David Poole author page

This puzzle grew out of a failed attempt to construct a different puzzle. Beginning with the not-exactly-earth-shattering observation that BLACK and WHITE have the same number of letters, I spent some time trying to create a "Schrödinger puzzle" in which the central 5-letter entry could be either BLACK or WHITE with the crosses using the same clues either way. It didn't take too long for me to realize that my constructing chops aren't good enough to pull this off.

So Plan B: construct a puzzle around a word ladder BLACK -> WHITE. There are lots of possible ladders for this, but I settled on the one I used in today's puzzle. However, the puzzle still seemed to be lacking a raison d'être, something that changes from black to white. The discs in the game Othello! OK, now we're getting somewhere but just sticking OTHELLO into the grid as a revealer of sorts seemed inelegant. Then the crossword gods smiled on me: the game Reversi, on which Othello^TM is based, also has seven letters! So I could put both OTHELLO and REVERSI into the grid symmetrically.

On to construction. With a ladder of nine 5-letter words needing to be placed in a particular order, along with OTHELLO and REVERSI, there are some serious constraints on the grid. I had wanted the ladder to flow downwards, for example with SLACK at 15-Across and WHILE at 63-Across. However, I couldn't get decent fill with this placement. So I settled for the grid you now see and, all in all, I'm pretty happy with it.

Will and Joel tweaked some of the clues to make the puzzle Tuesday-friendly but, for the most part, they either kept the spirit of my original clues or improved upon them. For example, at 15-Across, I had [Actress Melanie's actress mom] for TIPPI which is now [Hedren of "The Birds"]. I like that change for a Tuesday puzzle. I'd say the only changed clue that I don't like is for 60-Down: MII [The year 1002]. I had [Personal avatar in Super Mario Galaxy]. Maybe that's not a good for a Tuesday, but I have an aversion to random Roman numeral clues. Minor quibble. I have to say that Will and Joel did such a good job with the clues that I had to go back and look at my original puzzle to know which clues they changed. Thanks!

I hope the solving experience is enjoyable.

The inspiration for this puzzle came from another puzzle I was constructing that included the entry ACE IN THE HOLE. It struck me that it would be fun to interpret that literally. That idea led me to try hiding ACE in a solitary black square and building words around those. I had never used that gimmick before so it was a nice opportunity to see if I could pull it off.

The construction had one major challenge: where to place the ACEs and, related to that, satisfying the symmetry constraint for the theme answers. The four theme entries exploiting the two corner ACEs were the easy ones. The two side ACEs worked well for their corresponding across entries, one of which is the revealer. However, it took a bit of work to settle on the down entries for these two since ACE had to appear in the middle of those entries. There are surprisingly few decent choices for these. Eventually, I settled on ???ACE???? (and its symmetric counterpart) leading to the grid you see.

Will and Joel improved a number of the clues to make the puzzle appropriate for a Thursday. I'm very happy with the result. I hope solvers enjoy it!

This puzzle had its genesis when I was a neophyte constructor back in 2008. I wanted to try a rebus puzzle and built one around the theme of "Peanut Butter Sandwiches," PB being the rebus. I submitted it to Peter Gordon at the now-defunct NY Sun and, to my dismay, he rejected it. The basis for his rejection was that PBJ is better known than just PB. The rejection hurt at the time but, of course, he was right. I put the puzzle away.

Several years later — for reasons I don't remember — I decided to look at the puzzle again. PB as the chemical symbol for lead just jumped out at me. The reveal LEADBELLY followed quickly. I tweaked the old puzzle to get the theme entries to align nicely and sent it off to Will. The result is what you see today. I'm happy with the finished product.

This puzzle is a testament to perseverance. I still consider myself a rookie constructor — always more to learn. But what I learned from this one was not to give up on a puzzle. A little tweaking may very well salvage an otherwise unpublishable crossword.

This puzzle was the first collaboration for both of us. David originally contacted Gareth via email, and we ended up sending each other several stalled crosswords. This one was Gareth's, with the initial seed entry being TUBBY THE TUBER (which didn't make it to the final cut). Gareth didn't have enough themers that he liked or themers of the right lengths. After much wrangling, and a lot of creative ideas from both of us (FRANK ZAPPER, e.g.) we came to a mutually agreeable set and sent it off to Will, who liked some answers but asked for some new ones.

This went on for about three rounds. Boy is it difficult for three people to agree on what "pun" entries work! When we finally got the nod, I think we were both so excited we sent each other basically filled grids. This grid was David's although Gareth further revised it in a few places. The finished product is much better than the original one we submitted — we're both very happy with it. Patience often pays off! Thanks to Will for sticking with us on this one and for leaving so many of our clues alone!