Peter Wentz author page

If you're ever stuck trying to come up with a seed entry, might I recommend falling asleep face-first on your keyboard?

This is one of my more name-heavy puzzles, and I'm curious as to how it will be received. They cut a pretty wide swathe across the cultural landscape, so hopefully at least one will strike a chord with every solver.

Did Jimmy Dean ever produce a line of Hot Pockets? Seems like a golden opportunity!

One of my personal construction rules is a one-JFK-per-year limit, otherwise I may use it in every puzzle. Not that I have any special affinity for the president (....or the airport ...or the Oliver Stone film), rather its trio of high-value Scrabble letters almost guarantees three lively crossings. I especially liked the three here, although I now have mixed feelings about 3-Down after they published this vicious smear column specifically about me.

I'm pretty pleased with the remainder of the puzzle. It would have been nice to get one more fun entry in the lower-left quadrant — it sticks out as the drabbest section of the grid, but perhaps AHOY MATE is colorful enough to prop it up on its own.

The usual kudos to the editing team for their excellent work. Enjoy!

I listened to a fair amount of The Jesus Lizard in college, but had always figured that a broken up indie rock band didn't quite have the national name recognition to support their entry in a crossword. It wasn't until embarrassingly recently that I realized their name came from an actual "thing," which could also function as a grid's centerpiece. I'm usually not the type of guy to seed a grid from a single entry, but all the surrounding pieces fell into place, so who was I to fight it.

Let me give my usual props to the editing team for helping make this one shine. I never would have thought to parse 56-Down as PO'D. Feels like there might be theme idea in there somewhere... I call dibs.

In the meantime, enjoy today's puzzle!

When I reopened my original manuscript in preparation for this write-up, I immediately regretted not being in the know enough at the time to clue 27-Across as the slang term. Fortunately, the editing team and I are apparently on the same wavelength, as they updated my tired STAN Lee clue for something a little more this decade.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with this one. There's a good number of interesting compound phrases, ranging from a 19th-century botanist to an over-the-top NBA arcade game. Hope everyone enjoys!

It's always fun to dust off an old puzzle that's been out of your brain for a few months and look at it with fresh eyes, and this one I still mostly feel positive about. The sixteen longest answers are all solid to very good. Other than VIDI (not sure how that snuck in there....), there's nothing too objectionable with the shorter fill. Still, might just look to add a touch more spice next time.

Happy to see my original 27D clue made it to the final version. All other cleverness can be credited to the editing team.

Enjoy the solve and hope the puzzle is to your liking!

I'm no stranger to appropriating a grid I find particularly interesting, so it should be no surprise that I lifted Natan Last's excellent 2017 Saturday for this puzzle. I found it gave a nice opportunity to feature a few of the uncommonly used 13 & 14-letter slots, all of which I thought turned out pretty well here.

I'm likewise on a never-ending quest to up my clue game, so I'm pleased to take credit for 48-Across & 28-Down. The Shaw quote at 14-Across is probably my favorite addition from the editing team.

As an aside, looking at my records, it appears that for the first time in years I have no puzzles in the queue to be published. Need to get writing and push some fresh puzzles out the door!

More Saturday puzzle good times! This grid layout is something of an old standby for me, with the three long central answers balancing the mid-range entries in each quadrant. A few bullet points about this one:

-I believe DOTEDU was a first in my debut all those years ago, and it looks like this might be the first DOTGOV to grace a mainstream crossword. Be on the lookout for DOTLIMO and DOTDIAMONDS in future puzzles.

-Yes, I wasn't all that happy with the THE trio in this grid. In my own halfhearted defense, all three of those entries are pretty solid & if you're going to repeat a word, the most common in the English language isn't a bad choice.

-Two companies of eleven-figure Facebook acquisition offers in one quadrant! Stacks like these are the funnest to create.

Hope this one is a 34-Across! (sorry...)

This puzzle's genesis sprang from overhearing someone jokingly use the term "PC police", and being amusing at the thought of an actual militia enforcing a ban on Macs. That one was one letter too long to fit in a Sunday grid, but it opened the flood gates for theme potential.

The first draft needed a few thematic edits, including a breakfast test-violating reference to a popular action figure brand. Thankfully, there were enough two-letter acronyms out there to find a few substitutes, and I'm pleased with the final result.

Hope everyone enjoys and gets a chuckle or two!

This puzzle's creation began with an old-school approach of mine... Namely, cramming a bunch of Scrabbly letters into the opening corner and building out the grid from there. I've grown less infatuated with the rarer letters over the years, shifting my focus more towards smoother fill. That said, it's still fun to scatter a few J's and Z's when the opportunity presents itself. Regardless, hope the end result is an enjoyable solve!

