New York Times, Monday, July 4, 2016

JILL: I'm excited to see this puzzle make it to the page after a few years in the queue. Jeff and I painted ourselves into a corner by choosing a theme that could only reasonably run on a single day out of the year, and only in the Monday-Thursdayspan. Thursday, July 4, 2013 was the most recent eligible date until today. Hello, old friend!

This theme popped up while we traveling, as our themes usually do. I'll be reading a book or daydreaming, and Jeff will turn to me and say, "You know, we haven't come up with any good crossword ideas in a while," and then I'll propose approximately two dozen terrible ideas that Jeff very politely pretends to consider, usually phrased as, "Hmm, interesting. Let's put it on the list." In keeping with the Infinite Monkey Theorem, I eventually land on a theme that makes Jeff's eyes light up. This particular idea came a little sooner than most, thank goodness. Turning an ordinal number into a fraction seemed like the kind of nerdy yet accessible theme that makes for a straight-over-the-plate weekday grid.

Although I'm pleased with how the grid turned out, I think we both wish that we could have found another option for the 'L' themer. L-DOPA isn't the freshest. Regardless, it was a fun collaboration. Stay tuned for our next joint project, due in less than a month. Hint: it's not a crossword.

JEFF: As usual, the collaborations between my wife and me are one part inspiration, one part genius. She's responsible for both parts, so I ... well, I smell reasonably inoffensive. Most of the time.

It's been an amusing game, waiting to see which July 4^th this would be published on. We intended it to be hard, for July 4^th, 2013 (a Thursday). Then July 4th, 2014 was a Friday. And July 4^th, 2015 was a Saturday. Stupid calendar!

When we pinged Will about possibly running it this year, he confessed he was struggling with how to word the revealer. In classic wordplay, FOURTH OF JULY hints only at the letter Y, since it's the fourth letter of JULY, so many solvers might get baffled by the theme concept. If it were to be run on a Monday, we'd have to make sure a bigger chunk of solvers figured it out.

We ran by several ideas — our favorite for a crystal-clear clue was [The starts of 20-, 26-, 36-, and 42-Across are all one-___], but that admittedly felt inelegant. So I like the compromise with the [… literally] hint. Hope that makes it clear to everyone that J U L Y are each literally 1/4 (one fourth) of JULY!

Tough grid to assemble, with much less flexibility than usual. In working up the skeleton, I pulled out every trick in the book, including shifting each themer back and forth, changing the spacing, trying stacking / interlock, etc. I'm not a fan of the big L blocks of black squares on the sides, but it felt like the least of all evils.

Then it was a matter of choosing some good long fill — Jill liked MOM JEANS over LEE JEANS and DIONYSUS / TS ELIOT over many other options, even though the latter pair required an ORU to make it work.

I did sneak in a NYUK — the two of us have radically different opinions when it comes to the Three Stooges. I suppose she had to have some flaw.