Patrick Blindauer author page

This started out quite differently, so big thanks to Will and Joel for bringing more cohesion to the theme and solving some of the technical difficulties it presented. I've been a Beatles fan for a long time; I remember putting "I Want to Hold Your Hand" on the mixtape I made for an early crush, and this arrangement of "Blackbird/I Will" is a personal favorite. Hopefully, some of this puzzle's theme answers will leave solvers humming here, there, and everywhere.

For those interested in my other projects, I write a weekly, subscription-based puzzle called "Piece of Cake Crosswords," and I recently announced my upcoming Broadway Puzzlefest, which is an interconnected set of crosswords with a final answer. I also contribute to the American Values Crossword Club and Crosswords With Friends, for those who like lots of pop culture in their puzzles. Of course, nothing compares to the cachet of the New York Times Sunday puzzle. I hope solvers enjoy the ride.

JESSE: Patrick Blindauer and I initially created this puzzle thinking that it would be released around Thanksgiving. As a nod to my family, vegetarians who celebrate ThanksLiving (yes, a vegan Thanksgiving), I thought we could create a puzzle for vegan dinner options. How did that morph into a food snowman? I don't remember.

I've never made a puzzle before, but I love solving them. Working with Patrick, who is a puzzlemaster, was thrilling; it was simultaneously an exercise in boundless, abstract creativity (a food snowman?) and rigid boundaries (we need exactly two 13-letter and two 10-letter foods that are also parts of the body!). It's a discipline that requires multiple parts of the mind: 1/2 Jackson Pollock, 1/2 Alan Turing.

It was also a good opportunity to express my love of African geography (SENEGAL), my family's heritage (POLE) and mention my playwright friend Will (ENO). And it was primarily exciting to use clues that have never appeared before (e.g. Christian with some intelligent designs? for DIOR; What revolting people do for RIOT).

PATRICK: I had a blast working on this with Jesse; big thanks to Will for putting us in touch.

We brainstormed at least a dozen ideas before settling on this, a wacky concept that we originally pitched for a Monday. I was in the middle of my Kickstarter campaign for "Piece of Cake Crosswords," and Jesse was eagerly anticipating the birth of his child. I had recently become a father myself so we chatted about that, as well as our mutual love of theatre. He was eager to learn about all aspects of construction and was an excellent collaborator. It was fascinating to watch his agile mind at work.

Congrats on your debut, Jesse, and happy birthday to the New York Times crossword!

Out of the 60+ puzzles I've done for the NYT since 2005, it looks like this is only my 4th solo Sunday: "Overcharged" was constructed under the tutelage of Nancy Salomon; "Secret Santa's Helpers" was made during my holiday phase (see also Halloween and the 4th of July); and "Figure of Speech" was one where I got lucky with crossing theme answers. This latest Sunday was lots of fun to make, and there were a slew of entries that didn't make the grid for one reason or another. Some favorites:

• OH, WHAT A FLEEING (14) "Excellent exodus!"?
• GOOD TO THE LAST PROD (17) Cowpoke's credo for maintaining cow-poking quality all day?
• THAWS IN YOUR WALLET (17) Melts where one's money is?
• EXPECT ROME, PAY LESS (17) Slogan for a discount Italian travel agency?
• IT'S FRINGE-LICKIN' GOOD (19) Reply to "Why are you dippin' that tassel in honey mustard"?
• THE SAN FRANCISCO TATER (20) Bay Area spud?
• THE QUICKER PIP-PUCKERER (21) What gives one of Gladys's backup singers a sour face?

This is the last part of my six-part series of interconnected crossword puzzles, each of which contains a piece of a larger mystery which leads to a final answer. I'm not doling out any hints on the meta-challenge, but I will write up a little debriefing to be released after the contest is over. I do want to take this opportunity to thank Will, Joel, Frank, and the testers for all of their help with this — and uber-thanks to Will for allowing me to do it. I had a blast. If you had fun, consider virtually visiting me at www.patrickblindauer.com where you can try one of my free monthly crosswords or purchase one of my Puzzlefests. I'm also available to make customized puzzles, if you've got an occasion that needs some puzzlization. Good luck on the meta-challenge, everybody!

