New York Times, Tuesday, February 11, 2014

MATTHEW: Inspiration for this puzzle came while engaging in one of my favorite activities: list-making. Actually, the list aspect came later...

I originally tried to make this puzzle solo, but only got so far as the theme answers and a grid that remained mostly unfilled. Some months later, I saw an open invitation from Jeff on one of the crossword blogs to anyone interested in collaborating or just passing an idea by him and getting feedback. So I dusted off my idea, shared it with him, and so began our collaboration.

The first order of business was improving the theme answers. My biggest takeaway from this entire experience is the importance of having a tight, consistent theme, and there was room for improvement in what I had produced. We came up with a modified set of four theme answers (IT DIDN'T WASH, CAME UP DRY, WENT TO PRESS, IN THE FOLD), but still needed a good revealer. We brainstormed some ideas, such as LAUNDRY DAY and LAUNDRY SERVICE, but none of these worked; they were either too obscure or they had been done before. And then Jeff came up with the perfect revealer: LAUNDRY LIST. I really liked this as it tied everything together visually. The theme answers sort of resemble a list. With our improved theme, we proceeded with the grid and the fill, secure in the knowledge we'd knocked it out of the park. Not quite...

The feedback on the original submission was that the first theme answer, IT DIDN'T WASH, wasn't a familiar enough phrase. (In other words, it didn't wash.) Thus, the puzzle was rejected. Jeff suggested I propose an alternative answer that he devised, and as luck would have it, there was renewed interest in the puzzle. After some additional revisions based on Will's request to further tighten theme answer consistency, and an entire reconstruction of the puzzle...success!

Thank you for solving — and reading about — our puzzle!

And now for another installment of "JEFF VS. DAN", where I speed-solve against ACPT champ Dan Feyer on my own puzzles. Because he's spanked me so badly recently, I studied the grid extensively just before solving this time, trying to memorize every single entry. My time: 3:00 even. And that's with me typing in an utter frenzy! Check back into see what times Dan and the other speedsters post at Dan's blog.

Very fun to work with Matthew on this one. He was so pleasant in writing, and equally pleasant when I gave him some feedback. Theme ideas are hard to come by, and often times it's a real strength to know when to let something go. Very few people can do that, moving on to brainstorm further (I typically go through 20ish theme ideas before settling in on something that moves me).

This one was a toughie! We wanted to incorporate WASH DRY PRESS FOLD in that order, use LAUNDRY LIST as a revealer, and have each of the four words in snazzy phrases where the word had a different meaning. Not easy at all. As Matthew mentioned, we originally had a different grid, and Will gave us thoughtful feedback with his rejection. After nodding my head (read: swearing up a storm and perhaps making a mustachioed voodoo doll; I neither confirm nor deny this), we went back to the drawing board. Good thing we did, because Will's intervention forced us to dig harder, and we eventually came up with these themers, which we liked much better than the original set.

One aspect I'll point out in the gridwork: incorporating five long themers is tough, and it becomes even tougher when your middle entry is a "weird" length (13, 11, or 9 letters), which sort of splits the grid in half. Solvers might have minor gripes today, saying we could have cleaned up NEH (yup, ugh!) and SWED (double ugh!) by breaking up OF SORTS and PREPARE with black squares. We tried that, but look where POLIO sits. Turns out that there were few entries that could have worked there, and I just despise OLIO. Personal tick of mine. So we deemed it better to include the nice OF SORTS and exclude the ugsome OLIO. Would you rather have NEH or OLIO? Matter of taste, methinks.

Matthew and I have another collaboration waiting in the wings — he's two for two on submissions to the NYT! A whole lot better than my overall acceptance rate, roughly 33%. And that's a whole lot better than my original acceptance rate, which was roughly 0% (0 for 22). That was a long two+ years (with a very patient editor)...