New York Times, Wednesday, October 31, 2018

I remember sending a punny Halloween puzzle to the NYT about a year ago. They replied that the puzzle was OK, but they already had a Halloween puzzle in mind for 2018 - sorry, Charlie. That was disappointing but then, a couple of months later, they wrote to say this CRYPT puzzle was accepted for Halloween, and I had never even thought of that possibility. You just never know, and the pun puzzle is running today in the LA Times.

I see the editors punked my crossword FILL again, at 12-Down, calling it "Truckload at a garbage dump". On 6/7/18 they rated my FILL "Dirt in a dump truck, perhaps", so really not much improvement....

I remember with this crypt puzzle I was having a lot of trouble finding room for five theme entries and still being able to fill it cleanly. I eventually added a couple of blocks above WHY ME, and it worked out. It wasn't till I was cluing it that I noticed that I had accidentally made a cross directly above the crypt, which brought back memories of touring crypts below cathedrals in Europe a few times. For Halloween, I guess it's more like a tombstone marker over a crypt in the graveyard — at midnight, with spider webs. It's useful to have a good word list and practice your construction a lot, but sometimes luck plays a huge role in puzzle production.

My son Ryan was laid to rest in 2001, but he is remembered in a small way today, at 59-Down. More importantly, the Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act of 2008 (introduced by Dianne Feinstein and signed by George Bush) continues to save lives.

I love it when constructors break rules (for a good reason.) There have been plenty of grids where one section is completely separated from the rest, including one TOMB, but I adored the image of the little CRYPT at the bottom of the puzzle, actually looking like a CRYPT straight out of an Indiana Jones movie.

(I gave the TOMB puzzle a POW! too ... might I be obsessed with burial sites? Hmm.)

The "letter homophones" concept has been done many times in crosswords, one in particular that I loved. Even though this notion been employed over and over, there's always room to innovate, by cleverly combining the well-worn idea with a different one to produce something more than the sum of its parts. It's neat that you can homophonically spell out a five-letter word in C R Y P T, and even neater to make the leap to use this to hint at a blocked-off region.

And the execution! Cross made out of black squares gives the grid an even creepier feel. Added bonuses in ROTARY CLUBS, KGB MOLE, GOMORRAH, ARAMAIC — lovely stuff. All with super-clean short fill? Yes!

I could have done without the stretch to clue THEME as sort of a quasi-revealer. But other than that, such a fantastic solving experience.