Jack Mowat author page
2 puzzles by Jack Mowat
with Constructor comments
See the 20 answer words debuted by Jack Mowat.
Jack Mowat is a Civil Engineering major at the University of Notre Dame, planning to pursue a master's degree in that same field.
Jack is originally from the greatest city in the midwest: Omaha, Nebraska. His senior year, Jack was the project manager for the concrete canoe team, a club that designs and builds a 20-ft canoe out of concrete, and, yes, it does float!
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JACK: Before I say anything, I want to take this chance to wish my sister Margaret a happy sixteenth birthday!!!
With that out of the way, I am very happy to have my first Sunday puzzle published in the NYT! (Of course, this is far from Jeff's first.) Being that this was my first stab at a 21x grid it was tricky getting the fill for this one. With the long themer spanning the middle, we had to make a few compromises especially in the upper half of the grid, but I am still happy with how it turned out. We got some nice stuff in there and I'm particularly proud of debuting the 3 letter entry (!) IRL.
The theme started off broad, but Jeff and I were able to narrow it down to some fun golf themers. At that point we discovered that a similarly themed Sunday puzzle ran in the times in 2012. It was Jeff's idea then to focus on mistakes a golfer — the poor duffer in the clues — might make. This addition made the theme a lot tighter and made me smile at the thought of each theme entry a little bit more.
Finally, a big shout out to my dad, an avid golfer, who I had in the back of my mine as this puzzle got made. I know this doesn't make up for the Masters getting postposed, but maybe this is the next best thing! Hope everyone is happy, healthy, enjoys the puzzle!
JEFF: After a few months playing a little golf, my brother and I decided to get clubs. At the sporting goods store, a no-nonsense salesperson offered to help, asking me to take a couple of practice swings. After what I thought were decent cuts, she pointed me to the cheapest starter clubs available. "The way you swing, you might as well use two by fours," she said.
Twenty years later, her sage words helped shape this puzzle. And somehow, my golf swing has gotten even worse.
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I am thrilled to be making my New York Times debut and to be making the list of teenage constructors (just barely)! I've loved solving for a long time, so when I came across the NYT article series on "How to Build a Crossword Puzzle" last year, I decided to give it a shot. Though it was my goal, I didn't imagine that I would be seeing my name above a puzzle in The Times, especially not with my first themeless submission. I have to thank Jeff Chen, who has been mentoring me over the past year. I doubt I'd be here without his help!
This puzzle started with the grid. I appreciate nice looking Friday/Saturday grids, so I messed around with it until I had this nice wheel looking one. Being a denizen of the midwest and tornado alley, I seeded the puzzle with TORNADO TRACKERS. Once I found another 15 letter entry to cross it, the nature of the grid made it so that I only had a couple of routes to choose to fill the rest of it out. I started with the NW and SE quadrants. I particularly like what I turned out there. 29- and 30-Down paired nicely, and 3-Down is just such a lovely and quirky entry.
I hope everyone finds this to be an enjoyable Friday solve!