Thumbnails

BYRON: The idea for the puzzle was Joel's. I was psyched when he asked me to collaborate on it, because I like puzzles which play with crossword conventions, and I am a big fan of Joel's puzzles generally. For an easy puzzle, you want the structure of the theme to be evident right away. For a trickier puzzle, you want the revelation to come right at, or possibly just after the end. For this one, I envisioned the typical solver getting it somewhere in the middle, maybe just past halfway through. Too soon, and it becomes just a slightly odd themeless. Too late, and the joy of the joke gets washed away. Hopefully, we found the right mix.

JOEL: Had a ton of fun putting this together with Byron. One thing we debated in the theme stage was whether a clue like "*Search party?" for ED MCMAHON was fair game — after all, it completely eliminates the quote marks used in the show "Star Search," not to mention the space between "Star" and "Search". We agreed it might be a little cheap, but that hopefully it would add an extra "aha" layer for the solver.

We both favor wide-open grid patterns and constructing challenges, so our styles meshed pretty well when it came time to fill the grid. I've always felt that Byron is one of the best themeless constructors, so the task of working on a Sunday with him with big chunky corners like this was very cool. In the end, I think we kept the compromises to a relative minimum while working in some nice longer fill, but I'll be interested to read how solvers felt.

– puzzle by Joel Fagliano and Byron Walden

This puzzle's theme is a variation on a much overused one, and I hope solvers don't find it too straightforward. I remember coming across a puzzle from many years ago that used HARRISONSFORD as an entry, and I started wondering if there were other famous people with similarly automotive last names. I was unaware of Ichiro's last name, as his jersey features his first name rather than his last, and discovered this fact with the help of XWord Info. Furthermore, I was a bit worried that Freddie would not make the cut, since he was born Farrokh Bulsara, while the other entries featured birth names.

The fill, too, I think I could have improved, particularly those 4x4 corners — I would be interested in seeing if I could rework the grid structure to allow for longer words.

Overall, however, I'm happy to make my second appearance in the NY Times with another celebrity-based theme, probably surprising to those who know me and my pop-culture averse nature.

Hope you all enjoy!

– puzzle by John Westwig

The inspiration for this puzzle came from another puzzle I was constructing that included the entry ACE IN THE HOLE. It struck me that it would be fun to interpret that literally. That idea led me to try hiding ACE in a solitary black square and building words around those. I had never used that gimmick before so it was a nice opportunity to see if I could pull it off.

The construction had one major challenge: where to place the ACEs and, related to that, satisfying the symmetry constraint for the theme answers. The four theme entries exploiting the two corner ACEs were the easy ones. The two side ACEs worked well for their corresponding across entries, one of which is the revealer. However, it took a bit of work to settle on the down entries for these two since ACE had to appear in the middle of those entries. There are surprisingly few decent choices for these. Eventually, I settled on ???ACE???? (and its symmetric counterpart) leading to the grid you see.

Will and Joel improved a number of the clues to make the puzzle appropriate for a Thursday. I'm very happy with the result. I hope solvers enjoy it!

– puzzle by David Poole

NYT crossword fanatics may recall that I had a puzzle in February last year that used a similar figure-8 grid. While I was constructing that one, I was forced to add cheaters to the 7th and 9th rows to get clean fill, which ended up leaving me vaguely dissatisfied with the shape of the puzzle. This ended up nagging at me so much that I thought I'd have another go at filling the grid I really wanted to use, and this time managed to succeed. Happily, Will liked the second puzzle too, and I got to sleep well at night again after it was accepted.

It will come as no surprise that 12-Across was my seed entry at the top. Given that the current constructing community skews young and geeky, it's a little strange that the entry is only making its NYT debut at the start of Season 6 of the show — might be the awkward 13-letter length.

Played around a lot with the middle of the grid, going through about 4 or 5 versions before I was finally happy with what I had. I especially wanted everything going through CJ CREGG (another seed) to be unambiguous — you're out of luck with that name if you weren't a West Wing fan.

Clue I was saddest to lose: I originally had 41-Across as {Fry in England}, but Mr. Colbert took his place. Apologies to all my QI-loving friends.

– puzzle by Julian Lim

Who knew that there were so many phrases that include a two letter state code AND the nickname of that same state? And that they broke out symmetrically? When I first submitted this puzzle, Joel and Will liked the theme, but felt the fill was too bland, so this version is an extreme makeover. From my perspective, landing DONHO atop ALOHASHIRT was well worth the extra effort.

