Stanley Newman author page

Most of the ideas for the crosswords I make come from a twisty interpretation of everyday things I see, read, or hear. The inspiration for today's was just like that — seeing "two IDs required" in a newspaper article. With the assistance of the very constructor-useful onelook.com, I selected the three most lively theme answers available. (Sorry, ETHIDIUM BROMIDE didn't make the cut.)

While Monday grids with all-easy answers are most easily accomplished with a closed-off grid of maximum answer count (78), I wanted something more intricate for Will, the Times, and you. So, wanting to have the IDS revealer as the last Down answer and opening up the grid as much as this-human-ly possible, I managed to complete today's 74-answer diagram. The 10 answers Down of 7+ letters were a little tricky to accomplish, necessitating the one answer that I'd rather not have used (40 Down NAES), but Will didn't mind it, and I hope you didn't either.

For any early-week crossword I do for the Times, the cluing is a tug-of-war challenge for me. For any puzzle for Will, I always check the database of Times clues, striving for as many "new" clues as possible. The extra challenge comes from avoiding trickery and ambiguity at the same time.

Will kept the essence of somewhat more than half of my clues; the changed ones were typically made easier with a better-known fact, such as HEIDI as the "Project Runway" host rather than Mrs. Ted Cruz.

And that's all I have to say about that.

This is my 24th New York Times crossword. It has been 983 days since my 23^rd. My first was 35 years and 19 days ago. You see, I can't help counting things, and looking for chronological milestones. So you ought to be able to deduce how today's puzzle came about.

Early this year, I discovered that the bicentennial of Queen Victoria's birth was coming up and that it would fall on a Friday. That cried out to me for a Times themeless with QUEEN VICTORIA in the center. So with Will's approval, and a couple of revisions, both to "lively it up" and remove the unfortunate dupe of MEXICANS and TEXMEX (now TEXTED at 40 Across), today's grid was born.

My cluing was intended to be top-to-bottom tough, endeavoring to have as many never-before-seen clues as possible, with as much wordplay meanness as possible. Will did ease up on the overall difficulty but kept my favorites, including the double-twist "Opening of an account" for AS I RECALL (63 Across), "Grp. that no one under 30 can join" for U.S. SENATE (36 Down), "Priciest 1952 Topps baseball card" for MANTLE (27 Down) and the rather long and weird "Fictional land named in some real-life international law cases" for RURITANIA (60 Across)—which avoided the usual citing of "The Prisoner of Zenda".

In the memorable words of the eminent American philosopher Forrest Gump, that's all I have to say about that.

But wait, one more thing. My snooping around 1819 a few months ago turned up another very famous person born exactly one week after the Grandmother of Europe. I think it rather unlikely that next Friday's Times puzzle will mention him, but whether it does or not, you'll be able to find him quickly enough with a Web search.

This theme was inspired by seeing SHAQ ATTAQ in the Wikipedia article for Shaquille O'Neal, in search of something new to say about him in a crossword clue.

Slightly surprised that the phrase has apparently not been previously used as a crossword answer, I proceeded to round up QUINQUAGENARIAN and QUEBECNORDIQUES (with online assistance) as the best long answers to round out the theme--neither of which had appeared as a Times crossword answer before.

The central 9 pretty much requiring four sets of 7's in the corners, I thought it most prudent to deal with the six Q Downs by using the maximum allowable answer count of 78. Careful placement of the 15s and the black squares resulted in three of the Q Downs being three-letter words starting with Q.

Dealing with the those Down Qs first, I found the grid not overly difficult to complete. Give yourself extra points if you noticed the two echoes of the theme beyond the longest Acrosses: CUE CARDS at 38 Across and "Quid pro __" (QUO) at 68 Down.

Knowing that Will wanted this clued in a fairly easy manner didn't dissuade me from my usual attempt to have as many "brand-new clues" as possible in my puzzles for him. Some required some extra digging, such as the F.C.C. hearings on CSPAN (10 Across). 67 Down came from personal experience: Last year, I took a tour of the Liverpool boyhood home of John Lennon, which included the guide's prominent mention of Yoko ONO as the benefactor.

Thanks to this site, I see that this my fourth Times puzzle this year, the most for me since the five I had in Will's first full year as editor (1994). Having reread my previous author's notes of this year, I'm going to attempt to cover new elucidative ground with the following.

The "thank you very much" in different languages was in my Theme Idea Book for a while. What I thought might make it suitable for the Times was the lucky three-way theme answer intersection. For you Times Crossword History buffs, this "H-on-its side" is a theme configuration much favored by an eminent Times constructor of the past, Jack Luzzatto, who created many wide-open patterns of this sort.

