New York Times, Friday, October 28, 2016

MARY LOU: I approached Jeff about another Halloween puzzle using ALL HALLOWS EVE as a seed entry. He came up with the crossing LORD VOLDEMORT and we were off. Jeff whipped out a few grid layout possibilities. We kicked ideas back and forth and proceeded on filling the grid once we agreed on the best design. If my memory serves me right, he came up with the entries LIFE HACK, EREADER and I WONT DO IT and I came up with LE FIGARO.

We did offer the possibility of linking the clue on the two seed entries, as ALL HALLOWS EVE was the night when LORD VOLDEMORT went on his murderous spree, killing Harry Potter's parents, Lily and James. I also liked the clue "Howl at the Moon, e.g." for PIANO BAR as I thought it in keeping with the holiday spirit, but these did not make the cut. I was pleased to see the connection between OYSTER and BAY retained. I have fond memories of trips to Long Island and visiting the former home of the Teddy Roosevelt family, Sagamore Hill, near the hamlet of OYSTER BAY.

As always, a pleasure and learning experience to work with Jeff. My appreciation to Will and Joel for accepting and editing this puzzle. I hope you enjoy your solving experince and the Halloween/ALL HALLOWS EVE holiday on October 31! Happy Howl-o-ween!

JEFF: After ML wrote me that ALL HALLOWS EVE would make for a fun Halloween mini-theme, we brainstormed on what might a good crossing answer. Scanning through my personal list, I couldn't help but stop at LORD VOLDEMORT, as I'm a huge Harry Potter fan. (The rumors that I run through parking lots at night with a broom between my legs, practicing my aim with quaffles, are completely false.)

(Mostly.)

And when ML found an article (this was back in 2015) entitled "Voldemort is polling better than many Republican presidential candidates," we knew we had to do it. Considering The Terminator, Darth Vader, and The Shark from Jaws was polling ahead every Republican candidate at the time, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named really should have thrown his hat into the ring.

We couldn't quite get the syntax perfect, but brainstorming our original clue for ARMPIT was awfully fun: [Worst city in a particular state, metaphorically]. (I tried to make a joke about Knockturn Alley being the ARMPIT of magical London, but no one laughed.)

I love mini-themes in themeless puzzles — they can be such a nice little treat. The crossing ALL HALLOWS EVE and LORD VOLDEMORT did make for a constructing challenge, though, sort of breaking up the grid into four quadrants. We tried to equalize the quadrants, leaving mostly 8-letter slots all around, for ease of filling.

The SW and NE corners weren't so bad, especially after ML suggested the lovely LE FIGARO to fill the tough ??????RO slot we were working with. I put in LIFE HACK in the symmetrical slot, and both of those corners fell pretty quickly. We considered a few different options for the SW, since LENGTHS is a bit dry, but we both loved one of our first tries at the NE, with PIANO BAR / IDIOLECT / TED TALK and even ARMPIT / AD REP colorful pieces of language.

The opposite corners were much harder. They wouldn't have been, if we had broken up LASER BEAM and I WONT DO IT into two words apiece (with a black square at the B of LASER BEAM and the N of I WONT DO IT), but I just hated to lose that long slot.

My stubbornness led to all sorts of issues in terms of clean and colorful fill, and I debated greatly whether all those cheater squares (the black square in the very lower left, the one under ALL HALLOWS EVE, and the one after MINETA) was just too much. In the end, we decided that the visual effect wasn't too badly hurt, and it allowed us to retain LASER BEAM and I WONT DO IT. (Talk about WHOA WHOA and HARD SELL!)

They don't let me award POWs around here but this was my favorite puzzle this week.

"Certain logic gate" is a tough clue for NOT but every once in a while it's nice that mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists or logicians get to have something to feel smug about.