Brad Wilber author page

BRAD: Sam and I have been published as a team elsewhere, but I'm proud to be part of his first collab in the Times. I feel enriched by working with someone of his talent and also by having some glimpses into his life as a history teacher and a dad since my late father taught high school social studies.

Having this puzzle reach print is especially satisfying because there were so many levels of decision-making for us. Since we ended up with drafts at two different word counts, did the additional black square help or hurt our chances? Should the revealer be a grid-spanner, or something shorter like "PUT A PIN IN (IT)"? If we kept to the most obvious definition of pin, would the tautness be congratulated, or would the editorial team respond more positively to a variety of pins?

When Sam proposed we flesh out this idea together, he had a worksheet with many senses of "pin." Ultimately, we submitted a version set entirely in the realm of pins as fasteners, so when Will asked us to revise the bottom half of the puzzle and swap in BOWLING LANE and ATM MACHINE for our original DRESS DUMMY and BOUTONNIERE, we had to laugh at the déjà vu.

Another interesting note: After we had this puzzle tentatively accepted, it took us a while as a team to get our revision in shape. Tracy was kind enough to check in on our progress and let us know that since our submission THREE other puzzles had come in with our PIN theme. She would send regrets on those as long as we still planned on finalizing ours. Amazing how the crossword hivemind works!

ALEX: I'm no art expert, but Jackson Pollock's rule-breaking style seemed like a good excuse to do something different. The first idea I sent to Brad was to have P-A-I-N-Ts appearing diagonally, in random spots, going in all directions. But this was too constraining when constructing the grid. I gave up.

Then we thought about hiding D-R-I-P in some answers going down, but that wouldn't simulate his actual technique: laying the canvas on the floor horizontally, not vertically, and dribbling paint down onto it from above, so it goes in all directions. When we arrived at our final plan, I liked it because it's not common to see words hiding in multiple directions. I wrote a little code to find entries that would interlock in the right places while including P-A-I-N-T going once in each direction. (It seemed important to have each direction represented exactly once, even though doing that to show haphazardness doesn't seem very logical...)

My fantasy was to make it even MORE Pollock-like. If he created a crossword puzzle, would he arrange his theme answers symmetrically? Probably not. Maybe he'd even use a freeform grid. It was fun to think about; maybe the Jackson Pollock of crosswords could pull it off (whoever that is).

BRAD: Pollock's name was enough of a revealer, perhaps, but that 7-letter word in the middle called out for a "bonus" entry. As I recall, we tried a couple of different verbs (SPATTER?) before DRIBBLE really worked.

JOHN: I am excited to share a byline with Brad and it was great fun collaborating with him. We had two 15-letter entries (17-Across and 34-Across) we were looking to build a puzzle around, and Brad suggested many different grid layouts. When he presented the one we ultimately used, my eyes lit up as I loved the two double stacks and the flow of the grid. I never would have come up with it myself — the power of collaboration!

Writing clues with Brad was a treat and I learned so much going back and forth with him. My favorite entry is 34-Across, and Brad came up with an evocative clue for it. I also learned much from the editorial team's tweaks which strengthened the puzzle immensely — particular thanks for the clue for TOES … I would not have dreamt that one up in a million years!

We wrote this in April 2020, and since then Brad has become the editor of all the puzzles for Boswords, a series of crossword events organized by myself and Andrew Kingsley. We are currently preparing for our next event, an all-online, one-day tournament on Sunday, July 25. Registration opens on July 1 and you can find more information about this tournament (including our roster of constructors) at www.boswords.org.

BRAD: John has always been a quick-witted and congenial seatmate in the judging room at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. I jumped at the chance when he suggested we collaborate. Little did I know that he was mulling over a much bigger idea in the form of an expanded Boswords. I'm so proud of what John and Andrew have built, and proud that they've trusted me with an important role.

17-A and 34-A were both seeds of John's, and I was happy to get both into one grid when I pulled out an old-school pattern I'd used several times before. I hope John is right that my clue for 34-A is "evocative" — what I do remember is racking my brain for most of a day for just the right circumstance. I couldn't believe it when we got our preview of the NYT edit and I saw that the clue had stayed. But don't minimize how expertly John filled in around the 15s — once he was done I knew we stood a good chance of being accepted, and I loved his angle on parsing the letters at 32-Across. I wouldn't have thought of that, and many will be pleased to see it.

