Lewis Dean Hyatt author page
1 puzzle by Lewis Dean Hyatt
with Constructor comments
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A few years ago I decided to make a Mother's Day puzzle for my mom, a longtime fan of the NYT crossword. Hi Mom! I ended up building so much stuff — filling algorithm, word lists, etc. — that I decided to see what else I could do with it, and so here we are. It was an amazing process working with Will and Sam, and I couldn't be more grateful to them for the opportunity to appear in this venue.
The first puzzle I submitted was a different 66-word grid, about which the less said, the better. The grid you see here with the arrangement of six 14s is the second one I submitted; this puzzle is my third attempt at it. When I got the response to the second try, and the subject was "Crossword — good news!" my heart jumped — only to sink a minute later when I saw, among the generally encouraging feedback, a request to redo the NE corner to remove OREOTHIN and SWA. I knew the former was impossible, given how much the 8s and the 14s in this grid interact with each other.
I made a hard-fought effort, including going up to 68 words and adding cheater squares in various places, but there was no way to remove that singular cookie. I felt it was a great opportunity that Will had invited me to submit my next revision by email, and I didn't want to waste it, but after a week all I had was a version that was identical except for the one letter changing SWA to SZA. I found that rotating the grid by 90 degrees opened up some new possibilities, and so I made a brand new puzzle to accompany my revision and sweeten the deal. I was curious to know what the editing team thought of that one — I felt that the 14s were stronger and the 8s weaker, but I wasn't sure how it balanced out — but I never found out; they accepted the single letter change and all my dreams came true.
I hope you enjoyed solving this puzzle as much as I did making it!