New York Times, Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Did you know ANO in Spanish means something very different than AÑO? Like kind of a big deal difference. When I learned that, I realized I'd been entering a dirty word in crossword puzzles for a long time without knowing it. Hence was born the idea for this puzzle: what if a puzzle treated letters with diacritic marks distinctly from the same letter without? What followed was an in depth dive into English words with diacritic marks and what subtleties they carry (like whether the Ä in HÄAGEN DAZS is an umlaut or a diaeresis). The result, my first NYT crossword and a life goal achieved!

Debut! I really enjoyed corresponding with Wren, who wondered if his pic would be too odd for me, or if his writeup would be too risqué. I loved both — so fun to see a constructor's personality come through. (But don't look up ANO without the TILDE while you're at work. Ahem.)

I had a feeling something with diacritical marks was going on when I hit OYSTER right off the bat. Fun way to kick off the theme, launching it with a metal umlaut. Nice assortment of diacritics, from the UMLAUT to a CIRCUMFLEX (the little hat) to the CEDILLA to the TILDE. I highlighted those four answers below so they're a little easier to pick out.

An impressive amount of theme material crammed in. It might not seem like it, but check out where the four blue words are plus everything that has to work with the four special squares marked in red. Although they're all relatively short words, there are a ton of them. That's always tough to deal with, each successive word stressing a grid more and more.

I thought Wren did a pretty nice job considering the level of difficulty. I'm not hot on Random Roman Numerals, so CMIX at the top center felt awkward. Hard to avoid though, given TILDE and CEDILLA crammed next to each other, constraining things. And the FAROE/SABU crossing … oof. Very tough if not unfair. Otherwise though, not bad to have a few minor ENE SLO ILO bits strewn about.

It's a shame that there's no crossword symmetry in the grid. It's impossible to achieve with the four themers of course, but it would have been nice to at least get the four special squares in symmetrical spots.

And the real shame? I was so hoping for Wren to cleverly work in ANO … without the TILDE. How fun would that have been, to secretly use the subversive definitions! That would never have slipped past Will. But a guy can hope.

Looking forward to more from the juggler.

The marks in question have been added to the four letters below although, depending on the device you're reading this on, they can be hard to see. Patrick Merrell had a similar idea in 2010 with tilde Ns and David Kahn crossed acute Es in 2012.