New York Times, Monday, August 29, 2016

I constructed this puzzle over spring break. I've recently been trying to come up with themes involving grid art, since I always find it really elegant when I'm solving. The only problem with this approach is that Bruce Haight (aka Mr. Grid Art) has already come up so many of the great grid art designs! A dog? Nope, Bruce did that last February. A school of fish? Nope, he did that one in August 2014. Lightning bolts? Nope, those were part of his and Peter Collins's kite puzzle from March 2014. Anyway, I was so frustrated that I couldn't come up with a new grid art idea that I decided to make an "anti-grid art" puzzle! What could be more anti-grid art than a good old square grid?

Once I started thinking about square things, my mind jumped to Wyoming, which has always looked so boxy to me on the map! If I could somehow build a puzzle about Wyoming, having a standard 15x15 grid could be a cool bonus. Fast forward several hours. By some ginormous stroke of luck, I noticed that four of the most famous landmarks in Wyoming all have the same letter count! So I whipped up a fill and sat down to write the clues. Once the excitement wore off, though, I realized that my theme was kind of boring—who cares about four landmarks in Wyoming anyway?

That's when inspiration struck again. Since all the landmarks were the same length, why not arrange them in their geographically correct positions? A quick look at Google Maps showed me that I was even luckier than I'd thought: The four landmarks I'd picked were all in different parts of the state! So I scrapped my original grid and built the version you see today. I hope you enjoy!

I'm so bad with geography, I once mixed up Wisconsin and WYOMING. Maybe this West Coaster will finally keep them straight after today, a tribute to the "squarest of the 50 states." I doubt I would have correctly identified the state containing OLD FAITHFUL, JACKSON HOLE, DEVILS TOWER, or FORT LARAMIE — nice to learn a little today.

Neat to see the towering DEVILS TOWER run vertically. I couldn't quite remember where I knew that from, but a quick search turned up that it was in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." If only OLD FAITHFUL had been vertically oriented too, visually representing its eruption!

Brad Wilber recently turned down (very nicely, as always) one of my puzzles, saying it felt like too much of a list; no real zing to the theme. This one had a similar feel to me, the four WYOMING tourist sights something you might read up on in a US History textbook. (It was also kind of odd that YELLOWSTONE was not included, but then I realized that it's actually not fully contained to WYOMING.)

So I was glad to read David's note — that's actually quite neat that he was able to place the four landmarks roughly in correct geographical location. If only the puzzle had been more explicit about that somehow. I have a feeling a ton of people will miss that aspect.

David always puts out nice grids, and this one is no exception. He keeps his bonus fill somewhat short — which helps to make the themers stand out — and incorporated so many interesting words: TEJANO, GLUTEN, NEBULAE, SAMOSA, SPORTY, JENGA, and a bit of colorful stuff in MAN'S MAN, TIME OUT, IM OKAY. Really helped to spice things up. All of that great bonus material, without resorting to really any crossword glue = the mark of a seasoned pro. Excellent gridwork. I've heard some people complain about OVA, saying it's something they only see in crosswords, but it is the plural of "ovum." I'm perfectly fine with it.

WYOMING being the squarest of states makes it a great subject for a crossword! If only it had been a 14 x 16 grid, making it rectangular ... just like WYOMING. Ah well.