New York Times, Thursday, September 3, 2026

It's rare that I make a themed puzzle by myself. I'm lucky to live with the very talented Kevin Curry, who also just happens to be my life partner. (Ok ok fine, I admit it, he's the reason I got into constructing.) And my good buddy and hilarious co-constructor Mallory Montgomery is always just a text away. I'm often sending them half-baked ideas, since I don't generally start with fully-baked ones.

So what happened with this puzzle?? I honestly can't remember. But I do know from my email correspondence that an earlier version of the puzzle, with the revealer HOLES, was rejected. The reasons for rejections made 100% sense to me (extraneous Os; they already have too many rebusy-type puzzles).

I am pretty stubborn though, and I still thought there was a whisper of a good idea here, so I asked Kevin for his advice. He said, "What if you got rid of the extra Os and made it into a Sunday?"

I was tempted. I really wanted to have the themer RABBIT O crossing WONDERLAND, and moving to a Sunday-size would let me do that. But I also thought: What would I say in my resubmission notes? "Hey I know you didn't want this puzzle, but here it is again, and guess what? Now it's BIGGER!"

So I took some of his advice. I left the puzzle the same size, but I got rid of all of the extraneous Os. That was harder than I expected, as it turns out O is a pretty useful letter, being a vowel and all. I also got rid of the revealer, very reluctantly, because I could not for the life of me figure out some sort of "HOLE"-hiding word that could possibly be found in actual "HOLES". I flirted with the idea of putting SMALL O crossing HOLES, but in the end I decided against it. That was probably for the best.

A single letter O stands in for the word HOLE — and each "hole" is literally punched into the Across answer where you'd find it in real life.