See the 3 answer words debuted by Ann Shan.
M | U | S | C | L | E | S | A | G | E | A | D | S | ||
A | N | C | H | O | R | O | G | R | E | T | E | A | ||
S | T | E | E | R | S | C | L | E | A | R | W | R | Y | |
T | I | N | E | D | P | E | W | S | F | O | I | E | ||
R | A | S | E | L | I | E | G | I | R | D | S | |||
S | I | R | E | B | U | L | L | M | A | R | K | E | T | |
E | N | I | G | M | A | S | L | O | V | E | ||||
A | G | O | R | A | S | D | E | S | E | R | T | |||
A | L | T | A | G | A | L | I | L | E | O | ||||
C | A | T | T | L | E | C | A | L | L | D | O | D | O | |
A | R | I | E | S | R | N | A | R | E | Q | S | |||
T | E | A | R | T | E | D | X | A | C | U | T | E | ||
N | O | R | Y | E | A | R | O | F | T | H | E | O | X | |
A | L | A | U | R | G | E | D | I | A | N | N | E | ||
P | A | S | P | I | E | S | R | O | T | T | E | D |
A very late "Happy Lunar New Year!" to you all! I'm so excited to be making my New York Times Crossword debut.
I started solving crosswords at the beginning of 2020, and transitioned to constructing in March just as quarantine was kicking off. As a university student, it was a great way to fill a spring break with nowhere to go.
I owe a lot of thanks to everyone who used their constructor notes to encourage people interested in learning to construct (Erik Agard and Ross Trudeau come to mind), without whom my ideas would never have left the recesses of my notes app. I also want to give an especially big shoutout to Rich Proulx for patiently mentoring me over dozens of emails!
A fun fact about the clue for 26-down: the only other use of "wine-dark" by Homer is to describe oxen, an extra nod to the theme. I was also a little sad to lose my original clue for PEWS ("Laser gun noises"), but my favorite out of many great new clues by the editing team was definitely 25-Down.