New York Times, Tuesday, November 29, 2022

This is my first published puzzle in any outlet. I got into crosswords by doing NYT syndicated puzzles in my hometown paper in Oregon. I started making crosswords about four years ago on graph paper. I filled in the grids by continuously googling phrases like "7 letter words that end in ern". I have since found better constructing methods, which is certainly reflected in the quality of puzzles I have made.

Finding a set of seven birds to cross FEATHER going down was a challenge. Originally I had a different set of birds, but the editing team objected to having HEN be one of the birds (because it can refer to multiple species), so I had to redo the grid. Overall, I think the fill is pretty good, though I do not love the DANO/CONED crossing. A lot of the bird-themed clues were done by the editing team, so props to them for that. Hope you enjoyed the puzzle.

BIRDS of a feather FLOCK onto a single FEATHER. Longtime readers will know that my thoughts went straight to the precious phoenix feather at the core of Harry Potter — and Voldemort's! — wand. That may seem irrelevant to Muggles, but note how FEATHER is at the heart of today's puzzle!

I better dust off my protego spell.

There's some neat gridwork around the center. Seven birds flying through FEATHER is an eye-catching visual. I appreciated that David used a couple of long ones in FALCON / CONDOR — it would have been all too easy to default to ones like HEN, EMU, DOVE.

Beautiful use of black squares to separate FEATHER into halves. Once you place KESTREL, you can work on the left and right sides independently. It's still a challenge, though. You have a huge list of birds to draw from, but filling the center, period, is as challenging as summoning your patronus.

It was a relief to not see the crosswordese ERN, ERNE, or TERN, too. NENE isn't ideal, but among a stately group of KESTREL WREN HAWKs, it's not one of the unforgivable curses.

I wish there had been more theme material, especially since COOL AS A CUCUMBER and HORSE WITH NO NAME aren't related. Nice effort to clue PEACE CORPS and URBAN AREAS related to BIRDS, but those seemed only indirectly related, at best. BIRDS OF A / FEATHER / FLOCK / TOGETHER doesn't achieve crossword symmetry, but I wouldn't mind a stray FLOCK for the price of having the full adage included.

Although the theme was a bit of a beak-scratcher — a single feather shared by seven birds? — I enjoyed the visual of the FLOCK densely packed together.