Jill Denny author page

It's been an amusing game, waiting to see which July 4^th this would be published on. We intended it to be hard, for July 4^th, 2013 (a Thursday). Then July 4th, 2014 was a Friday. And July 4^th, 2015 was a Saturday. Stupid calendar!

When we pinged Will about possibly running it this year, he confessed he was struggling with how to word the revealer. In classic wordplay, FOURTH OF JULY hints only at the letter Y, since it's the fourth letter of JULY, so many solvers might get baffled by the theme concept. If it were to be run on a Monday, we'd have to make sure a bigger chunk of solvers figured it out.

We ran by several ideas — our favorite for a crystal-clear clue was [The starts of 20-, 26-, 36-, and 42-Across are all one-___], but that admittedly felt inelegant. So I like the compromise with the [… literally] hint. Hope that makes it clear to everyone that J U L Y are each literally 1/4 (one fourth) of JULY!

Tough grid to assemble, with much less flexibility than usual. In working up the skeleton, I pulled out every trick in the book, including shifting each themer back and forth, changing the spacing, trying stacking / interlock, etc. I'm not a fan of the big L blocks of black squares on the sides, but it felt like the least of all evils.

Then it was a matter of choosing some good long fill — Jill liked MOM JEANS over LEE JEANS and DIONYSUS / TS ELIOT over many other options, even though the latter pair required an ORU to make it work.

I did sneak in a NYUK — the two of us have radically different opinions when it comes to the Three Stooges. I suppose she had to have some flaw.

The grid to the right is what happened when I tried to do this one on my own. (I felt there had to be a progression from BOGEY to PAR to BIRDIE to EAGLE.) I didn't really like the themers. The fill. The layout. The solving experience. The author. But I proudly showed it to Jill.

"Hmm," was her reaction.

She's very considerate of my feelings. Canadian-esque, I might say.

Thankfully, I had the wisdom (dare I say, genius) to bring her on board so we could tear it down and create something a whole lot better. Sometimes I wonder how my wife's brain works. Normally when someone says "I need a seventeen-letter phrase incorporating the word EAGLE," you don't expect people to respond. Ever. (Then again, people often ignore me. For good reason, I'll admit.) But Jill blurted out THE EAGLE HAS LANDED within roughly 16 microseconds. I did some puffing out of my chest and blurting out things like "well, that one's kind of obvious, isn't it?" But I deigned to go with it. So generous am I.

The gridwork was a bear. Stacking PAR above or below each of the themers proved incredibly challenging. There was no intention to purposefully have POOL PARTY and WATER PARK be such long answers — short answers like PART and PARDON failed miserably in roughly a thousand-billion different ways, none of them quite working. Finding this particular arrangement was just a stroke of luck, one of those things where if you try a thousand different things, one might actually work.

Hope you enjoy! (And for those still confused by the theme, EAGLE, BIRDIE, and BOGEY are golf terms for two under par, one under par, and one over par.)

Today on XWord Info: a colossal clash, a fiery fight, it's...

MAN VS. MACHINE!

In the red corner, we have one of the puzzle's constructors. The Brawn from Taiwan, the Absurd Nerd of Crossword, he'll punch in those squares (along with a bunch of swears). Representing the human race… Jeff "THE BIG BOSSMAN" Chen (if I say if often enough, maybe it'll stick). Since he hasn't seen this puzzle in over three years, it seemed only fair to allow him to study and memorize the answer grid for 24 hours before solving. Fair is fair, after all.

In the blue corner: the upstart challenger, an artificial intelligence program which has worked its way into the top 100 finishers at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Armed with a database of answers, clues, and puzzles from throughout the ages, it employs an arsenal of pattern matching algorithms stemming from the mind of the brilliant but nefarious Matt Ginsberg. Introducing… Dr. Fill!

Who will win in this epic engagement? Will the human race come out swinging against its cunning creation? Or will the progeny punch out its pugnacious producer, making men mewl "Mercy!" to their mechanical masters?

Jeff's time: 3 minutes, 3 seconds.

Dr. Fill's time: 5 seconds flat.

Thankfully for humanity (collectively shaking their heads at my slowness), Dr. Fill came up with a few errors. Matt mentioned that his program was unable to see that SPACE SPACE SPACE SPACE SPACE SPACE SPACE was an actual word. I declare victory on the basis of nonsensicality! Cue the music:

Seriously though, I'm fascinated by Matt's efforts toward building crossword AI, and by man's attempts to keep one step ahead. I'm practicing communicating in binary code for the near future. Beep boop.