Ellen Brunsberg author page

When the pandemic hit and quarantine ensured togetherness, Ellen began looking for a distraction. Peering over Ray's shoulder while he was doing the crossword, the spark of a new passion began to glow. While our styles proved dramatically different — creative flair and equally creative orthography vs. read-the-clues-in-order and zero knowledge of pop culture — it became apparent we made a good team. Our friends at Boswords provided us with hours of fun practice, solving cooperatively, and inevitably the idea struck: couldn't we construct one of these?

We studied the six-part guide How to Make a Crossword Puzzle in the NYT. We brainstormed theme ideas and created a spreadsheet of half-baked concepts. Ray inundated Jeff Chen with theme suggestions, but his polite back-and-forth didn't result in any great theme concepts. Undaunted, we downloaded some construction software and simply began putting together puzzles. We had fun trying to be inventive with our clues but we will never compare to Brad Wilber, and we used friends to beta test our puzzles (thank you David Markus).

After six very nicely worded encouraging rejection emails from the NYT, they wrote to say they accepted this puzzle, saying that it made them smile. For that comment, we smile as well and hope you have the same reaction. Here's to teamwork and 27 years of marriage, a love of games, puns, and each other.