New York Times, Thursday, November 21, 2013

This is the second vertically themed puzzle of mine accepted by Will Shortz, and as I mentioned to him in my cover letter, I was hoping vertical was the new horizontal. There are certain limitations to the format, namely that all of the theme entries as well as the reveal are encountered somewhat early in the solving process, but it would be unfortunate to waste all the possibilities that "downness" brings to self-referential themes because of that.

This puzzle was submitted last December, and was accepted in April with some provisos. A few changes had to be made to the fill, however there was one sticking point, the ten letter 3-Down themer didn't quite fit with the others. In subsequent submissions 3-Down went from: THISLLPASS; to YOUAREOKAY; to DONTGIVEUP; to LIFEGOESON, each of which was rightly met with Mr. Shortz's disapproval. I just couldn't find something that sounded right.

By then it was the end of August, my wife and I were spending two weeks at a lake cabin in Vermont. On our final evening, after one or two margaritas, (underage constructors please disregard this), the heavens opened up, and NOTTOWORRY was comfortingly whispered into my mind's ear. EUREKA!!!

Mr. Shortz concurred.

This puzzle went through three versions until Jules finally got a set of four theme entries that were true and natural-sounding "comforters." The extra effort paid off, resulting in a nice Thursday challenge.

Fun, having DOWN COMFORTERS run down (vertically), as well as incorporating four theme "comforters" (comforting statements) in the down direction. Clever idea! It was tougher than usual for a Thursday (for me), but I liked the challenge. Not having clues for those four down answers largely made it like a quote puzzle, where you have to work for every crossing until you start to make out bits and pieces of words. It took a long time but felt very satisfying when I finally figured out what was going on.

It was interesting to read about Jules going through several iterations of the "comforters". IT GETS BETTER and THERE THERE worked perfectly for me, but THIS WILL PASS felt a little off (ITLL PASS seems more in the language to my ear). Could be a generational or a cultural thing? Same with NOT TO WORRY. Could also be that I'm personally much more likely to say GET OVER IT, SUCKA. I'm kidding. Sort of.

Even with five long themers, Jules manages to work in a lot of nice fill. SPONGEBOB is fun to see in the grid even though we saw him just recently, and COPYEDIT and BOOK A TRIP are quite nice too. Trying to find good entries that cross three themers (SPONGEBOB and BOOK A TRIP both do this) is often very difficult. Even if you can find a few good options, it often forces compromises in the surrounding areas since you have few options to try out.

Two areas I paused at, the first being FOWLES / LOEB. I know Lisa LOEB the singer, but the Harvard reference was lost on me. The cross was a blind guess, made tougher by my reasoning that if it was LOEB it would have been clued to the singer. You can see now why I'm a terrible rock, paper, scissors player, as I try to out-think my opponent until my brain smokes. (And I totally would have taken the wine with Iocaine powder in it.)

The second was the NW corner. NOT TO WORRY didn't make itself apparent in my head so I tried all sorts of DONT WORRY, DONT YOU WORRY, WORRY WORRY (I never claimed I was logical). Not knowing OMNIA made that especially hard. But hey, this is the New York Times Thursday puzzle. It's supposed to be hard.

Glad to finish it with just one error!