Zhou Zhang author page

Mallory: I couldn't ask for a better NYT debut than this one, shared with Zhou. We've worked through dozens of absolutely inane unworkable ideas, and a few that have, through countless revisions, become publishable in reputable outlets. Not a bad success rate, when you have as much fun on the inane ones as we do. We came up with this idea in early 2024. Our first version, a Schrödinger puzzle, was submitted (and rejected) in July 2024. Fortunately for me, Zhou is persistent and clever, and we didn't give up. We resubmitted in April 2025 and, after some revisions, it was accepted in July and ran the following January.

The best thing to come from this, of course, is my friendship with Zhou. We have so much fun constructing and solving together, I couldn't ask for a better collaborator and friend.

Zhou: I'm overjoyed to be sharing this byline with Mal, a rockstar woman and amazing human. Women are underrepresented in crossword construction, and all-women collabs are particularly uncommon, so I'm delighted to add one tick for "all-women collabs" to the 2026 numbers. Hopefully, there will be many more of those ticks to come (and at least a few more by the two of us)! I'd also like to shout out Kate Chin Park, who was crucial in helping us refine this idea and get it to publication-worthy status. Thank you so much, Kate!! We couldn't have done it without you.

As for the puzzle itself — we spent a long time on several different versions of it, in an era when we were just "baby constructors", as Mal likes to say. (We're probably in our awkward teenage phase by now.) We have so many screenshots of previous grids, and it was fun to go back and see how far we've come since those early days. I'm super happy with how this puzzle turned out, and I'm particularly pleased to debut KOTEX (that corner was all Mal!), which we originally clued as [Brand that's only periodically relevant?] I thought that was hilarious, but unfortunately it didn't make the cut... Next time!

Funny story about this puzzle…

I submitted this to the Times back in the days of the old Zendesk submission system, pre-Submittable. It was very promptly rejected, with the following feedback: "We're being extra picky with "words that come before or after"-type themes." Ok, fair enough.

Two months later, I got another email, with the following: "I'm happy to report I have some good news for you - we'd love to accept your DUCK DUCK GOOSE 15x submission for an upcoming Monday. It's a fun theme, and each of the theme entries is just so lively."

Wait, what???

It turns out that my puzzle had been duplicated in their system, and so while one puzzle editor had rejected a copy of it, another editor had pushed the other copy of it through. Luckily, I had procrastinated on sending the puzzle out to another venue, so the acceptance email was pure delightful surprise.

There are two lessons I try to keep in mind from this experience:

1. Just because something gets rejected doesn't mean it's not good.
2. Procrastinators always prosper.

Ok, maybe only the first one is the actual lesson. Time will tell.

This puzzle has a very special place in my heart because it's the first one I had accepted by the New York Times. Looking back on it, I'm honestly shocked I even got it to work. Unusual grid size … a lot of theme material … plus a Schrödinger … rebus??? This is clearly the hubris of somebody who has no idea what they're getting themselves into, and I say that with only love and affection to my former self.

I came up with this idea because I kept saying to people, "I'm down for that! I mean, I'm up for that! Isn't it funny that you can use either ‘up' or ‘down' in that sentence and it means the same thing?" My friends and family were (shockingly) uninterested in this finding. I couldn't stop thinking about it. So I set about looking for more examples to make into a crossword puzzle. It turns out there's not that many of them! The only one I didn't end up using that I really liked was RIGHT UP / DOWN YOUR ALLEY.

Now that I've checked "publish a Schrödinger puzzle" off of my crossword goals list, I'm moving on to "get more puzzles published than my husband" and "publish a themeless". Hah! Given the level of themeless quality these days, I think I'm more likely to achieve the first than the second. But if you want to collab and help me reach either of these goals, hit me up! I'm at [zhou] [dot] [zhang] @ gmail [dot] com. I love working with people, and I'm really nice, I swear.

Zhou: I am so very thrilled to be making my NYT debut (especially because there were many times over the last two years where I was convinced it would never happen), and it is particularly meaningful to be sharing a byline with my favorite person in the whole world.

My original concept for this puzzle involved a passcode that was a Schrödinger entry but with one unchecked square… I reluctantly agreed to Kevin's simpler approach of putting a lock in the middle, secretly still thinking my way was better. Yikes! In hindsight — I hate to say it, but: Kevin, you were right. (Please don't use this statement against me in the future.)

Lastly, and most importantly, we're actually not the first people in our family to publish a crossword in the Sunday NYT. Our two oldest kids, Kaela (newly 9) and Nate (10), were published in the Kids section in April (interview by the incredible Christina Iverson here, solve the puzzle here). Time will tell if Vivi (almost 7) also catches the construction bug.

Kevin: Zhou and I met as teenagers. It's fun to think back to those days: she convinced me to dance the hula with her in front of 500+ people, and I convinced her to play offensive line on my flag football team. Our interests were so different, but we were always looking for ways to help each other grow.

Fast forward more than two decades: many of our interests have converged as we've shared our lives together. But our spirit of tackling new challenges side-by-side remains. This particular puzzle builds on literally hundreds of hours put into puzzles that were rejected. With the help of Christina and the amazing editing team, we couldn't be prouder to share it with the world.

This note wouldn't feel complete without mention of our friends Shawna and Austin, who we've tackled many escape rooms with. There's nothing quite like the feeling of deciphering the final challenge and becoming 42-Downs. We hope that this puzzle recreates some of that magic for you!