New York Times, Wednesday, October 21, 2015

MARY LOU: I happened on this Publilius Syrus adage while researching online. I find it very apropos today not only for what we say but especially for what we write online. I saw that it broke nicely into an 8/13/13/8 split and had the potential for a word ladder leading from FOOL to SAGE.

My original submission in December 2013 had a seven step word ladder. I heard from Anna Shechtman in April 2014 that Will liked the theme "which combines a quote and word ladder in a novel way. With that much theme material, though, it may not be possible to get completely clean fill." My additional attempts met with a reluctant no from Will, who added that if I could rework the grid with cleaner fill I could resubmit only my one favorite version. I contacted grid guru, Jeff Chen, at this point. Within a day's time he saw the possibility of adding an extra rung to the word ladder and came up with two versions he sent me, noting that the asymmetry of the original submission bugged him.

We both liked the same version. Jeff was a little hesitant to use the entry GRU but I convinced him that GRU along with ZAMBONI were the way to go. We received an acceptance from Will in May 2014. He noted that "GRU was new to me, but I think I'll go with it. It's more interesting than the best alternative I could see, GOA."

My thanks to Will, Anna and Joel for accepting and editing this puzzle. I hope you enjoyed solving it.

ML brought me in on this one late in the game. After I declined to work on it (I've sworn off word ladders for the most part), she showed me Will's message to her (see above). She knows me too well — there's nothing I like more than trying to pull off something that might not be possible.

So off I went, trying out skeleton arrangement after arrangement. Working with four long themers plus another six short words proved to be quite a challenge, but I just hate giving up.

I finally came up with something I liked, something that looked like the word ladder "flowed" from FOOL to SAGE. I wasn't a fan of the "jump" from the right to the left side, but I did like how TALL and TALE naturally served to link the two halves. I sent the rough skeleton back to ML, and she filled it in with a lot of nice stuff.

It's important to me to include at least a little bonus fill in every puzzle I work on, so I'm glad MONOLITH (huge "2001: A Space Odyssey" fan), SO SUE ME, and SEX SELLS made their way in. Even though I've become a bit snobby about candy these days, I do like me a Mr. GOODBAR every once in a while.

Both of us are big "Despicable Me" fans, so I'm glad ML pushed for GRU to get his 15 minutes, despite my hesitations.

As always, a pleasure working with ML!