Victor Barocas author page

Victor Barocas is a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Minnesota. He's a longtime member of the National Puzzlers' League, and contributes puzzles to its monthly publication, The Enigma.

Victor loves all things related to language and wordplay. Contrary to the title of this puzzle, though, he does not speak French.

Victor Barocas is a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Minnesota with more than 100 published works in the field. Given his profession, the genesis of this puzzle (spelled out at 71-Across) is probably obvious. Besides the theme, Victor included colorful fill like 8- and 29-Across and 8-, 43-, 56-, 82- and 100-Down — all of which help make for enjoyable solving.

This is Victor's 14^th crossword for The Times and his fifth Sunday in the past year.

Howard Barkin is a software quality-assurance specialist — and an ace crossword solver — from Hillsborough, N.J. He won the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in 2016 and is a perennial top-10 finisher.

Victor Barocas, who also competes, is a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Minnesota. The men became acquainted through the tournament when their last names appeared alphabetically adjacent in the results. The idea for this puzzle was Howard's. They worked back and forth by email to make it.

David Liben-Nowell is a professor of computer science at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn. Victor Barocas is a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Minnesota. They met a few years ago at a crossword tournament at the St. Paul Public Library and have collaborated remotely ever since.

For this puzzle, they divided each part of the effort (theme, gridwork and cluing) evenly. They describe their process as "write, email, tweak, repeat."

Victor Barocas is a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Minnesota. He is married with two teenage children. He says that crossword constructing "reminds me of the research I do for my day job because I'm trying to do something that I don't know is possible. The constraints that my idea places on the puzzle may be too much. That uncertainty is somehow gratifying."

This puzzle, whose many circled letters appear in words across, down and diagonally (not easy to do!), must have been especially satisfying to create.

A fresh theme, elegantly done. DATEBOOKS did give me pause, because I'm just barely familiar with the usage of "book" meaning "to leave" — but it's legitimate. You might be interested to know that the constructors' manuscript had F-BOMB at 1A, which I edited out. It was a close call, but I wasn't sure this met the Times's standards of good taste.

I met Tom Pepper and Victor Barocas when I was in Minneapolis two weeks ago. There is a surprisingly large crossword-constructing community there. This puzzle's theme is first-rate, I think.