Andrew Zhou author page

I was Magritte's "Son of Man" for a Hallowe'en party a couple of years ago. The decision, however, had a fatal flaw: it was my Hallowe'en party and I was playing bartender. Seeing, I learned later, is a useful sense to have when preparing drinks for public consumption.

"Seeing is not believing" could be a warning drawing from the subject of this puzzle. The construction came together rather quickly, because I always needed to think several steps ahead to ensure the viability of its completion.

I'll go into some depth about the construction, for those interested. Tribute puzzles put an inherent limitation on theme entries: you've got to keep them basic and trivial (i.e. like trivia). (That being said, I have to acknowledge here Elizabeth Gorski and Kevin Der for having contributed the finest puzzles of this sort, in my book.) I thought here the added quotation simultaneously refined and complicated the tribute, and once I decided to include it, given the beautiful way it can break into segments of 7, 15, and 7, it became clear that I needed to go with right-left symmetry. (In fact, the crossings work out very kindly if you stack the lines directly on top of one another, but immediately you'll see the impossibility of this option.)

For the pipe itself, I knew it needed to possess a convincing likeness once it was drawn, and I was intent on honoring the original proportions as much as possible. So I put an image of "Treachery" into a vector graphics software, overlaid a 21x21 grid on it, and set out to find the key vertices of the pipe, seeing where they landed in the grid. These spots would correspond to the squares with circles in them. I also did some of manual testing in one of those science notebooks I somehow still own, despite completing zero scientific activities on a daily basis. It was only then I realized just how much the luscious, round edges of this pipe contribute to its sensuality, hence my "rounded edges look best" direction.

Because the text "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" is so iconic, and a fundamental visual component of the painting, as opposed to being a paratext, I knew it had to be included, in the original French. With the quotation on three lines, the title of the painting, and the other thematic material, there was no way this was going to make it in as a regular entry. Yet, at 17 letters, and hence 17 points in the outline, the phrase gives just enough resolution for the image (better than 14 for "THIS IS NOT A PIPE"). Once these proportions were determined, they were fixed, though the image could be moved vertically within the grid, and I could start the phrase at several points (I limited the possibilities to the left side: so the circles at 29-, 36-, or 62-across). Getting the title of work in the interstitial line without circles and finding out the"I" at 85-across could pull double duty was a crucial step toward getting that central section to work. I do wish MAGRITTE could have been in the very last slot, to echo the extreme corner position of the signature in the original image, but the crossings wouldn't allow it (it barely allowed the present corner to happen).

Thanks as always to Will and co. for helping get this out into the world. A couple of notes here: My original title for this puzzle was "WHAT YOU SEE IS...". The central bottom box was also revised from the submission (I had, under IS IT NOT: CEO, EXT, STE; not sure if EXT and STE are less desirable than OXY and DTS.) I had a lot more wordplay in the original clues, but maybe some were imprecise, or too oblique: SELFIE was "Single shot?" EMITTERS was "Ones with issues?" NOTE was "Staff pick?" The clues for LAB NOTES and TROUPE, however, made it through.

In the end, this puzzle is not only an homage to Magritte, but also an homage to the typology of puzzles: apart from being a tribute, it has circles you connect to make an image, a quotation, and even a bit of thematic wordplay with 120-across. It's also an homage to paper [solving].

Hopefully, the surrealism of the original painting gains a new dimension here: a representation of a representation. The (benign) joke, which was the reason "Treachery" was so enticing to invoke, is on detractors of this theme: if you finish the puzzle, play your bonus round of connect-the-dots, and declare "that's not a pipe!" or "that isn't anything like a pipe!," you'd, of course, be fully correct.

Who ISN'T captivated by stories of unusual animal friendships?

This list of theme entries took a while to get right (and still, only a few weeks ago, I realized STEPHENHAWKING's name also has this property). The original submission contained DRONESTAGRAM, an Instagram-type site for aerial photos, but for Will, it was less "three's company" than "three's a crowd."

Upon revision, which required nearly the whole puzzle to be razed, interesting entries like 55-across presented themselves—I dedicate that to all my friends who attended this fine institution. Many are musicians, composers, and puzzlers, incidentally. I learned about 107D (EGOT) from "30 Rock," produced by 20D (LORNE Michaels). 78D has a property that I hope will cause some solvers to consider 96A (You might pass one in a race) to be BACON. 119A came up in the revision; after I emailed Will about greenlighting its usage, he replied: "SNOT-NOSED is a little rude, so it's something I would try not to use. Still, if it makes for the best fill, go ahead."

