GHOSTED

ALISON: I am a grad student at UC Berkeley in global health and infectious disease. I went to Emory University as an undergraduate and then got my Master of Public Health degree from Berkeley in 2017. I started "solving" the NYT crossword with my grandma when I was a kid (with erasable pens) and got more and more into solving them during grad school (with normal pens, mostly). On a whim, I started making puzzles a few months ago with a friend after we saw that Rex Parker (Michael Sharp) had offered his help to any aspiring constructors. Rex referred me to the Facebook group called the Crossword Puzzle Collaboration Directory, and I sent my first-ever puzzle to a handful of "test-solvers," including Erik. The feedback I got from the dozen or so people who replied was all genuinely kind, supportive, and helpful. I'm so grateful for everyone's help and encouragement—especially from Erik, who became my de facto crossword mentor, and then co-constructor. We began collaborating on a few puzzles and submitted "Ghosted" in the middle of April.

ERIK: Ever notice how in the phrase "green energy," ENERGY is GREEN mixed up with a bonus letter? We set out to find out if there were any other phrases with this property; a computer-aided search turned up a large handful of possibilities, ranging from the erudite (ALFRED ADLER, ANDRE DERAIN) to the colloquial (FAST FACTS, RIDE-OR-DIE). Alison noticed that, using only phrases that dropped the letter in the second word, we could spell out PHANTO, which we found to be (most of) an apt description of the disappearing letters. The toughest part was trying to find phrases for the M and the S, since nothing in our wordlists would work and we had to search manually. How did people do this stuff before computers? Thanks to Alison for sharing her debut byline with me, and to the NYT team for having us.

Congrats to Alison on the debut! Working with one of the best in the business, reigning ACPT champ Erik. Can't go wrong there.

LOST IN THE SHUFFLE … how to explain this? Theme answers are made of two words, and if you remove one letter from the first word and them anagram the remaining ones, you get the second word.

Thus, that key letter is GHOSTED?

Hmm. One definition of GHOSTED is "ended a personal relationship with (someone) by suddenly and without explanation withdrawing from all communication." So, that key letter says buh-bye when it comes to forming the second word?

It is nice that the key letters form the word PHANTOMS, echoing the GHOSTED idea. It didn't produce a sharp a-ha moment for me, but I appreciate the attempt to work in an additional layer of cleverness.

Solid gridwork, as I'd expect from an Agardian production. Just a bit of super-minor OLLA APSE kind of stuff — now that's great craftsmanship, especially for a Sunday puzzle! Way, way, way less crossword glue than average makes for a feeling of elegance.

Erik's much younger and hipper than me (funnier and smarter, too), so it wasn't a surprise to encounter several things I didn't know. SERENA SLAM is where you hold all four Grand Slam titles at once? I wonder why the press didn't make up a neat name like that for the people who did it before her (Billie Jean King, etc.).

BBC ARABIC was new to me too, but I also liked learning that. Except it seemed to me like BBC ARABIA would have been such a better title. (Probably a good thing that I stayed out of marketing.)

APARNA, too. I don't know that she's become crossworthy enough to be a theme answer — cool that CHER is hidden inside NANCHERLA! — but as fill, absolutely fine.

The a-ha moment wasn't strong enough for my taste — I'm still wondering exactly why those letters fit the term GHOSTED and PHANTOMS — but there were some strong themers like CARMEN MCRAE, as well as enough SAM HILL, LIME JUICE, RUSH HOUR, THE NERVE bonus fill to keep me going.