New York Times, Friday, September 13, 2019

DANIEL: For years, I have been trying to figure out how to construct acceptable themeless puzzles. After all, good, original themes are hard to come by. My first attempts were awful, but as my program and word list improved, so did my puzzles. Eventually, I got better at finding the delicate balance between including fresh words and minimizing bad fill.

This was the 4th puzzle I wrote with Anne, and it was the break-through. Our seeds were FRAPPUCCINO (UNICORN FRAPPUCCINO didn't fit) and YELLOW VESTS. At the time we wrote it, YELLOW VESTS was highly topical, and Will kindly expedited the publication so that it would still be relevant. I was doing a project about the Yellow Vest movement in school, and when I came home, I found out that this puzzle had been accepted. Perfect timing!

ANNE: I've been peripherally involved with Daniel's crossword activities for a while, but this is the first time one of our joint puzzles has been accepted. We wrote this when I was home from college over winter break, and I was looking forward to a French class about revolutions, which is what made me think of YELLOW VESTS. Despite the stereotype of the over-caffeinated college student, FRAPPUCCINO was not from personal experience.

Our basic model for constructing was that Daniel operated his program while I suggested words and provided "constructive" criticism. I'm just glad it worked!

Debut themeless from one of the young guns — and his sister! Neat to see them work together. I keep suggesting to my four-year-old that we make a crossword together, so she can smash the record. Her reading/writing vocabulary is impressive already, so if I were a betting man, I'd set the over/under at age ... 10.

Not that I'd place bets on my own daughter! I'd never wager with other fathers on how many times she'd poop in a day or if she'd get across the monkey bars on the first try, no sirree!

(At least I bet ON her, never against her. Results: four, and she didn't.)

There's a lot to love in this 72-worder. Note that I didn't say "standard 72-worder." It's unusual to keep one's corners so wide open, because it's so hard to "turn the corner." ARCADE / COUGAR / TIRADE is a beautiful result coming off that ACT OF GOD / ROID RAGE / CURE ALLS triplet.

There were a couple of toughies, EREBUS, PEALE, and LATH having the potential to throw solvers off, but other than those hiccups, I was impressed by the quality of fill. It did take me 30 frustrating minutes to finish — about 3x as long as usual for a Friday. Perhaps that tough vocab was the culprit?

Puzzles that have such wide-open corners usually can't help but use a couple of neutral entries like EXPERTLY, INTERVAL, RANDALL. Nice clues for the last two, though, INTERVAL having potential for a clever musical clue, and [Tony with an Emmy] wonderfully confusing.

Speaking of wonderfully confusing, WTF does [Hear "here!" here] mean? It took me a few readings to realize how brilliantly that hinted at ROLL CALL.

I liked the modern touch of YELLOW VESTS (the recent French protest movement) and FRAPPUCCINO to balance out more tired material like SET SHOTS and ED O'NEILL, especially when the latter is clued to "Married with Children" instead of his more recent (and better) work.

Solid overall. I'd love to see more family duos pairing up.