Jules P. Markey author page

The idea for this puzzle came while at work, as many others have. I am a letter carrier in Philadelphia, at 63 I'm well into my 30th and hopefully final year with the USPS. I think the focus on name and number throughout the day allows my right brain the freedom to bubble up some theme ideas from time to time.

In this case, being in the midst of a creative drought I remember the exact moment when I reminded myself to look around and speak what I saw. It happened to be the sign of a dance studio with the address 1515 in large font. I said "number" aloud and began to riff, number became prime number (1515 is not one), which led to prime example leading to prime real estate which is a 15! Later at home I found some examples of places that included a prime and started to fill the grid. My submission was accepted in October of 2018, with the need to make some revisions which Sam Ezersky was very helpful with. Thanks to Will and his team for jazzing up my clues as usual.

Getting back to my profession, we are in a bit of a bind right now as you might have heard. I won't get too political here, I would just ask you if you care to, to educate yourselves about the issues, and remember that the Post Office is a public service established under Article I of the U.S. Constitution. The person residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. didn't arrive until Article II.

Be well everyone and keep on solving.

I like rebus puzzles, both solving and constructing them. This one went from theme idea to submission without too much of a struggle. All the theme entries are the same as in my first version except FISHBOWLS was originally at 39-Across.

I'm really happy with the theme entries, a couple of which came from the XWord Info list and Jeff's list. My wife and I had recently streamed SAUSAGEPARTY so that fell right into place. TEAMCREST was a Hail Mary pass of trying different combinations of words that end in AM with those that start with C. if I remember correctly there weren't many more if any cable channel trigrams that were workable acronyms and not abbreviations such as SHO. I guess I could have expanded to 4 letters with ESPN, but I would've had to find a crossing for the unappealing CATCHESPNEUMONIA, (is there one?).

Thanks as always to Will, Joel and crew, and thanks to Sam Ezersky for incorporating my clue change for 42-Across, which I mentioned to him at this year's ACPT, where he was the constructor of the final puzzle. Hope you liked this one.

The inspiration for this puzzle was bird poop, (I was going to end my blurb there, but I'll go on), which morphed into the more refined bird droppings, which became the original revealer for this puzzle, in which 4 five letter bird names are embedded in long down entries. I mailed in the completed BIRD DROPPINGS grid, and then at the 2017 ACPT I broached the subject with both Will and Joel. There seemed to be a positive vibe from both (well maybe more from Joel than Will), but alas when the email arrived it was along the lines of: We like the idea, but having a puzzle revolve around bird droppings might not sit well with some solvers.

So, I came up with a few alternatives including a fifth themer: CAJUN COOKING while trying to fit BIRD(S) somewhere in the grid, without success. Eventually, I suggested DOWNFEATHERS as the revealer, which was the one accepted. A quick reworking of the grid and voila, today's puzzle. Thanks to Will and crew for really polishing it up, as usual.

When I got word last week of the impending publish date, I took a look at the puzzle again, and for some reason, the phrase FLYING SOUTH popped into my head which I liked, but alas it was much too late, for at 11 letters it would have required a complete reworking of the grid.

Well, that's the inside POOP on this one, I am disappointed that BIRD DROPPINGS didn't make the cut, but one can never POOH-POOH the fact of having their puzzle published in the N.Y. Times. Hope you liked it.

I submitted this puzzle a few years ago (STONE AGE?) and I'm happy to see it published today. There were a limited number of workable AGE choices, BRONZE was a non-starter, although I could have gone the "wacky" entry route with something like: "LEBRON_ZEBRA_SKIN", clued as: [Nike's new King James exotic sneaker brand] … maybe not. DARK seemed to be off because it's referred to as the DARK AGES. I thought SPACE was cool but aside from SISSY SPACEK nothing seemed to work, so I settled on the theme entries you see today.

Placing the 9-letter reveal in the center necessitated long downs in the corners, my favorite of which is ODORANT, which is rarely seen without its DE- prefix but which is a real lifesaver in the form of Mercaptan when added to odorless natural gas. There was one change to the grid, 45-Down was changed to OPTI from OCTI, and as usual Will and Joel really livened up the clues.

I would like to add somewhat preemptively, that one of the meanings of the word MIDDLE is: being at neither extreme, intermediate. I hope you all enjoyed the solving experience.

The idea for this puzzle came when my MacBook word-of-the-day screensaver featured the term ex post facto, which I immediately saw in terms of theme possibilities. How many other entries could I find that start with a letter written phonetically? It probably wasn't very fruitful because I somehow zeroed in on the phrase "X marks the spot" instead, and saw that if I used EX, MARX and DESPOT I could, with a little poetic license, mimic that phrase.