ALEX: Our original idea for a revealer was ONE NAMED SINGERS. But when we added EMINEM, we weren't sure if he'd be considered a singer. Brad suggested MONONYM, which is more interesting and also avoids this categorization problem. Luckily, either potential revealer was a happy length (since 7's and 15's are the easiest to work with in the center row).

Theme entries from the cutting room floor: TRAGIC HERO, CAMDEN YARDS, GRADE LEVEL, TRUST IN GOD.

Editorially, the team had to get rid of some of our trickier clues to shape the difficulty level for a Tuesday, but I like the replacements. And, after several rejections, I'm happy to have made it in.

BRAD: Surely by now, some NYT puzzles have gone to press that were submitted using the online portal. But this dates back to the snail mail era; Alex and I actually worked on two puzzles together over the December holidays of 2019 and sent them in separate envelopes. Fast forward five months. To our surprise, they were both accepted on the same day, a few hours apart (watch this space for No. 2). "This may never happen to either one of us again," I said.

BRAD: I started out simply intending to put 22D and 27D at opposite ends of the grid. When you discover your seeds can be adjacent entries instead, things are looking up. Then Doug placed lively first and last Acrosses — 1A is my favorite clue of his this time. Did you know William Shatner made a horror film with dialogue entirely in 54A (Incubus, 1965)? I mean, are you sitting on that set thinking, "Geez, I was in 'Judgment at Nuremberg'?" No, I can't claim to have seen 'Incubus'; it's just one of the many bits of trivia lint you pick up in a crossword life.

DOUG: Brad mentioned 1-Across, and yes, I had a MOOD RING when I was a kid. It was purchased from an ad in a comic book, of course. I also had a pair of x-ray specs (rip-off!) and a jar full of Sea-Monkeys (awesome!). Anyway, my mood ring never seemed to change color, so I borrowed my mom's lighter one day and tried heating it up. (Don't worry. This was the ‘70s. Kids were allowed to play with lighters.) The ring changed color all right! The whole thing turned black and got that burnt plastic smell. So I never got to try my other experiment of putting it in the freezer.

VICTOR: This puzzle, for me, is a great example of why everyone should collaborate. I'm a reasonably clever and creative constructor, but I am not a great filler, and this puzzle's idea — with the quincunx pattern of crosses in the middle and the anchor entries QUINCUNX and PLUS SIGN — was nice but demanded superior filling. I took on the challenge and failed utterly, but fortunately, Brad was available to work on it, and in a matter of days, he turned it into something better than I could ever have produced on my own. It was awesome, and it was fun to see my initial idea turned into such a clever puzzle.

I had long enjoyed my interactions with Brad when he was editing the puzzles for the Chronicle of Higher Education, and it was a pleasure to work with him on this. I hope that people enjoyed solving it as much as we enjoyed constructing it.

BRAD: Victor has a record of producing some very satisfying high-concept themes over the years, and I was grateful to give some of them a home at the Chronicle throughout my time there. When he asked if I wanted to try and "grid-doctor" his quincunx pattern for the Times, I was hoping I wouldn't let him down. My main curative idea was to create a couple of 15s out of two 6-letter / 8-letter pairs. Two good 15s showed promise early on and settled in. Some of Victor's original fill stayed but together we were able to add a few more multi-word entries in the corners and devise a slate of tricky clues.

I remember working hard to get things "just so" for the clues for 3-Down and 36-Down (I love to bake), and lo and behold, they appear here just as I submitted them. And Victor had the nifty clues you see for THOR, NUISANCE, and ONE LEG.

BRAD: With this puzzle, my New York Times tally draws even at 27 solos and 27 co-writes. I have more collaborations in the queue, too, so the total will soon tip in favor of shared labor. It's nothing I ever planned, but I've come to see the crossword community as very familial, and co-writes are one of the ways that plays out for me. Doug was my first constructing partner ever, and we made our debut as a team ten years ago. This puzzle took shape in January 2020, and I like that the ROSE PARADE is in here, given that Doug lives in that vicinity. (Did you know that the early days of the Rose Parade included ostrich races?) The clue for HUMAN ERROR is one of two I submitted; I'm sure the other one had to do with the use of Hawkeye in pro tennis.

DOUG: I'm always thrilled to share a byline with Brad! I love the clue for PELE at 43-Across. And now I want to be the Extraordinary Minister of something.

