Quiara Vasquez author page

SPENCER: This puzzle came together relatively fast. I met Quiara a while back on the Crosscord Discord server, and this is our first collaborative effort together. I think it turned out pretty well! Rather than email different grid designs back and forth, we constructed the puzzle in a single sitting via a discord call. This live collaboration method allowed us to work around some of the pitfalls that collab puzzles can often fall into — those being that the grid is overly segmented to allow different constructors to work on different sections or that one constructor fills the majority of the grid while another constructor gets small outer sections that are already constrained.

In the end, I really love how the grid turned out. I know scrabbly grids (ones that use lots of high-point scrabble letters like J Q X Z) aren't everyone's cup of tea since they tend to bog down the fill, but I love them, especially when the rare letter is at the nexus of two punchy words like the Q is in our grid. The grid ended up being a pangram — the first one of 2023, in fact!

QUIARA: How exciting to be back in the NYTXW, and on my favorite day, no less. I feel most at home when making a hard themeless loaded with exotic letters, so thankfully, Spencer was picking up what I was putting down on this collaboration. We made this grid a little under a year ago — I think it was fast-tracked to run in June on account of how much they liked the PRIDE FLAGS clue — and as such, I have a pretty clear memory of our process on making this one.

We came upon this grid shape pretty quickly, but it took us a little longer to get a fun pair of stacks. Eventually, we cut out a lot of possibilities by planting an ING at the bottom of the vertical spanner here, which gave us lots of options — once we saw we could get BBQ PORK BUNS and QUIT DAYDREAMING to cross, though, it was off to the races.

Some miscellanea here:

- Since that spanner crossing that top stack has 20 of the 26 letters in it, we decided to aim for the pangram here. AJAX at 25-Across is the kind of entry that usually reads as fishing for a pangram, but in this case I really do think that gave us the best fill, and they were completely unnecessary to hit the pangram with JUDAS-crossing-JETE and FROST/NIXON elsewhere in the grid.

- WOZ is apparently a debut entry here, which I didn't expect to be the case, him being co-founder of the most valuable company in the world and all that. How often do you see a 3-letter word debut in the NYT these days? (Incidentally, shout-out to my pal Nick Wozniak, game developer of Shovel Knight fame, who is the reason I even put WOZ on my wordlist in the first place.)

- Speaking of WOZ, he was originally clued as [Jobs initiative backer, familiarly?] - a tricky clue that had its difficulty ironed out in editing, presumably because they prefer proper names to be clued more straightforwardly. Similarly, KHLOE was clued as [Rob's biggest little sis, in tabloid land], with the unstated assumption that we are all aware of the Kardashian-Jenner clan, whether we want to be or not.

- There were a bunch of other changes here, none of which are particularly tragic. Cluing YOGA PANTS as [They're not just for posers anymore!], for instance. Or cluing OBAMA as the [Central figure in 2014's "Tansuitgate"]. Or cluing BREAKDANCE in reference to the late great Adolfo "Shabba Doo" Quinones, star of the Breakin' movies. (And contemporary of Toni Basil - yes, that Toni Basil - with whom he invented the pop-and-lock. Also, this is a trivia chestnut at this point, but did you know Toni Basil choreographed David Byrne's dancing in the video for "Once in a Lifetime" ?)

- One extremely specific reference of mine that did make the final cut? Cluing Malik YOBA in reference to his (rather minor) role on "God Friended Me," a very sweet show that I genuinely like despite its stupid title, and not just because its cast is an armada of dreamboats. (Seriously, why is Brandon Micheal Hall so good looking? It's unfair.)

- See if you can guess our original clue for FROST/NIXON! Hint 1: it was *hilarious.* (Hint 2: It rhymed with "picnic.")

DAN: This puzzle was inspired by something that neither of us remembers at this point. I was playing around with building some Thursday-style puzzles and especially liked this idea but was having trouble figuring out a way to execute it cleanly. Quiara had given me feedback on prior puzzles on the Crossword discord, so I was extremely grateful to collaborate more closely on this one to bring it to fruition. Hopefully, you enjoy it — or for those that dislike rebus puzzles, at least most of the squares only have one letter in them.

As an aside, I'm happy the clue for 1-Down was kept, as that was a small homage to my grandfather's family name. He liked orange circus peanuts and disliked crosswords.

QUIARA: It's nice to finally have an NYT grid to my name, although I'll be honest with you — I cannot point to a single aspect of this grid and say, "Hey, I did that!" I definitely wrote some of the clues here, although in the past 18 months, I've forgotten which are mine and which are Dan's. (Not to mention which are the editorial team's — our original RAUL clue referenced Raul Julia's star turn in Addams Family Values, IIRC, but that's the only edit I can spot without consulting the original submission.) My biggest contribution to the grid itself was an alternate northeast corner where the rebus squares spelled out BULK instead of FORM. That one got left on the cutting room floor.

Ah, well — there are worse things in life to have your name attached to than a good crossword grid, especially one which you created in tandem with someone as lovely as Mr. Ziring. Getting the chance to work with Dan again would have made making this puzzle "worth it" even if it hadn't gotten the greenlight from the Gray Lady. (Not that I mind the prestige and the national audience that comes with running in the Times, of course. Nor the $250.) But yes, I love collaborating with other constructors, particularly new and aspiring ones, and especially ones who, like me, don't fit the mold of the "average" (read: older, whiter, dudelier) constructor. If that sounds like you, then hit me up. (Even if you think your grids kinda suck. Especially if you think your grids kinda suck! Trust me, my first handful of grids su-u-ucked. As Jake the Dog put it, "sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something.")

On that topic: Boswords announced their roster for the 2023 Spring Themeless League last week, and like with the last two, the final constructor will be determined via open submissions. (More details on their submissions specs here.) The one caveat is that, being for a competition, you can't publicly show off your grid for feedback. But, since I test-solve all the Boswords grids, I am one of the very, very few people to whom you CAN send your grid for feedback. Making a puzzle for Boswords was a career highlight for me, and it's an incredible opportunity for relatively unknown constructors to get their work seen — I'd highly recommend giving it a stab.