New York Times, Saturday, April 21, 2018

Hello, fellow Cruciverbalists!

When I'm not puzzling away, I'm working on my Ph.D. in molecular biology with a focus on breast cancer treatment via nanotechnology. I got started in puzzles because of my grandfather, who always did the Sunday NYT crossword ever since I could remember. For some reason when I was a youngster, it always seemed to me that grinding away at a crossword was such a grown-up thing to do. So I took the challenge and gave the Friday through Sunday puzzles a shot with much computer assistance, since my family had the Fri-Sun package deal for the Times.

After a while, I weaned myself off the computer and can now do most of weekend puzzles solo. I still need my grandfather to help out when I get stuck, which is not too often ;) , since he's way better than me in filling out proper nouns.

But what got me into construction was having a lot of time to kill in the lab. Back in undergrad, I used to work with bacteria, and for several weeks each day, I had to wait 3-4 hours for the bacteria to grow enough to do my experiments. So eventually it dawned on me to attempt making crosswords during this time at the campus library. My first submission was a mother goose theme that I made on graph paper.

Themeless puzzles were especially difficult at the start when I was trying to determine, for instance, the kinds of long phrases that Rich (at the LA Times) and Will liked and the appropriate single to multi-word answer ratio in triple stacks.

Anyway, to make a long story short, on my eighth attempt I got accepted in the LA Times and my tenth or more (I think) the NY Times. So to all you aspiring constructors out there, keep at it, and don't give up!

I've enjoyed corresponding with Daniel. He keeps on calling me "Mr. Chen," which I find infinitely amusing. Sort of like Marcy calling Peppermint Patty "sir." I've appreciated how polite he is with his inquiries, taking care to never infringe too much on my time, so it's a pleasure to see him make his debut.

That SE triple-stack is a beaut. GREAT DIVIDE is a great entry in its own right. GAY MARRIAGE, love it! And the common SEE ATTACHED rounds it out. I'm not a fan of DR T, who doesn't feel crossworthy, or BRAE, which is a bit of an odd word, but those were well worth the price of admission into that corner.

The opposite corner was pretty strong too. I wasn't sure if EROTIC NOVEL was truly a genre, like GOTHIC NOVEL, but some Googling proved me very wrong. Sometimes I forget that romance / erotic novels are WAY more popular than stuff worth reading. I mean, other stuff. Ahem.

I would have liked some of these marquee entries to get clever clues, though. Referencing "Fifty Shades of Grey" for EROTIC NOVEL felt like a let-down, when there could be so many plays on the word "blue."

Some entries must get a definitional or otherwise easy clue — GREAT DIVIDE would be tough to riff on, since it may not be immediately known to some solvers, for example. But entries like EROTIC NOVEL or GENE THERAPY left a lot of great cluing potential on the table; plays on "strands" or "bases" for the latter.

DEMO TAPE was a perfect example of clever cluing hitting the mark. The question mark in [Rock sample?] gave away part of the game, but I still enjoyed the repurposing of a common phrase into a completely different meaning.

There are a couple of shorties I debated internally. LYSIS is common enough in biology, something I heard all the time in my second career (in pharma). Clued as a suffix, it's definitely gluey. But as a scientific word? Hmm. Still probably esoteric for most. EGEST is similar.

Overall, very nice debut! Mr. Chen approves.