New York Times, Friday, August 15, 2014

Two years ago, I was researching the Panama Canal for a book I was writing. My crossword spidey-sense flared when I noticed the canal ran nearly diagonally (from NW to SE), connecting the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean. And those three entries magically intersect in a symmetrical manner! It's almost as if the builders named the canal so that their Easter Egg would eventually be discovered, and a crossword would be made of it. When I found that the 100th anniversary of the canal's opening fell on an upcoming Friday, I couldn't resist building it into a mini-themed puzzle.

Will liked it, proposing to run it on the day before the anniversary (I think so it wouldn't be all over the news already?). I agreed, but earlier this year, I had hesitations, worrying that the low theme density would turn off Thursday solvers.

So I redid the puzzle from scratch (grid shown to the left), brainstorming a few oblique theme entries. MADE THE CUT felt like a fun one, and after a long search, DIAGONALLY (clued to reference J.K. Rowling's DIAGON ALLEY) seemed pretty good too. It took me a few dozen tries over a few weekends to suss out a workable grid. But in the end, I didn't like it as well as the original. Luckily, Will assented to run the puzzle on the day of the 100th anniversary as I had originally intended, with PANAMA CANAL as a mini-themed bonus entry.

I would have preferred PANAMA CANAL as a pure Easter Egg, uncircled and tough to find. (My original clues for CARIBBEAN SEA and PACIFIC OCEAN were [Start/end of a famous passage hidden in today's grid], misdirecting people with the word "passage.") But I've studied crosswords for a couple of years now, and I've realized that a big portion of Will's solvers — perhaps a majority — wouldn't have found it, putting it aside with a feeling of annoyance. Too bad that PANAMA CANAL had to be so blatantly obvious, but I understand the rationale. It's not easy to satisfy a huge range of skill levels and desires within Will's millions of solvers.

I think Jeff intended 16A, A PLAN, to be a bonus theme entry, since it's part of the classic palindrome "A man, a plan, a canal — Panama." Also, 37D, MALARIA, is sort of thematic, since this disease famously plagued the construction of the Panama Canal. But I couldn't think of a way to clue these in reference to the theme that wasn't awkward or that didn't give the theme away. The fact that they didn't have symmetrical theme answers on the other side of the grid was a concern as well. So even though the entries relate to the theme, the puzzle doesn't explicitly say so. They're Easter eggs, of a sort.

One clue note: Jeff's original clue for 48A, RELIEF, was "Marketers spelled it with seven letters ending in an S" — in reference to the old Rolaids catchphrase "How do you spell relief? R-O-L-A-I-D-S". My 22-year old assistant Joel had no idea what this clue meant. Apparently the old Rolaids ad campaign has not stood the test of time. Since I generally like solvers to understand clues, at least after they see the answers, I decided to do something else.