New York Times, Monday, July 31, 2017

I constructed this puzzle a few months ago after reading one of Will Shortz's Cruciverb announcements about his inventory. I saw that he was shortest on Sundays and Thursdays, which was no surprise because those are the hardest ones for me to come up with. But I also noticed he was short on Mondays, which interested me because I'd never given much thought to constructing early-week puzzles. So the next time I sat down to construct something, I decided to target Monday instead of Friday/Saturday.

One of the first things that came to mind for some reason was Seattle. In between long stretches of living in California, I lived in the Seattle area for four years, which is where I first started constructing crosswords (for a fifth-grade project—see photo!). So I thought it would be fitting to pay homage to my "crossword roots."

I knew pretty early on that I wanted the focus of the puzzle to be the Space Needle grid art. Luckily, SPACE NEEDLE was the perfect length to make a grid art design out of, though it took me a few tries to come up with a convincing enough Space Needle. Once I realized that PIKE PLACE MARKET was 15-letters long, I was off and rolling. Noticing that the reveal SEATTLE would fit right between the S and the last E of SPACE NEEDLE was a huge stroke of luck, and I quickly banged out the rest of the grid from there. In fact, I was all set to send a version of the puzzle with RuIN/YuLE in the upper left corner when I noticed I could change RuIN to RAIN. After all, what puzzle about Seattle is complete without mentioning its signature weather? I initially worried that I wouldn't be able to balance RAIN with another theme entry, but fortunately, PIER came to the rescue.

All in all, I had a lot of fun constructing this one, and I hope Seattleites appreciate the shoutout! And who knows, I just might be back with more early-week offerings :).

Shout out to the 2-0-6! (SEATTLE's area code.) PIKE PLACE MARKET is a fun place to hang out — there's a piroshki place I love, and don't get me started on the fresh mini-donuts — and indeed, we do have eleventy-billion COFFEE SHOPs here.

Nice bonus in the SPACE NEEDLE visual, and what an elegant touch to have SPACE NEEDLE start and end at the start and end of SEATTLE! The visual doesn't quite have the right dimensions (see right), but it would be difficult to make it any more accurate unless you added several more circles to better define the shape.

Speaking of those circled letters, it's so tough to work around fixed letters, especially when you jam them into a space that's as big as the south section. Great work down there, so smooth, along with the bonuses of RAT RACE and TITANTIC, with just a RIATA as a price to pay.

Well, there's MOLESTS. Yikes. I'd go far, far, far out of my way to avoid this word in a grid. Double yikes. I'd personally have sent the puzzle back for revision, accepting two or three dabs of crossword glue in its place if necessary.

Some ELKE, TAI, IST, but that's a lot less than I would have expected given all the SPACE NEEDLE letters fixed into place, as well as all the themers.

What fun bonuses in PERMIT ME and KEEP LEFT. The latter is more workmanlike, but I love the unMondayish clue, using wordplay around liberalism.

All in all, this Seattleite enjoyed the hometown love. It was a bit too much of a random listing — and PUGET SOUND wouldn't be in my top ten of things to include, and STARBUCKS felt like a big omission (the local joke is that you can throw a rock 50 feet in any direction and hit a Starbucks) — but such a nice touch of SPACE NEEDLE intersecting so perfectly with SEATTLE.