Originally 29-Across was MARXBROTHERS, and the reveal was PIRATEBOOTY. Upon reflection I changed that to TREASUREMAP, which seemed to be more apt. After filling the grid I noticed that the two long downs each crossed at only one theme entry, which gave me some flexibility to relate them to the theme as well. OLDSEADOG crossed nicely at the S in DESPOT, however, I had trouble finding anything that would work with the MARX BROS. With the option of going to MARXANDLENIN available, I saw that the perfectly synonymous BUCCANEER did the trick. The addition of ISLE was serendipitous, and ARRR was deliberate (I was hoping for a September 19th publish date).

Thanks to Will and Joel, who excised a couple of "uglies" (my term) in the west and lower Mississippi, and greatly improved on my clueing.

I hope you enjoy the wordplay, whatever level of solver you ARRR!

What do you get when you cross the crossword-friendly OED with itself? You get a puzzle theme, that's what.

In choosing the theme entries I came up with two good long vertical themers which crossed CROSSREFERENCES serendipitously, so then I needed the two intersecting long horizontals. There was not a very large pool to choose from, ZEROEDIN worked nicely in the NW, but I originally had the so-not-in-the-language THEHOEDOWN in the SE which Will rightly rejected.

After coming up empty for a replacement, I decided to split the entry and look for two shorter words that would work when combined. After much trial and error I thought RADIO and EDITS might fit together, and lo and behold that was confirmed when I got back a gazillion google results for it. After acceptance, RADIOEDIT appeared in a 2014 NY Times puzzle. The themers in the NE and SW corners took a bit of finagling but they too fell into place, using a few cheaters to make it all come together.

I hope it was an enjoyable solve.

This is my tenth puzzle published in the NYT, a personal milestone, and if I've learned one thing at this point in my short constructing career, it would be to give the solvers what they want, and for many it's a Thursday rebus.

This idea occurred to me at work, the phrase COMPRESSED AIR had rebus written all over it. When I had the chance I researched whether anyone had published this theme before, and found to my surprise they had not. I then went about finding words and phrases that included the trigram AIR, fitting as many of them as I could into the grid. A couple of the entries involve the word "air" itself which I wanted to avoid, however I thought it was not fatal to the final product.

The original puzzle had the central entry UPSTAIRSDOWNSTAIRS running east-west but I changed it to the more apropos north-south. It also had ten entries that Will asked me to replace, and I was able to switch out nine of them. The two clues of mine which I hoped would make it and did, were 27-Across, and 62-Down, as always Will and Joel livened up a lot of the others.

Hope this puzzle satisfies that Thursday rebus jones.

I actually watched "Road to Bali", for the first time this weekend on YouTube. For its time, it was a pretty hip movie, what with inside-Hollywood and political humor, a few cameos, and breaking the fourth wall to wisecrack to the audience. My favorite line was when our heroes were captured by a tribe of cannibals. As they were being marched to their certain demise, a little boy runs out of the crowd of people and starts tapping and poking at them, the boy's mother hurriedly pulls him away and says: "Now junior, I told you not to play with your food" — that was a laugh-out-loud moment.

This was the second puzzle of mine to be accepted for publication, so you can see that Will does really try to space out word ladder puzzles. I was looking for something that was a bit off the beaten track when researching "xxxx to xxxx" phrases, and came upon the film title "Road to Bali", which I had not seen until the weekend prior to publication. I did see "Road to Utopia" on TV as a child, but that wouldn't work unless it was an add-two-letters word ladder (hmm...).

My original grid lacked the two cheaters which turned two of the "L"s into "T"s (on the sides of the grid). I really liked that the original made the middle of the grid look like a letter box movie screen, but there were too many "uglies" without those cheaters. Will and crew provided the fix, and cleaned it up a bit. In the SW I was wedded to having COSTAR at 38-Down crossing DOROTHYLAMOUR and providing her clue, however that also resulted in a few less than desirable entries. The Roman numeral unfortunately was inoperable.

I did have my qualms about the theme being dated and possibly turning off younger solvers, who would think it, and by extension me, less than hip. My advice to them would be to make a visit to their local Blockbuster and rent a VHS tape of the movie, they might like it =).

Hope you enjoyed the solve.

