New York Times, Wednesday, May 4, 2022

At one point, while trying to come up with crossword theme ideas, I was thinking about how certain theme types have been done over and over again. I guessed that there probably is a puzzle whose theme is add a letter for each letter of the alphabet. At some point, I came up with this idea, which has just a little twist on the theme type. To come up with theme answers, I looked for words ending in é and stumbled upon ATTACHÉ, which luckily worked as a revealer.

My earlier submissions had WRESTLING MATÉ, which the editorial team thought was too nonsensical and didn't match the other French words, and MILITARY COUPÉ, but the team thought coupé was too obscure. Joel came up with GOES ON THE LAMÉ, and the puzzle was saved! My favorite is GOT DOWN PATÉ, which I think is just funny to picture.

I hope you enjoyed solving!

ATTACHÉ is a perfect revealer for this theme, which attaches an É for comic results. It's rare that I laugh at every kooky phrase in an add-a-letter theme, but every one of them did it for me. TOUCHÉ TYPES amused — funny to picture a dog who's too fancy to go on anything but the LAMÉ. I'm sure many people think I have PASSÉ JUDGMENT. PATÉ is not my thing, so I'd struggle to get it down, indeed.

I appreciated the tightness of the concept, too. It's too easy to simply add an E to create another word — a whole ‘nother story to add an É. There are a few more possibilities, but only a few. You can sift through a rhyming site to see for yourself.

Great gridwork. It's tough to execute on adjacent long Downs like LETS PARTY / AVALANCHE without relying on a couple of dabs of short glue. It's incredibly difficult to get a pair of sizzlers with perfectly clean fill, but INCOME TAX and CHAPERONE are both solid.

"Add-a-letter" themes rarely catch my attention, but the tightness and the humor of the resulting phrases made this one stand out.

In his comments, Jeff links to a site called Rhyme Zone to find rhymes for attaché. XWord Info can also find rhymes. We use the same data source that Rhyme Zone does. Here's our list of attaché rhymes. Why duplicate their information? It's part of our ongoing drive to provide maximum value for constructors.

Rhyme Zone is part of the OneLook family. OneLook data knows a lot about words — what they mean, how they're used, how they're pronounced. This blog post shows how you can, for example, find words that match a pattern within a particular topic, or find phrases that include a specified word. XWord Info knows a lot about crosswords — which words are useful or dangerous, how words have been clued, etc. We aim to combine those two knowledge sets.

For example, our attaché rhymes are color-coded (key below chart) so you can see which words have been used in modern NYT crosswords, which ones have only been used in pre-Shortz puzzles, which come from Jeff's database but have never been used in a NYT puzzle, and which come only from a dictionary. Clicking words that have NYT history shows all the clues for that word. Other words link to definitions.

A quick primer on Search vs OneLook Search

Our two main search buttons labeled Search and OneLook search are useful for different reasons. For pattern matches, it's often a good idea to click both.

• Search gets results from our internal database, which includes every NYT crossword, Jeff's list, and several dictionaries.
• OneLook search gets results from their external source.

Examples (click links to see results)

• If you enter a single word, say PLANET, the Search button shows every NYT clue. OneLook search shows definitions.
• If you enter a pattern like PL*T, the Search button and the OneLook search button show different results.

Importantly for constructors, both result sets can be sorted by NYT usage frequency, word length, or by Jeff's word score.

Note that you may have to click More OneLook... to see advanced features like synonyms, antonyms, rhymes, triggers (other words that tend to occur with your word), and words that precede or follow yours.