Hal Moore author page

I built this "backward" — beginning in the SE and wending my way up to the NW. Perhaps because English speakers are used to reading, it can be easier to see a grid taking shape when starting near the upper left corner, but some seed entries work better in other areas, where they have more room to breathe.

Here the seed was 57-Across, an artist I greatly admire. He was difficult to clue for a Friday, so I went with my initial inspiration — my late father, who could happily spend all day in a museum. The 2003 exhibit "The French Taste for Spanish Painting" was one of the last he attended, and the framed poster is still hanging in my childhood home.

Another personal touch is my love of geography, which comes through on the right side with the 10-Down/30-Down pair. I'm thankful my clue for 30-Down made the cut — there are many potential angles, from the fascinating history of Indian Ocean trade and the development of Swahili to the Kalashnikov on its modern flag, but when I encountered this fact, it was a pleasant surprise, and I wanted to share that feeling.

This is my first NYT puzzle since the birth of my daughter, and it is dedicated to her and her amazing mom. I submitted it before her conception, so it's fitting that my clue for 22A survived the edit! Family and friends may also spot the homage to my mom — a mighty practitioner of both the written and spoken word, and the person most responsible for my love of language.

I'm excited to be sharing my work with Saturday solvers for the first time, and hope this provided the anticipated challenge. I can still remember the first Saturday I ever solved — well, my friend Tom mostly solved it, but I made some useful contributions, including the realization that the clue "Player coached by Hank Stram" was generic rather than specific. (April 12th, 2008 — a Walden, which unsurprisingly holds up quite nicely.)

That particular solve gave me a real boost — I started attempting Fridays and Saturdays solo during college (occasionally completing them), and, after graduation, embarked on my earliest construction efforts.

I began this at the 17A/14D crossing, which I envisioned as a micro-theme (though initially the answers were not cross-referenced). From there, I built in a generally southeasterly direction, focusing on preserving flexibility (i.e., letter patterns with several answer options, and answers with several cluing options). I hadn't intended to feature the pair of grid-spanning downs, but as I experimented with different lengths for those slots, the grid seemed to click into place this way.

The idea for this progression hit me late one night while mulling over the potential of 58-Across as a themeless entry. Maybe it's a kind of reverse semantic satiation (a term I just learned from "Ted Lasso") where if you stare at a word long enough, it can actually gain meaning.

I figured there would be a decent number of options for CAS-E, CA-SE, and C-ASE, but realized there are very few entries that begin CASE without using the word itself. I'm a baseball fan who married into a family of even bigger baseball fans, and I knew I wanted to start the progression with 20-Across. Given the lengths (13, 15) and relatively fixed placements of those two answers, mirror (left-right) symmetry was required. With rotational (180-degree) symmetry so dominant, I always enjoy seeing what the mirror will reveal.

Somewhat surprisingly, this arrangement of stacked themers seemed to yield the best fill, though some compromises were necessary, as in the wide-open "North" section. I suspect many solvers won't notice or care, but I do hope some enjoy the unusual layout, including the 2x2 Tetris blocks on either edge of the grid's middle.

The clues reflect a harmonious balance between my submission and fresh ideas from the editorial team. They injected new life throughout, with 17-Across a prime example. 42-Down is saltier than what I would have dared submit — but I loved seeing it! I appreciated the essence of my clues being retained in many places, especially 28-Down, 43-Across, and 27-Across.

I first experienced the deeply missed 37-Across — who would have been 64 last week — through Kitchen Confidential. I was captivated by his vivid stories of youthful summers in a French 42-Across village, and the characters, (including 24-Down), who make up the "pirate crews" in restaurants. For the clue, my intent was to pay tribute with a line from the book that I feel captures a bit of his adventurous spirit.

This is the first themeless I built "middle-out" rather than generally from Seattle toward Miami. My goal was to keep the center open and let the grid flow. The editorial team made fill changes in the NW and NE — I had originally submitted 1/2/3-Down as HERSH / ALOHA / LALAW, and HERSH / ELAH was a no-go. Despite the inelegance of an abbreviation at 1-Across, I'm happy with the edit — particularly the duplicate clue for 14-Across and 3-Down. Sometimes these can feel forced, but I think the wording works quite naturally here. Elsewhere, the NE corner originally had PHONE/ERO — I figured the flexibility of a trickier 9-Across clue was worth the niche classical music reference.

