New York Times, Wednesday, December 30, 2015

ML: Jeff and I were on a roll with holiday puzzles. Fresh off the Christmas grid I suggested Happy New Year 2016, Friday. He replied: "Yikes, 1.5 years out! Maybe something sooner? =]" I sent him the Wikipedia calendar link for 2015/2016 stating "Try six months out ;-)"

JEFF: Stupid math, why must you be so hard?

ML: Not wasting any time, he sent me a grid skeleton with the names and NEW YEARS EVE filled in. I began the tedious process of filling as cleanly as possible (not an easy task!). We went back and forth discussing the best fill (the west side was easier than the east). Jeff saw the opportunity to fit APE and MAN in the SW corner. This brings back memories of THE DESCENT OF MAN puzzle which we were working on three years ago at this time. That was my first NYT acceptance. Amazing to reflect on how much has happened since!

Felice anno nuovo!

JEFF:

I had no idea if we could find three famous people with AULD / LANG / SYNE hidden in "their hearts," but it seemed well worth a try. (We aimed this puzzle for Dec. 31 — a Thursday — so we wanted to clue the themers more opaquely, i.e. [Physicist with a song in his heart?]) So what a joy to discover these three folks from within such disparate areas: physics, economics, and football.

Dirac was apparently a quirky fellow, not totally in a good way. But such contributions to the field of quantum mechanics! And anyone who Albert Einstein spoke of with "This balancing on the dizzying path between genius and madness is awful" qualifies as interesting in my book.

The Chairperson of the Fed is one of the most influential people in the world. Alan Greenspan I'll always remember because of tidbits my macroeconomics prof in business school recounted: apparently Greenspan had a vascular condition for which he needed to take extended hot baths. The image of this guy in glasses soaking for hours at a time, mulling over how best to guide the largest economy in the world, will always stick in my head. Not to mention, his marriage to journalist Andrea Mitchell … with the ceremony done by the Notorious RBG (Ruth Bader Ginsberg)!

I don't know that much about Greasy Neale's football career since he played long before my time, but I always wanted a good nickname like Greasy. Back when I co-captained an Ultimate Frisbee team, we had a running joke about new member initiation, which involved catching a greased pig. Or more accurately, a greased co-captain. Ahem.

I enjoy working with mirror symmetry, which we needed for this theme (lengths of 9, 13, and 11 make regular symmetry impossible). Not only is it an interesting challenge given its idiosyncrasies, but you usually have to place a horizontal line of three (or more) blocks across the middle column. Put in a few stairstep squares, and it's almost hard to avoid giving your puzzle a smile.

We spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to give the solver bonus fill, adding to their fun. Usually, I like to work in at least six longer entries, stuff like HEALTHY GLOW, BOB AND WEAVE, and MINUS SIGN. The AMERICANO is my drink of choice at Starbucks, so that was fun too. I sure would have liked for us to work in one more pair of long answers, but that just strained the grid too much with little gluey bits everywhere. And what's most important — by far — is how much fun the solver has. Ah well, ICE BOX, AIRBOAT, PC CLONE, and (my childhood favorite) ASTERIX will have to do.