So, totally unlike my last Times puzzle, where I closed off the grid to the max for easiness sake, I wanted to open up the grid as much as possible here to allow for many longer words, and managed to get the answer count down to 72, without having to resort to any obscurity/crosswordese compromises.

As for the cluing, not unlike acting, it really is more fun "playing the villain" and being mean-but-fair/accurate wherever it works. The three "Thanksgiving phrase" theme clues were obviously supposed to be of no help without quite a few crossing words. My two other favorite mean clues: The "music masquerading as cardiology" for PRESTO (15 Across), and "multi-keyword diversion" of "Counter with a sharp edge" for RETORT (42 Down). The seed for the RETORT clue was the word "counters" in its Random House Unabridged definition.

The nuanced approach I aim for with my tough factual clues is: a fact you probably don't specifically know, but with enough context to put you on the right track toward the answer. Which, when you get it, will make complete sense based on "general knowledge" only, which most people can be reasonably expected to know. Such as: the POTOMAC River (34 Down) meeting the Shenandoah at Harper's Ferry, Jean AUEL (49 Down) writing about Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals, and the admittedly not well-known Grand Duchess OLGA (23 Across), eldest daughter of Czar Nicholas II, though eminently inferable as a female Russian name from "Anastasia" in the clue. A factual morsel that couldn't fit into the puzzle: JUDGE JUDY (31 Across) is 2014's highest paid TV star by far ($40+ million) because her show is syndicated and she gets paid for each station that runs it. And of course, because of the high ratings her show receives.

Finally, to paraphrase Will himself in a post he made to xwordinfo earlier this year, there are many editorial approaches to crossword constructing that are suitable for the Times. I'm glad Will finds mine appropriate enough to have put it before you four times in 2014.

The genesis for today's puzzle was my noticing the DVD monogram of Dick Van Dyke. Curious whether any other famous person had that monogram, I searched through "d* v* d*" at the excellent database onelook.com, and discovered the second TV-related answer "Death Valley Days". "Hmm, 15 letters, maybe I can make a crossword out of that." That would require an 11 to balance DICK VAN DYKE, of course. There being no reasonable matching-monogram answer presenting itself at onelook, I hoped to find a "revealer" answer starting with DVD, and got very lucky with DVD RECORDER — having the obvious TV tie-in and the "what you are by solving this puzzle" wordplay-clue slant that came to me immediately.

With the assistance of Crossword Compiler software, I found the creation of the grid pretty straightforward — placing the black squares to avoid crossing words with uncommon letter placements (no answers ending in V, please), closing off the grid to the 78-answer maximum for maximum flexibility, then filling the remainder of the grid with answers as lively-but-easy as possible. The non-theme star of the grid is undoubtedly PAPA JOHNS (32 Down), which just happened to fit very nicely.

My two principal objectives in writing the clues: having them all rather easy, and as far as possible avoiding duplication with recent Times puzzles, or any of the other major crosswords, for that matter. The latter is easily checkable at crosswordtracker.com. As for the former, while I think I'm pretty good at writing easy clues (having gotten my undergrad education in the early 1980s from Games Magazine's puzzle editor, one William F. Shortz), I figured that the Times clues needed to be a bit more difficult than the puzzles I create and edit elsewhere, and proceeded accordingly. Nevertheless, nearly all of the one-third of the clues that Will fully changed were easier than my originals. I promise to remember that for my next Monday, Will.

There are several examples here of my favorite type of "good and easy" clue: Facts on perhaps unfamiliar-to-you subjects that require only general knowledge to understand. Two of them are 31 Across: "Top Chef" appliance (OVEN) and 58 Across: Chocolate __ cake (dessert with a molten center) for LAVA. The latter factual reference for LAVA is new to crosswordtracker. That came from my own experience, chocolate lava cake being served regularly at the salad buffet restaurant chain Sweet Tomatoes. Also new to crosswordtracker is the Forbidden City reference to MAO (61 Down), also from my personal experience, having visited Beijing last year.

Besides my own experience and imagination, I find Google and Wikipedia to be excellent sources of new-to-crosswords usages of words, facts and names. Just one example of the latter: With New Hampshire senator JEANNE Shaheen (50 Across) currently in a close race for reelection, I was both surprised she hadn't appeared in the Times crossword before, and confident that Will would find my clue appropriate for a Monday puzzle (which he did).

I'll end by sharing this fun fact with you: While the complete run of "Dick Van Dyke Show" episodes are available on DVD, it's inappropriately unfortunate that the owners of "Death Valley Days" have never released the full series in its "initial format."

