I'M STILL STANDING

August Lee-Kovach is a freshman at Concord-Carlisle High School, in Concord, Mass. He started solving crosswords with his family when he was 9. Someone would read the clues aloud and anyone could call out answers. He started constructing puzzles by himself when he was 11.

This is his third Times puzzle, starting last October, and his first Sunday. At 14 years 11 months, August is the youngest known person ever to have a Sunday crossword in the paper.

This puzzle has gone through more iterations than any other puzzle I have constructed, from seed idea to publication. I developed the central theme early in 7th grade (I'm now in 9th grade). We were learning about Ancient Egypt in Social Studies. The Great Pyramid of Giza, the mystery behind how it was built, and what's inside, always fascinated me. When I realized that THEGREATPYRAMIDOFGIZA was exactly 21 letters, and that it would fit in a pyramid shape inside a crossword puzzle grid, it was too perfect an opportunity to pass up! I also liked the idea of having KHUFU in his tomb in the pyramid.

After that, I (mostly) took a break from the puzzle for about a year and a half. I didn't know where to go from there, and I still hadn't had a puzzle accepted by the Times. Then, last summer I discovered the possibility of using numbered squares to hide KHUFU. I was off and running again. The supplementing, straight-forward theme content followed, and I submitted.

Still, it bugged me that the puzzle had no word play in it. The Times said "yes" to the theme but asked for cleaner fill. I refilled the puzzle, and in the process, I noticed that ENCRYPT would fit front and center. For me, that entry makes the puzzle, because it ties together how KHUFU is in a crypt, but also encoded through the numbered squares. Three months later, here we are!

Today's PYRAMID scheme sucked me in almost as much the one back in 2015. Jill and I didn't get to enter the Great Pyramid back in 2010, but descending into the depths of a minor one was still memorable. Although the suffocating air was infused with centuries of decay, it was worth the claustrophobic sensation that we could be buried alive at any moment. You can't get much closer to reliving the SEVEN WONDERS / OF THE / ANCIENT WORLD.

Such meticulous gridwork, too, is worthy of the Egyptians and their precise building techniques. Diagonal theme entries take away flexibility and cause grid problems. It was smart thinking to separate the letters around PYRAMID with a pyramid of black squares.

The theme felt thin at first, but on second glance, I noted several shorter but also important entries: the KINGS / CHAMBER where CHEOPS / KHUFU is entombed, THREE chambers, LIMESTONE.

It was enough to make it feel worthy of the expanded Sunday palette and much more memorable than the average Sunday fare that doesn't always hold my attention. If there had been a more unusual mechanism to hint at the buried KHUFU letters or a way for the circled letters not to make the theme so obvious, this would have been my easy POW! pick.

Grids with unchecked squares are rare, but this is the third this month.

SYLLOGISM (46-Across) always reminds me of Lewis Carroll because he published so many great ones. This one is easy:

1. All babies are illogical
2. Nobody is despised who can manage a crocodile.
3. Illogical persons are despised.

Work through the logic and you end up with something like "Anyone who can manage a crocodile is not a baby."

Fair enough. Here is a longer one for you to tackle on your own:

1. None of the unnoticed things, met with at sea, are mermaids.
2. Things entered in the log, as met with at sea, are sure to be worth remembering.
3. I have never met with anything worth remembering, when on a voyage.
4. Things met with at sea, that are noticed, are sure to be recorded in the log.

And finally, an even longer and somewhat rude one:

1. No interesting poems are unpopular among people of real taste.
2. No modern poetry is free from affectation.
3. All your poems are on the subject of soap bubbles.
4. No affected poetry is popular among people of real taste.
5. No ancient poem is on the subject of soap bubbles.