David Bukszpan author page
1 puzzle by David Bukszpan
with Jeff Chen comments
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Jane Foley, a regular reader, has been delighting Jim Horne, David Steinberg, and me with her corrections and observations about the pre-Shortzian puzzles. She's been methodically working her way through the archives, and her historian-like perspective adds so much color to these older puzzles.
Today's quote is so apt for crossword solvers. It's also great to be reminded that the NYT crossword's first editor was a woman; female constructors are still underrepresented.
The quote breaks up so neatly into mirror-symmetry-friendly chunks, each piece an even number of letters. It's incredibly difficult to build around since any line that requires black squares at its ends eats away precious flexibility.
Breaking the first two lines as YOU CAN'T THINK OF / YOUR TROUBLES (shifting the OF) would have helped immensely — that would have allowed the first themer to go in row 3, thus increasing spacing and gridding flexibility. Although it's more accurate to FARRAR's era to have 10ish dabs of glue, these days crosswords should never have more than five.
I'm not a huge fan of quote puzzles, since they're an all-or-nothing proposition, either the impact a knockout or a swing and a miss. I do love today's sentiment, though, and the tribute to a great woman. With some more Shortz-era polishing, it had the opportunity to be a rare quote puzzle that shines.