New York Times, Monday, April 17, 2023

KATE: Woo hoo! I took up constructing during the pandemic and am eternally grateful to the welcoming, generous crossworld community for helping out a clueless newbie. I'm ecstatic to have my NYT debut with Scott, whose skill is matched only by his kindness. This was my 22nd submission — I finally wore them down!

This theme was Scott's idea, and we had fun going back and forth on themers (Can you read body language over Zoom? Does a silent movie have words? What's your favorite obscene gesture?). I'm so grateful to inimitable, hilarious mentor Ross Trudeau. I reached out cold to constructors I admired who were foolish enough to list contact information — thank you to collaborators Ross, Scott, Jeff, Adam, Matt, and Laura. In conclusion, woo hoo!

SCOTT: Kate has been a fantastic collaborator. I tend to construct freestyle [i.e., themeless] puzzles, so noodling on theme ideas with a creative partner like her has been a delight. This puzzle went through several revisions to make it more Monday-friendly — including a last one by the editors, thereby losing the fantastic CORI Bush — and being able to debate the merits of many, many fill options with Kate made the process much more enjoyable!

THERE ARE NO WORDS is such a colorful phrase to play upon. The connections to SILENT TREATMENT, EMOJI KEYBOARD, and ELEVATOR MUSIC are so fun!

Neat to see an early-week, debut offering feature so many delightful bonuses. With four themers, it's almost always possible to incorporate four long Downs — one in each corner. Tough letter combinations can make this more challenging, but check out how ODE TO JOY so joyfully uses that J.

Many would stop there, placing a black square at the second C of ICE CUBES and/or the first S of LETS SAY, and that would be acceptable. Working in eight long Down bonuses? Most of the time, I'd tell constructors to GET REAL because it's too easy to GO ASTRAY. Even if you can get the extra long Downs to work in the middle of the grid, that often causes the usual four to take hits in color.

There were compromises, like requiring ROTC to make ICE CUBES work, and STET is niche vocabulary that might turn off newer solvers. All the crosses are unambiguous, so it all works, but it left me wishing there were a touch fewer dabs of GOOS.

That said, it was such a pleasure to be confounded until the very end, and the freshness of EMOJI KEYBOARD was so welcome. Such entertaining, well-constructed work from a newer pair of constructors is an ode to joy, indeed.

Crossword solvers quickly learn that paying attention to clue precision is critical to success. An answer must match the tense and the formality level of the clue. Clue abbreviations imply answer abbrevs. Etc.

But the opposite is also true. Solvers need to accept the fuzziness of clues, especially if there is colloquial support. Speed and velocity aren't the same thing, but non-physicists use them interchangeably. Ode to Joy isn't the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth, but close enough for crosswords.

The fourth movement of Beethoven's final completed symphony included (shocking, at the time) four solo singers and an entire choir. Singing words! In what was supposed to be a "pure music" form! Kids and their crazy music nowadays! The lyrics for the singers were adapted from a poem by Friedrich Schiller called, in English, "Ode to Joy."

There's a sad story about the premiere of this work. Beethoven, already deaf, wanted to conduct, so he stood on a conductor's stand and madly waved his arms while someone nearby waved a baton that the musicians actually followed. But there's a happy ending. When the piece was finished, Beethoven turned to face the audience. The crowd knew he couldn't hear, so along with the clapping and cheering, they threw their hats and handkerchiefs into the air so the maestro could see that he was appreciated and loved.