New York Times, Monday, May 8, 2023

Much of the time, I struggle to come up with themes. I had been waiting to submit anything until I felt I had a "Times-worthy" idea, and I am happy to be making my NYT debut with this one.

I have always liked themes built around geometric shapes. Since I had exhausted all my ideas using boxes, I began playing with curves. One day, the idea for this puzzle seemed to pop into my head, fully formed. It seems the best ideas always do come along with the least effort.

I began constructing in early 2020 (actually, right before the pandemic hit) and have been delighted to discover the amazingly friendly and supportive "crossworld." I am grateful to all of the editors who have welcomed my submissions (good and bad!) and who have taken the time to provide helpful feedback and encouragement. I would also like to thank Mark McClain, who provided excellent mentoring when I was getting started.

I often resent photographers telling me to SAY CHEESE, so I sometimes mutter "cheese" through a forced frown, but seeing all those smiles in today's grid was infectious.

Beautiful gridwork, especially considering that this is Cathy's debut. Will Shortz has reservations about "geometric shape" themes, because they often force gluey fill around those shapes. Even with today's relatively open smile patterns, you still have those pesky diagonal edge letters fixed in place.

Vowel-consonant alternation is generally a good thing for constructors — many short fill entries follow this pattern to some extent — which means that even though having a long Down like RAISES HELL run through SWISS, it doesn't raise hell as much as it could, since the S-W and S-S ends can both take a vowel in the corners between them.

Not a surprise that the opposite side has the least elegant spot — OTT (yikes, that's a toughie for some newer solvers) and NAE — considering that the ends of FETA crumble chances of friendly vowel-consonant alternation.

Words like EDEN show up all the time in crosswords, so writing a clue that won't bore regular solvers is a challenge. The observation about "Eve's garden" is cool!

Crosswords typically draw much of their color from long theme entries, so building one on the backs of short, neutralish answers can be tricky. I would have liked a touch more GROUP HUG, FACETIMED, CARRY ON pizzazz, but some DIET POP, ELM TREE, ENTREATY keep things AFLOAT. Working in even one extra pair of long bonuses is a risky proposition, anyway.

Appropriate that Cathy's debut brought a smile to my face.