Inspiration this time began with recalling a puzzle I published more than 20 years ago, by the late, immensely talented constructor Elizabeth Wilkinson. All of the clues in her "T PARTY" 15x15 started with the letter T, and there were multiple T-shaped black square patterns. That puzzle got me thinking about clue-restriction themes that would be somewhat more opaque.

After coming up with the fixed-syllable idea, I offered it to Will with his choice of all three-syllable or all four-syllable clues, without having a specific day of the week in mind for it. Will accepted it for a Thursday (which he continues to be non-rebus short of), and chose four syllables.

The fixed-length message didn't leave a lot of flexibility for its placement in the grid. The crucial thing I wanted to take care of first was the Down answer for the X in EXACTLY. FEDEX looked good, and I placed the black squares nearby in such a way as to have as many options for the EDE crossing letters of FEDEX as possible. Then I placed the rest of the blacks, trying to have as low an answer count as possible. I briefly flirted with a 72-answer grid, but couldn't get that to work without answer compromises, so I reworked the grid slightly to the 74 answers finally used.

There were two additional subtle aspects to filling in the grid. First, the puzzle couldn't have any partials requiring fill-in-the-blank clues — how exactly does one pronounce underscores? Having abbreviated clues/answers seemed more of an inelegance than a problem to me, since one does pronounce many common abbreviations as if they were the spelled-out words. Still, I had wanted to avoid abbreviations entirely, and nearly did so — there's only AGCY in the answers and "yr." and "Mrs." in the clues.

Writing the 74 four-syllable clues turned out to be rather slow going, to come out to my satisfaction. Cluing "tough" for a Thursday was extra-tough with this added restriction. Also important to me was to avoid any clues that seemed unnatural or "forced," wanting to keep the theme a surprise for as long as possible. One more special wrinkle I had to watch out for: avoiding words with multiple common syllabifications. That's why my first thought of "Holy mackerel!" for YIPES wouldn't have worked.

Still, the harder clues turned out with all the variety and difficulty that I strive for with my less-restrictive tougher crosswords. Sometimes, that difficulty comes from a lesser-known fact about a well-known thing (like LATEX used for the scratch-off layer of lottery tickets), sometimes from multiple possible answers (at least four five-letter ones for "Colleague of Kirk"), and sometimes forcing you to think about things you know in new ways (like "Hive, in effect" for NEST). I'm pleased to say Will felt the need to totally redo only a dozen or so of my clues.

I hope I succeeded in surprising and pleasing you with this quirky theme.

Inspiration for this puzzle came from my 30-year-old son Marc (whom Will bounced on his knee at my home about 27 years ago), who sells items on eBay for his London office-salvage business. One of his recent items was a plaque with the theme message, for which only the original WE'LL needed to be changed to WE WILL to break perfectly. By dumb luck, Will was short of non-rebus Thursdays, so it appears today only 19 days after he OK'd it.

I clue puzzles hard by having as many "new" clues as possible, requiring some thought and reasoning to solve, rather than ones that can be solved at sight by solvers with good memories. Most of the new factual clues here come from Internet research, such as 52A, 63A, 8D and 34D.

An added requirement to my harder clues is that only general knowledge should be required to understand them, even if the fact itself isn't well-known. For example, anyone from New York should know that AMAZIN (14A) is associated with the Mets, so it shouldn't be surprising that a website all about the Mets is called Amazin' Avenue.

One other clue nicety here that might not be obvious: a factual balance between new pop culture (like 18A, 55A), older (40A, 25D), and historical (42A, 10D). I made sure that all my factual references could be quickly and authoritatively verified with Google, and passed that info along to Will with the puzzle.

While some of my new clues for uncapitalized answers also come from Web research ("Time-stretching" for 41D SLO-MO came from a Wikipedia article), I can often think of something fresh by just letting my mind wander. That's where I got 56A and 1D, for instance.

Will is obviously on-board with all of this thinking, since he kept about 75% of my clues, including all the ones cited above.

In the 1,000+ crosswords I've constructed and the 5,000+ I've edited (for the New York newspaper Newsday and Puzzle Social) since adopting Crossword Compiler in 2000, I've found that with careful grid patterning it's never necessary to use obscurities, even for wide-open grids such as the 72-worder here. This sometimes requires that I check Google News and Google Books, to be sure that words I think are in common current use actually are. I look forward to the day where this fussiness will be standard procedure for constructors, so we can finally bid the OLEOs, OLIOs and ANILs of crosswordese an unfond farewell.

Anyone wishing to throw bouquets or stones at me, or a constructor wishing to learn more about my "crud-free" approach to puzzlemaking, is welcome to contact me through my website.