David Woolf author page

This was really just an excuse to get BIGSPOON in a puzzle. With that in at 1A, I decided to shoot for big, open northwest and southeast corners while keeping the number of 3 and 4 word answers to a minimum. So here's a short list of the things I liked about the puzzle while I was constructing it.

1. The presence of HAHAHA and DADADA in the same corner, the latter of which was made pseudo-famous in the late nineties by a Volkswagen ad.
2. The Gashlycrumb TINIES are a delightfully morbid piece by the always great Edward Gorey.
3. Coming up with STRESS EATS saved me from having to completely tear up the northwest after I was most of the way through constructing it.
4. CELIAC Disease sufferers represent! We should form a club where we lament the lack of good gluten free pizza.
5. The non-forced dupe clue at 5D and 6D.

I was happy to see many of my favorite clues survive the cut, and particularly enjoyed some of Will's additions in the southwest. Also, the timing of this puzzle's publication couldn't have been better, as my wife just 41D'ed a baby while her family was on 47A for a wedding, so they're surrounded by 16A while we're surrounded by, well, 5D. I hope you enjoyed the puzzle!

I loved the idea of making a puzzle where all of the four letter words were the combination of two two-letter US state abbreviations. Of the 50 states, there are 37 that are capable of combining with other states to form words. (Sorry West Virginia and New Mexico!) Thus I could form a maximum of 18 words using the 36 of the 37 state abbreviations. (Sorry Kentucky!) Then I had to find a way to fit them all into the grid. After many iterations (I have 23 different named versions of this puzzle in Crossword Compiler, each one of which probably went through ten iterations), I found that stacking three of the theme answers on top of each other was the best way to fit everything in.

In my submitted grid, each four-letter word had an additional bracketed clue, such as for my clue for 5 Down: Lots [6/11], the answer of which is MANY. These bracketed clues corresponded to when the states were admitted to the union (6th for MA, 11th for NY), and I felt they'd help alert the solvers that something different was going on and help solvers track down the theme answers once they finished.

Without them, alas, I imagine the puzzle will play like a not-very-well-filled themeless puzzle for anyone who doesn't spend the time to seek out all of the states, but hopefully the revealer still serves as a nice "a-ha" moment. As always, I hope you enjoyed the solving experience and that the payoff was worth the effort!

This theme idea arose when I started picturing the crossword grid as intersecting streets. I tried to think of a way to represent a stop light in the grid somehow, and have certain answers stop on RED in one direction and continue through on GREEN in the other. I realized I couldn't have the stoplight squares as rebus squares without some unconventional cluing or grid numbering, so I settled on hiding stoplights in the black squares.

I then found a number of phrases where GREEN could be represented by a black square while the subsequent letter string would still be a perfectly acceptable crossword entry (such as BERG in HANK GREENBERG). Finally, I decided that this puzzle could use a revealer that might give an assist to any solvers who were stupefied by the theme. (Note: Will et al. decided to obviate the intersections, replacing the black squares with red and green colored squares. While I sense that this will make the puzzle eminently more solvable, I wonder if it doesn't also remove a certain aha moment from the solve.)

Symmetry for all six stop lights was impossible, though some ended up with a symmetric partner anyway, mostly because that's where I could fit them. The North and South open sections were the most challenging to fill, though no part of this puzzle filled easily. In spite of the challenges, I was pleased to be able to include CASH BAR (after having CASH BARS in my debut a few years ago), NON-EVENT, and SANTA CON.

This puzzle went through two revisions for the fill (getting rid of things like TA-DAH and HEY MA (crossing at the H) and HEALEY and YGRITTE (crossing at the Y) before it officially was accepted.

I hope everyone enjoyed the puzzle and that the challenge/payoff ratio was worth it.

I started writing this puzzle a long time ago and was convinced that 1) with 12 rebus squares, I couldn't fill it, and 2) couldn't keep it resembling a calendar while keeping the word count beneath 140 words. So I set it aside for a better part of a year before picking it up again. When I did, I found a layout where each month was relatively the same size, relatively rectangular, and not-too closed off from one-another, and forged ahead.

There ended up being three major challenges to filling this puzzle. First, the many straight edges. Constructors know that it is way easier to fill puzzle sections that have diagonal edges rather than straight edges. With straight-edges, it becomes difficult to avoid words that have terminal non-RSTLNE letters, so one ends up with a lot of fill that is, shall we say, STRUCTURAL. Second, there are very few three-letter entries in the grid, which are a constructor's best friend in otherwise hard-to-fill sections. Finally, I didn't want any of the rebused entries to share a common root with their corresponding month. This was particularly hard for July, which comes from Julius, as do just about every word and name you can think of that starts with JUL besides JULEP. BANJUL, then was my only other JUL-containing option, which as a world capital, is fully legit, but as a city of only 30,000 people, is pretty small potatoes. But so it goes!

