Robyn Weintraub author page

I hope you enjoy today's puzzle. I'm amused to see the clue to YOU GUESSED IT, ["Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner!"] because that clue was the genesis of my 2023 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament puzzle (apologies for the spoiler if you haven't yet solved this year's ACPT puzzles but still intend to).

After submitting this NYT puzzle, I began working on themes for the ACPT. I sent Will Shortz some theme options, including one of the simple add-a-letter(s) variety, putting DING at the end of common phrases to make new and amusing entries. I thought the resulting phrases were fun, and the whole thing could be tied together with the title "We Have A Winner" which seemed like an appropriate sentiment for a tournament puzzle. He nixed the other themes I submitted and chose this theme which became the Sunday puzzle #7 at the tournament, though he did go in a different direction for the title, naming it "Clear as a Bell".

Also, I wanted to take this opportunity to comment on the new Easy Mode versions of Friday puzzles. As someone who has now constructed 30 Friday NYT crossword puzzles (and I'm just getting started!) I'm definitely conflicted about this new offering. I am 100% in favor of easy themeless puzzles; in fact, I currently construct two easy themelesses per month for another publication.

And if you have to have your grid reclued, then it would be hard to find anyone better than the wonderfully talented Christina Iverson for the job.

But that's the thing … it's my grid getting reclued, and it just feels weird. I hope Easy Mode is wildly successful and has the desired result of introducing many new solvers to themeless puzzles. But I also hope the NYT takes the next step and begins offering ORIGINAL easy themeless puzzles rather than this questionable hybrid.

However it plays out, though, it's been an honor to join you for every one of these 30 Fridays (plus all my puzzles on the other days of the week, too), and let's do it again soon : )

I hope you enjoyed today's puzzle; it has a few fun facts (yes, Jimi Hendrix really did open for the Monkees!), a few misdirects, a few softballs, plus some debuts… everything I like to include in a Friday puzzle.

If you had fun solving my puzzle and would like to try more of them, please check out my new puzzle book coming out on June 7: Sit & Solve Hard Mini Crosswords. The "Sit and Solve" series is marketed as puzzles for the bathroom (who am I to argue with a successful marketing campaign?), but you have my permission to solve them in any room of the house. You can also take the book wherever you go because it's a pocket-size collection of 10x10s. And it makes a great stocking stuffer (if you're one of those people who likes to plan ahead).

Pre-order it today from your favorite book retailer, and then please let me know if you enjoy the puzzles @Robynw414 on Twitter. But seriously, no photos if you do decide to solve them in the bathroom.

And if easy puzzles are more your thing, my friend (and fellow New York Times constructor) Adesina O. Koiki has a book of Sit & Solve easy puzzles coming out on June 7 too. Or better yet, pick up a copy of each and give them both a try!

A few things of interest in this puzzle (at least to me… ). Clues for 28 Across and 12 Down are bits of new knowledge I obtained while sharpening my trivia skills in the past few years. I find more and more that if I can't come up with a clever misdirect or punny clue, my next preference will be to find some interesting bit of trivia.

Over the last decade I debuted both POKER TABLE and POKER TABLES to the NYT crossword; today I add POKER CHIP to my collection. One might think that I actually played poker for all the times I've introduced references to that card game.

And speaking of card games I don't play, the clue to 31 Down clearly isn't mine. In my 2018 constructor profile, I was asked about entries I'd never put in a puzzle, to which I responded "I recently removed a common five letter word used in the card game bridge because it also happens to be the name of a certain current political figure, and I don't want to see that name while I'm in my happy place." Whether it's a reference to bridge or SKAT, or anything else, I wouldn't put it in my grid and I wouldn't put it in my clues. Fortunately, this term never shows up in my game of choice, mahjongg!

When I'm constructing themeless puzzles, I like to jam in as many long, fun/cute/conversational entries as possible. To accomplish this, I typically have to break up the rest of the grid with shorter entries which then results in high word counts. Low word counts and big white spaces have never been part of my repertoire. But when contemplating a themeless 21x, for better or worse, I needed to get out of my comfort zone and try an open grid with a low(ish) word count.

I spent two weeks spinning my wheels with different layouts, word counts, and seed entries. Eventually, it became clear that I was getting nowhere; I decided that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and "borrowed" this framework from Patrick Berry's 2018 126-word themeless grid (with a few adjustments, bringing it to 130). With that grid, I spent another 2-3 weeks filling it over and over and over again until I was satisfied with the content, saving any version that I thought had potential. I believe this puzzle is version #19 of 22.

