New York Times, Thursday, January 14, 2021

ELLA: Aimee and I have been real-life friends for years and, as an avid crossword solver, I always thought she was the coolest person ever because she made puzzles (among many other reasons!).

In quarantine, I finally took her up on her offer to teach me. Within a week of riffing, we'd made our first puzzle together. Since then, we've made 6 (?) more, three of which have run in AVCX.

Puzzling together online has been such a fun way to hang out even though we can't see each other in person. I love collaborating with Aimee because we push each other to keep playing around with grids and ideas until they finally click in a way we both love. We've also got extremely similar taste and crossword quirks.

This puzzle was a total collaboration where I have no idea whose idea any part of it was — we both loved the revealer from the beginning but wanted to figure out the most fun way to spin it, and landed on this one. There is also a version of this puzzle on our computers with totally different themers because neither of us noticed we'd forgotten to include the revealer until we were about to clue. Oops.

When I'm not puzzling, I'm an actress — mostly theater and mostly in NYC and the Bay Area!

AIMEE: Ella and I have been real-life friends for several years now, when she moved to The Bay Area from New York. But between the pandemic and her moving back to New York in early 2020, we haven't seen each other in person in a while. But the funny thing is that, now that she lives across the country from me, she's actually the person I "see" the most these days.

And that's thanks almost entirely to crossword puzzles.

I had never really collaborated much on crosswords before this year, but something about the pandemic has made me crave the collaboration process. Plus, the puzzles Ella and I come up with always seem to be better than what either of us is capable of making on our own. Or at least, I know she makes me a better constructor. I mean, she was the one who realized we hadn't included the reveal in this puzzle's first draft! If it had just been me, I probably would have sent this off without its key ingredient!

Here's to many more, Ella!

SPIN THE BOTTLE is so full of crossword potential, a constructor's dream. I have notes on several ideas for executing this, including the strings OTTLEB TTLEBO within words, bottles like BUD spun in the grid, even a big (upside-down) bottle made out of black squares. I never thought of this implementation, though. I admire the creativity!

The concept might still be unclear to some. The Across answers use the letters B O T T L E, starting from 6 o'clock and going clockwise. The Down answers use the same letters, but they start from 12 o'clock. Thus, the BOTTLE is spun 180 degrees. Sort of.

It didn't entirely make sense why Acrosses and Downs used letters of different spin positions, but it is done with consistency.

It's not hard to fill a grid region so that in one square, two letters form equally valid Across and Down words. Take GA(TB)OR, for instance. There are dozens of patterns that could be valid for the ??(TB)?? sequence. It does, however, get increasingly harder as you go, since every time you fix something into place, the rest of the grid loses flexibility.

I was impressed that Aimee and Ella got most of the special squares smooth. LITRE and EATER (is that EATRE in England?) aren't great, but the rest are all fine. Great work there.

Mostly excellent bonus fill, too. USAIN BOLT is retired, but who can forget that Olympics where he looked like he was jogging? WASSAILS, LOSE FACE, EVA PERON, also excellent.

I did wonder what ABOUTNESS was all about ... Eliot Ness? It appears to be a library-specific term, exactly as clued. It is two recognizable words. Man, did it look bizarre, though, and it feels a bit too insidery; smug. Of course, now I'll be dropping it into everyday conversations.

I could have used more polish on the short fill — ESO OSO TSO is so many SOs, and ASA ATOB STL UKE, whew! — but given so many constraints, there had to be some trade-offs.

All in all, I like the innovative thinking, but the a-ha level wasn't as high as I like for a Thursday puzzle.