Ashish Vengsarkar author page

NARAYAN: For over a decade, I lived the life of a quasi-single Indian-American dad in Texas with a live-in Chinese mother-in-law (no, this isn't the failed pilot for a sitcom!). Soon after she moved in, I was banished from the kitchen. I was happy to oblige because she was a brilliant cook who soon learned to cater to my Indian tastes and vegetarian restrictions. Her English wasn't very good, but it was far better than my Mandarin, so that became our medium of broken communication.

One day, she offered to make "calm" soup for dinner. I had no idea what that meant, but I figured it had to be good ... but even after soup was served, I couldn't see what made it (or me) "calm". After a few more instances of this, I realized that she was actually saying "com", not "calm". Of course, that makes even less sense. She was puzzled by my questions about the contents of the soup, so she brought me a can of com. That's when it hit me: between her poor command of the language, her less-than-perfect eyesight, and poor kerning on the can label, she had misread "corn" as "com". And a therne was bom!

I shared this theme with Ashish, and we batted around possibilities like "burn" for "bum", "garner" for "gamer", etc. Once we had enough fodder for a puzzle, Ashish came up with a bit of brilliance for the revealer: "from stem to stern" offered a clean way to tie it all together.

Hope you enjoyed the twist and used the missing letters to find the hidden cross country. The first two crossings were probably the hardest to get as you are trying to figure out the Thursday theme. Especially if you entered LASTNAME (First in China, second in US) with confidence. Once the grid was partially filled and the central CROSSCOUNTRY revealed, did the crossword staples (PANAM, BEIN, IGER) provide the confidence to skip a square? At least that was my attempt — that the puzzle put up some initial resistance and then crumble for an easy solve!

As usual, great work by the NYT team on the clues that were changed - they know how to clean up some of my wild clues and create a balanced offering. One of my misdirection clues that did not make it: Probe that ended September 15, 2017 for CASSINI; and that hard TONG-as-a-verb clue? Not mine!

The first version, started early in the pandemic, was a simple letter-drop from countries and you can see a better version by Deeksha Gaur, a brilliant puzzle! In a strange coincidence, an early draft of mine had identical theme answers (but, without the great revealer: NATION BUILDING)! Uncanny how two constructors can independently dream up similar themes.

But I dropped this format and looked for two countries that could cross each other with the same missing letter. Why? Because I did not have the wonderful NATIONBUILDING as the revealer, and CROSSCOUNTRY/UNITEDNATIONS/MISSINGLINK were the potential revealers stuck in my head!

The second manifestation, a Sunday 21x titled "CROSS COUNTRY", with UNITEDNATIONS crossing MISSINGLINK in the center (perfectly at the N!), had six intersecting countries sprinkled around the large grid. (LEANON-OLIVIA, MAN-CAMERON, HANA-REECE were some of the other finds). However, the missing letters did not spell a country or a revealer. With some crisp feedback from two test-solvers (one with initials BEQ, and the other named Patrick with a ™ symbol), I dropped the puzzle down to 15x. Both stalwarts insisted that the missing letters had to spell another country to add an extra layer of fun, so I had no choice but to find BEIN-IGER (the weakest of the crossing countries). Thanks guys!

List of other countries on my list: HUNGRY (really wanted to use this, and I am sure a better grid-expert would have figured out how to use this with PANAM/TONG/CHIN/MALT in the 15x version, instead of the TONG-PANAM pairing), INLAND, ENYA, NEAL, PAIN/SPAN/SPIN. Did I miss any others?

The seed entry came to me at the dentist's but the simplicity of this letter/sound deletion theme did not inspire. Until I wondered if I could run the rest of the themers through the central entry. And maybe doing so would free up some grid real estate and create a themeless feel elsewhere in the puzzle.

After multiple mostly-meh drafts with 132 words, I shifted my focus to the 36- and 40 Down region. Finding the BOOERS & SHOO combo which could accommodate the anagram pair was a sign that this was worth expanding to 136 words and submitting. With IAMMALALA sliding in, the final grid took shape. Finding a reasonable set of theme entries that could intersect TOOTH in the bottom half of the puzzle did create some problems.

Immense thanks to the NYT Editorial Team for working through several iterations. They gave SHOO (the weakest entry) a pass and found BOOTSTRENGTH, to replace the original DOOBARRYMORE. DOO was another weak entry — difficult to clue in any meaningful way — but one I was loath to lose because I wanted all themers to have different consonants.

The NYT team also provided most of the clever clues, Île be there? (MER) and Bands you might listen to in a car? (AMFMRADIO) being my top two! I am grateful they kept the groan-inducing Total-itarian? (ADDER) and Eaglelike? (UNDERPAR — did anyone drop in AQUILINE?), as well as my long IAMMALALA clue.

Hope solvers enjoy this traditional fare, with some K-Town kimchi, palak paneer and samosas thrown in for good measure!

Dr. Arno Penzias, who once headed Bell Labs in the 1990's, turned 88 on April 26^th. This puzzle is a tribute to Arno and a fond reminiscence of my Bell Labs days, where I received this gift from Arno.

The three 15-letter theme entries were waiting patiently in one of my empty grids for over a decade. The pandemic allowed me to dust off the cobwebs, reload Crossword Compiler, install the XWord Info Word List and revisit construction after a 10-year hiatus. Arno's t-shirt quote and the synergy with the PAST-PRESENT-FUTURE phrases led to this time-capsule offering. The cruciverbal grid-gods were clearly smiling as BIGBANG + PENZIAS and TSELIOT + WHIMPER slid cleanly into the grid (with a little assist from the corner cheater squares)!

P.S. A short farewell message to Nancy Salomon, my mentor, who passed away this month. Without her "tough love", I would not have derived this tremendous joy that comes from constructing crosswords. Thank you Nancy for pulling me into this pursuit and introducing me to my crossword tribe!