New York Times, Friday, January 17, 2020

I've been a word nerd and puzzle junkie for almost my whole life, but my love of crosswords in particular blossomed when I was a high schooler. I fondly recollect sitting in the kitchen with my mom and tackling the weekend grids on her clunky desktop, the clatter of the keyboard a satisfying soundtrack to my solving. Veterans of the NYT's Wordplay column may remember me by my erstwhile forum handle "rpsmith"—I'll always be grateful to that community for encouraging my passion. Outside the "crossworld," I'm a voracious consumer of film and video games and a writer for both Smithsonian.com (for which I recently wrote a piece on crosswords, as it happens) and the World Bank's Connect4Climate division. I'm also starting to compete in screenwriting contests!

I got a number of puzzles published in the Stanford Daily during my time on The Farm (including cryptics, which I love), but this is my first submission to the Times to be accepted, and I'm over the moon to see it in print and online. I very nearly didn't send in this puzzle at all, as I was coming off a sizable string of rejections and felt rather demoralized. So glad I gave it a shot! I'll admit to being a bit bummed that Will Shortz EDITed OUT the second half of my 'Come before... or go after?' clue for PREDATE, but overall I'm quite pleased with how much he kept in place, including my shout-outs to David Lynch, Albert Camus, and the A.V. CLUB as well as the trivia I used to hint at THERESA MAY and Justin TRUDEAU.

It occurs to me now that the upper half of this puzzle is packed with nods to influential women whose domains range from international politics, acting and filmmaking, to the pages of fiction and mythology. I can't say that this was strictly intentional on my end, but I'm delighted with the way it panned out! I'm especially happy to be featuring OLIVIA WILDE, whose "Booksmart" I found to be a masterfully crafted and moving comedy.

I'm pleased to say I already have fresh grids in the submission pipeline, so with luck, you'll be seeing more of me before too long. Happy solving, and a fine New Year to all!

Debut! It's always impressive to see someone debut on a Friday or Saturday since the competition in themelesses is fierce. I always (kindly) suggest that budding constructors steer clear of them since the supply/demand imbalance is tremendous.

One aspect that can make one stand out is a unique grid that catches the eye. A gigantic plus sign in the middle of a grid can certainly do that! Also, most themelesses avoid this sort of "racetrack" approach, since connecting up the start and end can be a bear. Ryan helped himself by constricting two passageways — at the W of OLIVIA WILDE and T of ELECTRONICA — which allowed him to (more or less) work on the grid in two halves.

I enjoyed the right half, chock full of OLD SALT to NASCENT to RED EYES (so hard to parse as REDEYES) to DEFENSE to TOTE BAG to ELECTRONICA. And setting aside my personal politics, there's something audacious about featuring Britain's second female prime minister, THERESA MAY.

Heading into the left half, I was sensing perhaps a POW! coming Ryan's way, an even rarer feat than a themeless debut. VESPERS to UMLAUTS to SMART TV to ISRAELITES to ARIADNE (I love Greek myths!) — great material in a tough grid to fill.

Then I hit the NW. Then I stalled. Then I gnashed. Then I erased. Then I cheated. Then I pretended I hadn't.

I finally did (mostly) finish, but not knowing OLIVIA WILDE or LIVE MAS (Taco Bell's yuletide celebration of existence?) and the tricky AMOR did me in. It didn't help that even as a nerdbot of the nth degree, UNICODE didn't register as a computing standard. The only way the clue could have been less helpful is if it read [Word related to computers].

All in all, I appreciated the innovation; always great to see something novel in a themeless. However, it's critical to make sure that a huge swath of solvers can successfully finish, and I'm not sure that there was enough overlap in the Venn diagram created by the NW entries.