KEVIN: I like horror movies if they're intelligent and well done. Psycho is a classic, so I felt it was deserving of a tribute puzzle. (It's my second movie tribute in the NYT; I had an "ET" puzzle published on 9/24/13).

I don't remember when I first built a version of this grid. Eight years ago, maybe. I wasn't happy with it. Two years ago, I noticed that the 60^th anniversary of the movie's release was two years away. I decided to ask for Brad's help fixing the crummy fill. I figured six months max working with Brad (it didn't take that long), six months for Will to get back to us (it didn't take that long), and we'd still be one year ahead of the anniversary date.

Brad came up with the idea to split PSYCHO into PSY and CHO and place them in those two symmetrical down spots, as a nod to the split personality of the main character. That's why I like to collaborate with people on puzzles. Two heads are better than one. I would never have come up with that on my own. Kudos to Brad.

BRAD: This puzzle has been biding its time in the vaults for a little while. My memory of the project is like Kevin says: I was invited on board to help spruce up the fill and to brainstorm with him about a revealer (eventually two three-letter words instead of one six-letter word). I didn't know if editors would go for a puzzle about fractured mental health, but on the other hand, it's not every day that an iconic movie quote and associated names fit so neatly into a grid. Kevin had packed it all in beautifully, just like he did for our Dr. Seuss puzzle of 7/14/15.

I think I've seen Psycho just once; if I rewatch a Hitchcock film, it's more likely to be North by Northwest or Rebecca. But I surprised myself by loving the "Bates Motel" TV series with Vera Farmiga and Freddie Highmore.

When my employment status changed last year, another crossword venue generously invited me to take over a regular Monday slot relinquished by someone scaling back on their constructing. Looking to me for the gentlest possible puzzles was a bit of a risk. I'm not exactly known for them, right? Mental rewiring was required.

Anyway, this puzzle theme had a covert element inappropriate for that Monday gig, but I liked the idea enough that I worked it up and sent it into the Times. I was thrilled to have a "yes" on it, with the assessment that it was "almost the ideal easy puzzle." So maybe I'm learning the right things?

Shout out to Doug Peterson for tinkering with the grid design and thinking of having the revealer cross the last theme entry instead of running parallel. (For those keeping track, this is not only my first Monday appearance but my first solo themed puzzle of any kind for the Times.)

BRAD: As I recall, this collaboration started when Sam sent me a dense and ambitious block at the middle of the grid. EMOJI and ROGUE ONE were the clear stars. It was mostly beautiful, but I think there was some plural that set off my Hinky Meter.

SAM: What, ALGEBRAS is bad? More importantly, I now want to make a puzzle containing HINKY METER.

BRAD: I sent back something that kept ROGUE ONE and crossed it with a specific EMOJI that we thought lent verve in its debut.

SAM: Yes, credit to Brad for the use of a particular EMOJI, and double (nay, triple) credit to him for the [Sext symbols] clue. One of my favorites.

BRAD: Sam supplied another great pop-culture 15, and helped me out with the nice SET MENU in the NW, as I wanted to recycle COSMIC JOKE from an abandoned draft of something I did with Byron Walden. Sam was crushing it on the cluing front, too: 39A, 10D & 11D echo. We submitted two clues for 17A, both his, and I was hoping maybe to see the other one, which poked fun at an urban myth about their shelf life.

SAM: I love me a Wilber-Walden collaboration--a guaranteed thirty hours of staring and erasing (and fun).

BRAD: Sam and I both worked on all the remaining corners after the SW went in, trying out combinations off the Z, voting Version 1 or Version 2 like at the eye doctor. Always a joy to see Sam's mind and craft going on all cylinders.

SAM: Brad is one of the great collaborators in crosswords. I believe this is his 25th collaboration in the Times, a testament to how well he plays with others. (Hey, I now have something in common with Emanuel Ax!) He is forgiving and supportive, but his keen eye also gets you to perform at your best.

AX: I have been a passionate devotee of the Times puzzle for more years than I can count. When I travel, the daily puzzle is one of the things that makes me feel close to home. I am also very happy that my children seem to have caught the bug, and are far better than me at solving. Getting to try to make one for the great Will Shortz has been a true highlight for me, and I am grateful to Brad for his expertise, inspiration and patience.

WILBER: I minored in applied piano at college, and I'm still occasionally a church player, though when Will paired me with Mr. Ax ("call me Manny") he was only aware that I had a general classical music bent. I wanted a theme with some musical component, if possible, and once we sketched out a decent idea, Will and Joel had the brainstorm of the visual grid element and deftly tweaked the roster of theme entries to allow them to cross, thus clearing the middle.

