New York Times, Wednesday, July 31, 2019

This was only the third crossword puzzle I'd ever made, so the original draft of this puzzle was, you know, pretty rough. Instead of four rhyming-couplet clues, the original draft had six treasure hunt clues that spanned across the board diagonally and in all four compass directions. Simply put, it was way too complicated. So I'm glad (and extremely lucky) that Joel and Will took a chance and allowed me to salvage this puzzle!

Fun fact: when I originally sent off this puzzle to the New York Times, I printed it on old-timey parchment paper and included a handful of plastic pirate doubloons in the submission envelope. I'm not entirely sure if that ended up helping or hurting me. But, if there are any aspiring cruciverbalists out there looking for a quick way to get published, remember: sometimes bribery works!

Every day, I bring home three books from the library to read to my kids. I search for as many pirate ones as possible — even if the book is groan-worthy, at least I can practice my pirate accent. Arr!

More than ten budding constructors have approached me with ideas similar to this one, and why not? The idea of integrating a treasure map into a grid --and maybe even having the solver find real treasure? — is appealing. Dan's concept works — following a path from the skull, pacing east, south, west, to end at the lone X. X marks the spot!

I loved the inclusion of the skull (see grid below). There's huge potential in visuals like this, aspects emphatically declaring that the print edition of newspapers still has advantages most e-solving can't replicate. (I am curious to see what the NYT xw digital team does with this. I've been impressed by how much they've improved the e-solving process at their website.)

Interesting decision to include long fill in the across direction, COMMANDO adding spice to the pirate theme. They're not directly related — and maybe there are such things as INTRANET pirates? sure, why not! — but I did enjoy it.

Heavy price to pay, though. Four grid-spanning themers are difficult to work with. If you don't space them properly — look how close together START AT THE SKULL and EAST TWELVE PACES are — you're bound to have trouble. Even for a mid-week puzzle, where some crossword glue is passable for regular solvers, there's way too much of it. A more traditional layout, with the second and third themers moved one row toward the middle, would have been better.

I would have loved some way of digging for the treasure — over the years, contructors have suggested a rebus of GEMS, Schrödinger of X / BOOTY, and much more — but fun concept overall. The colorful piratic clues were great.