Alison Perch author page
1 puzzle by Alison Perch
with Constructor comments
| S | U | E | T | S | U | E | D | E | A | B | B | A | ||
| O | B | V | I | E | N | T | E | R | I | R | I | S | ||
| R | O | O | M | A | F | T | E | R | O | A | T | S | ||
| T | A | K | E | M | E | O | U | T | D | L | I | S | T | |
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| I | N | L | E | A | G | U | E | W | O | N | ||||
| T | R | E | N | D | S | H | O | T | S | A | M | A | ||
| H | O | N | E | B | E | E | F | S | A | V | I | D | ||
| E | M | U | A | R | E | A | L | P | I | E | T | A | ||
| Y | E | N | C | A | N | D | Y | B | A | R | ||||
| C | E | N | T | A | L | L | H | E | R | E | ||||
| A | N | I | M | E | M | A | K | E | M | O | N | E | Y | |
| M | O | A | B | T | I | M | I | D | L | A | T | E | ||
| M | O | T | E | E | L | I | T | E | E | C | R | U | ||
| O | K | E | D | M | O | D | E | L | S | T | O | P |
It all started when Franz Ferdinand's song "Take Me Out" got stuck in my head. I thought, "That could be a fun revealer." I searched XWord Info for words and phrases containing "me." Luckily, I came across "cement" and "come in" early in the 42,000+ results, and a theme was born. (And that was before I discovered XWord Info's Replacement Finder, which would have made the job much easier.) I felt like I struck gold when I realized my theme answers could become members of the same category (i.e., money) following the deletion of "me."
I've been a fan of cryptic crosswords for years and am still fairly new to the daily New York Times crossword. I fell in love with Thursday puzzles — which often have cryptic elements — and felt compelled to start constructing puzzles in that style.
Also, I should acknowledge that Hoang-Kim Vu and Jessica Zetzman's clever Nov. 17, 2022 puzzle has a similar theme. Their puzzle was published about a month after mine was accepted, and I'm delighted that the editors decided to run both.