New York Times, Friday, February 18, 2022

One of the many things I love about making crosswords is how a single puzzle becomes a fingerprint of who you are while you are making it. The words you choose to put into a grid say something about your interests, your obsessions, your values. For example, I think this puzzle makes it pretty clear that I'm interested in food, since TONKATSU and BOXED WINE are both given prime real estate in the grid. Similarly, this puzzle highlights my juvenile sense of humor, since both BRAIN FART and NAKED LIE are some of the first and last words you see while solving.

And, as you may know if you solve a lot of my puzzles, I absolutely love books. BODICE RIPPERS, yes, but also, mainly, children's books. I always try to sneak references to children's books into my clues (see 45-down) and this is, in large part, because children's books are my profession.

The juxtaposition of these many facets of a constructor's personality is always fascinating to me as a constructor, but it's especially intriguing to me as a writer. I've always enjoyed playing with the definition of poetry in my books, and the unique poetry of a crossword puzzle is something I've been trying to write about for years.

Today I'm thrilled to share the news that my third book, Words Apart, will be coming out in winter of 2024. This book combines poetry, comics, word definitions, and, yes, fully-solvable crossword puzzles. It's the story of two sisters, Olive and Mattie, and their sometimes tumultuous relationship, as they realize that life doesn't always have a right answer, spelled out perfectly inside of neat black-and-white boxes.

I hope you enjoyed this puzzle as much as I enjoyed making it and I look forward to sharing Words Apart with you!

I'm not cool enough to know what Aimee's parties are like, but I sure appreciated being invited today. All those entries she highlighted mixed together to form an awesome bacchanalian rave. I'll gladly sit in the corner, eating my Japanese lunch dish of choice, TONKATSU, while enjoying the festivities.

Two clues that likely will cause confusion so I'll explain them, and one that amazed:

• PIANO, usually written as "p" on a score, indicates to play at a [Soft] volume. Jim Horne often plays PIANO on his grand PIANO, although his forte is playing loudly.
• This Seattleite gets a contact high just taking out his trash from all the POT smoke wafting about. I don't hear it called [Dope] ever, but that's definitely slang for marijuana.
• What field involves blood, sweat, and tears? Literally, FORENSICS!

Friday themeless have the most supply and least demand (from editors as a whole), so the bar has risen incredibly high. Something like NCR crossing RNS wouldn't have caused a second thought ten years ago, but the landscape is different today. OSH is a tough one to accept too, since it's not even a standalone word, just a chunk ripped out of OshKosh B'Gosh.

Aimee's entertaining voice came through so well, through both her entries and clues. Appropriate to have both ADORE and SWOON in the grid. With a few cleanup touches with a revision RASP, it'd have been an easy POW! pick.