New York Times, Monday, November 23, 2015

This puzzle was a long time in the making! I submitted the first version back in early 2014. It was rejected because my central theme answer, THIRD CULTURE KID, was deemed too obscure. I did a bit more brainstorming for alternatives and landed on THIRD TIMES A CHARM — a much better entry, but one that requires a 16x15 grid.

After producing several possible grids, I resubmitted the puzzle in late 2014. I heard back from Will with a tentative yes, provided I could clean up a few iffy entries. At that time, I was using the entry FOURTH OF JULY and no matter how creative I was with my block placements, the J was proving to be quite a problem. Changing that entry to FOURTH ESTATE helped alleviate some constraints and I was able to come up with a much cleaner fill. I resubmitted again this February and it was finally accepted!

I'd say that THIRD TIMES A CHARM is an apt description of this creation process but looking through my records, I found about 15 drafts of a completed grid! In one version, there were no blocks between 12/36-Down and between 28/49-Down, but unfortunately the fill had too many compromises. I'm pleased that I was able to pack in five theme entries although it certainly complicates the construction process.

Will changed a number of my clues, mostly skewing easier, since I wrote the initial clues expecting this to be a Tuesday or Wednesday puzzle. Did you catch the tie-in from the clue for 27-Down?

I have the good fortune of living near Parker, so we meet up every other month or so. Nice to be in an area with many fellow puzzle people! Parker showed me an earlier version of this puzzle, and I remember being impressed by the idea. It's so fun to see FIFTH, FOURTH, THIRD … and then not get SECOND and FIRST! Cool to have another completely natural sequence-completer in HALF and WHOLE; one which was unexpected.

I also remember feeling like there were too many gluey bits in his earlier grid, so it was a relief to see Parker's final product. Not only is the crunchy stuff limited to the very minor LIRE, STS, SGTS, but Parker also worked in quite a bit of long fill. This is important, since the larger-than-normal grid (16x15), must captive the solver for that much longer. Uncovering bonus entries like NICE ONE, ALOHA STATE, STILL LIFES, EDIT MENU, ICE CREAM (yum!), AIRLIFT, even OCULUS Rift (one of the leading virtual reality headset companies) kept me entertained. Quite a nice construction, especially considering just having five themers is hard enough.

As Parker and I discussed his redo, I mentioned that the FIFTH ELEMENT was the weakest themer, since 1.) it omits "The" from the title and 2.) my guess is that it won't reach "classic" status. I thought there had to be something better. Could have been FIFTH WHEEL, FIFTH AVENUE, FIFTH COLUMN, but finding a "WHOLE ___" phrase with a matching length made it tricky. I liked WHOLE FOODS paired with FIFTH WHEEL, but WHOLE SHEBANG does make for a great final themer.

Nice to get a few insider's nods, with MASAI (Parker did Peace Corps in Africa a few years ago) and APP (he recently got a job as an ioS app developer).

A theme that cleverly misdirects + is accessible to novices + a smooth and meaty grid = a beauty of a Monday puzzle.