Jonathan Kaufman author page
2 puzzles by Jonathan Kaufman
with Constructor comments
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| C | H | A | T | S | M | A | T | S | U | B | I | N | ||
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| S | E | T | T | A | N | K | T | O | P | T | E | E | ||
| C | L | I | P | A | R | T | O | N | A | L | E | A | D | |
| A | S | P | I | R | E | S | E | G | G | T | A | R | T | |
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| I | C | A | N | T | T | E | L | L | ||||||
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| S | T | O | R | E | A | D | K | E | Y | N | O | T | E | |
| S | W | O | R | N | L | E | A | F | S |
Greetings, crossworld! I'm an attorney based in Palo Alto, CA. I began solving the NYT crossword daily in mid-2018, and started constructing soon thereafter in my gap year before law school. Over the last 4+ years, I've made and distributed puzzles (all of which were themed) to my family, friends, classmates, and coworkers — but this is the first themeless I've ever shared publicly! Thanks to everyone who solved those puzzles for their patience as I worked out the kinks of crossword construction.
This puzzle started with the supersymmetrical grid pattern. Elements of the grid were inspired by themeless constructors who I admire, but this particular layout felt like something I hadn't quite seen before and proved to be a good canvas to work from in an iterative fashion — first, finding a set of six juicy entries in the center and then filling each of the four corners as cleanly as possible (minimizing the "dabs of crossword glue," as Jeff Chen would say).
I'm grateful to the NYT team for preserving my cluing angle while improving the clues at 5-D/26-D/42-D and for their new clues at 23-A/1-D/10-D. My favorite clues that made the cut are 21-A/6-D/47-D.
Hope you enjoy the puzzle!
P.S. If there are any aspiring constructors out there who have questions or are looking for a resource, please feel free to drop me a line at: kaufwords [at] gmail [dot] com — happy to help however I can.