New York Times, Thursday, August 24, 2023

Hello Crossworld! I'm delighted to be back in The New York Times — it's always an honor to be a part, however small, of the crossword's decades-long history.

The core conceit of this crossword came readily from the revealer — in a way, with the pieces ROLLING, BLACK, and OUT, the theme practically writes itself — but I sat on the idea for months as I couldn't fill the grid cleanly. The construction is surprisingly involved; for example, the cheater squares are thematic, so using extra cheaters is a non-starter. Twenty failed drafts later, I cut the number of theme answers from six down to the four you see now. It's still not perfect — I can only offer my sincerest apologies for DONC — but I hope the puzzle was enjoyable nonetheless!

On the clues, 42A is my favorite by a mile — discovering this angle for an otherwise boring -ER word was nothing short of a miracle — and I'm very grateful that the team agreed. I also like 24A, 41A, and the team's laugh-out-loud 21D. I love wordplay and always try to include plenty in my clues (knowing many will be cut): 17A was originally [Worker concerned with strike action?], 44D was [Tailor for swift?], and 45D was ["Call me," maybe]. Sometimes, I need to remind myself I'm not writing for the Stumper!

Finally, I almost can't believe I'm introducing VTUBER to the Times! Crosswords are a great place to share a glimpse of one's interests with others, and flourishes like these, I think, make them uniquely human. If this was unfamiliar, I hope you found the crossings fair — and learned something new, too!

Turning puzzles have become such editorial turn-offs that Will Shortz temporarily halted them several years ago. They're today's Black Forest cake — once a classic, now a relic of a different age.

There's a reason why so many baking shows feature the German gateau in challenges, though. What better way to test one's ability than to ask bakers to put a modern spin on something so old-fashioned?

Robin interprets "spin" literally, giving us four record-like shapes showing the curved answer paths to connect phrases like WENT (OUT) THE WINDOW. How are we supposed to know that the three black squares represent OUT? From the revealer, ROLLING BLACKOUT — or more precisely, ROLLING (spinning) BLACK O-U-T.

Whenever our maestro producer, Jim Horne, has to figure out how the hell to digitally represent a constructor's artistic brainchild — that deserves high marks for novel presentation. (In print, the curved lines in the grid are looping arrows indicating direction. You can see the PDF here if you have an NYT Games Subscription).

Although it's easy to find phrases with OUT in their middles, Robin faced an additional constraint: the last letter before OUT had to match the first letter after. That's not difficult if you do some coding or RegEx, but it's much harder than a simple search like *???OUT???* (which gives you all entries containing OUT, with at least three letters on either side).

With four sets of orthogonal themers in the corners plus the central revealer, some ANON ORO UEY material is acceptable.

Robin's offering may not be the most elegant entry, but it has its modern turns. I wouldn't make a DONC bet against him in this week's Next Level Constructor competition.

Jeff is right that his simple Finder search isn't that useful. He's shy about showing off his advanced Finder skills, but this RegEx query works the same, with the additional constraint that the letter before OUT is the same as the one after. Sure enough, all four of today's theme answers are there.