New York Times, Thursday, March 23, 2017

This is my first published puzzle. I'm pretty excited about my debut, but I think my dad is more excited. I remember him and my mom working on the Sunday Times puzzle when I was young, but I never had much interest in crosswords myself. It wasn't until I was about thirty that I started solving these things (with some help from my sister). Five years later I started constructing amusing (or at least mildly inappropriate) puzzles for my friends, usually to celebrate New Year's. We also play crossword puzzle charades, where we take turns pantomiming the clues and then putting the answers into an empty solution grid.

This puzzle bears little resemblance to my original submission. In fact, with the exception of three short theme answers, there's nothing left of the original. Even the grid size is different. If you're interested, take a look at the original 15x16 puzzle.

I started with the idea of squeezing extra words into a grid where they didn't fit. The entire theme would consist of unclued answers that had to be thin enough (literally) to squeeze in. I thought of (skinny) JEANS, (narrow) BRIDGE, (narrow) MARGIN, (lean) BEEF, (thin) line, (thin) ICE, (thin) AIR and (slim) CHANCE. Once I settled on 5 symmetric theme answers I had to go 16 wide with JEANS in the middle.

But Will thought the grid would look best if entire columns were thin instead of just individual answers. So…basically a complete rewrite. I'm still not sure which I like better, but Will and Joel were very helpful with the overhaul. I hope you like how it turned out.

Sandy uses slimmed-down columns for theme answers that have an implied "thin" qualifier. (See grid below). 14-Down isn't MINTS, for example, but (THIN) MINTS. Same with (SLIM) CHANCE, (LEAN) CUISINE, (NARROW) ESCAPE, and (SKINNY) JEANS.

I particularly liked the ones where the answer in the grid made no sense until grokking the theme idea — CUISINE isn't a brand, but (LEAN CUISINE) is.

CHANCE and JEANS didn't work as well, as both could fit with their respective clues without the implied qualifier — a long shot does have a CHANCE, and some JEANS are form-fitting.

Some nice gridwork for a debut. It's tough to work with short theme answers, because that means you'll need a bunch of long fill elsewhere (due to the maximum word count limit of 78). That bottom left corner shines, with OMNISCIENT running through a RAINOUT, and some PINE TAR giving a baseball mini-theme. EXECUTE even gives us a bonus — a rare X. All that for the price of an OST = great craftsmanship, especially considering how hard it is to work with all that white space.

The upper left corner didn't come out as well in my eyes. TOOK HEART is good, as is ALA MODE and THINKER, but IDLER has a made-up feel, and PEER INTO is more neutral than positive (I have a hard time getting excited about phrases with a tacked-on preposition). And CARIOLE … it's a real word, but it wasn't satisfying for me to uncover, after working so hard to piece together every letter.

There were also a few HRS, PEU, COSM blips (that last one seems more major to me than the others), but some nice fill to help balance out those liabilities — PUT TO A VOTE, SHINDIG, TOURISTS stood out in my eyes.

I liked the creativity of using these thin columns, but the trick might have played better on a Tues or Wed since it came pretty easily and could even be (mostly) overlooked while still finishing. Still, always fun to see something kooky going on, deviating from neat little square boxes.