Katie Hale author page

KATIE: Zach and I had been trying to come up with a fun theme together for a while, but nothing was quite landing. One evening, I was taking my 6 year old through some of her spelling words, which were all -OOSE words that week. I find a lot of inspiration through helping my kids with their homework because seeing things written out in different ways can sometimes trigger an idea or connection that I may not have thought of before. So constructors who have kids, I highly recommend this as an extra incentive to check their homework!

We originally had POOR EXCUSE in the theme set, but Zach (rightly) thought twice about that one because of the Y-sound on USE, and he redid the grid beautifully with HYPOTENUSE instead. Hope you all enjoy the puzzle!

ZACHARY: Katie and I were actually working on a different puzzle when she proposed the -OOS ending concept. I'm happy with the current theme answers; we also tried to work ZEUS into the set, but TEMPLE OF ZEUS and BLOOD OF ZEUS are not particularly idiomatic. We also would have liked to use a revealer — Katie floated END USE, but I thought that focused too much on the long U sound. I also thought we might be able to create a starting OO- theme set with the revealer PRIMORDIAL OOZE, but that didn't quite work out either.

KATIE: I know I say this about all my puzzles, but this one really is my favorite. I love when a theme falls into place like this while you work through other ideas and end up on a tangent that becomes a great set. Scott is really fun to work with since we have a similar sense of humor. He is so good at exhausting the possibilities of a theme, and he doesn't hold back, on the theory that even crazy ideas can spark something that could end up working. We tend to communicate on our shared docs through comments on each other's entry ideas, and quite often, I just leave a "lol" or an "omg, Scott!"

He took the lead on writing the clues here because I kept letting the word "is" slip in, which we really needed to avoid for it to work. He made them all quotes which gave them a nice consistency, and I think it enhanced the humor significantly.

SCOTT: I'm so excited to have joined forces with Katie Hale on this puzzle! Our mutual mentor (and crossword rockstar) Christina Iverson introduced us by email at some point during her meteoric rise to the NYT editing staff. Having our acceptance email penned by Christina was undeniably cool.

Katie is hilarious to work with. I found the inclusion of DARK HUMOR as one of the longer non-theme entries particularly appropriate because we share a twisted sense of humor — sometimes to our detriment, I think. Our first ever NYT (REJECTED!) submission used funny "bad behavior" phrases like LIFT A FINGERPAINTING [Steal artwork from a kindergarten classroom?]. Another (REJECTED!) submission followed a heckling wine snob at a tasting party and ended with a glass of wine tossed in his face by the up-until-that-moment tolerant host.

Today's theme is largely Katie's brainchild and started with dropping an "S" from words ending in "SS" to make possessives — DRESS CODE became DRE'S CODE [Hip-hop Dr.'s ethos?]. Then, Katie suggested using verb phrases with S-ending verbs in which "apostrophes matter," which I thought was a brilliant parallel to the famous "Let's eat, grandma" example of how commas matter.

You see? Even this puzzle has its roots in a bit of DARK HUMOR.

CHRISTINA: As a lifelong reader and a huge fan of classic literature, I was very excited when Katie pitched this idea to me. She had already come up with most of the entries here but felt stuck and wanted to bounce ideas off of someone. I'm glad she chose me! This is one of my favorite puzzles I've worked on.

We had some other great entries, but decided to add the constraint of adding exactly one syllable to make an author's name. We also decided to stick with what we hope are very recognizable names.

Some of my favorite rejects that didn't fit or meet our constraints:

• [Just MUST read "The Captain's Daughter" ?] NEEDS A PUSHKIN
• [Finishes "North and South" ?] RUNS OUT OF GASKELL
• [Tosses "The Great Gatsby" against the wall?] THROWS A FITZGERALD
• [Stack of "Ulysses," "Finnegan's Wake" and "Dubliners" ?] BUNDLE OF JOYCE

KATIE: This puzzle would not be where it is today if I hadn't asked Christina to come on board. I had been trying to get a set to work for months, got happy with it, even made a fully filled in (and clued!) grid, then changed my mind and scrapped the whole thing. I began doubting myself and almost parked in my file folder with other half-baked ideas.

But I knew the theme had merit if I could just get the right mix. When I pitched it to Christina, she quickly came back with so many options I hadn't thought of. I didn't know at the time that she was such a classics fan. We had a lot of fun making this puzzle (way more fun than I had agonizing over it alone), and I'm really proud of how it turned out.

CHRISTINA: Oof. This puzzle. My very first submission to the NYT was a puzzle using rebuses in this style. Besides just being a generally terrible puzzle, the theme entries had nothing tying them together. Sometime in 2020, Katie and I were working on a different puzzle about body parts, and I suddenly realized a lot of the phrases we were playing with had elements that would work well with a rebus, which led to this puzzle.

While this is one of my favorite ideas for a puzzle, the technical aspects made it an absolute nightmare to create. Since the entries are not symmetrically placed, it was really difficult to build the grid around them. Then, I can not believe how hard it was to fill a grid with entries that don't contain any body parts! Every time we had a grid that we liked, one of us would go, "Oh noooo, how did STINKEYE get in there?!" (etc., etc.,)

Our first submission had just "LEGS" stretched instead of ONE'S LEGS, and a couple of other entries the editing team didn't like. The feedback they gave in their rejection (which was decidedly a "no," and not a request for revisions) made me think maybe, just maybe, if we redid the puzzle with a few different entries, they'd go for it. I'm so glad they liked the changes enough to bite the second time around because this version was even harder to construct. Katie was a joy to work with, though, as always!

