New York Times, Thursday, July 23, 2020

I'm very excited to share my Thursday debut. This is just a basic ‘drop a letter' theme, with the twist of moving the drop-a-letter part to the clues, and then incorporating the instructions within the grid.

In deciding which letter to nix, I knew it needed to be a less common letter of the alphabet, but not so obvious as to give itself away (I suspect that if there were a dozen clues containing the letter Q solvers would have caught on very quickly). And although the drop-a-letter gimmick only applied to the clues, it seemed inelegant to include the letter anywhere in the grid, other than the instructional "LETTER ?" entry. But I would need a crossing word using the mystery letter, and it bothered me to include a random word that contained the letter. I decided to go with W because a few years back I had a Sunday puzzle (in another publication) that did the drop-a-letter thing with the title NOWHERE ("No W Here"). In homage to that puzzle I went with a shortened form of the revealer, parsing NOW as "no W", so that both the across and down entries containing the W would be part of the theme.

In addition to the entries REMOVE THE/ LETTER W/ FROM CLUES and the NOW mini revealer, I had 11 entries that came from W clues. I thought 11 was a good amount (and allowed the editors to nix one if they didn't like it and still have an even 10). Instead, Will and the team somehow managed to add 5 more W clues to entries already in the puzzle! My favorite of their additions is "Swaying just before a disaster" for UHOH.

Some clues/entries in my notes that I couldn't manage to fit in include "Warm cover" for SLEEVE and "Group of swingers" for CHORUS.

Finally, I remember seeing puzzles where constructors have altered their names in keeping with a puzzle's theme. I thought about requesting "Robyn Eintraub" for my byline. But aside from making the gimmick too obvious, it would have also necessitated changing the editor byline to "Ill Shortz" and that just seemed like a bad idea.

A (w)holesome concept, the LETTER W's disappearance making me go down many rabbit holes. I spent so much time floundering while trying to uncover that set of instructions. So many mistakes I had to shred ... shrewd I was not!

I'm glad I stuck with it, as the payoff was so satisfying, finally dawning on me how many clues had been affected. Fantastic job of making all the W-removals all seem so innocent. Kicking it off with [Major source of wheat] is brilliant. Hawn to Han of the silver screen is amazing!

I do wish there had been more longer entries whose clues had been affected. For a puzzle with this much grid flexibility, it'd have been great to put focus on those long downs, where MINUTEMEN and ELABORATE sit. Having so many short themers made it hard to keep track of them.

I'm glad I read Robyn's note since I couldn't figure out why NOW was in such a strange spot. I hadn't noticed there were any other Ws in the grid; that's a nice touch.

There was a lot of crossword glue spread throughout but think of all the short "themers" Robyn had to place. Plus, the three-part revealer! Normally, a puzzle with 10+ gloopy bits would fall automatically out of POW contention, but in service of such an entertaining experience, I let it slide.

I enjoy getting a clue-focused puzzle once in a while. It's been a while since we've such clue trickery — one I remember played on IT. I did find the "quote puzzle" aspect of this one frustrating, but thankfully, Robyn kept that part short. Finally earning all that delightful W-wordplay was well worth it.