Another frequent collaborator of mine, Doug Peterson, lent a hand with the nitty-gritty of grid design. Manny himself ably put crowning touches on the puzzle fill (including the revealer) and was game to do an even split of the clues. (I counseled against RUNS at 16A as a duplication of a theme entry, but I see it's back and I get it - TUNS or DUNS is not exactly commonplace.) After years of solving, Manny showed a nice affinity for New York Times style, I think - my favorites are 1A, 23A, 32A, 53D.

We worked over e-mail and by telephone, sometimes from wherever he was performing (Brahms concerto no. 2 in Milwaukee, Beethoven concerto no. 2 in Detroit, etc.), and more recently from his home as he was premiering the HK Gruber concerto with the New York Philharmonic.

Given my puzzle bylines over the last several years, you might correctly surmise that I derive lots of satisfaction from co-authoring, and this was one I won't soon forget. Beyond the joys of connecting with Manny and his enthusiasm, it's a special way for me to mark my 50th appearance in the Times, as Will mentions in his intro.

BYRON: Fun as always to work with Brad. He's so meticulous in his craft, but always in an easygoing manner. I love the things you learn when you construct, and the story behind 15A (CESAR ROMERO) may be one of my all-time favorites. MARTI pops up in crosswords often enough that I was quite surprised I hadn't run into that fascinating bit of trivia before.

BRAD: This puzzle began its life as a solo submission of mine with UPSET VICTIM / NATURE DEITY / FRAGILE EGOS in the upper left. The 1A had a misdirecting sports-related clue, but Will felt that the entry was not quite in-the-language enough to green-light. My subsequent revision hinged on at least one abbreviation he had decided to relegate permanently to the "no" list. The whole thing sat for a while, and on a whim, I sent the stack from the opposite corner across the country to see if Byron liked it (FINESSE SHOT / TROMBONISTS / the Ayn Rand title "WE THE LIVING.") Byron replaced the literary reference with WATER-LOVING to spare everyone involved ERI at 60D, and we were off.

I don't consider wordplay clues my strength, but I think I chipped in 31D and 53D to try to keep pace with Byron's brilliant 25A and others like 13D. It's also nice to scan the puzzle and see validation of our combined relish for pumping life into common entries with trivia-based clues. (In case you were wondering, a puzzle with that old NW did find favor at another venue.)

BRAD: So it falls to Doug and me to refute the dire promise of yesterday's puzzle! HOORAHS for us. Will provided delicious tweaks to clues for 19A (GENE) and 56D (HARE).

I think this is one of the few times we've placed a seed entry at 1A. I usually try to tuck them in a few rows down. I always think of David Letterman when I think of the 1A descriptor, but Doug came up with two different cluing options — the one you see here and also Chaucer's Wife of Bath.

DOUG: I'm going to predict that Jeff comments on ALTERATION at 63-Across because it's a bland sort of entry in a long slot. And, assuming he does, he's got a good point. I like the rest of our longs, especially the HOGWARTS stack in the lower left. After placing DRACO MALFOY in a 2014 New York Times grid, Brad and I were taken to task because neither of us has read the Harry Potter series. Well, I recently bought the entire jillion-page series for my Kindle, and I'm planning to dive into it soon. I can't wait to find out what the heck a HORCRUX is.

SAM: In December of 2014 I sent a partially completed grid to Brad, asking if he wanted to collaborate. That's code for "I like what I've done so far, but I can't seem to make anything else work. HELP!" The grid I sent him had the northwest and southeast corners done. Not surprisingly, what he sent back was terrific. He balances my low-brow MAMA BEAR, SPEED DATING, and SIPPY CUP with the RIG VEDA, the VISIGOTHS, and (what now may be my new favorite word) CREPEY. The result, I hope, is a balanced puzzle that puts up a tough fight.

I always like to track how many original clues survive the editing stage. In this puzzle, 27 of our clues (about 40%) made the cut, while another 10 (almost 15%) were edited slightly, probably for length. Will and company came up with 31 clues from scratch (that's 45% of the total). My favorite new clues are [Following the beat?] for ON PATROL and [What isn't working?] for ME TIME. Of course, I mourn the loss of some clues resting atop the cutting room floor. Maybe we'll have another occasion to use [Turns to stripping?] for SHREDS and [It can be used to drop acid] for PIPET.

