New York Times, Thursday, February 12, 2015

I was surprised to learn when researching the theme that it had not appeared before in the NY Times, so I was off and running with it. The fact that there are only four corners, however, made for a limited amount of theme material even with CORNERSTONE as the central reveal. I tried to find other entries which related and noticed INSCRIPTION — an integral part of a cornerstone. The task became finding an eleven letter partner, and it wasn't too long before I hit upon TIMECAPSULE, which very often is either contained in or lies behind a cornerstone.

The placement of the three elevens, with CORNERSTONE in the middle, was determined by the choice of vertical theme entries in the northeast and southwest. Fortunately, after some trial and error, STONEMASON and TOUCHSTONE fit the bill. I wanted all of the perimeter theme entries to be the same length, however with the added horizontal theme material that became very difficult to pull off, thus GEMSTONE and STONEAGE. I made a few changes to the fill after acceptance; 8-Down was originally SIDEARMS. Will and his team made a few more changes, as well as a great number of much better clues.

I was extremely honored to have this puzzle selected for the final round at this year's 16th Annual Westport Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Thanks to Will Shortz, and to Patrick Merrill who hosted, and congratulations to the winner Andy Kravis.

Literally four CORNERSTONEs today, with a beautiful clue for the revealer. [Where one might find a date …] felt like it had to be THE CORNER BAR, COFFEE HOUSE, MATCH DOT COM, or whatever the kids are using these days. Love the trickery, pointing to not a first date, but a calendar-type date.

Also nice to get some bonus material, INSCRIPTION and TIME CAPSULE worked in. And crossing theme answers, nonetheless! For how constrained those NE and SW corners were, they came out pretty well. People may point to OSA, ETTE, and ITO in these regions, but ITO feels perfectly fine to me given the fame both Lance Ito and Midori Ito achieved.

Once I figured out the concept, I worried a bit about the NW and SE corners — so difficult to fill corners with perimeter answers, and even more difficult when those areas are this big. Very pleasantly surprised to see how well the NW came out, even a WINESAP worked in.

The SE did have more glue than I like to see, but it's hard to avoid that. One aspect that I've picked up over the years is that in this sort of arrangement, needing words ending in "I" makes filing surprisingly difficult. Having two perimeter words containing an I — RHINE and GRIND — likely made things tougher.

Unfortunately, the ?????STONE pattern has limited results, and with TOUCHSTONE already used elsewhere, there aren't a lot of other good options in those two slots. In cases like these, I find that switching black squares around so that you can also draw upon ????STONE (only four preceding letters) can help immensely, opening yourself up to entries like SAND(STONE), EMMA(STONE), LODE(STONE), etc. Different lengths = more flexibility.

Finally, I loved the clue for AFT: [Like a spanker's position on a ship]. I hope no one's looking at my Google search history …