New York Times, Saturday, September 30, 2017

Mary Lou Guizzo: My seed entry for this themeless was the RIJKSMUSEUM, a place I hope to see in person someday. It was inspired by my visit to a special exhibit at the Dayton Art Institute, Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art: Treasures from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

My first themeless grid with this seed entry was submitted in July of 2016. I received a rejection in August noting that Will really liked some of the grid fill including this seed entry, but there was too much crosswordese.

I asked Jeff for his assistance in reworking the grid. He pointed out I had too many three-letter entries. He noted it was best not to go above 12 for a themeless grid. After numerous back and forths using a grid of Jeff's design, we submitted a revised grid a few weeks later. We received an email in November accepting the revised grid.

Jeff worked the NYT debut words MAMA BIRD, BEER BRAT and GO BLONDE into the grid and my contribution in addition to RIJKSMUSEUM was OBAMA ERA. I was surprised to see the clue we had for TOMY, "Big name in toys headquartered in Japan," was replaced by the partial TO MY. I did like the edited change of clues for EARS and DJS to "Reception figures" as well as the clue change for HARRY from a name to "Badger."

I hope you've enjoyed your Saturday solving experience.

ML asked me to come on board with this one after an encouraging rejection from Will. It's so tempting to try to fix a few little spots here and there on a themeless … but often, the skeleton and basic structure make that near impossible.

We decided to do a total teardown, starting with ML's (and Will's) favorite entries: I MEAN, REALLY! and RIJKSMUSEUM. I love the former as a colloquial phrase, and the latter as a place of incredible beauty (and weird consonant patterns!). If you ever get the chance to travel internationally and can't figure out where, the Netherlands is amazing.

As I mentioned yesterday, 11-letter entries are problematic for themelesses. ML originally had stacked sets of 11s in the corners, but that's a rough way to start — you force a bunch of 3-letter slots right off the bat, and too many of those can make for a choppy solve. So I repositioned those 11s more toward the middle of the puzzle.

It quickly became apparent that a few cheater squares would help out, and I'm pretty liberal in that aspect of constructing. I didn't like nibbling away a precious 8-letter slot into a 7-letter one, but thankfully COSPLAY seemed to work there. (I'd totally dress up as a Klingon at ComicCon, BTW.)

I like trying multiple dozens of versions of every region within a themeless. Luckily, ML graciously puts up with my OCD about exploring the entire solution space. We saved so many versions that I didn't remember which one we finally submitted. Thankfully, ML has a good eye for what's the best trade-off between strong entries and gluey short ones.

Looking back on it, I would have tried to open up the NW and SE corners, which feel more disconnected from the rest of the puzzle than I like. It did let us easily try many dozens of versions in each area, but with so few entries connecting everything up, hopefully solvers don't get stumped on LAKSHMI or RIJKSMUSEUM.