BRAD: People would not think me so highbrow if they could see me Facebook messaging with Sam during "Orphan Black," I don't think. Anyway, it's our second puzzle together, and as before, I really liked working with him on it. Sam's chosen grid designs are challenging (usually 68s like this one) without being too constricting, so we steer clear of most haggling over fill and worry that the fill is not clean enough. His corners with the nice 11s were impeccable (I was imagining drinking VEAL MARSALA sauce from a SIPPY CUP and a BAD DEAL or two that might result from SPEED DATING), so I pushed myself to come up with what I hope are relatively fresh SW and NE corners. Sam really goes for it with humor in the clues, so he gave me a lot of "wish I'd thought of that" moments as we put the manuscript together. That plus his nice clue echo at 47D and 49D.

I have to say, when VIZSLA went into the center of the grid, I had a flashback to about ten years ago when my friend Frank Longo put XOLOITZCUINTLI into a themeless grid for the New York Sun. This was well before John O'Hurley had occasion to talk about the XOLO on nationally televised dog shows, so I leaned on the Down crossings for that answer. But I thought it was time to fete our furry friend from Hungary.

GARETH: I can't remember how Brad and I started putting together some themeless grids. I know we made a ton of stacks, and from those made several different themeless puzzles, of which this one has made the cut.

I don't remember that many specifics about this puzzle. I remember CABOTCOVE was something I included in a stack in a different grid, that Brad built his own stack around. I think most stacks were fairly collaborative in the end, but it's probably about 70% Brad that you're looking at in the final product.

Why? That's what I really came to say: It was an amazing and educating experience working with one of the masters of themeless construction! What really blew me away was the perfectionism — never leaving a bit of grid as "good enough". Brad is a tireless polisher! And a wonderful clue writer! It was a great privilege to be able to work with you, Brad! If this sounds fawning then so be it!

BRAD: When you're constructing a puzzle with a partner, "perfectionist" can come across as "control freak," so I'm exceedingly glad if Gareth had fun. Rather than be content partnering Doug Peterson, Byron Walden, and Kevin Christian and coping with a three-hour time difference, I went big: the time difference between Gareth and me is SIX hours.

I recall 1A and 15A being Gareth's starter stack (yes, possibly recycled from something we abandoned), and I was able to slip 17A in there. We actually added a white square to our original design to get the two 10-letter entries, and my favorite part of the finished product was Gareth's eventual crossing of 33D and 50A. His cluing aesthetic is mischievous but well-refined — it's on display in entries like 1D and 30D, not verbatim from the manuscript, but close.

Themeless construction DOES mean polishing to me; sometimes just one entry can sink you, and I don't like to put myself in the position of hoping something will skate through. Gareth brought lots of savvy and open-mindedness to the discussions we had on that score. I think you probably will be hearing from us again!

KEVIN: This is the first puzzle that Brad and I collaborated on chronologically, even though our Seuss-themed puzzle was published last month. I first got the idea for this theme in early 2013 but I didn't do anything with it right away because I didn't have an ODIN theme answer that I liked. I considered GOOD IN MATH, but I thought it was kind of weak. I looked at other GOOD IN ???? possibilities, but never found anything that really grabbed me. I let the idea sit until one day I ran across MOOD INDIGO.

The hardest part of the grid was the SW. I wanted to use BORA at 38-Across but Brad talked me out of it and ultimately we went with the grid that you see here.

BRAD: When Kevin and I decided to work together on something, he sent me a handful of theme ideas, and I zeroed in on this one pretty quickly, as being fully formed and ready to go without any tweaking to the theme entries. We only have a small handful of Norse gods who are household names (one maybe shading into crosswordese), and Kevin had settled on some common but lively relevant phrases.

The original grid design had an excess of 3-letter words at the center, but we were able to add a pair of white squares back in and even jazz up some of the original fill in the swath from the NW to the SE. We did a bit of haggling over the NE and SE, but it was constructive and amiable, and the final result represents a nice melding of our styles.

KEVIN: I'm happy to be collaborating with Brad Wilber on his first themed puzzle in the NYT. Brad's a very experienced constructor, but he's only had themelesses in the NYT up to now.

I have two kids: Tim (age 13) and Kate (age 11). When they were small I used to read stories to them at night before they went to bed. We had many favorites that we read over and over, many of which were Dr. Seuss books.