This grid layout has become something of a go-to for me, with a similar one published about two years ago and another being written as we speak. It offers good opportunities for a variety of stacks, is reasonably wide-open, and can accommodate edits without sacrificing the entire puzzle. This one appears to hold up even years after its original creation, so it'll likely continue to be a staple on down the line.

I thought I'd struck gold with my original clue for 11-Down ["Family Matters" central character], but the whole "character" bit of wordplay for CAPITAL_ entries is old-hat at this point, so the revised clue referencing the Gmail logo is a nice alternative. Lots of other improvements in the clue department as well, with my favorite probably being 54-Across.

Hope everyone enjoys!

It's pretty rare that I build a puzzle around a single, central marquee entry, but if there were ever to be such a case, GUYFAWKESMASK is about as good as I can muster. It must have been deemed too tricky for the Friday audience, but I had my fingers crossed the original clue of "Anonymous symbol?" would make the final cut. My clues have been saved on many past occasions by the editorial team, so I can certainly respect their judgment. Maybe this is a late makeup for my "Stone work" clue for JFK on a Thursday puzzle all those years ago...

Rest of the puzzle appears to hold up, even if the quadrants are a little closed off. They all feel pretty smooth, but maybe could have used another splashy modern entry or two. Perhaps a little more crossword glue might've done the trick. It's always tricky to strike the right balance. Hope it's a pleasant solve regardless.

Happy puzzling!

Looking at this puzzle again with fresh eyes, it feels clean and well arranged, and is of solid quality all around. Though, I do wish I had added a little more sizzle with the longer answers. There are many good entries, and even more excellent clues, many of which belong to the editorial team, so this should (hopefully!) still be a fun solve.

This is a bit of an odd puzzle for me. I like the individual entries as much as any other crossword I've constructed, yet it doesn't have the cohesive feel I normally strive for. From the preponderance of proper names in the upper left, the INs pileup in the lower left, and a couple more abbreviations than I normally like to use, something feels a bit off. Ms. Rice crossing the three central entries still looks good though, so at least the heart of the puzzle remains strong.

I'm pleased to see that many of my original clues made the cut, and as always, the changes were universally upgrades. 33-Across (BAR MITZVAHS) was my favorite discovery while reviewing the final version.

Luckily for solvers, I tend to be a poor judge of how my puzzles are received, so hopefully it'll go over better than in my mind. Enjoy!

I remember liking this puzzle a lot when I first sent it off to the Times and am pleased it held up in my eyes upon its publication. A grid that looked great while constructing can sometimes lose its luster when viewed again after several months in the queue.

My construction process is closely related to what I look for when solving a fun crossword — namely a fairly wide open grid, interesting compound phrases that cover a variety of topics, unusual scrabbly letter combinations, and a minimum of the shorter dreck. Combined with the improvements of the clues during the editing process, and I think this one hits the mark and looks pretty spiffy [smart, as it were]. Hope you all enjoy!

I've been dipping my toe in the water of lower word counts and more wide open grids. It gets more and more difficult to keep a clean puzzle with a few zippy entries the farther one goes in that direction, yet I feel it's something of a badge of honor to fit a fun puzzle in an expansive grid. The repetitive TOs and OKs obviously aren't ideal. However, removing any of them would necessitate either an awkward bit of crosswordese or the elimination of entire sections of the puzzle. Given those alternatives, I'll take the entries as they are.

On a behind-the-scenes note, I'm pleased that a majority of the final clues were my own. While my grids' fill has improved, my cluing quality has lagged behind. Of course, solvers shouldn't notice much of a difference, as each puzzle is expertly edited before being released, but it's satisfying to have a greater sense of ownership over the final product.

With the bar for freestyles currently so high, I feel the need to go beyond building a grid around a single seed entry. HATCHETJOB is a solid phrase for sure, but it really wouldn't be a complete puzzle unless I could stack it with two other quality entries and have their crossings up to par.

Of course, the challenge is to pull that feat off several times in one grid. On top of that, cleanly bridging between the "seed stacks" is often as tough as filling those open white spaces!

This crossword's first entry was reverse engineered in a sense, as "So that's it!" often serves as the clue for AHA. I'm hoping dedicated solvers appreciate that little inside joke!

Looking at this puzzle again, it reminds me that I'm a fan of constructing themeless puzzles with mid-sized entries of about seven to ten letters. That length is about the minimum for having a wide range of interesting, compound phrases to choose from, and simple math says more of those can fit into a grid compared to one loaded with fifteen-letter entries.

Much of the time, a themeless might start with a single seed entry that the rest of the puzzle is built around. With this one, my goal was to have each of the central three answers be "seed entry" quality, all while still allowing solid entries to bridge into the corner quadrants. This meant a few compromises in the crossings, but overall I was pleased with the number of fun answers in this relatively low word count (for me!) grid.