New York Times, Thursday, June 30, 2016

What a thrill to have today's New York Times crossword run under my byline, and to have my debut on a Thursday!

Will and Joel reacted to my submission with a "wow" on May 4, accepted my final grid on May 9, and apparently bumped the finished puzzle up in the queue. I'm grateful to them for their willingness to work with a novice constructor, their suggestion that I revise the grid with cleaner fill, and their expert edits to the clues. I hope solvers enjoy this puzzle and its unusual theme.

In developing the "TOP OFF" effect, I found only seven letters that could be "hidden" in a way that looked natural to me: D, I, J, L, O, U, V. I used these to make a list of about 20 words that might be good candidates, and settled on DUD, IDOL, OVOID, and VIVID after finding that each had a simple definition that could span the grid. (In retrospect, I realize that I overlooked some nice J words in making my list, and could have used the clue J0B8 B8J8 (or B8J8 by itself) with the answer MARTIAL ARTS SITE.)

In cognitive psychology, there's a concept called "functional fixedness" that may explain the difficulty in "seeing" the four words hidden in plain sight: we have a mental bias for associating a tool only with its most common function. We tend to see letters and numbers only as representations of sounds and amounts. Their shapes are arbitrary and used only for recognition, and not as possible hiding places for other information.

A bit about me: I live in the AU Park neighborhood of Washington, D.C., with my wife, son, and dog. For the last 11 years I've been privileged to serve as a Senior Counsel (in house attorney) for the American Red Cross.

Debut, and what a brilliant idea! The mysterious clues kept me in the dark for the longest time, even after I had uncovered TOP / OFF. And it continued even after I pieced together DEFECTIVE BULLET — how could "B0B" possibly describe that? What a fantastic a-ha moment, realizing that you have to lop off the top of "B0B," getting DUD as a result. Here are the others, with a helpful graphic from Jonathan:

• TB8L gives IDOL
• 8V8TB forms OVOID
• My favorite, VMB making VIVID. Cutting off the top of M results in an I V I — so cool!

I'm typically not a fan of "definitional" puzzles, where the grid answers sound like they're taken from Merriam Webster. But it worked so well today, since I really needed those definitions in order to finally get my moment of clarity. SUPERSTAR would have been a fine, in-the-language answer for IDOL (and EGG SHAPED for OVOID), but I kind of like how SHAPED LIKE AN EGG feels like it's prodding me to keep on thinking. I needed that nudge!

There's a bit of APER AMOR ATALE crossword glue in the grid, but it's pretty minor stuff, especially considering all four themers are very long. It's not easy to pull off a perfectly clean grid using four grid-spanners, but Jonathan did well. Check out the west and east sections, which are usually the hardest (since you have to work with the beginnings or ends of two long themers) — the east is the roughest spot with TARDE (tough foreign word), ATALE (partial), RETAG (sort of arbitrary RE- word), but the west is so nice. Not a dab of crossword glue in there.

I might have liked a little more bonus fill, but that's a minor complaint when the theme idea is this good. SILLY ME is awfully nice, anyway, and I do like me some Harry Potter referenced in SEEKERS.

All in all, a fantastic debut. So, so, so enjoyable; a very memorable theme.