My only regret about this puzzle is that I couldn't figure out a way to work in THE CAT IN THE HAT. That's 14 letters, which is sometimes an awkward theme answer length to work with.

I want to give credit where credit is due. Joel Fagliano, Will's editorial assistant, came up with the idea to use quotes from the books as clues, which I think is genius.

BRAD: By the time I came on board, Kevin had already designed the grid and filled it. I was immediately impressed with the presence of five theme entries plus a revealer. Kevin was concerned about some nose-wrinkling incidental fill (I remember RRR crossing RRS, for example), so together we did some "doctoring" of Dr. Seuss. I brainstormed different ideas for some of the seven-letter entries that crossed three Seuss titles. We tinkered with the upper middle and lower middle, especially, and did some sprucing up of corners.

Helping write Tuesday clues is kind of new ground for me, but we seem to have done all right based on what the final draft looks like!

BRAD: The seed entry at 57A (SHRINK RAY) was in an early draft of the grid that appeared on 2/21/15, but I pulled it out of there when the stack you see here presented itself. The editorial tweak to the clue eases up considerably on the original [Facilitator of filmdom's "Fantastic Voyage"], but it makes sense looking at the general degree of difficulty in that corner — Doug's great clues for DENVER, ART FORGER, SOUTH POLE, my definition of REGIFT, etc.

We started the opposite corner with EXOTIC PET, and it was cool to have several Scrabbly entries settle in around it. Totally random that UNIBROW has made its way into 3 or 4 puzzles I've been involved with…I'd better take care not to develop one. I still have a few clues for it in the bag; the one here is Doug's, who I feel had a particularly inspired day when he sat down to work on this set (SWINE!).

DOUG: Brad mentioned that SHRINK RAY came from a draft that looked quite different by the time it was accepted. We've become quite adept at repurposing discarded entries, and sometimes we're even able to build a grid around an orphaned stack. I like to think of our grids as starfish. Because you can whack off an arm and use it to grow a whole new starfish. That really works, right? I think so, but bear in mind a lot of my starfish knowledge comes from comic books. Starro the Conqueror is one of my all-time favorite super-villains. (You think I'm joking? Look him up.)

BRAD: The ambition and versatility of Sam's work intrigued me from his very earliest appearances. He can deliver fresh, well-turned themes and also notably elegant themeless puzzles. He did lots of the heavy lifting here; I contributed the starter and the last corner, but he set me up very nicely. We've done others together since then in which the collaborative process itself might warrant a bit more discussion. Nice to have some longer entries feeding into the center from the border — no islands in the design. Quite a good number of our favorite clues made the cut, too.

SAM: I enjoy Brad's puzzles because they always teach me something new. The process for solving his puzzles usually goes something like this: (1) tentatively write one answer after another; (2) finish the grid feeling uncertain about four or five squares; (3) look up the answers where those mystery squares cross; (4) change 90% of the uncertain squares to the correct answer; and (5) vow to brush up on opera, literature, and other elements of the humanities.

Constructing with Brad is a similar process: (1) receive a partially completed grid; (2) look up three or four of the answers; (3) realize they are real words (and, in fact, darn good ones); and (4) try to contribute something of equal value. It's great fun to work with him. Brad mentioned our success in getting some clues to stick; specifically, 32 of our clues (47%) were left as is, 14 (21%) were polished but retained their original concepts, and the remaining 22 (32%) were completely overhauled, nearly always for the better. (Our original clue for 40-Down referenced the quarterback of my favorite NFL team, but I guess philosophers are a little more high-brow.)

DOUG: Remember the recent kerfuffle about whether or not HELLO KITTY is actually a cat? I've done some research on the topic, and she is indeed a cat. But here's where it gets weird: Hello Kitty has a pet cat named Charmmy Kitty. Charmmy Kitty basically looks like a smaller, more catlike version of Hello Kitty. Somehow this is even more disturbing than the Goofy/Pluto dichotomy.

BRAD: I don't know what Doug's talking about; I've kept a couple of smaller versions of myself as pets for years. One of them actually edits the Chronicle of Higher Education puzzles.

This puzzle went through a couple of drafts before we arrived at this fill. Between versions, I actually pulled one of my seeds to use in a different collaboration with Doug, which you'll see here eventually. But we preserved Doug's nice seeds at 33D and 17A. His HELLO KITTY clue is great, as well.

