New York Times, Thursday, May 11, 2023

I'm very excited to have my third puzzle published! This theme idea was one of my earliest attempts, well before I had enough experience to make it work. I also had difficulty coming up with a related crossing revealer with an "e" in the center. At the time, the best I could come up with was SPEED—why couldn't ALBERT_EINSTEIN's parents have given him a middle initial? It would have been the perfect 15-letter crossing! In any case, I liked the idea, came back to it years later, and finally came up with EINSTEINIAN — a little clunky, but it worked. I know double rebuses (or maybe, in this case, one and half rebuses) are a hard sell, so I'm grateful the editors went for it.

I do have to make a very sincere apology to all the mathematically or scientifically inclined solvers today. I realized after I sent it in that since the formula is e=m(c²), not e=(mc)², the rebus should not, strictly speaking, have the mc together in the square. Please take it as cruciverbial license, not ignorance! I hope you still enjoy the puzzle and have a RELATIVELY enjoyable experience!

The last time this theme was done, I was outraged. E doesn't equal MC—it equals MC SQUARED, so the five squares should be E / MC or at least E / MCC! Are we shouting "Fake news!" at laws of physics now?

Sadly, that feels like it's coming shortly.

Thankfully, I learn (albeit slowly), so I already appreciated that the MC was "squared," as in put into a single square. Neat how Sheldon crossed the central entries through one of those special squares, EINSTEINIAN and EEQUALSMCSQUARED. We've inserted a slash into the five squares below, to help you visualize what's happening.

FOR SOLVERS WHO DESPERATELY NEED TO KEEP THEIR STREAK OF PERFECTION ALIVE: enter either E or MC and it should be marked as correct. Other options that are supposed to also work: E/MC and MC/E.

Almost as confusing as relativity itself.

Rebus puzzles ideally want their special squares placed inside long themers. Although BENCHMARK isn't that snazzy of an answer, it's a lot more interesting than IDLEST, for example. It would have added a touch of elegance to have DREAM CAR be longer than ELEGANCE — my inner word nerd would have swooned at ROMZOMCOM.

How do you go about creating a grid with such weirdly-acting squares? Best approach is to start with the more difficult constraint — your four long *MC* entries — since "must contain the letter E in a certain position" is hardly rocket science. After that, there are some construction tricks you can employ. I won't get into them because time would slow to a crawl for non-nerds.

For those folks lucky enough to encounter the concept for the first time, enjoy!