Bonjour à tous! My New York Times debut crossword puzzle has dropped. Play it here (NYT Games subscription required). Some question and answer about it to follow! (Why yes, I did interview myself, LMAO). Spoilers below, will leave a bit of space in between.
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How long did it take to make this puzzle?
5 years! JK, but honestly, it kind of did. It was a long process for me to learn how to make crossword puzzles, and I got started during the Covid-19 pandemic. February 5, 2024 is the first date I can find where I started working on this grid with the marquee entry GOES BEAST MODE at 38A, with the accompanying headliners COMES OUT AHEAD and WHITE RUSSIANS that made it to the final version. All 4 corners changed a lot, my process is usually to fill a central area with strong seed entries, then try to make the corners and the “corridors” work too. I eventually came to a final draft around end of May 2024 and submitted it on June 4, 2024. It was accepted around August 2024.
I would probably say in terms of amount of hours, this one was more than usual because of a more extensive revision process than usual. It’s hard to say exact number of hours for a puzzle because I start and stop a lot as I work, and I multitask AF. I would estimate a typical good themeless will take at least 20 hours for me. This one probably took 30 to 40 hours, if I’m being honest, because I had a finished grid with all my entries chosen, and I think I even clued it all, before realizing when sending to friends, that I had an entry that was almost certainly too “vulgar-adjacent” for mainstream publication.
The entry in question? HUNTY, at 47D, was it. I legit thought it was a cute way of saying honey, but a search revealed that it originated from drag queen slang combining “honey” and “cunty.” In a self-publish that’d be fine but for mainstream outlets it was just too risky. It originally crossed DNA MODEL, ITS A DEAL, and EYE TESTS in the SE corner, and I think that corner was passable otherwise!
What are your favorite entries and clues? How did you come up with them?
Obviously, starting with a super-strong long entries is paramount toward making a solid themeless puzzle. The middle staggered triple stack in this puzzle seemed like the obvious place to start. I knew GOES BEAST MODE was going places, and I also liked that you could leave the first four letters blank to see if an alternate but similar entry might work (mostly WENT BEAST MODE). I often do that entries containing more than one word, when they that have a nice word in them that could flipflop with something else in case it makes the other fill better. The clue went from “Rampages, in gamer-speak” in my original submission to “Runs wild, in gamer-speak” with the NYT editors’ revision. I kind of enjoyed it having ambiguity between “rampages” as a verb or noun, even though the surface read is definitely more on the verb sign. COMES OUT AHEAD wasn’t exactly my favorite ever, but I figured it was a cute enough phrase and could be clued in a general, ambiguish way. I submitted it with the clues “Gets in the green // Has a winning streak // Makes good?” (yes, if you’re extra like me, you can submit 3 clues for 1 entry).
I also knew the triple stacks in the NW and SE corner had to be very strong, but also couldn’t contain too much crosswordese-type glue, to pass muster with the NYT. Going with some of the safer, but solid options, worked. Since I chose to make the stacks on the shorter side (8 letters each), there wasn’t a ton of room to shoot for super fun additional marquee entries, anyway. HOT PANTS / APERTURE / SEA OTTER felt right, as did UNICORNS / INFO DESK / EYE TESTS. Some other medium length fill that I enjoyed: GHOSTING, COIN PURSE, AGE GAP, SASHAY, NO OUTS, HOUSE REDS.
Your least favorite entries?
PROSE POET felt a little stretchy to me, and it does end up being its NYT “debut” (though PROSE POEM has run twice). I did feel ultimately that it WAS a thing, or that it was more a thing than it was not a thing, if that makes sense. We stan Gertrude Stein in any case, so I felt good getting to highlight her. ANTENNAE is probably fine, but a little dry/not-in-the-spoken-language. But I saw on xwordinfo.com that it had been clued as “Feelers” in the past, which a fun ambiguish take on it. Plus, it can be fun to have a plural that doesn’t end in S to throw off solvers trying to use their usual tricks. The most questionable shorter fill is probably OAS, ATT, and SERGE, but we were able to find fun cluing angles. SCHUSS, WHA, ASPS were also borderline for me but a little more passable. One part of my process that I have really honed in the past year or 2 is deleting shitty short fill from my word list (like ABCD or EIEIO or SSN/SSNS), or scoring it below my typical threshold, (i.e. ).
Was there anything that had to change about the puzzle to make it work for the New York Times? How was it to work with the New York Times?
In general, it was really great to work with the NYT. I’d love to say that Will and I zhuzhed the puzzle’s final draft up together over a lavish lunch at Balthazar, but that wasn’t the case LOL. I mainly communicated via email with Christina Iverson, with whomst I had worked before on puzzles for the LA Times. The NYT sends you a proof of the puzzle and gives you a few days to respond with your requested changes. The team was very reasonable with my requests, granting a few, and acknowledging but declining to change most of them. I’d love to have received more reasoning for the why, but I also respect keeping an editorial process a little mum given that it could be considered a “trade secret.”
Here’s a tiny little view into the process you might enjoy. Here are some clues I think they made decidedly better:
- EYE TESTS: From the more well trodden/used already “They’ll help you look sharp” to “Many of these begin with ‘E’ “
- COIN PURSE: From the kinda corny “Quarters’ quarters // Penny-pinchers’ pride?” to “What might be pinched for pennies”
- OPERA: From the misdirecty “Metropolitan offering” to “___ cake, dessert with layers of sponge, buttercream and ganache” (um, YUM!)
Any last words?
I’m really proud I made it into the New York Times. For a while, I thought I simply “wasn’t good enough.” This experience taught me that’s never true if you’re willing to put in the work. My late grandmother Joby Holmes Mulvihill was the one who taught me how to do crossword puzzles, and I dedicate this puzzle to her. I also dedicate it to my late grandfather Artie Evans, who didn’t teach me how to solve, but was an impressive solver himself.
Now, as we say in the crossword world, enjoy the solve!