This is my first publication since the formal introduction of constructor feedback to the editorial process, and I really enjoyed the opportunity. I'm always trying to learn about the art of cluing, and our exchange was very productive. Many of my original clues did make the cut, including 35- and 39-Across — answers I'd selected with those specific clues in mind. It's satisfying to feel like the final product retains my voice.

Thank you to the editorial team for encouraging and bearing with me through two revisions. They rightly pushed me to get more out of the SE corner, and the puzzle is much stronger as a result. I hope my fellow "30 Rock" fans enjoy seeing 46-Down — he was the key to smoothing out that section. In today's episode, Jack travels back in time and becomes an unlikely ally of 45-Across (perhaps recalling Edie Falco's story arc). 49-Across, led by the great Gwen Dickey, provides the soundtrack.

The classic triple stack seems out of fashion, as many constructors opt for wide-open middles with stairstep/pinwheel patterns and other heavily interlocked grids. These are visually stunning, but stacks are tried and true. I have also been experimenting with more adventurous grids, but this type of 72- or 70-word design will remain reliable.

The seed entry was 1-Across, which felt evocative to me, and I think the old-timey 68-Across provides an appropriate bookend. I tried to make the NW corner lively while preserving flexibility for those medium-length Downs. For example, with a few black squares shifted 4-Down could have been a certain Swiss-German artist; 7-, 9-, and 10-Down each had several possibilities. That, in turn, allowed me flexibility with the placement of the central black squares.

We must be wary of 61-Across in these troubled times, including people like 64-Down. To make myself feel better, I imagine that in the movie of his life, he would be played by Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean.

I'm pleased to publish my first NYT Sunday — thanks to Sam and Will for their nice edit, especially their clues for 37- and 54-Across, and 59-Down.

This puzzle is special to me for two reasons. Firstly, by sheer coincidence, it appears on the final day of the U.S. Open tennis tournament. With respect and affection for the golf competition held in the UK each July, in New York, The Open only means one thing.

I started out going with my mom when Sampras and Agassi were in their pomp, although I idolized Patrick Rafter, the Australian who relentlessly attacked the net and said "sorry, mate" when he had to catch his serve toss. I have had some of the best sports moments of my life at the Open, including a memorable night match in 2000 when my mom and I saw my hero Rafter (by then a two-time Open champion) lose dramatically in the first round. Though it wasn't the result I wanted, the atmosphere was electric, and I was hooked.

In recent years, I have been making the annual pilgrimage to Flushing with my soon-to-be-wife Laura — my solving partner on Sundays and my everything partner every day. She has been encouraging me in my constructing since we first met, and I am always bouncing ideas off her. I thought "love-hate relationships" could make for an interesting Sunday concept and revealer, and first tried a "switch" idea (answers like love speech and hate handles), as well as conventionally hiding "love" and "hate" inside longer answers. But I was struggling with the execution until Laura suggested a rebus element which could operate differently in the across and down directions.

After a lot of trial and error, I found the "H-A-T-E" strings hiding in those two longer answers, and realized I could intersect them both with the centrally placed revealer (It seemed logical for the "L-O-V-E" strings all to operate horizontally because Across clues appear first in print). This led to a somewhat unusual grid with lots of options for long non-theme material, and I'm happy with the bonuses I was able to include. It's a real challenge to stay at or under the 140-word limit, so I hope the tradeoffs, including more short plurals than I'd prefer, were worth it, and that solvers enjoy my interpretation of mixed feelings.

The pangram (a puzzle containing every letter of the alphabet) is nothing new, and indeed, when constructors put a Q or Z where it doesn't really belong — "doing it for the ‘Gram," in the parlance of our times — they may find themselves accused of lewd acts against a certain board game!

But I thought the restriction of having each letter appear adjacent to the one before/after it in the alphabet would make for a fun construction challenge that wouldn't require too many compromises in the fill.

