New York Times, Thursday, January 26, 2023

DAN: This puzzle was inspired by something that neither of us remembers at this point. I was playing around with building some Thursday-style puzzles and especially liked this idea but was having trouble figuring out a way to execute it cleanly. Quiara had given me feedback on prior puzzles on the Crossword discord, so I was extremely grateful to collaborate more closely on this one to bring it to fruition. Hopefully, you enjoy it — or for those that dislike rebus puzzles, at least most of the squares only have one letter in them.

As an aside, I'm happy the clue for 1-Down was kept, as that was a small homage to my grandfather's family name. He liked orange circus peanuts and disliked crosswords.

QUIARA: It's nice to finally have an NYT grid to my name, although I'll be honest with you — I cannot point to a single aspect of this grid and say, "Hey, I did that!" I definitely wrote some of the clues here, although in the past 18 months, I've forgotten which are mine and which are Dan's. (Not to mention which are the editorial team's — our original RAUL clue referenced Raul Julia's star turn in Addams Family Values, IIRC, but that's the only edit I can spot without consulting the original submission.) My biggest contribution to the grid itself was an alternate northeast corner where the rebus squares spelled out BULK instead of FORM. That one got left on the cutting room floor.

Ah, well — there are worse things in life to have your name attached to than a good crossword grid, especially one which you created in tandem with someone as lovely as Mr. Ziring. Getting the chance to work with Dan again would have made making this puzzle "worth it" even if it hadn't gotten the greenlight from the Gray Lady. (Not that I mind the prestige and the national audience that comes with running in the Times, of course. Nor the $250.) But yes, I love collaborating with other constructors, particularly new and aspiring ones, and especially ones who, like me, don't fit the mold of the "average" (read: older, whiter, dudelier) constructor. If that sounds like you, then hit me up. (Even if you think your grids kinda suck. Especially if you think your grids kinda suck! Trust me, my first handful of grids su-u-ucked. As Jake the Dog put it, "sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something.")

On that topic: Boswords announced their roster for the 2023 Spring Themeless League last week, and like with the last two, the final constructor will be determined via open submissions. (More details on their submissions specs here.) The one caveat is that, being for a competition, you can't publicly show off your grid for feedback. But, since I test-solve all the Boswords grids, I am one of the very, very few people to whom you CAN send your grid for feedback. Making a puzzle for Boswords was a career highlight for me, and it's an incredible opportunity for relatively unknown constructors to get their work seen — I'd highly recommend giving it a stab.

This puzzle grew on me.

Wait, stay before FORMing your opinion! You might think what I say is SWELL.

Is anyone else getting SWEaty?

Such an innovative rebus concept, one I've never quite seen before. SNOWBALL EFFECT is a perfect revealer to describe G GR GRO GROW, F FO FOR FORM, and S SW SWE SWEL SWELL. Note that GROW, FORM, and SWELL are synonyms for SNOWBALL — swell concept indeed!

Wise choice to separate the three rebus sequences as much as possible. The five-step SWELL is particularly challenging, so sectioning it so only the middle three rebus squares have to interact with each other is excellent construction strategy.

(There's even a TL;DR way to create a dummy grid to fill the south region totally on its own. I tested it to see if I could improve on ETE TYR and the SWEATY / SWELTER similarity, but the best I could do was SWAZI / SWEDES / SWELTER with ADT ZEE ISR crossings.)

That sectioning made the solving process extremely difficult, though. Even after uncovering SNOWBALL EFFECT, I was stuck in the NW and NE corners and even more so in the south region. My frustration eventually turned to awe, but I imagine the rebus-haters out there — and there are a lot — might create a snowball effect in our mailbox today.

While this was several standard deviations harder than an average Thursday, I love the incredible creativity.