SOLUTION:

The main inspiration for this crosswordy experiment was the paper itself. Knowing it was going to be in the Times, it made sense to start (and end) with something related to time. Brainstorming gave me my theme concepts for the week: units of time, TIME in the clues, FACETIME, and Times Square. I wanted the Friday and Saturday puzzles to be themeless, though I did put in some time-related clues on Friday and there were the two meta-hint entries on Saturday. The letter X is used to make a multiplication sign or "times sign," so it seemed appropriate to use that letter, utilizing the grid numbers themselves to spell out the final answer. The first X appears in Monday's puzzle in a square with the number 20, and if you use alphanumeric replacement (1=A, 2=B, 3=C, etc.) you'll get the letter T. Continuing similarly with each square containing the letter X, you get TEMPUS FUGIT, or "time flies."

Thanks again to Will for the opportunity to do this — it was a dream come true.

When Will asked me if I'd be interested in writing a 6-part meta for the Times, of course I jumped at the chance. I'd be a fool not to … on the other hand, it had been done once before by my xword idol, Patrick Berry. There's no way I could make something as intricate or clever, but hopefully it had been long enough that people might've forgotten about his magnum opus a little. Rather than cower in the shadow of a giant, I resolved to do my own thing with it and give it my best shot. I had some ideas brewing, so I quickly set off to work on the set of crossword puzzles you're seeing this week.

This is a six-part series of interconnected puzzles, each of which contains a piece of a larger mystery which leads to a final answer. I won't say anything about the meta-challenge until the contest is over, but today's surface theme is a simple, Monday-level category theme featuring increasing units of time. Luckily for everyone involved, Will and Joel eased up the clues on this one considerably. Some of the clues that got changed (read: clues I'll use another time) include [Scientist Bill whose mother was a codebreaker], ["___ a Bully, Charlie Brown" (TV movie)], and [Josh who voiced Olaf in "Frozen"].

I like to think that part of this is due to space limitations, since the square inch-age in the paper is extremely limited (especially when it includes a big blurb about the contest every day). I've gotten used to writing longer clues for xword venues like my website and the American Values Xword Club, I guess, so a bunch of clues had their gists maintained and got truncated. Other gems like [Answer to "Paris est-il la capitale de la France?"] and [Apt anagram of CO-STAR - S] weren't my doing at all. HUARTE is an obvious outlier, but I thought all the crossings were fair; this puzzle does skew older, what with HUARTE, CLU, and HARLOW. Anyway, I hope it was a fun and breezy way for solvers to start the week, whether they're participating in the contest or not.

Tony:

For a delightful stretch of years, Patrick and I were never without some puzzle idea brewing that we could work on together, and this one served to get us back in the flow. I had a bunch of entries and knew it would be something Patrick would enjoy joining forces on. As usual, we had plenty of fun trying to find a good theme set. Adding the commonality of names, and having the changes all happen the same way, made it come together in a way that felt worthy of making it for public consumption (as opposed to our own entertainment). It's fun to make crosswords, and it's really fun to make them with Patrick!

We had a long list of rejected near misses and, as anyone who's ever tried to think up spoonerisms can tell you, it was not the easiest task to keep them straight and pick through them. In defense of one early one I had — FRIED COWELL [Gave a scorching review of talent judge Simon?], which was not a true spoonerism because it conveniently separates the changing sound (a proper one for CRIED FOUL would/should be FIED CROWEL) — I told Patrick "I know of no governing body of spoonerisms that would disallow it." As a character played by John Cleese on "Cheers" said: "Ah. The cry of the truly desperate!" With desperation on this one now passed, I'm looking forward to the next one with Patrick.

Patrick:

It's a blast making puzzles with Tony, too! We work really well together, and we each bring our unique personalities to the table, as well. I sure do miss kicking around ideas with him over various lunch tables since I moved to STL, but I'm not missing things like the smells (or the prices) of the City So Nice They Named It Twice, that's for sure. As for this puzzle, the first email I see about it was back on 10/28/13, and we sure did go back and forth a bunch before settling on the theme answers. The grid came together pretty quickly, and I took far too long to write my clues (something called Lollapuzzoola seems to have gotten in the way). Sorry to see some of my favorite clues on the cutting room floor, but I guess that means we just get to use them the next time those words come up. I'm ready to make another whenever you are, Tony!

