New York Times, Wednesday, July 8, 2015

I am beyond ecstatic to be making my NY Times crossword debut today. I've been submitting puzzles to the NY Times since my junior year of high school — spring 2007. A friend challenged me to make a crossword during class eight years ago, and I've been hooked ever since.

This idea came to me when I was working on a composer-themed puzzle: BACHTOTHEFUTURE, HAYDNPLAINSIGHT, etc. When I saw HAYDNPLAINSIGHT had already been used in a previous composer puzzle, I started to think about hiding the phrase HIDDENINPLAINSIGHT in plain sight with the hopes of being especially clever. I used to love doing the Jumble and the NYTimes crossword with my great aunt on Sundays, so I was happy that I could get a little bit of jumble in my first acceptance. Also I'm a huge New York Giants fan, so I was excited to help ELIMANNING get back in the puzzle after a long hiatus.

The original themed entries were THIRDDEGREEBURN, INTERPELLATIONS, and SINGTHESAMETUNE, but Will prompted me to switch up the last two and I'm pleased with where things ended up. I was a bit bummed that ‘Rex Parker's gripe' didn't stick as the clue for WHEREISTHETHEME, but otherwise I'm really happy with my first accepted submission.

I'd like to thank the following people for all of their work to help me achieve this milestone: my dad, for being my constant crossword tester and slugging through my early atrocities; Frank Longo, for all of his help with this puzzle; and Will, for being a kind, patient mentor over the past eight years. Thanks for the warm welcome, crossword world. Hope to see you again soon.

Debut! A theme HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT, those letters spread through three long answers, tied together with WHERE IS THE THEME? Although I typically don't care for made-up-sounding theme answers, the revealer has a playful aspect to it.

Audacious to debut with a 74-word puzzle, even more so to do it with parallel downs (BAD LOANS / ATE LUNCH and WRETCHES / NATIVE TO). Difficult to get colorful answers while still keeping the crossings clean.

I love BAD LOANS and WRETCHES, but ATE LUNCH and NATIVE TO don't feel nearly as strong. What with some ELL / A TIE and CVI / ESSO glue, I might have preferred breaking up one of the long down pairs. I'd usually rather get two great entries with super-clean fill than four pretty good ones with some subpar crossings.

Nice touch to add in other long fill. ELI MANNING is a controversial figure, a guy the Giants traded up (at a high price) to get in the 2004 NFL draft. Other players available in the first round of that draft: QBs Philip Rivers or Ben Roethlisberger, and stud WR Larry Fitzgerald. Hindsight is 20/20, but it sure makes me wonder how much value per dollar you really get out of that overall number one pick.

Then again, there's Peyton. Ahem.

And AMSTEL BEER … the last time we had something like this — SOL CERVEZA — Matt Gaffney had the exact same reaction I did, that it felt off. I highly respect his opinion, so it was good to know that I wasn't the only one. AMSTEL BEER feels better than SOL CERVEZA, because the label actually says AMSTEL BEER, but it does feel slightly wonky to me still.

Overall, I might have liked a craftier "hiding in plain sight" trick — the circled letters didn't really feel hidden to me at all. I'm not sure what that trick would be, or how it would work, but I think of the "Magic Eye" posters, where you stare at the thing for ages, and then all of a sudden the image pops out — now that's hidden in plain sight. Can't wait to see if someone could actually pull that off!