Jean O'Conor author page

I came up with this theme in 2013 when I was brainstorming for the annual holiday crossword I send to family and friends. I had a few ideas to choose from, so I decided to send this one to the NYT instead. There were a lot of words and phrases that started with "snow" and I was amazed at how many of them fit together. The theme fell into place quite easily. I wish all of my puzzles were like that!

This was a fun theme for me. Shortly after submitting my PESTO recipe puzzle two years ago, I decided to continue to follow the advice "write about what you know" — so another cooking theme. I remember standing in the middle of the kitchen looking at various items and calling out humorous definitions to my husband. It didn't take too long to come up with a theme-worthy list. What took much longer, and several revisions, was getting it all into a decent puzzle. Thanks to Will for his advice and final tweaking of the fill. Hope you have as much fun as I did.

This puzzle began at Positive Pie, a restaurant in the very small town of Hardwick, Vermont. It's known for its delicious pizza served from a wood-fired oven and for its selection of craft beers. While anticipating both of these pleasures, and studying the menu decorated with its design of +'s and π's, my husband started the discussion of pizza/pie/pi theme ideas. The pizza pie piece eventually fell by the wayside, except for its circular shape.

The puzzle went through some revisions of the fill, during which FULL got moved around a lot. I hadn't realized what a hard word it was to "fill" around! I have to thank Will for livening up my clues. I was glad to see two of my favorites still there (for SERENADE and HOEDOWNS), but I can't take any credit for "It wraps around a chest at the beach"!

Hope you enjoy the π.

Although this is my fourth puzzle to be published in the New York Times, it is the first one that Will accepted. I was a little nervous about looking at it again since it's been over a year since I constructed it. I hope I've learned a few things about grid-filling and clue-writing in that time. I really like the theme.

I had been thinking about doing a recipe puzzle for a while and finally started looking in my recipe collection for one that had only four or five ingredients. I had to play around with it to decide just how to word the various steps, but it all fell into place pretty nicely.

In the beginning I was sending in so many puzzles and getting so many rejections, it's hard to remember the trials and tribulations of each one. I thank Will, though, for considering my many attempts and offering helpful suggestions.

I think this puzzle has one of the few themes that came to me spontaneously - inspired by a roll of toilet paper. That roll didn't make the final cut, but there were many other theme entry possibilities to work with. By that time I had rounded up some family members to serve as testers and take the heat off my husband, a faithful NYT solver. That helped me to step back from the puzzle and get some perspective before my final edit.