New York Times, Thursday, February 13, 2020

We're so excited to be back in the New York Times after what feels like forever! We kept busy during that time with our now 16-month-old son, Clark, and trying to think of fun puzzle ideas.

As is often the case, constructors think alike and David Steinberg's great Sunday puzzle last year employed a similar theme concept with balls vs dice in ours. It looked like David had beaten us to the punch for this particular "trick" and so we were very pleasantly surprised that our puzzle was accepted as well.

Some memorable things about this puzzle:

1. When we couldn't find enough theme entries in our word list, we did it the "old-fashioned" way by searching the good ol' world wide web, which resulted in a few debut entries.
2. It worked out nicely that the DICE entries rotated in a progression (though that was probably more luck than skill.
3. Given the theme density and the fixed placement of the DICE, we're happy that not too much crosswordese was needed.
4. Karl's thrilled his Star Trek shout-out at 31-A survived.
5. Amanda prefers the editing team's clue at 24-D — parenthood has given new meaning to Seuss-isms (and Mr. Rogers).

To any aspiring constructor, feel free to contact us at amandakarlxword@gmail.com. We'd be happy to talk shop.

Amanda Chung and Karl Ni ROLL THE DICE today, placing D I C E into dice-like visuals. At first, I wondered how an up-right-down movement was a "roll," but that led down a long Chidi-like internal debate of moral existentialism, and I had to slap myself upside the head.

I enjoyed several elements today:

• Each of the D I C E roll clockwise (see, I told you, they're rolling. Okay, maybe not physically but in a metaphysical sense ... although one wonders — SLAP, STOP THAT!)
• There are four instances, each starting with a different position, to cover all four possible clockwise permutations.
• It's so neat to get entries that are longer than 15 letters. We rarely see something like REVERSE DICTIONARY; excellent themer choice.
• Each DICE breaks across a phrase, and each phrase is exactly two words.

I've seen many up-right-down motion puzzles, so I appreciated all the elegant touches.

I could have used more polish in the grid, though. There was so much EAN EINE HAI MEIN RGS STS. Even taking out the worst one — EAN, a weird suffix — would have made a big difference. Perhaps a black square at the H of HEIDI would have been a quick fix, though it's hard to say if the opposite side would cooperate.

A lot of bonuses did help to balance out some of the infelicities — I love stately VALHALLA and, of course, my man, ARISTOTLE. Hmm. What would he say about the roll issue? Would he consider the ethical ramifications of --

*sound of "Nichomachean Ethics" dropped onto my head*

BTW, if you haven't done the Patrick Berry suite from 2011, I highly recommend it. I won't say why I thought of it today. Just do it.