It's hard for me to believe this is my 20th puzzle in the Times. A long-time solver, I started constructing several years ago after attending a workshop given by Andrea Carla Michaels at the late, great Silicon Valley Puzzle Days event. Andrea demystified the process and encouraged those of us who were intrigued with the idea of constructing to give it a try. When my first puzzle was accepted, she was almost as thrilled as I was. Since Andrea is one of the great constructors of Monday puzzles, it seems karmatically correct that #20 for me is also a Monday — a symbolic 15x15 tip of the hat to a terrific mentor. Many thanks, Andrea!

– puzzle by Dan Schoenholz

Last fall while at an art fair, I ran across these Shakespeare, Socrates, Sartre and Sinatra "quotes" twice in one day. By the second time, I realized that the number of letters in the phrases matched — and a possible theme was born. I suspect like most readers of the constructors' comments on XWord Info, we observe things around us through a unique lens of letter counts, interesting words, and other filters of a crossword constructor.

Of course Will and Joel greatly improved my clues, changing about half of them and tweaking the grammar in a handful more. I originally assumed this puzzle would appear on a Monday (perhaps Tuesday) if accepted, so their editorial assistance tightened the consistency of the degree-of-difficulty of the clues. As a still relatively inexperienced constructor, I find setting the right tone for clues as one of the more challenging aspects of construction. I often get enamored with a possible clue, without fully appreciating whether or not it is appropriate for a given puzzle.

In the end, I hope solvers share the same moment of amusement from the theme that I did when I ran across it (twice!) last fall.

– puzzle by Pawel Fludzinski

Inspiration for this ONE came to me in a grocery store parking lot. Though I've never seen the film, (M)AR(A)THO(N) popped into my head and struck me as being theme-worthy. Excited by the prospect of a new project, I brainstormed suitable revealers as I shopped. Fellow consumers undoubtedly questioned the sanity of a grown man talking to himself while counting out the length of familiar phrases on his fingers. Somewhere in frozen foods, INITSELF (one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight…aha!) came to me. A phrase that's in the language and conveniently equal in length to MARATHON! A theme was born, even if in my preoccupied state I forgot to bring home the EDAMAME.

Over the next few days I scoured word lists for other thematic candidates and came up with a couple more. LABO(R)(A)(T)ORY and C(O)N(V)(E)CTIO(N) seemed legit and rounded out the first grid. Will and Joel liked the concept behind the original submission, but wondered if there could be more consistency in the theme answers. RAT was the only example with consecutive circles and OVEN was the only 4-letter example. I gladly went back to the drawing board to find ALIST good enough to cut the cruciverbial mustard.

It took several weeks of editing to yield today's offering. This is by far the most workshopped of all of my puzzles. The revealer INITSELF ended up on the cutting room floor. (S)(E)N(A)(T)E and PRE(S)ID(E)NTI(A)(L) were promising FINDS, but lacked symmetrical partners. A final set of theme answers was eventually assembled. Grids were constructed. Grids were reconstructed. Clues were written. Much time and CARE was taken to ensure a quality product. It's a MARATHON, not a sprint, right?

Thanks to Will and Joel for your advice on this one. I hope you all enjoy it!

– puzzle by James Tuttle

DAVID S.:

Dave and I met at the now-defunct Silicon Valley Puzzle Fest back in 2012, which feels like just a few months ago to me! Time flies when you're busy with crosswords, I guess. Anyway, Andrea Carla Michaels and I were giving a presentation about crossword construction, and Dave (who at that point had just started constructing) was one of the more enthusiastic-looking audience members. He approached us after the talk and showed us some of the puzzles he had been working on, which I remember being very impressed with. In fact, our first collaborative effort, which appeared in the Los Angeles Times back in 2013, spun off of one of the puzzles Dave showed me that day!

Dave and I have remained in touch ever since. I was thrilled to see him make his New York Times debut with an ingenious Paint It Black puzzle in 2014! He followed that up with one great themeless after another (and a handful of fun themed puzzles to boot!). Dave was also one of the most accurate Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project proofreaders—he used to make Excel files with all the mistakes he would find, which were always both helpful and fun to read.

I don't remember much about the construction process of this particular puzzle (my 50th published New York Times crossword, built back in late 2014), but I'm pretty sure we started with my bottom stack in one of Dave's insanely wide-open grids! We went through a ton of possibilities for the top before finally settling on the one you see. Most of the clues are Dave's, though "Piano-playing Cat" for STEVENS was definitely mine!

These days, I haven't had as much time for crossword construction, but Dave and I still keep in touch . . . even though he went to Berkeley and I ended up at Stanford! We hope you enjoy our puzzle.

