Hoang-Kim Vu author page

RAFA: Last November, I was in the car with some friends who were discussing a 57-Across they knew and I thought it would be a fun word to debut in a crossword. Soon after, I was working on this grid and saw the opportunity present itself in the bottom right corner ... I had to make it work. This grid started with the spanner, though, which felt relevant because it seems like every person I know is getting engaged these days!

Looking back, I clearly had relationships in mind while working on this one even though I was, and remain, single as a Pringle. Perhaps there is something to psychoanalyze there ... but I will leave it be! Anyhoo, Kim was an absolute pleasure to work with, and my favorite of his fill is 17D.

KIM: About eight months ago, I made a joke on Twitter about Rafa's prolific puzzle output, he DM'd me about collabing, and now here we are with our second puzzle together. All credit goes to Rafa for the grid shape and the spanner, which let us really tinker with each corner until we got it just right. My favorites of Rafa's clues are 16A and 2D.

Also, congrats to my sister, whose own 34-Across was this past weekend. Wishing you and Jon a wonderful future together.

This puzzle was inspired in part by Joon Pahk's very good "Deal or No Deal" puzzle from Lollapuzzoola 2020. During walks to pick up our daughter from daycare last fall, we fleshed out the idea and themers, which makes for a very fond memory of crunching through leaves and asking each other whether CHARD/CHARMED was better than HOMEWARD/HOWARD (neither obviously made the cut).

Our intent was to identify a few marquee entries that really had a lively definitional shift once the ME was removed. Once we realized the best ones weren't strictly letter symmetrical with one another like typical themers, we concentrated on laying them out at least N-S and E-W symmetrical in the grid as a basic skeleton, while taking advantage of any additional MEs that popped up as we filled (see: MEAD and MERV). We're really happy with the outcome (not the least of which was some fun-for-us bonuses like SWEET TEA and SOUS VIDE), though pour one out for MED STUDENT/D STUDENT not making the themer cut. Hope you enjoy!

Hi everybody! We're excited to debut/return to the NYT crossword today! A love of puzzles has always been a shared hobby in our marriage, but Jess honestly never even thought she'd get into solving crosswords, much less constructing, as she assumed being able to spell was a prerequisite. But crosswords became a perfect habit for us to do together right-before-bedtime; working through a puzzle really helped us both relax and clear our mind of the day's stress.

Like all things in life for Kim, he took a perfectly normal hobby and made it an obsession, and like all things in life for Jess, she couldn't let things go out the door without making sure they were perfect. So, we quickly found ourselves spit balling themes over the dinner table, something that became even more important during a pregnancy in a pandemic, when co-constructing was a great way to use our minds for other things besides worrying. This theme's genesis was during that time when there was certainly much despondency around. But as you may have guessed, its timing was ironic for us with our hearts fuller than ever before, as we welcomed our first child into the family. We apologize to her for not figuring out a way to get her name into the grid.

For the construction bits, we toyed with having the HEARTs follow a staircase down to the revealer, but those options for the fourth themer were less sparkly than HEAD FOR THE HILLS and if you turn the puzzle sideways, there's a rough heart shape that's also getting broken. Lastly, as with many of our puzzles, there are lots of favorite constructor bits in here — food, cities we love, world football, 80s and 90s pop, Star Wars. Hope you enjoyed it!