New York Times, Wednesday, July 5, 2023

I've seen dozens of plays on (nationality) + (food) over the years, so it's a delight to experience a fresh angle. One of my first efforts riffed on [Pain] = FRENCH BREAD — "pain" is the French word for "bread" — but every editor said it felt way too familiar. Given that was ten years ago, it's even harder to come up with something that feels interesting within this category.

There's something beautiful about other alphabets. Featuring them in crossword clues is not only neat from a diversity standpoint, but each one hints at what the entry might start with. I'm terrible with languages, but I could still recognize RUSSIAN and GREEK letters. Although ARABIC and CHINESE took longer to place (my ancestors are weeping), they still served as perfect footholds to figure out the themers.

There's not a lot of traditional wordplay in the theme. On the one hand, I wanted a clever clue written in the native alphabet, like [Game of kings?] presented as [国王的游戏] — how kooky would that be? Yes, that would mean that few solvers would get the wordplay, but how many solvers figured out that 跳棋 meant CHECKERS?

(insert loud ancestral wailing)

Working with five long themers is no joke — there's so much strain everywhere. The 14s are particularly challenging since they stubbornly have to go into rows 5 and 11, jamming things up. Kicking off a puzzle with AGLET isn't ideal, and crossing it with THISBE might make some SLOE solvers complain that this be inelegant. I'm curious if some cheater squares could have helped, perhaps at the T of THISBE and/or the A of AGLET.

It's tough to offer something new in a long-established category, and I enjoyed this angle.