Brad::

I had the stack in the SW and was struggling with the "J" in JOE CAMEL. Neither any 15s nor any 7s with J in that position spoke to me. Enter Doug, who really got us unstuck with O.J. TRIAL. Lots of the fresh stuff here you owe to him. Some of my favorite clues include the ones we had for TRIX, OFFAL, and NEC. It might be worth noting that 25A is a terrific scene from Don Carlo, my favorite Verdi piece and quite possibly my favorite opera, period.

Doug:

Why would anyone want a JOE CAMEL shower curtain? And yet, back in the heyday of Joe Camel, that was one of the promotional items you could get for turning in proof-of-purchase slips called "Camel Cash." I'm not sure why I know or remember that. As for the O.J. TRIAL, I remember almost everything about that. I lived in Southern California in 1995, and it was impossible to escape the wall-to-wall coverage. Let's see what else is in the grid: DRACO MALFOY? I know a little about him, even though *gasp* I've never read a single "Harry Potter" book. I don't think either one of us has. So, no spoilers, please.

Brad:

My original intention was to do the entire top half and tag Byron, but I ended up giving him just a corner. I had to laugh that he engineered a nifty section with TAD LINCOLN, as I had tried that over and over again with no clean fill. I hadn't mentioned it to him in advance; we won't call it mind-reading exactly, since the –LN ending was one of the better choices. I recall that we had more back-and-forth choosing the fill for the bottom than we did for the whole of our puzzle of Nov. 30. 36D was a new word to me, and having Byron slot that in really tidied up that immediate area. I particular liked the Walden clues for 40A and 59A — I think the upper left might have been too hard with his original clue for 16A, but I'm keeping it mum so he has a chance to use it again.

Byron:

My memory of the construction was Brad started with the lovely NE corner, I got the TAD area working with a helpful assist from the egregi..., um, I mean innovative partial at 2D. Brad zipped off at least a couple of excellent SE corners. Then I slogged through with something OK in the SW but Brad noticed a bit of a dupe and buffed up that area to fix it. Beyond his greatness as a constructor, Brad really just shines as a co-constructor. I'm not even sure the 16A clue I wrote is harder than what's in the puzzle, just hard in a different way. Several clues are like that, especially 52A, which was clued in one option as the recentish Jake Gyllenhaal movie. I imagine that would be easier for some and harder for others. Hopefully the headaches are spread evenly and pass quickly.

DOUG: This is the first time, in the NY Times puzzle, that the entry DOGSIT (39-Across) has been clued as "dog-sit" (take care of a pet) instead of "dogs it" (loafs on the job). We went that route because the entry crosses ITS at 42-Down. And Brad came up with some stellar clues for dog-sit, including the one that Will used in puzzle. Here's a nice one from the cutting room floor: [Keep an afghan around you, perhaps]. I have cats, so I don't have to worry about finding a sitter. Cats are easy. If I'm going to be gone for a couple of days, I just leave a twenty-dollar bill on the counter and they're good.

BRAD: Every time I do a puzzle with stacks of 11s, I say it will be my last for a good while. But ever since Doug and I did our puzzle of last August 3, we've had orphaned stacks that we couldn't quite mesh with the grid of the moment but that we felt had the kind of panache solvers like to see — maybe enough to launch a new puzzle. Each new grid has left us with a tempting discarded scrap. I've joked to Doug that we will have an endless loop of 11-heavy puzzles and we'll just try to space them out judiciously and use other grid types in-between. I thought this one turned out especially clean. I liked Doug's clues for 34A and 57A. And the nice SE he did led to some fun digging on my part — research-based clues that Will liked and used in the final edit.

BARRY: TWITTERVERSE was the seed here. I also thought EXPEDIA would make a good Scrabbly entry, despite it being a brand name. We went through a few drafts before settling on the published grid. The first attempt used TIMEOUTS in the NE corner, which had to be changed because we eventually incorporated TIMELAG into the SW. So Brad replaced TIMEOUTS with WIPEOUTS and made some other changes to the NE. There were a couple of other words I wanted to use in the puzzle that would have been debuts for the NYT, but they had to be removed for other reasons. I thought LIBRARIAN would be fitting for the puzzle given Brad's profession. He clued the Downs and I did the Acrosses.