On that note, I wish you all a peaceful and enjoyable long weekend.

The challenge here was finding fully plausible cooking instructions (grammatically) with indisputably unsavory connotations. In other words, you gotta have a verb and an object, so CUT IN LINE, for example, would be a no-go on both counts. I am particularly fond of 96A, which twists my linguistic processing a bit to get the original and contextual meaning of the idiom to jibe.

Original clue for 47A: Reciprocated sin? Not sure if that implies some sort of revenge film-type scenario.

Will kicked this puzzle back due to my original entry at 39A: MIX YOUR METAPHORS, asking if I could change it to what it is now. The original thinking there was that recipes would likely direct you to either "mix the metaphors" (aforementioned with the correct quantity in the ingredients list) or "mix your metaphors." (The latter, I suspect, is far more prevalent among those homey food blogs that Pinterest every step of the process, so that even a sink full of dirty dishes comes out looking Country Crock®-chic.*

On a related note, there was a second revision I sent later that mysteriously didn't make it to print. It contained a tiny revision in the upper-right corner, making 22A: VAPE and 26A: ETTA. Those with eagle eyes might spot why that emendation was made...

*I actually secretly love those blogs.

Don't know if you can tell, but this puzzle had to be scaled back slightly from its original, larger ambitions. After some futzing around, LASTSTRAW was slotted for 1A but due to various formal and aesthetic constraints, like my non-acceptance of multiple STILTONS where TILTSAT is, and 31D/32D crossing three very long entries in a relatively open region, there was no way I could get the other corner to work without breaking it up. But I liked the top half too much to completely put the puzzle away for good.

Clues that stayed that have personal resonance: 3D (love that description) and 19A (I studied Xhosa for a semester and Zulu for a year and a half; can't really speak either to save my life).

As for 1D, it's the final Q that makes this entry new to a Times puzzle, and semantically, it's the most interesting letter, what with its dual meaning of "queer"/"questioning." Although the Q now seems to be standardized, its widespread adoption is still relatively recent, and has its remaining detractors, despite reclamation in inclusive circles of the word "queer." The National LGBTQ Task Force was renamed in 2014, I learned, and GLAAD only updated its media handbook to recommend its usage in October 2016. Some advocates, out of a desire to be more specific, have adopted my favorite version of the acronym: QUILTBAG.

A chance, anyhow, to meditate on a wider significance of single letters beyond the boxes of a crossword puzzle.

This puzzle went through an interesting transformation in the editing process. While the similarities between Halal and Kashrut are plentiful, there are notable differences that preclude strict "synonymity" (and thus strict opposition between "halal" and "nonkosher.") Two examples: camel is halal, but also not kosher (kashrut requires animals to chew cud and have cloven hooves). Halal foods cannot contain alcohol of any kind; kashrut allows for alcohol, provided it be, of course, made under kosher laws.

The original conception of the theme plays on the fact these answers "contain" ham, pork, lard, and bacon, rather than the circled things being nonkosher themselves, which I thought gave the puzzle its raison d'être. This idea of ham/pork, etc. sneaking their way into things reflects the concern many kosher/halal-keeping folks have in determining whether they can have certain prepared meals, say. In that conception, the answers (AHAMOMENT, NBACONFERENCE, etc.) are both, with this wordplay, nonkosher and not halal. I had wanted to avoid the opposition of nonkosher and halal in and of themselves b/c of the specificities listed above. But Will felt that this was somewhat confusing since the long answers were not foods.

In further discussion with Will regarding the clue for 65A, he notes that while "opposite" might not be the "perfect word," brainstorming sessions with others made him feel it was the best option, and as he noted, they apply equally to the pork products I hid in the grid. So I've happily complied with his well-reasoned judgment on this.

In this way, the theme ended up quite different from the initial idea. (CHOPS in the opening corner, clued not as food, by the way, prefigures the theme.) But it preserves the original spirit of multiculturalism, and appropriately ushers us into the Thanksgiving holiday, whatever we choose to eat.

I tend to think of crosswords as somehow arguing for an archive of collective experience. As a result, I don't tend to (that's not to say never) seed my puzzles with proper names--I find those can end up resonating with some and falling flat with others. Rather, I go for what I consider to be unusually evocative phrases, or phrases that reflect this particular cultural moment; for me, 1A, 20A, 33A, 58A, 61A, 15D, and 35D fit at least one of those conditions.