– puzzle by David Phillips and David Steinberg

When I retired from McGill University, where I had held academic and administrative positions for almost 40 years, I set myself a goal of having a crossword puzzle published in the Sunday NYT. I had never constructed a puzzle before, so as you might expect, my first two efforts at Sunday puzzles didn't make the grade. But crossword construction was as engaging as I had anticipated, and, although I switched to weekday puzzles, I didn't let multiple rejections otherwise deter me. My lucky 13th submission got the nod from Will, as did my 14th, which is the one appearing today.

As a solver, I like the gradual reveal of humorous crossword quips and the change they offer from standard puzzles. I came up with the idea for today's quip while reading a list of cooking metaphors. It took quite a while to get the language right, but I knew I had it when I laughed out loud at my own joke. Unfortunately, the 67-character quip seriously constrained the fill, so compromises led to more names in the puzzle than I would have preferred.

I have to thank Will and Joel for their enormous help and seemingly endless patience. Although they enjoyed my humor, my initial submission was far from acceptable. Many entries fell short, and the middle line of the quip was off-center, a departure from crossword-theme symmetry that was a show stopper. I revised both the grid and the entries — twice. Finally, I submitted two alternatives and, with changes suggested by Joel, we settled on a grid, which I then clued. Given other constructors' comments, I wasn't surprised that quite a number of my clues were changed, in several cases making them more contemporary, but I was pleased that some of them survived and I'm delighted to see my first puzzle in the NYT — my first puzzle published anywhere.

This whole process has convinced me that retirement is a great stage in life for starting something new. It affords the time to develop and hone novel skills, so I'm still hopeful that I will eventually see one of my puzzles in the Sunday NYT.

– puzzle by Morton J. Mendelson

VICTOR:

I think that the best puzzles I construct, and I think that "Rise and Fall" is one of them, are those in which the idea has a moment when it seems impossible to execute in a publishable puzzle. Triple-checked letters pose a particular challenge because they constrain the fill but do not reduce the number of words in the puzzle, so meeting the NYT's guidelines gets difficult quickly. In the case of "Rise and Fall," fitting the black squares around the mountains and valleys was tough, and then the sharp corners were messy, but it looked fillable when I started out with it (in mid-2014!). Of course, months of false starts later, I was still unsuccessful, so I asked Andy to co-construct it with me.

I like Andy a lot, he's a terrific filler and collaborator, and he seems to think a bit differently from me, which makes us able to find solutions together that we (at least I) might not find alone. The first thing he did was suggest adding MOUNTAINHIGHVALLEYLOW across the middle, which was a great addition to the puzzle — and which is a rather strange song (and not the one by Tina Turner that I suspect most people think of when they see it).

We went back and forth on a few iterations and finally managed to get something we liked with 144 words. Close enough, right? Wrong. Will sent it back for being too wordy, so we hacked at it for another couple of months and got it down to a 140-worder. I hope that people liked the puzzle. (P.S. I started with KILIMANJARO instead of SAINTHELENS, but that proved impossible. Such is life!)

ANDY:

I don't much to add, except that I always enjoy working with Victor. His theme ideas are always unique, which makes the process of constructing the puzzle much more fun.

– puzzle by Victor Barocas and Andy Kravis

I think all parties were enthused about the finds in this quirky theme and about the number of theme entries that were able to be incorporated. The tricky thing here, though, was the issue of double cluing—how could I clue the long and short forms without making the puzzle too easy? Joel and Will's solution is elegant. To me, it seems to make the theme fall into the (unexpected) category of "wordplay on a base phrase," in which the base phrase is assumed to be a common expression that the clue doesn't actually refer to. (So, you'll have to accept that GUEST SPOT is a "thing," since only G-SPOT is referenced in the clue).

Being a musician, I'm happy to see the reference to Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's "Oblique Strategies" retained (I've known many a composer to use these lateral thinking cards for stimulus), and for the NY Times, the omnipresent producer gets a novel clue. Estonian conductor PAAVO Jarvi breaks up the cluing monopoly hitherto held by the Flying Finn Mr. Nurmi. The TAJ Boston reference is also new; I distinctly remember the Christmas parties I attended there years ago (as a plus one when I lived with my more "adult" roommate who worked for a company that would hold holiday parties at such establishments).

Looking back, the inspiration for this theme must have come from some (ironic) attempt at doing "teenspeak," wherein everything that could possibly be shortened does. Totes.

– puzzle by Andrew Zhou