New York Times, Thursday, January 26, 2017

I'm thrilled to see my first published puzzle on my favorite day of the puzzle week — the Times Thursday!

First, I'd like to thank Joel and Will for their encouragement through a significant rewrite and several revisions — I'm happy with the final product, but all that really matters is whether or not solvers enjoy it!

My goal was to provide that "aha!" moment in a playful way, to create the type of Thursday I'd like to solve myself. I have been fascinated by the idea of a rebus ever since I was first stumped by one, but for a long time, I struggled to think of a rebus concept that felt different, and that would allow me to express myself. Then it hit — the original inspiration for this puzzle was one of my favorite songs, Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds."

The birds would be "little" in the sense of each one having to fit in a single square, and I would use all 4-letter birds for consistency — that seemed like the sweet spot between not interesting enough (3 letters) and too difficult to hide inside longer answers (5 letters).

My initial attempt was rejected for an awkwardly broken-up revealer (THREE and LITTLEBIRDS), but Joel had the idea that the revealer could be changed to ALITTLEBIRDIE. The new revealer worked much better because its 13 letters allowed for central placement in the grid — this flexibility and the removal of the song reference meant I could also include a fourth bird.

After much experimentation with the grid design, I opted for the "four corners" structure you see here. I felt it set the rebus squares apart nicely, and allowed me to maintain a uniform length for the themers of 10 letters for the Across answers and 7 letters for the Down answers.

Debut! Loved the rationale of A LITTLE BIRDIE leading to rebusized birds. I also liked that Hal picked four birds, each with four letters — something satisfying about the symmetry.

I got IN (CROW)D / (CROW)N ROYAL quickly — great corner. Not only were both rebusized phrases strong, but the bird was an easily recognizable one. And the rest of the corner was executed nice and smoothly. If you can fill a rebus corner and with only a TRE as a minor ding, that's an excellent result.

I found the other three corners to be really hard, especially since they played like three separate mini-puzzles. The layout is constructor-friendly — note that there are only two words that let you get in/out of the NW, for example. This makes it SO much easier to section off and fill a grid piece by piece … but it also leads to solvers possibly getting dead-ended in small places. Not very satisfying.

That NW ... although I'm an avid comic book fan, I couldn't place the name ULTRON. And having tried HERB and NAME for [Rosemary, e.g.], the gears ground to a halt for five unsettling minutes. Thankfully the SAPPHO I (was supposed to have) read in college finally broke things open.

Then the SW ... the TE in T. E. LAWRENCE ( the inspiration for "Lawrence of Arabia") also made me sweat. After having been frustratingly stuck for another five minutes in this tiny space, I waffled on P?S. Maybe I follow basketball too closely and count Personal Fouls. Point Guards are on scoreboards too!

Oh, I wish TERN hadn't been the last bird. To me, it's one of those TERN / ERNE / ERN birds I learned from crosswords; a bit too insidery for my taste. A DODO or a SWAN would have been my preference. ASWAN DAM, anyone?

Overall, though, some nice gridwork, especially considering it's a debut. And loved the intersection of HELLENIC / AGAMEMNON, LOOPHOLE — excellent choices for bonus fill. With just a bit of IZE, THO, PTS, it's clear that Hal put some time and iteration into this grid.