Looking back, this is probably my favorite themeless puzzle out of the ones I've constructed. I'm quite satisfied with the mix of high and low, old and new, erudite and vulgar, sports and...not sports, and a good lot of Scrabbly letters sprinkled throughout.

The pairings of 1A/14A, 11D/12D, and even 61A/63A seem give each corner its own character. Happy to see the original clues for 1A and 63A, as well as for the perhaps unexpected echo of 19A/35D. GOPRO hasn't been seen in a Times crossword since 2013, and it's reemerged commercially. As a result, it's really been, as far as crossword entries go, been (re)freshened up.

This puzzle, like sushi, claims a very brief shelf life: it was accepted four weeks prior to publication, and was submitted probably only a week or two before then. "Visualizing" this proverb in a puzzle had been in the back of my head for much longer, though—I originally thought I might pair it with some counterbalancing expression related to "heaven."

You know how scuttlebutt has it how diagonal themers are exponentially more difficult to execute? All true. I think cruciverbalogy would tell me that otherwise ideal vowel-consonant patterns, once on a diagonal, are shifted over, forcing a potential concatenation of weird letter strings. This happens at the crossing of MEDDLES/EENIE, which was by far the hardest region to build.

Two important things about the theme execution: since the aphorism "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" is only obliquely referenced, it was important to make sure all the key words--namely ROAD and PAVED--be included (see my last bullet point for all sorts of variants). It was also important that PAVED ROAD be a real thing (i.e. something you'd like to find in bonus fill or a themeless). This way there was no ambiguity about the intended expression.

Some points:

• Spent New Year's 2015 in OSAKA, the mecca for takoyaki (octopus balls). Of course, they have their own museum about it too.
• I am imagining a dinner party in which ENESCU and RAPDUOS flank DRNO. George Enescu (aka Georges Enesco) was also a brilliant violinist, teacher to the great Yehudi Menuhin, and a national figure in Romania. For classical musicians, his later, more conservative works are better represented on stage, but I am much fonder of his more innovative compositions from a younger age. (Hip-hop trio Run–D.M.C., by the way, hails from HOLLIS.)
• This St. Bernard (b. 1091, not the same saint who lent his name to the canine breed) recorded a quite different aphorism from the one you see in this puzzle: "L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés ou désirs" ("Hell is full of good wishes or desires"). For some beach reading, you can peruse the at times grotesque transformations of this saying in Cassell's Book of Quotations, which spares neither children nor scholars.

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.

I'm quite fond of themeless puzzles in which triple stacks in the NW and SE corners open out into surprising territory in the middle. I started this one with MYSTERY MEAT, which is not only gives me a chuckle, but which contains very "end-friendly" letters. This solves a problem I've encountered in which the bottom entry of the bottom stack, constrained by such "end-friendly" letters, can often be something less than stellar.

Some of my favorite entries here are on the shorter end: MCCAFE, ADEXECS, FBICASES, and CHEEZITS. I MEAN REALLY unintentionally evokes SNL's "Weekend Update" and my SETH MEYERS entry from December. GET THE WRONG IDEA is one of those expressions that seems harmless and generic but, upon closer inspection, is rather contextually specific (e.g.: "I think you got the wrong idea about my intentions," or "now don't get the wrong idea or anything...") And finally, composers of the ARS subtilior, a style the flourished in 14th-century France, produced some of the most beautiful manuscripts and crazy rhythmic ideas you'll ever encounter. "More subtle art," like crosswords--and the "American Pie" octalogy.

A couple of months back, Evan Birnholz espoused his theory that music and crossing words have much to do with one another. I've always thought that a good crossword works like a piece of Bachian counterpoint, in which both the vertical (harmony) and the horizontal (melody) are required to maintain absolute integrity.

As music theorists will tell you, in non-equal temperament, F-natural isn't necessarily the same pitch as an E-Sharp, and C-sharps could be different than D-flats, depending on how you "arrive" at it and depending on where it is "going." Equal temperament allowed for these equivalences, at least on the written score. You'll see then, pieces of music — particularly ones employing a lot of chromatic harmony — mimicking what happens in this puzzle, where it's, say, an E-flat melodically, but a D-sharp vertically. A type of musical pun.

I completed this grid relatively quickly, though admittedly, getting to the end was a series of fortunate events. Some of my favorite entries--FANGIRL and FELLINI, came after I chose to redo the whole grid post-acceptance. Interesting note: DEFLATEGATE was originally clued as a 2014 scandal, but indeed, it happened in 2015...at the 2014 AFC Championship.

