New York Times, Wednesday, July 6, 2016

I loved the idea of making a puzzle where all of the four letter words were the combination of two two-letter US state abbreviations. Of the 50 states, there are 37 that are capable of combining with other states to form words. (Sorry West Virginia and New Mexico!) Thus I could form a maximum of 18 words using the 36 of the 37 state abbreviations. (Sorry Kentucky!) Then I had to find a way to fit them all into the grid. After many iterations (I have 23 different named versions of this puzzle in Crossword Compiler, each one of which probably went through ten iterations), I found that stacking three of the theme answers on top of each other was the best way to fit everything in.

In my submitted grid, each four-letter word had an additional bracketed clue, such as for my clue for 5 Down: Lots [6/11], the answer of which is MANY. These bracketed clues corresponded to when the states were admitted to the union (6th for MA, 11th for NY), and I felt they'd help alert the solvers that something different was going on and help solvers track down the theme answers once they finished.

Without them, alas, I imagine the puzzle will play like a not-very-well-filled themeless puzzle for anyone who doesn't spend the time to seek out all of the states, but hopefully the revealer still serves as a nice "a-ha" moment. As always, I hope you enjoyed the solving experience and that the payoff was worth the effort!

What a neat idea! The TWO-STATE SOLUTION refers to the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict, but also to the fact that every four-letter word in this puzzle is formed by two state abbreviations, i.e. MISC = MI (Michigan) + SC (South Carolina), ORCA = Oregon + California, etc. Not an easy task at all to come up with 18 (!) words, using 36 postal codes without repeating any.

Simply forming that many words without repetition is tough enough, but to do it without resorting to a bunch of ugly answers is impressive. MISC isn't great, and ILKS feels odd in the plural, but the other 16 are all fine entries. Nice that David didn't resort to the ARME or CACO sort of stuff.

And to stack all those four-letter words so well! I did hitch on a couple of inelegant entries, a SERIO / AFARM here, a SCI there, so I had a feeling something odd was going on — David has strong enough grid skills that he wouldn't usually let those through. But when I realized the constraint he was working with, I was impressed with the results. The lower left corner is especially nice, stacking WACO / ALLA / FLAK without needing crossword glue, but also giving us the nice CLAVE and even intersecting STEVE / ALLEN. OAKED might seem on the marginal side, but it is regularly used in the distilling business.

Also admirable to work in SHILLELAGH. What a neat word, and so hard to spell correctly. I let out a giggle when I filled in THREE WAY for [Relationship with two other lovers, both of whom consent]. A little embarrassing to realize it was TRIAMORY. I enjoyed learning that term.

Not easy to work with this tough constraint, so I don't mind the aforementioned inelegant entries plus the dabs of SMS, MTN, TWI, etc. State postal codes have been used in many ways in crosswords throughout the years, but this will be memorable for me.