I hope this Sunday puzzle — my first! — kicks off your new year on the right foot.

I started working on this puzzle as an exercise in "How to construct a Triple Stack." I wanted to understand the magnitude of the trade-offs between interesting 15s and interesting everything-elses. I also wanted to maintain an open grid, because my own personal gripe with many Triple Stack puzzles is that there's only one way to attack them: whittle away at 3-, 4- and 5-letter fill until you have enough of the stack to intuit the long answers.

So I started with the top and bottom 15s as my seed entries, and then chose a grid shape that would feel open but still not impossible to fill. I think the top stack came out zippier than the bottom stack, but I was happy to avoid a preponderance of terminal esses that can sometimes distract from otherwise nice answers.

Other notes: I'm also happy to see "Afrobeat music pioneer Fela" make his debut. I tried to sneak him into an old, rejected puzzle submission a few years ago, on an easier day of the week. He seems worthy of a Fri/Sat puzzle, though, as long as the crosses are fair. I'm also very pleased with the cluing. Many of my favorites made the cut, and Will's additions are excellent.

I hope you enjoy!

First, a note on 1-Across. From reading many a crossword blog from the past year, I have become more aware of real and perceived gender biases that appear in crossword puzzles from time to time. When building this puzzle, I found the only entry that I could make work at 1-Across was BIG BREASTED, and feeling a little uncomfortable about it, decided to make the clue about chicken ("Like industrial broilers?"). Furthermore, I realized I had an opportunity to at least create some balance by cluing 13 Down as "Subject of the Seinfeld episode ‘The Hamptons.'"

To say the least, I was disappointed to see both clues changed in the ways that they were. I do not know if the effect of cold water on a man fails to pass the "breakfast test" or otherwise runs afoul of the NYT standards and practices, but it seems to me that crossword puzzles should be able to objectify men and women in equal measure. Now, onto the puzzle!

Finding interesting longish entries when starting with a concept that's a bit of a stunt like this can be a challenge, but in general I was happy with the trade-offs. I found that 60/64-Across stacked well, and then went searching for a symmetric pair and came up with 15/17-Across. The ?HT of 8-Down necessitated something longer, and so I started forming the grid shape around that.

I discovered STAYED LOOSE gave lots of options at the bottom, and could only make BIG BREASTED work at 1-Across (though I still ended up with the gluey LEHR and EOUS). APPLE ID at 45 Across allowed me to fill the middle cleanly, and the two black squares that were added before 48 Across COLONEL and after 25 Across Clayton did the same for the northeast and southwest.

I hope you enjoyed the result.

A while back, while trying to come up with rebus themes involving the words "square" or "box," etc, I stumbled onto Einstein's famous equation, E = mc², and realized that I could cleverly use the "equals" and "squared" parts of the equation to make an 'E' in one direction make an 'mc' all in one square in another. Never mind the fact that in Einstein's equation only the c is squared; the important part for me was that the language that you would use to describe the puzzle is the same language you would use to describe the equation: "E equals m c squared."

Conveniently, the puzzles four theme answers all had 'E's in them, allowing this puzzle to be a simple dedication to Einstein on one level, while being a rebus-like puzzle on another. In order to be fully consistent though, I had to make sure there were no other 'E's anywhere else in the puzzle. In general, I think restrictions like this are capable of leading to nice, out-of-the-box answers, though some fill can strain because of it. (33 and 40 Across are a good example of this dichotomy.) Anyway, that's the story. I hope you enjoy it!

I started puzzling and constructing around the same time. Which is to say I started out only being able to solve (and construct) Monday and Tuesday puzzles. The act of constructing rapidly improved my solving ability by introducing me to so many words and phrases that are put in then taken out of tricky corners. It also led to me developing certain rules that I will always try to follow in my grids. For instance, I will never have a corner with only one entry point. I think it cheapens the building as well as the solving experience.

For this puzzle, I was most proud of the Northwest, with CASH BARS on OSCAR WAO on NO IFS ANDS OR BUTS. Didn't notice until it was too late that AND crosses ANDS. Oh well. I went back and forth on whether to include NOONER but decided to keep it (SOONER/MISCUES would have worked as well with some other changes to the Southwest). Really wanted KRUPKE in the Northeast but couldn't make it work. Hardest part to fill was the Southeast. Was honestly surprised that ACE DEUCE was accepted.