New York Times, Thursday, June 16, 2022

PARKER: It's always fun to breathe some life into a joke that is literally centuries old. This puzzle got started when I told my friend and frequent collaborator Ross about the eighteenth century racehorse Potoooooooo (pronounced: "potatoes") whose biography goes viral on social media from time to time. It's an old joke, but it works!

As is our custom, I sat down to write software to try to find examples that met the pattern, while Ross just thought about it really hard and came up with the same stuff. We tried versions with a revealer, we tried standard rotational symmetry, but working with the editing team at the Times we arrived at this version which really shines.

I'm tickled to have such a bold 1A answer (and clue!) in my debut. My only regret is we couldn't find a way to squeeze CHICKENDDDDDDDDDD into the grid.

Ross and I published a print zine of 12 crossword puzzles with a Spelling Bee twist earlier this year, and we stream solving and constructing crosswords on a Twitch channel called Cursewords Live. If you're reading this before 8pm Eastern on Thursday, come join us then for some cruciverbal fun!

ROSS: If you're interested in learning how to make crossword puzzles, feel free to reach out to me via Twitter or via my personal puzzle site, Rossword Puzzles.

Plenty of hacks have tried their hand at playing with repeated letters, but Parker and Ross made theirs shine. Quite the pair of CUTIE PATOOTIES!

The other themers, in case you didn't CCCCCCD (six-C D = succeed; I know, not only does this joke not fit the pluralization pattern, but it's terrible) in catching them:

4Ns IC SCIENTIST = FORENSIC SCIENTIST

TOM 8Os = TOMATOES

A 10Ds = ATTENDEES

The last one hit me the weakest since the lone A so badly wanted to be a long A, not a short A as in ATTENDEES. It was close enough that I could look the other way, though.

I wonder how many solvers will think that CUTIE PATT is a Gen alpha-speak term they're too out of touch to understand. Thankfully, the italicization of the clue forces you to notice that something odd is going on, but the others have so many repeated letters that they don't need such flagging. I grew to like how CUTIE PA(TOOTIES) forced me to think; to not grow complacent.

Such a great take-off on repeated letters. Integrating the partial syllables into words made them delightfully unpredictable.

Jeff's least favorite theme answer is ATTENDEES. That's my favorite.

The reason that we have different opinions is that we're different people. At least we agree that the puzzle is brilliant.