Stu Ockman author page

The toughest challenge for any constructor is to come up with a theme that is going to excite Mr. Shortz. Three years ago, when I started on this grid, I thought to myself, "Aha! I know this theme will excite Will. Can I pull it off?" Today, my question is finally answered: "Yes!!!"

When I began this journey, I was amazed to find that TABLETENNIS is bisected by the T in NET (a serendipitous discovery indeed). I was equally amazed to find that BOUNCING BALL is bisected by the N in NET (not quite as serendipitous as you will soon see). Hence, my first of fourteen versions of this grid:

Will and Company responded apace, "Cute, and we really liked how NET crossed TABLETENNIS in the middle, but the SPACE rebus felt too much like a crutch (and the LOS rebus too random)." A year later, I received this response to my third submittal: "We thought the visual worked really well, tho the BLANK felt like too big of a curveball to throw at solvers. We're not sure how you'd fix this, tho, so we figured it was best to say no". Such is the life of a crossword constructor.

Exactly an hour and a half later, I get the following directly from Will in response to a question on a completely different grid: "I still like your PING-PONG 15x, which I hope you can make work." Well, we made it work after only eleven more tries. I hope it got you excited, too!

I was thrilled a year ago to receive Will's acceptance of the goo goo eyes puzzle; especially, since Joel was kind enough to add in the email:

"We're happy to say yes on your GOO GOO EYES 15x, which has a cute concept and lively theme examples. You've done a nice job with keeping the fill clean and interesting as well, which will add to the overall fun of the puzzle. This one should be popular with our solvers."

When I received the link to the final manuscript from Jeff, I was surprised to find that 33 words had been changed prior to publication. I was curious as to what led to the decision to revise 40 percent of the ‘clean and interesting' fill, so I asked Will (Jeff: response below).

To the right are the two grids (my original is on the left).

I'm, of course, always happy to have a puzzle appear in the New York Times. Hope you were happy solving it.

I can't believe we pulled this one off. Another example of a good idea turned into an even better puzzle with the help of Will and the crew. The original submittal had one and two letter words. But, I was hopeful that the overarching idea would be important enough to allow them (after all, they've appeared in NY Times grids before). I even made sure there were no unchecked squares by providing clues for each of these outliers. Here are the clues for the one-letter words, something you don't see every day:

16A, Me, myself and ___ :: I

58A, Special ___ :: K

12D, Fork in the road :: Y

61D, The scarlet letter:: A

It turns out that even a single one or two letter word was a puzzle killer, and I had four of each. Still, Joel volunteered that it was a ‘cute idea' so I stumbled around looking for a better grid. Four tries later, I arrived at another version. Per Joel, it was "more promising … However, it would need a symmetrical counterpart that's thematic for Will to say yes on this one." A symmetrical counterpart; how do you come up with a thematic 15-letter phrase? Is there a search engine I haven't heard about? I was pretty sure this one was toast. Fortunately, I was able to MAKE CONNECTIONS and clean up the fill. The reward was a nice note from Will:

"The theme is unusual, and the fill now is relatively clean. So ... the answer is yes."

When I received the acceptance email in January, I did a double-take. After submitting over a hundred puzzles, several multiple times, I'd never seen an email from Will unconditionally accepting one without requesting final cluing and/or the removal of one or more offending words or phrases until now. I couldn't help but think, ‘Wow, this is freaking awesome!'

My excitement was tempered a bit by Joel, writing for Will, "Some stinkers here and there (ESAS, AS FIT, ANAG, ARMAS, AGENAS), but also a ton of fun vocabulary in a wide-open 66-word grid. Nice work." Of course, I focused on the first part of the sentence; not the last.

The five stinkers were no surprise; I never liked them, but there are always tradeoffs between ‘fun vocabulary' and drek. Nevertheless, I redid the NE corner, eliminating two of the offenders and creating the final grid.

To the left is the original corner which would have otherwise appeared in the New York Times today (with the actual corner on the right for easy comparison).

I'm hoping Jeff agrees that ESAS/AS FIT/ARMAS is a small price to pay for holding the fun fill together, and I'm hoping you enjoyed filling in the grid as much as I enjoyed creating it.

The seed for this grid was LAP DANCERS, but Will preferred TAP DANCERS. Go figure. He even suggested a fix: make ADDLE ADD TO and CREAM CREAK. Since I hadn't had a puzzle accepted in more than a year, I was delighted to comply.

