Sarah Sinclair author page
4 puzzles by Sarah Sinclair
with Constructor comments
Sarah Sinclair is a Product Manager at Microsoft living in Seattle, WA. She loves puzzles and crafts of all kinds and has published a variety of NYT-themed knitting patterns on Ravelry!
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| L | R | A | T | A | R | O | E | R | I | ||||||
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HOW TO MAKE A PIZZA:
- Think about Evan Birnholz's False Starts puzzle, as you do once every week or so.
- Wonder if there are other ways you can have a crossword where every Across answer has a fun/tricky property.
- Have an idea for a puzzle where every Across answer starts with a two-letter rebus, with the revealer SHRUNKEN HEADS.
- SHRUNKEN HEADS might not be the best thing for the breakfast test. Maybe pivot.
- Tweak the idea into STUFFED CRUST, with the two-letter rebuses being at the beginning and end of every Across entry.
- Run the idea by Sarah, who suggests a grid shaped like a pizza, with two-letter rebuses around the "crust".
- Realize this makes the idea good. Go forward with a collab.
- Go back and forth a lot about what a mushroom looks like in black square form.
- Try to grid in Crossfire. Realize it was not designed to put 40 different 2-letter rebuses in squares according to the constructors' whims. (We were shocked to learn this; seems like a fatal design flaw.)
- Remember the aaronson.org-linked project Swordsmith, a open-source Python-based grid filling engine that allows for more tinkering.
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Create an ungodly hack to force the algorithm to put two letters in squares we specify. Now we're cooking with sauce!
- Realize that without the mythical Perfectly Scored Wordlist™️, the algorithm is going to keep spitting out fill like ELODEA. There is no other solution than to create an 1100-line spreadsheet so we can iteratively collect outputs we like and Frankenstein them together by shoving them in as additional seeds.
- Delight in the finished puzza (that's "puzzle" plus "pizza")! Send to editors. Wait a few months. (In the interim, take turns buying Adam Aaronson pizza, trusting that he'll understand the thematic resonance in due time. Realize that before that happens, you will seem weird. Roll those dice.)
- Purchase a newspaper with today's crossword. Preheat… pen to 350°?
- Realize a metaphor can only go so far. Forget about it and enjoy the crossword. Serves one or multiple people. Leftovers can be refrigerated.
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| G | M | O | F | I | X | A | N | D | S | O | ||||
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This puzzle is the culmination of an unexpected journey from designing crossword-themed knitting patterns to constructing actual crosswords! Coincidentally, both pursuits involve putting colored squares in grids — and have led to lots of lovely new connections in the "crossworld" on Twitter! I'm especially grateful to Ross Trudeau, without whose mentorship you wouldn't be solving this puzzle today.
They say to write what you know, and I am certainly well acquainted with 59-Acrosses, having tried all the ones featured here except 25-Across. 17-Across is currently my platform of choice, where I imagine you may soon see a profile picture of me holding this crossword! I was lucky to find a relatively constrained theme set here with a lot of fun in-language phrases. The shorter 9- and 10-letter themers gave me the flexibility to include a lot of answers longer than 7 letters while maintaining clean fill. I'm really happy with how this puzzle turned out, and hope you enjoyed my debut!