New York Times, Friday, September 27, 2019

I am thrilled to be making my New York Times debut and to be making the list of teenage constructors (just barely)! I've loved solving for a long time, so when I came across the NYT article series on "How to Build a Crossword Puzzle" last year, I decided to give it a shot. Though it was my goal, I didn't imagine that I would be seeing my name above a puzzle in The Times, especially not with my first themeless submission. I have to thank Jeff Chen, who has been mentoring me over the past year. I doubt I'd be here without his help!

This puzzle started with the grid. I appreciate nice looking Friday/Saturday grids, so I messed around with it until I had this nice wheel looking one. Being a denizen of the midwest and tornado alley, I seeded the puzzle with TORNADO TRACKERS. Once I found another 15 letter entry to cross it, the nature of the grid made it so that I only had a couple of routes to choose to fill the rest of it out. I started with the NW and SE quadrants. I particularly like what I turned out there. 29- and 30-Down paired nicely, and 3-Down is just such a lovely and quirky entry.

I hope everyone finds this to be an enjoyable Friday solve!

Jack's NYT debut! I've had the pleasure of working with him on a few crosswords now, including his debut in the WSJ two months ago. Hard working, with a drive to improve, Jack is going places in the crossworld. He was even featured in a local TV interview!

A few months ago, he sent me a draft of this themeless, asking for my opinion. It's one of the questions I dread the most — not for my sake, but for the constructor's. Themelesses are so ultra-competitive, why would you want to get into them? I usually try to nudge newer constructors toward better using their time; brainstorming themes, where the supply/demand balance is more favorable.

I like that Jack had a goal in mind, though, and he stuck to it, no matter how much work it was going to take. I gently pointed out some of the weaker spots of his draft, a couple of slots that wanted more pizzazz (FOOT BRAKES, PRECIPICES, OSTINATOS, and EL ROPO), along with some clunkers (ABM, RIN). All in all, it was decent, but I guessed it wouldn't pass Will's bar.

A few weeks later, he sent back a revision. Some improvements! FOOTBRAKES became SNOWFLAKES. OSTINATOS became US CAPITOL — but that forced a strong entry, I WANNA SEE, to morph into the weaker BRENDA LEE. And EL ROPO had twisted into PELAGE. Not great, to say the least.

Round three: no PELAGE! And TIE BREAKER + ITS ALL MINE = fantastic! But: OTA. ERL. ESSO? Just so-so. So we prepared ourselves for round four.

Not many people last past three rounds of freedback (that's not a typo; take freedback for what it's worth).

I rolled up my sleeves and got in the trenches at this point, tearing out the SW to see if we could smooth things out while still retaining enough sizzle. Took a while, and it sacrificed ITS ALL MINE, but the overall result (what you see today) was much better than before. Jack agreed — progress!

We tried to do the same with the NE, trying to squeeze more out of the BRENDA LEE slot and replace PUT BY, but everything we tested felt weaker in comparison.

Themelesses are so competitive that my assessment of whether one will get accepted is usually "low" (read: fat chance, buster). After all this work, I upgraded my guess to "medium." It was great to hear Jack's excitement a few months later when Will took it.