New York Times, Tuesday, September 26, 2017

LYNN: This collaboration was something of a blind date set up by Will, and it was all done via email. We both decided from Day One that the theme would be comedians, but it took a while to get from there to this puzzle. At first we thought of using names like (Lucille) BALL, (Bob) HOPE, and (Chris) ROCK that could be used in everyday phrases—and we batted around some possibilities. We also considered a few ideas that included revealers.

But then, among ideas for those themes, Joy included PRYOR COMMITMENT … and I knew immediately that she'd come up with something different and perfect. She'd found our theme angle for sure, and her example was even 15 letters for a terrific central grid-spanner. After emailing back and forth, we decided on this set. Three of the five themers (PRINZE, PRYOR, and IDLE) were Joy's ideas, and all but one of the theme clues were hers (all but BARR). Unfortunately, BARR HOPPING didn't fit. A few names that didn't work were Chaplin/chaplain, Marx/marks, and Bee/be.

I did the grid, which Joy approved. And I wrote clues that she then went through and edited, preferring to make them more challenging. Will changed very few of them. If you guessed that Joy wrote the great clue for GO APE, you'd be right. Also the ones for RESCUE DOG and HELIX, just to name two that I especially liked.

Working on this with Joy was great fun. Her emails were guaranteed to include some funny choices I never would have thought of. I loved the way the puzzle turned out. I hope all of you solvers do, too.

So much fun to make comedy out of regular phrases … using comedians! FALLEN IDLE made me laugh; so appropriate to kooky Monty Python humor. PURPLE HART (heart), PAW PRINZE (prints), PRYOR (prior) COMMITMENT, BARR (bar) FIGHT — nice that Joy and Lois drew from different ages, genders, races, and styles of comedy. I only vaguely knew Freddy PRINZE, but that was fine with me, as hitting 4/5 for this pop culture idiot is pretty darn good.

Five themers can give newer constructors fits, so it's a good thing the early-week veteran was on board. Lynn is such a strong constructor, always turning in clean and snazzy grids, and today's is no different. The 15-letter central entry is much easier to work with than a 13 or 11 or even 9 — a 15 doesn't force you to place any black squares — but still, look how many down entries must run through at least two across entries. So many constraints.

Lovely long downs in HARDY BOYS, NOTORIETY, DALAI LAMA, RESCUE DOG. So important to make your long fill slots count, and they did great here.

Smart to stick to 78 words, the max allowed. Some constructors might have attempted the low-word-count challenge (74 or even 72), but that's generally not wise, requiring a lot of compromises.

It is true that there are a ton of short words — a whopping 69 out of 78 that are five letters or less — but that's perfectly fine for an early-week puzzle. The high word count makes it so much easier to avoid dabs of crossword glue. Just some NEHI, OER, ENO, which I'm even hesitant to point out because they're so minor.

Amusing theme, superb execution. Not easy to entertain with an early-week puzzle, but this one succeeded for me.