New York Times, Tuesday, October 22, 2019

I'm extremely excited to be making my NYT debut! I'm a 17-year-old high school junior from Washington, DC, and I made this puzzle for a school project. I know it sounds crazy. But, in tenth grade, we were asked to do a "personal project" about something that piqued our interest. I chose to take up constructing crossword puzzles. My mom, older sister, and grandfather love crosswords, and I had just gotten into solving puzzles myself. My English teacher, Tom Heilman, is an experienced constructor who guided me through the process and gave me great advice. Some of my classmates made fun of me because everybody was researching ways to save the world while I was trying to come up with a perfect puzzle, but it all worked out in the end.

I came up with this theme at the dinner table with my family. It started off as famous people whose names are also sentences, with BILL WITHERS instead of SEAN COMBS. I built and filled a grid, only to realize that focusing the puns on jobs would be more interesting. Creating a clean fill was a struggle because I was an inexperienced constructor, but I finally managed to come up with something that seemed worthy of submission.

I'm very happy about the way the NW corner turned out. I love the combination of 2-Down and 3-Down. My favorite clues in the puzzle are [Howl of happiness] and [Muppet with a smartphone friend named Smartie].

I'd like to thank Will Shortz and his team for the great feedback, edits, and clues. I hope everybody enjoys!

Constructors have been improving by leaps and bounds over the years. I love experiencing a debut this smooth and well-crafted. I used to cringe when seeing a new byline, knowing that the person would have a long way to climb up that steep, steep learning curve. I'm more optimistic these days, seeing more new constructors emerge with strong gridwork right off the bat.

A middle 9-letter entry — ROSA PARKS — usually causes all sorts of problems for rookie constructors, because it forces four big corners. Not only that, each of those four big corners has to be filled with 7-letter answers, which can be a sneakily tough length to work with. It's so difficult to pick colorful 7-letter entries while keeping the shorter surrounding fill clean.

Well, it's not difficult as much as it's incredibly time-consuming. Most constructors aren't willing to iterate dozens of times until they find solutions as strong as ABSCOND / EREADER / SEA LEGS, with only minor bits like CALS and NEG holding it all together. That's an excellent result.

I've seen so many "celebs whose last names are X" themes that it's tough to get excited about today's. It is impressive, though, that Saul was so consistent, picking A-listers whose last names are all verbs ending in S. It's not as tight as I'd like — BRITNEY SPEARS, BEN FOLDS, WESLEY SNIPES, BROOKE SHIELDS, ROBIN QUIVERS, TOM WAITS, ED BURNS, JOHN WATERS, ALICIA KEYS, and on and on — but there's no rule that all themes must be tight.

Overall, not a memorable theme, but a memorably well-crafted debut.