Take Two

David Liben-Nowell is a professor of computer science at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn. Victor Barocas is a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Minnesota. They met a few years ago at a crossword tournament at the St. Paul Public Library and have collaborated remotely ever since.

For this puzzle, they divided each part of the effort (theme, gridwork and cluing) evenly. They describe their process as "write, email, tweak, repeat."

VICTOR: I thought that I'd give a little history on the puzzle since especially new constructors might be interested in the timeline. The first communication I can find between David and me on this was from June 22, 2017, and it involved the idea of putting a word (such as BASE) in the puzzle twice, with a clue elsewhere like "Player positioned to the left of X-Across," with the answer SHORTSTOP, since the shortstop plays to the left of second base." Then there was some back and forth about possible "second ___" combinations. It took us over a year to get to something we liked, and it went to Will in late August 2018.

In December, we got a tentative acceptance from Will but with a request to remove the cross-reference clues and just clue the second word as (SECOND) ___. So, the second BASE became "It's halfway around the diamond." Of course, that meant writing a new puzzle, but after we'd come as far as we had, rewriting the puzzle was small potatoes. We got a new version done in about two weeks and shipped it off. Will sent back a few quibbles, and then we put together the final version in early January 2019.

It's still not flawless (I wrote in one e-mail that "no one is going to have a party about BEIGES"), but it came out reasonably well. All told, almost 16 months of constructing, three to four months in review, and five months in the queue make right around two years from conception to publication. I hope that people enjoyed solving the puzzle as much as we enjoyed making it.

DAVID: I feel like the experience of filling a puzzle is all about tradeoffs — some version of "is using entry X worth the cost of having to use entry Y?" asked over and over. One of the things that I appreciate about collaboration with Victor (in addition to his persistent generosity and good humor) is that, first, we both try to maintain high standards in the fill, and that, second, the hypothetical entries that I hate are quite different from the ones that he hates.

I know of myself that I tend to overweight the benefit of a long entry that I find lively and fun, even if it means several of the kind of short entries that Victor calls "crud" (the less good three-letter acronyms, partial phrases, ...). Meanwhile, Victor happens to be a serious Latinist who knows a great deal more about pop culture than I do (not a high bar!), so he's happy to use proper names and Latin words that are both like foreign languages to me.

Neither of us wants to end up with something that we hate, so a lot of our back and forth is about each of us trying to excise some personally hated entry from a corner. The grid did not (and never does) end up being perfect, but at least this version includes none of RERISEN, IRING ("Do you want me to knock, or should ___ the bell?"; IRE was also in that version of the puzzle), and MANOLO, all of which were seriously considered at some stage in this construction process. (And all of which might still be worth it sometimes, but not this time.) I'll echo Victor's wishes: this puzzle was great fun to put together over its long journey, and I hope that it was a fun puzzle to solve!

A decent idea that went on too long. HAND, and then (second)HAND, that's fun. PLACE, and (second)PLACE, still good.

STRING, (second)STRING. Okay.

PERSON, (second)PERSON.

. . .

Just thinking about having to list out the other five makes me tired. Check out our list of puzzles with repeated words to see them all.

Why not branch out, avoiding being so repetitive (ha)? TIME and (another)TIME. LOCATION and (echo)LOCATION. There's so much potential for fun. You might have to give a hint to the implied word, maybe even put that implied word into the grid somewhere, but it would be worth it.

Thankfully, David and Victor worked in a lot of extras, helping keep my attention. SLIDE GUITAR sparkled. HEDGEHOG, SKI PANTS, WINNIPEG for Canuck solvers, the OUTBACK for Aussies, even some TORSION for us mechanical engineers.

With an average quantity of crossword glue, it made for a good overall grid.

This would have been much better as a weekday puzzle, scaled down. Alternatively, more creative, expansive thinking, would have improved the Sunday experience dramatically.

I continue to hope that Will takes my suggestions in publishing more interesting Sunday puzzles. Things ain't what they used to be.

Here's another suggestion: issue "Sunday theme query licenses" to 25 constructors. I get that it can be overwhelming to have to sift through theme queries, but:

1. A limited number would be more of a trickle than a flood.
2. Mike Shenk at the WSJ does it (with the huge help of Mark Danna)
3. Not being able to theme query is a tremendous hurdle that some of the best constructors aren't willing to overcome.