New York Times, Wednesday, April 11, 2018

As they say, the tenth time's the charm. After a year of encouraging rejections from Will and Joel, I'm happy to make my NYT debut on a classical note.

I like themes that require two steps to find the solution. (For example, Trenton Charlson's 'Battleship' NYT puzzle, in which an answer like PTCRUISER becomes PTXXX.) Matt Gaffney's contest crosswords often depend on this kind of double deduction.

The theme clues I submitted began with: "The sounds of..." followed by the relevant Down entries. This led solvers first to the composer ("The sounds of BATE + HOE + VENN?"), and only then to the idea of a famous composition ("The sounds of Beethoven?"). Will's re-cluing flattens these two steps, which I worry makes it less satisfying to solve. But in Shortz I trust.

The big challenge was fitting the 11 phonetic entries. My sense of order demanded they run downwards, intersecting the Across themers. But with such a constrained grid (45% of the fill is theme-related), I paid a high price in cheater squares.

Shoutout to Nancy Salomon for her mentorship and generosity. In the same welcoming spirit, Raph Levien and I built a free online tool so anyone can try their hand at puzzle-making. It'll even print a Times submission when you're done. Enjoy at keiranking.com/phil. (And feel free to get in touch. I like people and job offers.)

There's a lot to admire in this audacious debut. As a classical music lover and former cellist, I loved the notion of "classical composers sounded out with single words." Here they are, in case you didn't bother to search for the individual elements:

ROWE + SCENE + KNEE = Rossini

PACK + ELLE + BELL = Pachelbel

SHOW + PAN = Chopin

BATE + HOE + VENN = Beethoven

Notice how all the pronunciations are pretty darn good. I didn't like Pachelbel at first, but I think I've been pronouncing his name wrong all these years — apparently, it is "Pack-el-bel," not "Pahk-el-bel." (Or maybe I'm too much of a joon pahk fan.)

Also, it's very cool that Keiran used almost all normal words. The only oddball was BATE. (I love Mike ROWE and "Dirty Jobs.") If only he'd found a way to work in BAIT, it would have been a perfect set.

Speaking of working things in, working in 11 extra pieces of theme? That's insane. I would have told him that it couldn't be done cleanly. I was wrong, as the fill is amazingly smooth for the level of difficulty. ABED, CIRC, DELE, HWY is about as much crossword glue as any other Wednesday puzzle, but the theme is MUCH harder to execute on than average.

As much as I appreciated the puzzle as a constructor, I didn't particularly enjoy the solving process. When Keiran showed me the concept way back when, I didn't bother to look up the individual words; felt like too much work. Same happened during my solve.

It's a shame that some people will piece together BARBER OF SEVILLE from the crossings, and not bother to find the playful homophones making up "Rossini."

I wonder if it would have been more enjoyable if the clue for BARBER OF SEVILLE had been [Composition by cigarette purchase + Vogue rival + Old AT&T symbol?]?

But overall, it's a rare debut that makes me think so much and probe my feelings. Looking forward to more from Keiran.