New York Times, Thursday, January 23, 2020

I'm thrilled to be making my debut in the New York Times, especially on Thursday, my favorite puzzle day. I have been a word puzzle fan and occasional crossword solver for as long as I can remember. Four years ago, when my sons gave me a New York Times crossword subscription as a gift, I got hooked and started solving it daily. (My streak is 1,469 days as I write this.) At some point, I started reading XWord Info and enjoyed the inside look at the process of crossword construction. I decided to try my hand at creating crosswords about a year ago, and I'm really enjoying my new hobby. During the day, I work as an engineer.

This puzzle was even more of a family affair than most of my puzzles. One day, my husband made a joke about ‘wife' and ‘Wi-Fi'. I got the far-off look in my eyes he's come to know. Later that day, I mentioned my theme idea to one of my sons, who was home for a visit. Over the next couple of hours, he came up with bow tie, Versailles, and Sinai. When I thought of ROCKS THE BOWTIE, my favorite theme answer, I knew I had to make the puzzle. To add to the family connection, my father was a valuable test solver.

I submitted this puzzle in June, and it was accepted in September. I'm pleased that Will Shortz and the team kept a good number of my clues. I also want to recognize the contribution of the crossword community. I've gotten feedback and encouragement from crossword editors for several other venues that have helped me to improve my skills. I'd also like to put in a plug for the Crossword Puzzle Collaboration Directory on Facebook.

Regular readers of this column know that I love Thursday trickery. Nearly every single ground-breaking / avant-garde / mind-blowing work of iconoclasm has come on a Thursday, and for good reason — Will Shortz aims for Thursday to be the hardest themed day of the NYT week.

Will has been consistent in his philosophy, wanting Thursday to be nothing more than harder than Wednesday. However, all the clever, unique, crack-the-mold concepts have to be slated for Thursday — and there are a lot of them. Those pesky constructors and their breaking of every single crossword rule! Lawless agents of chaos!

Not every Thursday can break the mold, though — that's unrealistic. And even if it were possible, I wouldn't want it. My brain likes to be challenged, but it also likes success. Solving something hard but familiar can produce a great feeling.

That was exactly the case today. At first, I was underwhelmed by the theme being a simple sound change, and I wrote it off as not POW! material. Chatting with Jim Horne made me rethink, though, giving more weight to some of my first impressions:

• VERSE to VERSAILLES? Now that's a spelling change! I've brainstormed hundreds of sound change puzzles, but I don't remember such an amazing transmogrification.
• ROCK THE BOAT -> ROCK THE BOWTIE is not only a neat presto change-o, but what an awesome resulting phrase. Heck yeah, Bill Nye rocks his bow tie!
• Amazing big corners — from a debut constructor! I'd rarely attempt a 6x7 chunk inside of a themeless puzzle, much less within a themed puzzle with more constraints. The SE is exemplary, super clean while shining with such winners as CHILLAX, PALETTE, T REXES.
• Such clever clues for ALGEBRA — containing an "X" factor, as in "solve for X, heh heh — and SENATE. I've worked with many non-profits who used Ernst and Young — but that's the auditing firm, not senators Jodi Ernst and Todd Young.

There were a couple of blips, notably that "gimme a sign" as a base phrase doesn't sound as strong as "give me a sign," and there was more crossword glue than I'd like — close to a GROS amount. As much as I enjoyed some of the wide-openness, I'd have preferred a more standard grid layout that would have been easier to fill cleanly.

Barbara did so much right, though. I'm glad that Jim nudge-nudged me to take a second look.