New York Times, Thursday, September 16, 2021

Psyched to be back in the NYT!

As the theme might suggest, this puzzle was born in the early days of quarantine, when I was looking for a source of optimism. It had been a while since I'd come up with a theme I liked, and spending more time than ever in my living room, staring at my laptop, I really felt the rut. But hark! — metaphorically and literally, a SILVER LINING appeared! The theme required a lot of iteration. It would've been nice to fit DOLLAR or MEDAL in, but them's the breaks.

The theme also required some concessions in terms of sparkling fill, but I hope you find something in here that speaks to you. Shout-out to my favorite furry friends, KOALAS, who finally found a way into one of my grids — they've had a tough go-around Down Under, and I'm pulling for them. I especially like a couple of the vertical stacks here — GO TO JAIL / EARWORMS and BRONCO / FIASCO. It was a tough grid to fill cleanly, but I'm proud of how it turned out.

To the people who were my SILVER LININGs through a tough year — my girlfriend Liz, my parents and uncle, my roommates and friends — thanks for being there for me.

As always, my e-door is always open to aspiring constructors in need of a grid review, a second opinion, or general crossword chitchat. Find me on Twitter at @KPat95 and shoot me a DM, and I'll be happy to help :)

"Perimeter puzzle," SILVER / LINING indicating that the answers around the edges all should be preceded by SILVER. Some answers left no doubt, like the Christmas classic is clearly not BELLS, but SILVER BELLS.

However, Jim Horne and I worried that some solvers might see [Second-best era] and decide that although AGE is a slightly wonky answer, it still works. So Jim fixed up the answers (below) for our database, and as an added measure, he colored in the perimeter answers silver.

I'm sure we'll still get confused emails …

We've seen so many perimeter puzzles by now that Will Shortz has increased his standards. Ten years ago, he told me that one of mine needed to have intersecting answers in all four corners, so at first, I was surprised to see two corner black squares slip by on this one. However, after searching the limited pool of SILVER ___ entries, this seems reasonable. SILVER TONGUE is such a great phrase, much more so than SILVER MINES or SILVER ARROW.

Still, it made me wonder if intersections in all four corners was possible. I would have loved ADO and STEIN worked in somehow.

Perimeter puzzles are notoriously difficult to fill since the corners are so rigid. Even if you can make them all work, knitting them together can be a bear. I'm impressed by Kevin's grid. I hesitated at BFS — boyfriends? — but otherwise, so smooth. Great job keeping the solving flow wide-open, too, not choking any of the corners off from the middle.

Not a lot of snazzy bonuses, not a SILVER BULLET puzzle, but a well-executed example of a well-established theme type.