As the blurb on this crossword says, it was used during the most recent "Lollapuzzoola" tournament in NYC, which I cohost with Brian Cimmet. It was our dreaded Puzzle 4, meant to be the trickiest puzzle of the day (like Puzzle 5 at the ACPT), though looking at the standings just now, I see that Andrew Feist solved it perfectly in 6:45. Nicely done, Andrew! Some got stumped until they were allowed to use their Google tickets (our sanctioned method of "cheating"), and some solved it but put two letters in each of the key squares, which we had decided to count as incorrect (sorry!). Also, two solvers had an odd advantage: they chose to compete in our Downs Only Division for the day, so they didn't have the Across clues to throw them off. As such, Joon Pahk solved the puzzle correctly with only the Down clues in 4:41. Wowza. If anyone had noticed this and done some lateral thinking, it might've been a big help in deciphering the puzzle's diabolical secrets. Special thanks to Will for his support of the tourney these past 7 years and for sharing my puzzle with a much wider audience.

Next year's 'Zoola is already scheduled for 8/8/15, so save the date and join us for a day of cruciverbial silliness in a church basement on the Upper West Side (or in our At-Home Division through the magic of the internet). Most of the puzzles aren't nearly this cruel, I swear!

Andrea:

Post-ACPT 2010, Patrick suggested M*C idea, knowing i like to do this kind of AEIOU puzzle. I came up with preliminary entries, most held to the end, though the MIC was MICROPHONESTAND. Really love MICKEYMOUSECLUB so much more, esp with EEK under MOUSE! (and I snuck in my Siamese cat KOKO)

We talked about adding MCC (MCCOURT) and /or MRC Mr Clean. Maybe MYC MYCENAE...maybe even a MDC snuck in there. PB did a version with SEVEN of them, but the MUC (MUCHADO) lacked the MAC, MEC, MIC, MOC sound. So we decided to scale back and just do a clear, solid, fun alphabet run. I made a new grid having just learned how to use Crossfire, that my other frequent collaborator Michael Blake insisted I learn. The peppy original cluing is all Patrick. Though not a pangram, two Xs and seven Ks (!) make up for no QZ.

Many of my puzzle partners are new folks I've mentored, but Patrick's role with me is that he always takes my ideas and bumps them up many notches. Always. :)

Patrick:

Flattery will get you everywhere. ;)

Working with Andrea is a lot of fun; her vivacious energy is quite infectious. Glad we scaled back our original theme ambitions on this one, though I do like the idea of adding some consonants to the usual "vowel run" theme. Maybe next time!

ANDREA:

This was my first Thurs and the most complicated idea I had ever had. I wanted all the words in the grid to be OTHER words if read backwards. I envisioned three sets of clues: Across, Down and Backwards. There is no way I could make this grid on my own, so I went to the genius aka Patrick Blindauer. We bandied about how we could have a reveal in the grid itself. Either a phrase like TO AND FRO, BACK AND FORTH. Both he and Will felt it would be too easy to have a third set of clues.

Then Patrick managed to create a grid with the phrase EVERY ACROSS / ANSWER READS FROM / RIGHT TO LEFT (written from right to left). I didn't originally want something that looked like gobbledygook in the grid, but there was no denying this was an incredible solution and that it broke into three balanced phrases that could be read backward was breathtaking. One of the early drafts had several palindromes that I suggested were "cheating" which was a poor choice of words, which caused a lot of stress between us, but Patrick managed to get rid of most of them. (I bring this up not to tell tales out of school but to be honest about the difficulty of collaborating at times. Especially if one person feels they have done the lion's share of work.)

This is a delicate topic with partnerships. My personal feeling is whoever comes up with the idea should get full and equal credit/money, whereas Will told me a good idea could come from anywhere and doesn't necessarily deserve credit. Needless to say, I don't agree. I'd rather be extra generous with credit as we have so little else. I had been a writer in Hollywood for many years and was well aware of the heartbreak, rifts and lawsuits not giving proper credit can bring. We also didn't want partials that couldn't stand alone without a clue, like INOR even though it could be clued as Rice-a-___, but INOR when read left-to-right, out of context wouldn't stand on its own, so we were sensitive to that as there would be only the clues for the words going backwards, but would still look like good words read from left to right.

My fear was also when people caught on what was happening, they would have to erase or start completely over or have a big mess if solving with pen...and it was the first time ever I worried about pissing off solvers! But am super proud of the concept and the result.