A Thousand Words

Christina Iverson, of Ames, Iowa, is an assistant puzzle editor for The Times. She reviews crossword submissions and helps edit the accepted ones for publication. This puzzle started as an 11 x 11-square grid in which every clue was an emoji. When that didn't work out, she revised and expanded her idea into what you see here.

Christina says, "I had hoped to convince someone to draw the pictures for me, but had no luck, so I drew them all myself."

As Will mentions in his intro, the first draft of this puzzle was an 11x11 grid where every single clue was an emoji. The theme entries were things like for FASHION ICON and for MIRROR IMAGE. I eventually expanded it into a 21x21, but dropped the emoji clues and just kept the fundamental idea of using visual puns for theme entries. I sketched these pictures on the back of an envelope and took photos of them, which I pasted into a Word document with the rest of the clues. I had assumed the editors would find a professional illustrator, but they liked using my originals.

Kudos to the NYT team for doing something distinctive in the Sunday Magazine! I loved seeing illustrations in the clues, and finding out that they're Iverson originals makes them even better. The informal yet artistic drawings bring so much personality to this puzzle.

So many of the themers are entertaining, too, especially the ones that drastically change the second word's meaning. LOTTO DRAWING uses a different definition of "drawing," and LEGAL REPRESENTATION is even better. The latter reminds me of my favorite representation of a representative, Barry Zuckercorn.

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED sort of works, but a drawn illustration vs. picture illustrations are too similar.

The crossworld has an unwritten rule called "the breakfast test," You wouldn't want to present anything that would make solvers lose their appetite as they're doing the crossword over breakfast. That SPITTING IMAGE evokes so many tales of servers spitting in people's food — ugh! I'd have much preferred an image of someone spitting a watermelon seed.

Such painstakingly meticulous gridwork! Smooth as silk in the short fill — I can't fault a single entry, which only happens a few times a year — plus a few DEAD GIVEAWAY VEAL PARM IRISH TEA bonuses. It MAKES A FOOL OF other constructors who say, "my grid is good enough," when it really isn't. Getting a 140-word construction this clean is tough, but it's not difficult to get close.

I've seen too many rebuses and wacky wordies over my lifetime to get too excited about this concept, but I give a big round of applause to Christina and the NYT for pushing the boundaries, and exploring more of what the print Sunday Magazine can do. Drawings, color, crazy shapes in grids, whatever — the unique canvas gives it so much potential to shine.