New York Times, Tuesday, August 25, 2015

This puzzle has been waiting to be "born" for quite a while. In fact, this was actually the very first puzzle that I had approved for NYT publication, although not the first to be published. The crossword constructing requires real PATIENCE!

I remember with this puzzle, being my first, how exciting it was to not only get an encouraging response back from Will's assistant, but then as a follow-on e-mail to actually see that I was communicating directly with the WILL SHORTZ!

At the time I was doing this puzzle, I had a lot of trouble coming up with six 4-letter "BALL" words that would work in a 4-letter, free-standing cluster in the grid. I remember an earlier version I had submitted that included FOUL as one of the 6 "balls," but this was rejected because it wasn't, like all the others of course, a type of ball per se. Eventually, after many hours of "treasure-hunting" for fills (actually a pretty fun process for constructors!) with my skimpy database at the time, I was eventually able to get 6 "ball" words to work out!

With an earlier version, I had the main themer clued as: "Note from a vacationing friend," which I liked because the temptation for a solver might have been to jump-the-gun with: WISH YOU WERE HERE. For those who would have been using a pen that might have been considered a cruel trap!

I hope the final version was user-friendly and fun!

Shout out to my Seattle friend, Jeb! (John E. Bennett = JEB) Jeb and his wife had Jill and me over for brunch a while ago. Super fun to talk shop with nice people.

Jeb uses six big circles (it looks much better in the print version) to form "balls." There's a SOUR ball, a HAIR ball, FOOT ball, BASE ball, MEAT ball, and a POOL ball. This sort of layout is very tricky, as each one of the balls causes so many constraints. When you throw in a revealer — JUST HAVING A BALL — it becomes that much more difficult.

This kind of puzzle is even trickier, since none of the "theme answers" are very long. This means that some of the fill has to be long instead. I love FOOLS ERRAND, very colorful, and OBSESSIVE / NEWSPAPER aren't bad. PARONOMASIA … it took me every single crossing to fill in, so frustrating in that sense, but I decided I really like the word and will find ways of using it.

Filling around everything mentioned above is so hard to do cleanly. Each one of the six ball areas has minor dings. The top left is actually quite nice, with just OFT a blip. Continung to the next region, CHROMO feels a bit outdated. Then OH FOO … on one hand it sounds so made up. On the other hand, I'm going to find ways of using it too, because it sounds so funny.

The other three balls show us the British RASE, the outdated SSTS, and the kind of gross EGESTS. All in all though, for the high level of difficulty, it's not bad.

I'm not sure I liked JUST in front of HAVING A BALL — felt like something tagged on to make the central answer 15 letters, which is SO much easier than working with a central 11. Ah well.

So, some compromises due to such high theme density and constraints, and some head-scratching entries which forced me to do some thinking. I like it when a puzzle challenges me to think.