Ultimately, I am happy with the fill, and although the white space consists of many crossing 6s— which aren't necessarily the most sparkly entries— I tried my best to provide amusing and clever clues wherever possible. Plus, I still managed to squeeze in some smile-worthy long entries, including debuts like FORGET ABOUT IT, LINE-ITEM VETO, AS I WAS SAYING, NOT EVEN CLOSE, COINED A PHRASE, HIGHEST BIDDER, and RETAIL THERAPY. I know a themeless Sunday isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I hope I've been able to provide some entertainment and maybe even encourage a few reluctant non-themeless solvers to give a Friday or Saturday puzzle a try.

Last but not least, with this themeless Sunday puzzle, I have finally hit for the cycle, with NYT puzzles published on each of the 7 days of the week. But I'm not crossing "Sunday NYT Puzzle" off my bucket list just yet… not until I get a regular themed Sunday published. So, keep your fingers crossed for me, and hopefully, I'll be back soon!

So... what are you doing this weekend? If you're reading this before noon on Friday April 23, it's not too late to register for the 43rd Annual (but first virtual) American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. I'm one of the puzzle constructors and I'll be hanging around the chat rooms with over a thousand lovely puzzle enthusiasts. I'm incredibly sad that another year is going by without an in-person ACPT, but it looks like Will and his team have managed to pull off an impressive weekend filled with fun and interesting events.

As for today's puzzle, it feels like it should have run in October rather than April with HOT APPLE CIDER and concerns of an EARLY FROST. I submitted it last April so I'm not sure what was going on with me then... other than the fact that by April of 2020 time had begun to lose all meaning.

I'm glad TIM the Enchanter stopped by for a visit (and I implore you to take him seriously when he warns of dangerous creatures with nasty big pointy teeth). I also liked the editors' clue turning EMU into "lemur".

Anyway, despite my mini fall theme, it's definitely spring here, so I'm going to go play in my garden for a while, figure out WHAT'S FOR DINNER and then hopefully see you at the ACPT this evening!

I see from my files that you're solving version 6 of this grid. Versions 1-4 have been lost in the ether, but I do have v. 5, and in that iteration, 8 of my 14 long entries are already in place. Also, I originally had so many food and cooking references that I felt compelled to remove some (plenty remain) for fear of this puzzle looking like it had been commissioned by "Bon Appetit" magazine!

The reason I clued EVA with the somewhat obscure meaning of "extra-vehicular activity" was that when I submitted this puzzle in January of 2020, astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir had recently completed the first all-female spacewalk, a story I had been following after the earlier debacle of not having enough spacesuits for women astronauts onboard the space station in 2019 (my original clue featured both their names). Of course, January of 2020 was about 10 million news cycles ago, so I'm surprised I remember any of those details today.

Finally, I'm happy to have introduced some fun entries to the NYT puzzleverse today: EXTRA SPICY, ZERO CHANCE, PUB TRIVIA, PICKY EATER, ACCENT RUG, SECRET RECIPE, and those wild and crazy guys, BERT AND ERNIE.

Happy solving!

I'm very excited to share my Thursday debut. This is just a basic ‘drop a letter' theme, with the twist of moving the drop-a-letter part to the clues, and then incorporating the instructions within the grid.

In deciding which letter to nix, I knew it needed to be a less common letter of the alphabet, but not so obvious as to give itself away (I suspect that if there were a dozen clues containing the letter Q solvers would have caught on very quickly). And although the drop-a-letter gimmick only applied to the clues, it seemed inelegant to include the letter anywhere in the grid, other than the instructional "LETTER ?" entry. But I would need a crossing word using the mystery letter, and it bothered me to include a random word that contained the letter. I decided to go with W because a few years back I had a Sunday puzzle (in another publication) that did the drop-a-letter thing with the title NOWHERE ("No W Here"). In homage to that puzzle I went with a shortened form of the revealer, parsing NOW as "no W", so that both the across and down entries containing the W would be part of the theme.

