New York Times, Monday, July 18, 2022

My daughter Phoebe's first New York Times crossword is in Monday's paper. Give it a try.

— Peter Gordon (@XWORDS) July 17, 2022

The pregnancy that led to Phoebe's birth was publicly announced with this puzzle.

And her first and last names appeared as the first and last Across entries in this puzzle from around her first birthday.

AT SIXES AND SEVENS so perfectly describes math confusion! It also applies to my six and seven-year-olds, who are at sixes and sevens regarding my algebra and pre-calculus puzzles. I know they're only half-Asian, but come on!

I'm (half) kidding.

Over a decade of crossword construction, I'd never considered the pattern ?? X AND Y (where a question mark represents any letter). Neat that it's a fairly tight set — I couldn't think of many more that fit the pattern; only IN FITS AND STARTS.

It's even neater that each phrase can be punnily applied to an apt subject. That second criterion makes this idea even tighter, since IN FITS AND STARTS might only apply to some Laff-A-Lympics quick-change relay race.

Three themers is below average these days, so I expect incredible color and ultra-clean fill. SPIT TAKES, STAR GAZE, LADY BIRD, CUPHOLDER, oh yeah! The spacing is perfect, alternating up down up down across the columns. Sets the stage so well for smooth short fill.

I paused at NHLER and slowed further with minor DYS ELLS PDT. ONZE is tough foreign vocab for newb solvers, too (although my French friends down the street will love it!) — is it worth the snazzy Zs in OZZIE? That question has no right answer, though I much preferred the ZZ in RAZZ because they came with no associated price to pay. It's so much harder to fill a region like the south, with STAR GAZE taking away flexibility.

It's not every day that I see an interesting letter / phrase pattern that feels crossworthy. Nice theme for a Monday debut.

I know what you're thinking: "Jim, is there any way that, without doing any programming, I can use the OneLook search button on the XWord Info Finder to discover more phrases that match Jeff's ?? X AND Y pattern?"

Your instinct to try the OneLook button is dead on. The standard Search button knows a lot about words but doesn't understand phrases. That is, it doesn't know where words break. The best you can do is ??*AND* which, if you'll click there to see, produces mostly crap.

OneLook search words better for this task. Click the query ?? * AND * (notice the spaces) which means start with a two-letter word, follow that up with anything, then the space-delimited word AND, and then something else.

The search does find all three of today's theme answers. Other interesting results include IN DRIBS AND DRABS, OF MICE AND MEN, IN BLACK AND WHITE, IN FITS AND STARTS, IS PART AND PARCEL, AT BECK AND CALL, TO CUT AND RUN. Not all great, but they demonstrate when our OneLook search can be handy.

Most constructors will never care about these details, but for some of us, WE LIVE AND LEARN.