New York Times, Wednesday, May 8, 2019

The toughest challenge for any constructor is to come up with a theme that is going to excite Mr. Shortz. Three years ago, when I started on this grid, I thought to myself, "Aha! I know this theme will excite Will. Can I pull it off?" Today, my question is finally answered: "Yes!!!"

When I began this journey, I was amazed to find that TABLETENNIS is bisected by the T in NET (a serendipitous discovery indeed). I was equally amazed to find that BOUNCING BALL is bisected by the N in NET (not quite as serendipitous as you will soon see). Hence, my first of fourteen versions of this grid:

Will and Company responded apace, "Cute, and we really liked how NET crossed TABLETENNIS in the middle, but the SPACE rebus felt too much like a crutch (and the LOS rebus too random)." A year later, I received this response to my third submittal: "We thought the visual worked really well, tho the BLANK felt like too big of a curveball to throw at solvers. We're not sure how you'd fix this, tho, so we figured it was best to say no". Such is the life of a crossword constructor.

Exactly an hour and a half later, I get the following directly from Will in response to a question on a completely different grid: "I still like your PING-PONG 15x, which I hope you can make work." Well, we made it work after only eleven more tries. I hope it got you excited, too!

Pretty image of a TABLE TENNIS table and its NET! Neat way to employ shaded squares in a crossword.

I get a lot of people asking me about their TABLE TENNIS theme. It's almost as if they knew Will Shortz was nuts about the sport.

There was another TABLE TENNIS theme from a long time back that I loved. Similar to today's, such a great use of circles to create the sensation of a ball actually bouncing.

Why a BACKSPIN SERVE in particular, though? It mostly works (my ridiculous physics-based qualm: wouldn't a backspin serve result in an asymmetrical path?). But I'd have liked something more generalized — THE BOUNCING BALL was so perfect in that previous puzzle. I wouldn't have minded the same thing today, using THE BOUNCING BALL roughly where Stu has BACKSPIN SERVE.

Not much theme today. BACKSPIN SERVE does take up a lot of real estate, what with it bouncing all over the place. But 13 letters + 13 in TABLE TENNIS / NET + 8 in PING / PONG is only 34 total theme letters. Thin, thin, thin. It'd have been great to work in a few more entries like PADDLES and RACKETS, or better yet, something related to BALL..

Impressive work up top, what with so many constraints imposed by BACKSPIN SERVE. Great use of black squares to not only trace the ball's path but to facilitate best fill. No one likes NEER or EEE, but the presence of NEWSCAST and IMPINGE and MEMOREX — along with no other crossword glue! — makes it a smash hit.

Wish I could say the same about the bottom. What with PING and PONG the only constraints, it should have been much smoother. EDS ULAN ESTER SRTA NSW? Oh (bus)man, that's rough. Granted, it's a little tricky what with the biggish regions to fill. But if it's so tricky that you have to end up with so much glue, do something different. Perhaps take out the black square between PLUS ONE and ANATOLE, and put two new ones where the Ns are in those two entries. Use more cheater squares. Don't call it good when it's not.

Thankfully, a lot of excellent clues to help keep up my interest. As a bridge fanatic and a former mechanical engineer, I loved the misdirect of the [Bridge experts] clue.