In addition to the entries REMOVE THE/ LETTER W/ FROM CLUES and the NOW mini revealer, I had 11 entries that came from W clues. I thought 11 was a good amount (and allowed the editors to nix one if they didn't like it and still have an even 10). Instead, Will and the team somehow managed to add 5 more W clues to entries already in the puzzle! My favorite of their additions is "Swaying just before a disaster" for UHOH.

Some clues/entries in my notes that I couldn't manage to fit in include "Warm cover" for SLEEVE and "Group of swingers" for CHORUS.

Finally, I remember seeing puzzles where constructors have altered their names in keeping with a puzzle's theme. I thought about requesting "Robyn Eintraub" for my byline. But aside from making the gimmick too obvious, it would have also necessitated changing the editor byline to "Ill Shortz" and that just seemed like a bad idea.

Another puzzle from me already? It's only been two weeks since my last one. I cranked up production last year, so I have a bunch of puzzles in the queue, but now I'm afraid you'll all get sick of me!

I really like this grid — I was very pleased with the 14 long entries, 8 of which debut today. However, all my gratuitous sex and violence got edited out of the puzzle. Wait... gratuitous sex and violence… from Robyn? Indeed!

For MOTELS, my clue was, "Where some got their kicks on Route 66?" and for FIELD MOUSE, I had "Little Bunny Foo Foo victim."

Okay, I recognize that on the respective gratuitous sex and violence meters, a double entendre from a song written in 1946 and a reference to "bopping mice on the head" from a children's ditty don't rate all that high. But on the cute meter (definitely my favorite of all the meters), I think those two were adorable, and I figured I'd share them here.

I typically fall back on a few basic grid designs, but this triple-stack layout is a new one for me — though in keeping with my usual style of packing in many long multi-word entries. Don't be surprised if you see it again (and again) from me. No quibbles on the clues; many are mine, and those that aren't are an improvement over what I submitted. The only one I'm disappointed that didn't make the cut was my clue for PAYPHONE: "Anathema of free speech advocates?". Free speech/pay phone… get it? Ok, I admit it, some of these jokes are just for me.

This is my 25th puzzle in the New York Times. Reflecting on this quadranscentennial (yes, I googled it) milestone, I realize that what began for me ten years ago as nothing more than a whim and an intellectual challenge is today a central part of my identity. I'm so glad to be part of the wonderful community of crossword constructors, solvers, and editors, and I look forward to many more years of arranging black and white squares and moving letters around for the amusement of others.

Finally, it's an honor to be included in this week highlighting women constructors. Thanks to Will and the team for making it happen, and three cheers to my fellow constructors whose puzzles ran this week. And to all the women who might now be inspired to begin constructing: I look forward to solving all your puzzles in the years to come!

This puzzle went through not one, but two rounds of revisions. The first time I needed to get rid of a bunch of unimpressive fill in the SE corner, which included ESAI, SHIA, ENLAI and other junk — but which held together, amongst other things, the totally adorable entry I LOVE TRASH, a favorite tune of mine by Oscar the Grouch. Sorry Oscar...

The second revision was requested because my solution to fixing the unimpressive fill in the SE corner unfortunately yielded a series of unimpressive longer entries. It was hardly my best work, and I completely understand why Will sent the grid back again (and thankful that he gave me the opportunity to revisit it one more time).

Ultimately I had to pull out about half the grid and experiment with endless variations of cheater squares to get something that scored both high on my "that's cute" meter and low on the "dreck" meter. Fortunately, it finally came together and I'm pleased with the puzzle you're seeing here today. I hope you like it too. Happy solving!

This puzzle originally featured DOUBLE DIPS instead of DOUBLE WIDE. I was sorry to lose DOUBLE DIPS, which I found considerably more entertaining, but it was accompanied by a corner of less than stellar fill: TSE, ESME, SIETE, DPI. I traded those in for DOUBLE WIDE and a far better corner overall.

Recently I've had a few grids sent back with the request to revisit a corner or two due to a few meh entries. I've been told that the bar continues to be raised on accepted puzzles, which is a great thing for solvers — and forces me to become a stronger constructor in the process. It's also made me get far more aggressive about removing junk from my word list. But with each Roman numeral or obscure government agency acronym that I delete, I can't help but wonder if that's the bit of unsightly glue that could someday hold together a 54 word masterpiece. Or, more realistically, yet still lamentably elusive... a perfectly nice Sunday puzzle.

Happy almost New Year. May you find solutions to all your puzzles in 2019 (crosswords or otherwise).