New York Times, Wednesday, March 21, 2018

This puzzle's theme was inspired by a text. I was chatting with a friend, and he texted, in response to something I said, "Bears repeating!" So I sent back a row of the "bear face" emoji:

🐻🐻🐻🐻🐻

— bears, repeating. I realized I had a 14-letter phrase, and started looking around for others that began with the criteria "plural animal name that is also a verb."The original grid had BEARS REPEATING (with the clue [Grizzly, panda, grizzly, panda, grizzly, panda?]), along with SEALS WITH A KISS [Pinniped passion?], YAKS ON THE PHONE [Himalayan cattle call?], and the revealer ANIMAL BEHAVIOR.

This was one of the very first puzzles I submitted to the New York Times, almost a year ago. Will and Joel were very encouraging in their feedback and suggested a second draft in which each entry had a prepositional phrase (bye bye BEARS!) and no revealer. I put together a new version (with much help from Erik Agard and John Lieb, both of whom have been fantastic as mentors and collaborators) which was finally accepted. This is my solo debut in the Times; much has happened since I first started constructing, and I feel very fortunate to be part of the crossword community.

Fun animal plays today, reinterpreting phrases involving animals that can commonly double as a verb. DUCKS OUT OF VIEW = birds hiding from a hunter, FLIES IN THE FACE eliciting that awful feeling of having gnats swarm you, etc.

I thought Laura did a fantastic job in grid execution. There are only four themers, but since they're all long (14 letters), this usually causes problems in the west and east regions, where two long themers have to interact. Beautiful work in the east. Smooth results, and even an X in AXELS, along with the nice FERMI and HAMLET. Now that's the way to execute in that type of tricky region!

In the west, FIXIE seemed odd to me — I remember it seeming even odder when I first saw it. But it does seem to be a term in usage.

I imagine Laura tried out different combinations of themers in different locations to figure out what letter placements would best allow for smooth fill. Very nice to have that flexibility, if you can select themers that are all of equal length.

The reason I didn't consider this POW!-worthy was the awkwardness of the themers. SEALED WITH A KISS is a fantastic phrase. SEALS WITH A KISS, not so much. Same with FLIES IN THE FACE, without "of" to finish it off. And ON THE PHONE felt like filler in order to make YAKS fit the theme. I realize YAKS ON THE PHONE might seem more solid to others, but I doubt I'd strive to use it as fill in another crossword.

Impressive solo debut, though. I'm hoping that we'll be seeing a lot more from Laura. Her gridwork was much better than stuff I see from many — perhaps even most — experienced constructors.