I started off by placing the Q — I knew both PQ and QR had very few options, and figured it would be most efficient to use a single Q to cross the two answers near a corner. WX and JK were the other most challenging pairings, so I found a way to include them in longer answers with otherwise friendly letters, and then to cross those answers near a corner as well. I would have loved to include the RIJKSMUSEUM in Amsterdam, but couldn't manage it, and also that's probably a late-week answer.

It was Will and Joel's idea to include the note and bracketed numbers indicating alphabetic position, and I thank them for their editorial efforts. They also made one change to the grid, at NATHANIEL/INIS. My original submission had NATHANAEL/INAS, figuring that IN AS was a slightly more palatable partial. I had also considered ETAL/IT IS/JAE in that section. I watch a lot of basketball, so Jae Crowder is well-known to me, but is he crossworthy? I wonder which option solvers prefer.

The LYS/SSRS crossing is a bit ugly as well, but other than that, I don't think the grid shows too much sign of strain. I hope solvers feel the same, and that they appreciate the rationale behind this construction.

GHOSTFACE KILLAH has appeared in the Times puzzle before, but until today, the full WU TANG CLAN had not — as a native New Yorker, I'm glad to be able to rectify that and show Staten Island some love. I grew up in Manhattan in the 90s, and hip hop was a vital part of that experience, so I gave the Wu pride of place at 1-Across. From there, I just tried to keep the fill lively and clean without sacrificing flow.

Because the NW and SE corners have only one entry/exit each, I made the openings three blocks wide, so that those sections wouldn't feel cut off from the rest of the puzzle. Once I had the NW stack in place, I put in the two 12-letter answers — normally a difficult length to work with because of the forced placement of six black squares, but the blocks below 22-Across and above 48-Across made sense to me.

It was a challenge to then "reverse engineer" the NW and fill the SE to my liking. I had to pay the price of LIA (the Irish word for "stone") and the partial ONE TO, while the third-person GOES EASY ON might not hit the ear quite right. But I was pleased to be able to include the great TRINI LOPEZ to provide a musical contrast with the opposite corner. Alongside NELL Carter, IRV Gotti, and ALANIS Morissette, a wide variety of styles are represented, reflecting my own eclectic taste.

I finished the construction in the SW and NE corners, and looking back (I made the puzzle last summer), I feel the 90s coming through there, too — THE X-FILES was huge, (although I wasn't really into it, I just like the wacky H-E-X-F letter string), as were dinosaurs, so solvers also get a giant IGUANODON.

Thanks to Will and Joel for their editing — I especially appreciated how they livened up the short fill with their clues for 29- and 36-Across, and 11- and 27-Down.

I'm thrilled to see my first published puzzle on my favorite day of the puzzle week — the Times Thursday!

First, I'd like to thank Joel and Will for their encouragement through a significant rewrite and several revisions — I'm happy with the final product, but all that really matters is whether or not solvers enjoy it!

My goal was to provide that "aha!" moment in a playful way, to create the type of Thursday I'd like to solve myself. I have been fascinated by the idea of a rebus ever since I was first stumped by one, but for a long time, I struggled to think of a rebus concept that felt different, and that would allow me to express myself. Then it hit — the original inspiration for this puzzle was one of my favorite songs, Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds."

The birds would be "little" in the sense of each one having to fit in a single square, and I would use all 4-letter birds for consistency — that seemed like the sweet spot between not interesting enough (3 letters) and too difficult to hide inside longer answers (5 letters).

My initial attempt was rejected for an awkwardly broken-up revealer (THREE and LITTLEBIRDS), but Joel had the idea that the revealer could be changed to ALITTLEBIRDIE. The new revealer worked much better because its 13 letters allowed for central placement in the grid — this flexibility and the removal of the song reference meant I could also include a fourth bird.

After much experimentation with the grid design, I opted for the "four corners" structure you see here. I felt it set the rebus squares apart nicely, and allowed me to maintain a uniform length for the themers of 10 letters for the Across answers and 7 letters for the Down answers.