New York Times, Monday, January 20, 2025

Professor Byl: Thanks to co-author Jeff Chen! His nudges were a huge help, and it's fun to work on a puzzle with a good partner. With Jeff's pre-submission tweaks, I was happily shocked at how many of our original clues made it through…

One exception is for 1A ["I'm just a ___" ("Schoolhouse Rock!" song)], since that's exactly how you pronounce "Byl" (which — you guessed it — many folks mispronounce).

Thanks also to Robyn! I got interested in constructing during the pandemic and reached out to Robyn Weintraub (because she was and is my all-time absolute favorite constructor) way, way, way back in 2021. She's either leading a double life — or is one of the nicest people I know. She was a terrific mentor: kind yet to the point.

FYI, I wasn't very serious about constructing until early September of 2023, when someone close to me had a stroke. (Yes, a few months before Will's stroke…) Right at the same time, I had a birthday, and Robyn was also featured in this (fun) BBC interview.

It's fun to re-listen to that… I had an old friend ask me this week, "What's the hardest part of constructing a crossword?" — and my answer was, instantly, "getting started" — e.g., with a solid theme!! (No joke there.)

I often tell doctoral students that being ABD (all but dissertation) is not a minor thing. It's like climbing Mount Washington (which can have impressively extreme weather near the top). It feels like you're making good progress — and then you finally clear the tree line, so you have a better perspective on where you are and where you need to go, and you realize, "Oh #$@&. I'm not as close to finishing as I thought I was — not nearly…"

And so it was for me, with crosswords. Robyn's interview mentioned XWord Info and the rest is history, as they say…

Specifically, I excitedly went to look into XWord Info — and then found out it was slated for "decommissioning." (Oh no!!) Despite this, I signed up for an account and wrote to Jim Horne to ask if Jeff Chen was still doing collabs. (Robyn had warned me Jeff had stepped down from his role at XWord Info and was unsure if he was still open to collabs…)

Oh, wait, lastly, special thanks to — Mr. Horne! I'm very excited to have a crossword documented here on the "now-defunct" website*** xwordinfo.com! (…and published on NYT, too.)

And yet, if Mr. Horne refers to me here as "Ms. Byl" — I am going to make a point to tease him about it — on a very regular basis.

*** For those who are not yet level-5 geeks in the crossword universe, that's a shout-out to Brian Cimmet and Ryan "Ebirt" Hecht — and their Fill Me In podcast — and Brian's repeated teasing about this.