I was surprised to learn when researching the theme that it had not appeared before in the NY Times, so I was off and running with it. The fact that there are only four corners, however, made for a limited amount of theme material even with CORNERSTONE as the central reveal. I tried to find other entries which related and noticed INSCRIPTION — an integral part of a cornerstone. The task became finding an eleven letter partner, and it wasn't too long before I hit upon TIMECAPSULE, which very often is either contained in or lies behind a cornerstone.

The placement of the three elevens, with CORNERSTONE in the middle, was determined by the choice of vertical theme entries in the northeast and southwest. Fortunately, after some trial and error, STONEMASON and TOUCHSTONE fit the bill. I wanted all of the perimeter theme entries to be the same length, however with the added horizontal theme material that became very difficult to pull off, thus GEMSTONE and STONEAGE. I made a few changes to the fill after acceptance; 8-Down was originally SIDEARMS. Will and his team made a few more changes, as well as a great number of much better clues.

I was extremely honored to have this puzzle selected for the final round at this year's 16th Annual Westport Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Thanks to Will Shortz, and to Patrick Merrill who hosted, and congratulations to the winner Andy Kravis.

This puzzle was originally submitted in February of this year, and it received a rejection with a proviso. Will liked the theme but not POLAR OPPOSITES because the PO didn't occur at the start of the second word as it did in all the others . Having a foot in the door, so to speak, I focused more intently on improving the puzzle. I replaced the offending entry with POLE POSITIONS but the resulting grid had all plural theme entries, which Will would not go for. To make the revised puzzle work I was forced to remove my favorite entry, POTENT POTABLE(S).

The original grid had all the themers running horizontally, I then realized that if I switched two of the them to the vertical they each serendipitously crossed the reveal symmetrically. The one remaining issue was a SW theme entry to balance POLE POSITION in the NE. After a few tries and some back and forth emails, Will accepted POISON POWDER in July, resulting in a surprisingly quick turn around for a rebus puzzle.

My favorite clues are 25-Across which is a newbie for a well-worn 3-letter word (LEI), and 44-Across. My favorite clue which didn't make the cut and admittedly was a bit of a stretch of the old "?", was 21-across clued as "Feathered friend?" as in "tarred and feathered". Will greatly improved on my cluing, especially for the theme entries, as usual.

A word on the "sausage making". I do not use any crossword compiler software to create my grids (I can hear the snark already: "Yeah we can tell"). I'm not of the graph paper and stacks of reference books school though, I do use an Excel spreadsheet for my grids and clues, and I use XWord Info and OneLook as helpers in weaving the words together.

I hope you like this puzzle, my seventh with a few more in the pipeline.

This puzzle was one of two that I constructed with this theme. The original idea of NEWSPAPER COLUMN as the reveal came while I was thinking about vertically themed puzzles, which unlike horizontal themes almost always have their verticality as an integral part of the theme. The other version included "THE" in its three 15-letter themers, as in: THE SUN ALSO RISES; THE GLOBE THEATER; and THE POST EXCHANGE, the latter of which did not pass muster with Will. Readers usually refer to their papers as "the Post", "the Times" etc., so I did like that version, however I had a difficult time coming up with enough suitable theme entries, thus I went with the version you see today.

I like the published version for its four theme entries, several of which are debuts. TIMES TABLE CHART might be a bit weaker than the others, however I think most people are familiar with the term from their elementary school days, or their children's. The rest of the fill is fairly clean, so all in all I'm happy with the result, as I hope you are too.

Finally, thanks to Will for accepting this puzzle and improving some of my underwhelming clues, although I think my clue for 42-Across is a nice bit of misdirection.

This is the second vertically themed puzzle of mine accepted by Will Shortz, and as I mentioned to him in my cover letter, I was hoping vertical was the new horizontal. There are certain limitations to the format, namely that all of the theme entries as well as the reveal are encountered somewhat early in the solving process, but it would be unfortunate to waste all the possibilities that "downness" brings to self-referential themes because of that.

This puzzle was submitted last December, and was accepted in April with some provisos. A few changes had to be made to the fill, however there was one sticking point, the ten letter 3-Down themer didn't quite fit with the others. In subsequent submissions 3-Down went from: THISLLPASS; to YOUAREOKAY; to DONTGIVEUP; to LIFEGOESON, each of which was rightly met with Mr. Shortz's disapproval. I just couldn't find something that sounded right.

By then it was the end of August, my wife and I were spending two weeks at a lake cabin in Vermont. On our final evening, after one or two margaritas, (underage constructors please disregard this), the heavens opened up, and NOTTOWORRY was comfortingly whispered into my mind's ear. EUREKA!!!

Mr. Shortz concurred.