicolor.

YELLOW LAB and DARKROOM are a perfect example of the theme pairings. How is a DARKROOM a YELLOW LAB? It's a type of lab that's highlighted in yellow!

PEACOATS confused me at first, since "pea" elicits "green." That's overthinking it, though, as a PEACOAT is definitely not green. In fact, it's navy-colored, doubly emphasizing that it's a BLUE JACKET — highlighted in blue!

I like that Rafael stuck with VIOLET rather than using the much easier PURPLE (purple prose, purple heart, etc.), since that's the official final color of the Pride flag. There are so few VIOLET phrases, though. VIOLET RAY is a thing, but it's from days of yore. Still, using BRADBURY as a famous RAY highlighted in VIOLET was excellent.

ON AND OFF are states that are highlighted in red, so that works. It's unfortunate that some RED STATES have less than positive attitudes about Pride, though. I might have preferred something like RED ALERTS and WARNINGS.

JUICE is STEROIDS slang, as in "that pro athlete is juicing." The pairing works, although the connection is less direct than the others.

The print Sunday Magazine has a huge advantage over many digital crossword platforms. Although this is a simple example of how color can be used, it's effective.