The entire bottom half of the original grid [see left] required rework. Can you see why?

If you guessed ESOP, OSSO, UTES, TETS, AGEE, SNERD, LEAS, LEVAR and LARA, go to the head of the class (it was pretty bad). NAVIGATE, BRACELET and CARELESS aren't very exciting, either. However, all's well that ends well. The SE corner is now my favorite part of the puzzle.

I do have a small bone to pick with the cluing. Will replaced nearly three-quarters of my clues (a new record for me, I think). Two missing in action that I like are 46A ‑ Followed but never met [PARALLELED] and 31D - Tight slip [CORSELET].

Oh, and one more thing. Noticing that the grid contained both OAKS/OKS and LA LA/LAA-LAA, I clued OKS as 1-Across minus one and LA LA as 12-Down minus two. I never expected those clues to make the cut, but I thought it was worth a try.

I'm looking for a course in remedial cluing if I can find one nearby. Perhaps, Swarthmore College will offer one in the fall. I should add that Will's cluing is a lot tougher than mine. ‘Dendrochronology,' what isthat? [And, I was worried that having BOLES in the grid might be a puzzle killer].

Hope you enjoyed the challenge, and kudos if you solved it without googling. I would have needed to google a lot.

When I first submitted this grid to Will in March 2013 (see right), Paula let me know that most of the theme examples "feel contrived." Before I went to work on a new grid, I shared my guess that, among the themers, NOT UNATTRACTIVE was okay, and Will replied, "That's a fine example of litotes," so we were off and running.

I was expecting this to run on a Thursday. Hence, each theme answer was originally clued by its one-word, figure-of-speech. When Will decided to run it on a Wednesday, he took on the task of simplifying a lot of my clues including adding a hint to each of the theme clues, and as always, did a bang up job. Other examples: [Part of a bargain] for PLEA became [Subject of a court bargain], [Abba hit] for SOS became [Maritime alert], [Beans] for ZILCH became [Nada].

One of my favorite clues that I was both delighted and a little surprised to see make the final cut was 'Squash units' for SETS. I'm guessing Will has a soft spot for anything that's related to racquet sports.

Hope you enjoyed it.

I originally constructed this grid in October 2012, inspired by Steve Salitan's October 6, 2012, Saturday puzzle. In fact, my original grid was identical to Steve's.

When Will told me it was a near miss, I decided to jettison the bottom stack and replace it with TEAR ONE'S HAIR OUT, ARMED RESISTANCE and STEPS ON ONE'S TOES. Now, the fun began. Will let me know that 11-Down (C. OF E.) was a puzzle-killer, and losing Church of England meant having to abandon Steve's beautiful grid. After ten more emails back-and-forth, Will sent the "this is ready to be clued" email in February 2013; music to any constructor's ears.

Along the way, I learned (1) to avoid made up phrases [IT'S A TRADE SECRET, ATE A LOT], (2) that the letter I and the numeral I are not the same [as in APR I crossing WEIRD], and (3) if I ever wanted to see my own themeless in the NY Times I needed clean fill [no ENER, OSI, NO EAR, ... N PEPA, etc.]. Will and I ended in the SE corner where I learned my final lesson: it's better to have an obscure four-letter word than an obscure longer one. And, that's how HAME found its way into the grid. Hope you enjoyed it.

I sent Will my first version of this crossword more than two years ago. It was the thirteenth puzzle I constructed. Before August 2011, I'd received nothing but rejections from the NY Times so "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You" just popped into my head.

I was trying to figure out how to use it as a theme when I found Ms. Kelly's June 22, 2006, Point of no return rebus. Thanks to Ms. Kelly, problem solved. The original grid, with eight unsymmetrical call boxes, wasn't exciting enough, but Will did like 38A. That was all the inspiration I needed to construct an entirely new version. I decided, in this case, that less was more, so I went with a call box in each corner along with the two in 38A. The only other answers in both versions are BACALL and CALLAS.

Sadly, this version was rejected, too, which surprised me because my mentor, Adam Perl, had a slightly different take: "I thought this puzzle was fantastic - challenging without being frustrating. The theme is excellent and very well carried through the puzzle. 'Don't call us...' was brilliant. The two sets of three eleven letter words were very good. I didn't find anything too crosswordy in it." Based on Adam's encouraging words, I decided to give it one more shot and added CALL BOX to the grid. Will wrote back, "Your CALL rebus 15x is looking pretty good…"

Hope you enjoyed it as much as Adam.