Artistic Differences

Jeremy Newton, of Austin, Tex., is an engineering manager for a mobile games company. Tracy Gray, of Hunt Valley, Md., owns and operates a lawn and landscaping business with her husband. They initially connected via Facebook. They shared the work of making this puzzle throughout, even in the end splitting the duty of writing the clues — one of them the Acrosses and the other the Downs.

This theme started with visually representing famous painting titles in the grid. After a few brainstorms, the concept of altering art into wacky knockoffs took over. One early version had us changing the letters F-O-R-G-E-R-Y across seven paintings into random letters to form silly phrases. For example, the "G" from FORGERY would map to the "G" a solver replaces in Leonardo's "THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI" to become "THE ADORATION OF THE MANI". This was fun, but the incorrect letters were oddly arbitrary — and having the solver mentally replace the wrong letters with F-O-R-G-E-R-Y to reveal the original titles was potentially unsatisfying.

What we decided felt most fun and impactful was including well-known original painting titles in the grid as guides, with F-O-R-G-E-R-Y squeezed into key squares alongside original letters — giving the sense that the solver is actually comparing the original to a fake, much like an art dealer. Our original Times submission included slashes in the rebus squares. The puzzle editors removed them in the final version, and we both agreed that the puzzle was better for it, since telegraphing all 7 of the either/or squares from the start would make a less tricky and satisfying solve.

Tracy and I were pleased that THE SON OF MAN snuck into our theme about forgery — since this painting appears in the 1999 film "The Thomas Crown Affair" which features a forgery scheme.

THE GIRTH OF VENUS … I wonder how many irate emails we'll get today.

Crossword constructors have long relied on REO to make grids work. Such useful letters! I enjoyed the insidery nod today with the REO BALLOON — which also plays on the REO Flying Cloud! I might be one of the few people grinning at that connection, but maybe I can float this fun idea into more people's consciousness.

REO BALLOON worked well for a second reason: you can easily confuse O and D with a casual glance. (If you're a parent of a six-year-old still working on his letters, you can easily confuse his Q and his … is that an ampersand?) It's perfect for an art FORGERY.

It would have been great to have others so closely disguised. I'm sure there would be some fights in the Museum of Modern Art if they labeled van Gogh's masterpiece as THE STARRY FIGHT. Maybe THE CREATION OF A DAY is easier to overlook since that switch comes at the end, but Y and M are tough to confuse.

Tricky decisions. Jeremy and Tracy's point about random letter changes feeling inelegant is well-taken. Having them spell out something is appealing. FORGERY is apt for the theme, and getting those letters to swap in with the limited number of uber-recognizable paintings is a tough job.

It doesn't feel amazing, but getting FORGERY to pop out is interesting. Not at all a BIG OOF (which apparently is what the kids say these days?), as I appreciated hearing about Jeremy and Tracy's creative process.