New York Times, Thursday, December 17, 2020

I'm thrilled to make my NY Times debut with a puzzle dedicated to one of my favorite composers. I play piccolo and flute in the Houston Symphony and Beethoven's music is always a joy to perform. (When I'm not performing I can often be found backstage hunched over a crossword with a few colleagues). Beethoven's Fifth is extra special to me because it was the first symphony to feature the piccolo! If you've only heard the first movement I encourage you to listen to the whole thing — it's a true masterpiece. The opening four notes are said to represent fate "knocking at the door" and the entire symphony plays out as an epic struggle between darkness and light.

I grew up doing crossword puzzles with my dad, a devoted daily solver despite being a terrible speller. We still do puzzles together and now he is the beta-tester for my creations (additional thanks to my mom, sister, Matthew and Ian!) I started constructing puzzles about 2 years ago after doing a lot of diagramless crosswords. Those got me interested in the structure and symmetry of crosswords and led me to try creating my own.

The hardest part for me is coming up with a clever theme, so I was excited when I got the idea to embed the opening notes of Beethoven's Fifth in a puzzle. I wanted the placement of the "notes" to make sense musically as well. If you draw a line through the rows starting at 20-, 28-, 36-, 44- and 55-across, you'll create a 5-line musical staff with the notes falling on the correct line (in treble clef) - transforming the puzzle into a piece of sheet music.

It was a delight to be edited by Will Shortz, who took this puzzle's clues to the next level. I can't take credit for most of the really good ones, especially 58-across which cracked me up!

Happy 250th Ludwig!

Fourth debut in a row! The ominous sequence representing FATE, the group of four tones that is the hand of God, the strike of the Grim Reaper's scythe. Dum dum dum DUUUUM!

It's time to have a word with XWord Info's dumb symphony blogger.

I appreciated the visual presentation of G G G EFLAT, appearing as it would in a score, with G a few rows higher than EFLAT. Perfect that the Gs are short, and the EFLAT stretches out like it does when played!

Also interesting were the FATE and DEAF touches in the puzzle. I didn't remember that bit about the sequence representing FATE, but what other short musical sequence does that better?

It's a shame that this tribute comes so quickly after the last one, especially since E FLAT was incorporated into the same entry. Talk about leaving solvers DEFLATED. There's not much else you can hide EFLAT in, though, since BONNEVILLE FLATS doesn't disguise FLAT at all.

There are several execution problems with today's version, like RIGI a head-scratcher, C MINOR not placed symmetrically with LUDWIG, FATE and DEAF not matching positions either, and the odd mini-themed feel of ASGARD and LOKI. However, the visual of G G G EFLAT mimicking the musical score is so neat that I could maybe overlook the issues, especially given that it's a debut.

I doubt Will Shortz, looking back in hindsight, would make the same decisions to accept both puzzles. I can imagine his situation, though. You've already said yes to David's puzzle, and this one comes across your desk. You can't de-accept a puzzle … so maybe take this neat visual one, too, and spread them out?

At the time, it could have seemed like a passable idea. A shame that Will ran Kathryn's second, though, taking away from a debut constructor's impact.

A couple of music notes today (haha.) First, OBOE really is featured in Beethoven's Fifth, as Peter Schickele makes clear in this famous bit imagining how sportscasters might call the first movement.

More importantly, 4-Down is all the excuse I need to embed the official Love Like a Yeti video. Musicians aren't performing in front of audiences these days, but some friends and I got together in a socially-distant outdoor way to record this brilliant song by our drummer Jeremy Stone. Some of you may recognize ace crossword solver Jeff Brumley on bass.