Matthew E. Paronto author page

And now for our next installment of JEFF VS. DAN, where Jeff feebly attempts to solve his own puzzles faster than ACPT champion Dan Feyer. Seeing as how Dan spanked me silly in our last round, I decided to give myself a significant advantage: not only did I look at the answers beforehand, but I STUDIED them. I tried to memorize as many as I could so I'd be able to fill answers in just based on letter patterns. My time was a personal best: 2:25. Check back in to see what times Dan and the other speedsters clock in at.

ADDED NOTE: Drat it! David Plotkin, aka Bug Out, checked in at 1:57... ON PAPER. That's almost 30 seconds faster than me, using a slower solving medium (I solve on computer). Sigh.

Matthew contacted me with this idea, and I thought it was hilarious, and insider's nod to the crosswordese that often must be used to glue a puzzle together. And to have all common E words that were all "four-letter words" just tickled me. We went to work trying to figure out appropriate definitions, and given my distaste for entries that sound like they're from a dictionary (I just don't find them fun to uncover in a crossword), we batted around many phrases until we arrived at ones we felt like we'd be fine with seeing in a normal xw.

The fill was especially challenging, especially because if we incorporated a single piece of crosswordese (outside of the themers), the puzzle just wouldn't seem elegant. Not to mention, we'd leave ourselves open to all sorts of chop-busting from our crossword friends. So it took a long, long time figure out an arrangement of those five themers which would allow us to produce a relatively clean fill. I don't like that we had to leave in REE or ANAT or the singular TAPA, but almost every crossword with five themers is bound to have something.

Now, if we could have just fit in FOUR LETTER WORDS...

And now for another installment of "JEFF VS. DAN", where I speed-solve against ACPT champ Dan Feyer on my own puzzles. Because he's spanked me so badly recently, I studied the grid extensively just before solving this time, trying to memorize every single entry. My time: 3:00 even. And that's with me typing in an utter frenzy! Check back into see what times Dan and the other speedsters post at Dan's blog.

Very fun to work with Matthew on this one. He was so pleasant in writing, and equally pleasant when I gave him some feedback. Theme ideas are hard to come by, and often times it's a real strength to know when to let something go. Very few people can do that, moving on to brainstorm further (I typically go through 20ish theme ideas before settling in on something that moves me).

This one was a toughie! We wanted to incorporate WASH DRY PRESS FOLD in that order, use LAUNDRY LIST as a revealer, and have each of the four words in snazzy phrases where the word had a different meaning. Not easy at all. As Matthew mentioned, we originally had a different grid, and Will gave us thoughtful feedback with his rejection. After nodding my head (read: swearing up a storm and perhaps making a mustachioed voodoo doll; I neither confirm nor deny this), we went back to the drawing board. Good thing we did, because Will's intervention forced us to dig harder, and we eventually came up with these themers, which we liked much better than the original set.

One aspect I'll point out in the gridwork: incorporating five long themers is tough, and it becomes even tougher when your middle entry is a "weird" length (13, 11, or 9 letters), which sort of splits the grid in half. Solvers might have minor gripes today, saying we could have cleaned up NEH (yup, ugh!) and SWED (double ugh!) by breaking up OF SORTS and PREPARE with black squares. We tried that, but look where POLIO sits. Turns out that there were few entries that could have worked there, and I just despise OLIO. Personal tick of mine. So we deemed it better to include the nice OF SORTS and exclude the ugsome OLIO. Would you rather have NEH or OLIO? Matter of taste, methinks.

Matthew and I have another collaboration waiting in the wings — he's two for two on submissions to the NYT! A whole lot better than my overall acceptance rate, roughly 33%. And that's a whole lot better than my original acceptance rate, which was roughly 0% (0 for 22). That was a long two+ years (with a very patient editor)...