New York Times, Thursday, February 23, 2017

Don't get what's going on? Check out 10, 20, 30, 40 in the grid.

Still don't get it? Look at the entries at 10-Down, 20-Across, 30-Down, and 40-Across.

(Don't you hate-love it when someone (HOOD)WINKS you with (TRICK)QUESTIONS?)

I wish I could have rounded these out with two final answers more tricksy than (PUSH)PIN and (PET)ROCK — that was the Holy Grail. Ah well.

This idea came to me back in 2014, when Will asked me to write tricky Puzzle #5 for the ACPT … with only three weeks to go. In a state of sheer panic, I brainstormed day and night for one of those weeks, and this particular concept was only half-baked by then. For the life of me, I couldn't get it to work quite right. Thankfully, Will chose a different idea.

I forgot about it for a year, but it popped back in my head when I heard the phrase TEN FOUR. Wouldn't it be cool to have phrases involving TWO, FOUR, SIX, EIGHT, TEN — and combine TEN and FOUR!

It nearly killed me to put the grid together, what with having to place themers at 2-D, 4-D, 6-D, 8-D, and 10-D — in such a way to never have a 2-A, 4-A, 6-A, 8-A, or 10-A, which would have confused the issue — and I was pretty happy with it, especially since the entire south of the puzzle was wide-open; ripe for great themeless fill. I had a lot of fun adding in colorful material in that first draft.

It's always a mixed blessing to hear that Will likes a concept but wants a revision. In this case, he liked the general idea ... but didn't like that TEN and FOUR were combined as themers … and didn't like that there was no theme in the south of the puzzle.

Shows you what I know!

It would have been easy to use a set of random numbers for the redo — FRESHMAN FIFTEEN leading to FRESHMAN SENATOR and SWEET SIXTEEN leading to SWEET CAROLINE were two of my favorites — but that felt inelegant. I wanted some set or progression. It took a long time to figure out a set that worked with 10, 20, 30, 40.

If you've never tried to create a grid in which themers have to be at specific numbers, don't. It's like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer. A white-hot hammer. A white-hot hammer with an angry shark duct-taped to it.

I didn't want to use so many black squares, and I hated going up to 78 words, but every sub-78 word grid I completed (about two dozen of them) had some small entry that rubbed me the wrong way. Or didn't have enough colorful material. Or sticky shark bite prints.

Big relief to finally get the "we're good to go" email from Joel!