KATIE: When Christina approached me with this idea, I had never made, or even thought about making, a rebus puzzle with this kind of visual representation for answers. It reminded me of my elementary school teacher who used to hand out these types of brainteasers every morning, and I remember feeling oh so clever when I figured them out. (Still do, actually.)

I enjoy solving this style of puzzle, so I'm glad Christina wanted to work with me on this. It was a long and arduous path, and I learned a lot about constructing technique in the process. While it was helpful that we could move things around without worrying about symmetry, the loss of that constraint meant that there was a lot of grid trial-and-error. And we did it twice! We both believed in the idea, and I'm glad we took a punt to rework and resubmit. For the visualizations, we originally imagined the boxes for 7-Down being stretched into rectangles, but the editing team felt this was unnecessary in the end.

I think this is the best puzzle that I've written so far. I'm a subscriber to Ade Koiki's philosophy over on Diary of a Crossword Fiend that "sports will make you smarter." I know sports puzzles can be polarizing, but Ade has made some that are accessible to solvers who may be put off by the genre, and I wanted to do something similar.

My original idea for this puzzle was a bit too niche. It came from the phrase BAIT AND TACKLE, a fishing term that sounds like a football play. I thought of a bunch of phrases that could cross between different sports but quickly realized that the puzzle would have limited appeal. My brainstorming led me to OFFENSIVE REBOUND, which I thought was funny when clued as a dating term. From there, I found many pun-worthy sports phrases, and it was just a matter of narrowing it down. I wanted a wide range of sports and no repeats, so hopefully, there is something in there for everyone.

Once I settled on the theme set, the grid and the fill fell into place quickly (only two drafts saved, a record for me as I usually have about twelve). I was also determined that the rest of the puzzle did not have any other sports trivia or references. I need to say a big thank you to my good friend Georgia for test solving this one.

Ladies, please let 34-across serve as a reminder to do your Kegels!

I'm really pleased to have my solo debut in the Times today! This was one of the first puzzles I made after I met Christina Iverson, my mentor. She helped me redo the grid to get some nice long fill. I couldn't have done any of this without her, and I'm so grateful to her.

This puzzle came to me when my daughters were obsessed with ABBA. They listened to it all the time, on repeat. It still makes me smile to think about the 3-year-old trying to figure out how to speak clearly enough for Alexa to play Money, Money, Money. It occurred to me that a lot of Abba's titles are repeated words, so I wrote out all of the ones that fit the pattern, and lo, there were three with 15 letters each.

Originally, I had different clues for the themers, which were changed by the editors as mine were deemed a bit too obscure for a Tuesday. Here are my originals:

• MONEY MONEY MONEY: Triple crown?
• GIMME GIMME GIMME: Excess demand?
• I DO I DO I DO I DO I DO: Vow renewal?

They also asked for an edit on SDSU/ESPNU crossing, but in the end, they liked the original version you see here the best.

I'm glad that my living through a few weeks of these earworms paid off in the end with this puzzle. I hope you enjoy it. Sorry if these get stuck in your head on repeat too!

KATIE: I loved this puzzle idea when Christina pitched it to me. We both have young children (mine are 8 and 4), and the thought of the little one saying some of these phrases made me laugh a lot, especially LOCKER WOMB TALK, which didn't make the final cut in the end, but still makes me smile. Christina is a wonderful mentor. She is very easy to work with, and I am grateful to her for sharing her knowledge and collaborating with me. I couldn't be happier to have my debut with her and on a Sunday! Also, shout out to her dad for connecting us.

When I was a kid, I would take the books of Sunday puzzles that my dad always had around on summer vacations and fill in one or maybe two of the easiest answers on every page. This probably annoyed him, but he never said anything, and I felt very proud to have contributed. Now we solve the Sunday together over FaceTime most weeks. I wrote him a (non-symmetrical) puzzle for his 70th birthday a few years ago but didn't try serious construction until last spring, during the UK's first lockdown. As a stay-at-home mom trying to handle home-school, puzzle construction has offered a welcome distraction in the evenings.

CHRISTINA: Katie and I connected when she read an interview with me on my dad's blog. She reached out to him to see if I was interested in mentoring her. I gave her some feedback on some puzzles she had made, and we quickly ended up collaborating. Katie is a fast learner and a great brainstorming partner. You will definitely see more from her!

This might be my favorite puzzle I've made. It was inspired by a real miscommunication when my toddler (2 at the time) said he wanted to weed. I assumed he meant "read," and "weed between the lines" just popped in my head. I thought it was a good theme entry for a puzzle and pitched the idea to Katie. It turned out my son really did want to weed, though.

We had a great theme set picked out but then realized that some of the entries had extraneous R's and W's, and so we brainstormed more to make sure we didn't have any extras in there. We also tried to keep it to words where the sound changes, but it's more than just a letter swap (i.e., ROCK to WOK, and not RINK TO WINK). Some of my favorite entries that didn't make it for one reason or another:

• THE WEST IS HISTORY [Headline after the Yellowstone Caldera erupts?]
• LOCKER WOMB TALK [Little chat about pregnancy between classes?]
• A CALCULATED WHISK [Beating the eggs at just the right second?]
• ICE SKATING WINK [Flirty move after landing a triple axel?]