Queena Mewers author page

We submitted this puzzle in December 2018, and it was accepted in April 2019. It's our second collaboration in the NYT.

Our working title for this puzzle was "Instrument Panel." But we informally thought of it as a story about a raunchy rendezvous involving a love triangle, champagne, stilettos, and a sex tape.

Since we knew that angle wouldn't fly in a mainstream venue, in our submitted manuscript we clued the theme entries as "Heel instruments?," "Rom-com plot instruments?," "Toasting instruments?," "Interviewers' instruments?," and "Procreation instruments?" Because those theme clues hint at the dual nature of the instruments in each themer, we thought an additional revealer was unnecessary.

We were a little disappointed to see that the theme clues were edited into more straightforward definitions and paired with a revision of the southeast corner to add the revealer MUSIC. That grid revision, unfortunately, resulted in some infelicitous words being added to the puzzle.

On the other hand, perhaps that change enhances the aha moment by delaying the solver's realization of the connection shared between the theme entries.

In choosing our group of themers, we prioritized examples where the instrument word was used in a completely different sense. For example, a COMPUTER KEYBOARD is very similar in form and function to a piano keyboard, so that was a no-go. We also avoided themers like SEA BASS where the two homographs have different pronunciations.

The theme of this puzzle was largely hashed out over dinner at Red Robin. The most important decision was which pairs of words to include. We wanted the Spanish to be fair and recognizable to a large portion of the solving population. Luckily, only one of us speaks Spanish. Therefore, we leveraged the perspective of the non-Spanish speaker to help make that determination.

Of course, all pairs of widely-recognizable English and Spanish words that start with the same letter don't necessarily work in this type of crossword puzzle. This is especially true with 16 crossing theme entries totaling 68 of the 186 white squares.

Some of the other combinations with well-known Spanish words that didn't make the cut were: BATHROOM/BAÑO, PLEASE/POR FAVOR, and RIVER/RÍO. Ultimately, the requirements of grid symmetry and theme interlock (e.g., the shared "O" between FUEGO and HELLO) dictated which themers worked the best. We tried to get DAY/DÍA to fit in the upper-left corner so we could start with DAY and end with NIGHT, but the resulting fill options weren't good enough. Instead, we went with SUN/SOL.

We're happy to see almost all of our clues kept as-is or only slightly modified. Queena has been trying to get a "The Baby-Sitters Club" reference into one of her published crossword puzzles for a long time, so we were especially pleased to see that come to pass.

One final trivia question. Four of the eight semantically-paired Spanish words have appeared in the NYT crossword puzzle more often than their English equivalents. Which words are they? To find the answer, click on "Analyze this puzzle" at the bottom of the page.