Ben Gross author page
1 puzzle by Ben Gross
with Constructor comments
See the 6 answer words debuted by Ben Gross.
| C | R | I | P | M | A | N | T | A | P | S | I | S | ||
| L | E | N | T | A | R | E | E | L | O | H | N | O | ||
| A | N | T | O | I | N | E | T | T | E | L | I | M | A | |
| S | T | I | L | L | L | I | F | E | B | A | R | A | K | |
| S | A | F | E | L | Y | L | A | C | E | R | A | T | E | |
| I | C | A | M | E | B | I | T | E | S | I | Z | E | D | |
| C | O | D | Y | T | U | X | E | D | O | S | ||||
| S | P | A | R | A | T | A | T | A | T | L | A | C | ||
| P | A | R | T | N | E | R | W | I | L | L | ||||
| G | R | E | A | T | O | D | D | S | H | A | S | T | O | |
| N | E | U | R | O | T | I | C | T | O | R | T | E | S | |
| A | P | L | A | N | A | H | O | Y | T | H | E | R | E | |
| W | O | O | S | F | L | I | P | P | H | O | N | E | S | |
| A | R | G | O | B | E | L | I | E | L | U | G | E | ||
| T | T | Y | L | I | D | L | E | S | S | P | O | T |
We decided to build the puzzle when Ben realized that the phrase "Netflix and chill" was 15 letters. It felt a little risqué, so we were delighted when the puzzle was ultimately accepted. Our initial construction effort, however, got off to a bad start: Ben had misconfigured our construction software such that it only offered single-word fill — no phrases!
We eventually figured out how to use computers properly, and when we were able to pair BUTT DIALED with FLIP PHONES, we knew we were onto something. We struggled a bit with the north-center — we're not particularly proud of the AREEL/AREI intersection — but we hammered away until we had something we were happy with.
Cluing the puzzle was especially fun. We each took a copy of the completed grid and, working alone, wrote up a full set clues. Then we compared clues for each entry in a series of TETE A TETES. Our cluing was helped by a simple shell script James wrote, called `cross`, which let us see all the past NYT clues for any entry we were considering (basically a worse version of this site!).
On to the next one!