Zachary Schiff author page
1 puzzle by Zachary Schiff
with Constructor comments
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After too many rejections to count, I am finally making my NY Times debut (though I have had puzzles published elsewhere).
For a couple of years, I had wanted to do a "SILENT __" puzzle, and my first idea was SILENT NIGHT as a 15x15 weekday puzzle, but 5 themers and a revealer proved to be too messy. I switched to SILENT FILM, but after a lot of tries, I couldn't come up with a grid I liked. Eventually, I decided to go the Sunday route, which is much, much harder to do and so much more time-consuming, but when I settled on SILENT AUCTION, it all fell together. Of course, it still took 30+ hours and two revisions to create, but I'm happy with the results.
They kept a lot of my original clues, which I was happy about. I'm jazzed that they kept my hockey and shuffleboard clues intact as well as my trivia about the cost of the 1970 NYC marathon and the Schwarzenegger-Pratt connection.
Of course, there are some entries I couldn't avoid (OAS, RATA and NOAIR are the ones I'm thinking of), but to get a Sunday that you're happy with, concessions have to be made.