BRAD: Barry sent me a sizable section with his two nice seeds, plus a nice shout-out to my day job! I was merely glad to be able to make my own 12-letter seed work with a fairly nice stack of 9s. If memory serves me, I think we both did some tweaking to the corners with the shorter stacks. Using WYCH ELM reminds me of the second or third puzzle I ever did with Doug Peterson, where he used a variant spelling and we got by with it. I didn't know either spelling existing before that time! And I don't know if we're the first clue-writers to reference Hitchcock for 2-Down, but it may be a fresh angle for many solvers. I may have used that clue in one of my online self-edited puzzles.

Brad:

Byron has always been a clip-and-save constructor for me, so I jumped at the chance when he sent me a corner and proposed we try the "hook" of mirroring B____ W____ entries. The scary part: I had never done any significant stacks that were four deep, let alone ones with restrictions. After a day or two I sent Byron a few possibilities without any BW, saying perhaps it was the best I could do. He was gracious about it, but luckily I persevered a little longer and a BW section came together. I'd have to say, though, that my favorite part of the puzzle was the last to go in — Byron's zippy NW. A 10-letter entry with only one vowel — how often has THAT happened?

Byron:

Brad was more than up to my little challenge — not that I had any doubts. I do like four deep stacks when possible just because three-letter entries are nearly always tired. (NAS was first clued as the rapper in 1999!)

One other note about the cluing. I suggested to Brad that we clue each other's corners. It was a nice way to completely share in the creation of the puzzle.

This grid design owes a debt to a 2008 Barry Silk puzzle run in another venue. I rearranged the black squares in the center to form two mini-staircases of the longest entries in the puzzle. I liked that they were all different lengths (9, 10, and 11 letters). I've used this pattern a few times in both a 68-word version and a 70-word version, but I think this was my first instance working with it.

Plugging in possibilities from my list of seed entries, hoping to stack them, TORT REFORM and CLAW CRANE slid in. VELVET ELVIS and FALLEN HEM also worked on the bottom. For some reason, E.L. DOCTOROW was not in my word list at the time, and I kept that in, only later discovering it's not a new entry in the least. Something else might have popped more. There are underwhelming spots in the shorter fill, but the 8s are not bad and both Will and I especially liked "I'M RUINED" at 58A. JILTEE from the unabridged Webster's kind of saved my bacon in the SE, but I used the first clue that came to mind and I see Will left it in.

Brad:

Doug and I usually achieve something close to a 50/50 split on the fill in our themeless puzzles. The kind of balance we're looking for is helped along by grid patterns that are fairly modest in their demands — whatever progress I make somewhere should leave Doug lots of flexibility. What I like about grids that Doug picks (like this one) is that they are manageable but they usually present some extra degree of difficulty, like a pair of 10s feeding into the center or reaching into the corners, when we could have bailed out with cheater squares instead. Doug plunked down a nifty new 1A here and worked to 32A. We took turns on the other corners until we were done. We've got movie trivia, history, gastronomy, and baseball here — all elements we both like. I humbly submit a fresh clue for 16A. Doug has concocted some crafty ones for a couple of the 9-letter entries.

Doug:

1A is an example of my favorite type of themeless seed entry. It may not be familiar to most solvers, but the entry is quite figure-out-able. And most importantly, it's an interesting phrase to learn. You can use it to impress your easily impressed friends at your next cocktail party. I try not to use unfamiliar names as seeds, because they're quickly forgotten once the puzzle is solved. And let me add that I always learn something new (a cool word, some fun trivia, etc.) when constructing a puzzle with Brad.

BRAD:

The old adage of "good longer stacks start with the stacking of useful shorter stems" was especially true here, as I realized ONLINE went nicely atop GOLDEN, and what remained was to pick compatible tails. Doug liked LIE DETECTOR in the stack and added MALL COP; he's also responsible for those two great clues.

We tried a few design configurations in the middle and realized we'd have to have some long vertical entries too or the word count would tip over into 72 or 74. BOXER BRIEFS won out over other –EFS we tried. I had just been doing some work in the trenches at the end of the alphabet on my word list, so new addition WAX TABLET helped matters a lot, facilitating ___ FAMILY.

And we had to decide whether or not to have the vertical 15s, rather than going with SEWELL or NEWELL or LOWELL or whatever. TO A FARE-THEE-WELL had actually been on my list of possible seed entries. But did we ever take some ribbing for it (fewer people seemed to recognize it than I expected) — and since the puzzle appeared the Saturday before Lollapuzzoola, some of the ribbing was in person! Still, I think this was a grid most solvers were quite happy with.