New York Times, Tuesday, June 14, 2022

My older sister first introduced me to crossword puzzles when I was in middle school and she was visiting home from college. I enjoyed solving them with her, but in the years that followed, my crosswording was mostly limited to in-flight magazines and the back page of my college newspaper.

But during the lockdowns of the pandemic, doing crossword puzzles helped to keep me sane. I was gifted a NY Times subscription (thanks Phil!) and the crossword became part of my daily routine. I started recording videos as I solved the puzzles and posted them to YouTube to share with friends. Even when we were all stuck at home, we would meet on Zoom to chat and solve crosswords and cryptics together.

All of this puzzling got me thinking about how crosswords are put together and what themes I really enjoy. I hope figuring out the theme of my puzzle brings you some joy. Other themers I considered were LITTLE FINGER and BLACK SESAME. I also wonder how many people have PET LOBSTERs.

Special thanks to Liz Chen, Alex Lazar, and Oriana Wen, who are great test solvers and even better friends.

Nice twist on the out-of-fashion "both words can precede X" genre, ROCK AND ROLL hinting at BLACK(ROCK), BED(ROCK), MOON(ROCK) and COFFEE (ROLL), SPRING (ROLL), JELLY (ROLL).

Ever wonder how to create one of these? It's not hard, but it takes brute force, patience, and judgment. Start by creating a list of words that can precede each:

ROCK: ACID BED BLACK CHRIS CLASSIC FOLK GLAM HARD LITTLE MOON PLYMOUTH PUNK RED SOFT THIRTY

ROLL: BARREL BREAD COFFEE DINNER DRUM EGG JELLY ONION PIANO SPRING SUSHI SWISS

From there, you test each pairwise. ACID BARREL, no. ACID BREAD, no. Rinse and repeat until the people around you question your grasp on reality.

Finally, the judgment calls. HARD BREAD is a thing. Is it a great phrase that's theme-worthy, though? How about CLASSIC PIANO?

And on another level, is BLACK(ROCK) theme-worthy? Although there are so many different Blackrocks out there that there's a strong chance solvers will at least recognize some form of the term (Blackrock is big to us finance wonks), it's much better to generate the type of click that BED(ROCK) achieves.

With just four themers, I expect a ton of bonuses and a squeaky-clean grid. Lots of points for BOONIES, INKBLOT, even STERILE. ABOIL is not HALER fill, though, and lesser dings for DEFS ESS kind of stuff.

Neat to see something a bit different, to keep a tried-and-true theme genre alive. MOON JELLY is an especially nice find; a colorful phrase that produced such a strong click in MOON(ROCK) and JELLY(ROLL).