I always want to include vocabulary that allows solvers to reflect on the contexts in which these words arose, and hence on what they say about society at large (or just about my current interests). Today, we have the conceptual PANOPTICON watching over the rest of the puzzle at 1A. UNLADYLIKE is such a loaded and interesting word to me: I mean, what does it mean nowadays to act like a "well-bred woman?"

When I constructed the final version of this in Sep. 2014, there had been a downtown beautification project going on outside my apartment whose completion date was delayed by over a year. Consider the inclusion of NOISE LEVEL as my personal vendetta against the awful din of a Caterpillar struggling to re-park every morning at 6:50 am! No such feelings toward SETH MEYERS, whose Weekend Update with Amy Poehler I thought was the highlight of SNL for several seasons.

Other bits: 1D breaks my personal rule of not including dictators or generally horrible individuals, but the stories of what Haiti has had to endure are really unknown here despite our geographic proximity, and worth investigating. 2D might be clued anew re the Chinese e-commerce company. And I like how the vertical spanner at 3D (which I conceived of as the Alice Cooper song) somehow anticipates the feeling of 12D and 33A. The clue for 49D comes from memories of my childhood in Canada, where in social science every event we studied was interrupted by a portage or the making of the scrumptious-sounding* pemmican.

And with that, I turn to WONDERBRAS, whose brilliantly straightforward clue is not mine (it originally echoed IRAS, both being sources of "support"). Reading up on it, the campaign in question enraged many, and a billboard that came out of it caused its share of traffic mishaps. Meanwhile, it launched the Czech model Eva Herzigová, who claims the campaign to have been more "empower[ing]" than offensive, into stardom.

This puzzle was submitted in two versions — the version here, and one in which you got the full name of the theme entry. I really preferred the more tricksy version here, so I'm happy Will did as well. Some may grouse that the type of auto isn't consistent (that is, I have makes and models freely mixed). Unfortunately, it was either that or a puzzle without enough theme density for my taste. REO was originally part of it, but Joel and Will asked for all the cars to be modern; OLDS, as a short form, didn't cut it either.

A concern in construction was that the solver had to have enough left in the grid so that you could figure out what the full phrase was, and GTO was particularly problematic — almost anything ending in "-ING TO" for the first word like COMING TO could conceivably stand alone as a slangy version of that word (e.g. "Comin'" or "Lyin'"). I wanted to find an entry in which, even as a standalone, it was clear you needed to tack on GTO.

The big shock for me in previewing this was that roughly 75% of my clues remain more or less intact, 22A and 5D being my favorites.

A playful, though perhaps dark element in this puzzle, is that AUTO, by becoming "automobile," is rendered no longer automatic. Machines can complete our thoughts for us, before we even know what that thought is. So if you don't know entries like "HELP ME RHONDA," you can type in "HELP ME R," and the search engine autocomplete will do its thing, unlike in earlier times, when you might never have found out, unless you asked someone, or browsed your local record store...

I'm pleased to make a comeback after a single, rather controversial outing a few years ago. I soon realized that cutting your teeth on themeless puzzles is probably the most intensive way of getting better at construction in general. A phrase like VANITY PRESS is ideal to me, because 1) it's a new entry for a Times puzzle, 2) it has so much personality, and 3) it's decipherable as a phrase even without prior knowledge, meaning it passes my "learnable moment" test. As a musician who currently finds himself at a highly academic institution, I love it.

Jacques LACAN may seem obscure, but he is UBER-big in academia (I originally had "'Hysteric's Discourse' psychoanalyst" hoping some solvers would lay down FREUD). KICK ME SIGNS are ... also big in academic settings? (Although, honestly, more cultural trope than reality? Tell me, world!) NIQAB and ARAB conversing with each another at the top is nice, though I hope implication of any sort of one-to-one between them has been avoided.

My non-reliance on any sort of autofill — does that qualify these puzzles as "artisanal"? — has taught me to think creatively about longer entries. ADULT SITES and BLANK CDS came about this way — it is always my hope that the quality of the seed entries and non-seed entries are near to each other enough that it becomes hard to tell which came first.

Thanks to Will and Joel for most of the clues and for a mild redo of the SE corner. The isolation there isn't ideal, but opening it up a bit would have meant undoing the central weave. I'm happy to see Will stuck more or less to the flavor of my original clues for 1D and 34A. My clue for 21D (BEDTIME STORY) was originally "Its end is rarely reached," but the published one is more on point. The transformation of 27D (CHESS) is just hilarious: my original clue was "Speed ___."