Thumbnails

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.

– puzzle by Zachary Schiff

I live in Seattle with my wife, Zhou, and our three kids, and I've become obsessed with running along a beautiful lake near our house. (I have a goal to run every day this year.) Sometime last year, I decided to ditch my earphones and be more present for the views of Mount Rainier, the beautiful sunrises, and, of course, splashing through puddles during the many, many days of rain. The side effect of that decision is that I think about crossword ideas. A lot. This one came to me at the end of a tiring run where I was imagining the Rocky theme music to pump myself up. Although "I OF THE TIGER" didn't make the final cut, I had lots of fun brainstorming this theme set.

When I'm not "runstorming" crossword themes or chauffeuring my kids around town, I spend a lot of time at the climbing gym, where I've met some of the most important people in my life. So, I'm grateful to the editors for keeping the clues for 70A and 56D as a nod to that community.

– puzzle by Kevin Curry

I'm so excited to be back in the NYT! Thanks to everyone who test-solved this puzzle and made it possible.

This puzzle, like my last, was built around the crossing spanners 1-Down and 15-Across. The phrase at 1D was my primary seed entry, which I thought of one day last summer and felt would be particularly grid-worthy; I decided to try diagonal symmetry for fun, and I'm really happy with how it turned out.

Of my clues that made it into the final puzzle, my favorites were 41A, 25D, and 48D, which I was so glad the editors kept in. Of the clues they changed, I most like 19A and particularly 10D, which I thought was clever.

On a personal note, I'm turning 21 in just over a week, so I see this puzzle as an early birthday present to myself. Thanks for solving it, and I hope to be back soon!

P.S.: It was so great to meet many of you back in April at the ACPT! And don't forget to check out my blog.

– puzzle by Ryan Judge

I'm honored to make my NYT debut today! I'm a graphic designer and social media manager from the Delmarva-lous state of Delaware. I was lucky enough to have my first submission accepted, and the Games Team was a pleasure to work with!

I'm pretty happy with how this theme turned out, which boils down to [BODY PART] + [BUILDING PART], hence BODYBUILDING. SHINDIGS was the catalyst, and after I realized that HEADQUARTERS had the same amount of letters as BODYBUILDING, I was in business. I cycled through a couple of theme answers (FOOTHOLD and EYELEVEL come to mind), but I settled on terms or slang for small living spaces (QUARTERS, DIGS, PAD, ROOM) to keep things consistent. My favorite clues that made it through are "Server error?" for FAULT, Siskel & Ebert's THUMBS-based rating system, and the cold hard truth about the ROMA tomato. One clue that sadly didn't pass Monday muster was "It's the fuzz!" for LINT, but I'm satisfied overall with the replacements that were made.

Happy solving!

– puzzle by Anthony V. Grubb

HOW TO MAKE A PIZZA:

1. Think about Evan Birnholz's False Starts puzzle, as you do once every week or so.
2. Wonder if there are other ways you can have a crossword where every Across answer has a fun/tricky property.
3. Have an idea for a puzzle where every Across answer starts with a two-letter rebus, with the revealer SHRUNKEN HEADS.
4. SHRUNKEN HEADS might not be the best thing for the breakfast test. Maybe pivot.
5. Tweak the idea into STUFFED CRUST, with the two-letter rebuses being at the beginning and end of every Across entry.
6. Run the idea by Sarah, who suggests a grid shaped like a pizza, with two-letter rebuses around the "crust".
7. Realize this makes the idea good. Go forward with a collab.

8. Go back and forth a lot about what a mushroom looks like in black square form.
9. 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.)
10. Remember the aaronson.org-linked project Swordsmith, a open-source Python-based grid filling engine that allows for more tinkering.

11. Create an ungodly hack to force the algorithm to put two letters in squares we specify. Now we're cooking with sauce!

12. 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.
13. 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.)
14. Purchase a newspaper with today's crossword. Preheat… pen to 350°?
15. Realize a metaphor can only go so far. Forget about it and enjoy the crossword. Serves one or multiple people. Leftovers can be refrigerated.

– puzzle by Paolo Pasco and Sarah Sinclair