New York Times, Wednesday, September 9, 2020

I'm excited to be making my solo NYT debut after a puzzle last year with my cousin Gabi Friedman.

This puzzle idea started as a Sunday puzzle where all the numbers 11, 22, 33, etc. appeared in the grid — I forget what the revealer was going to be — but I ended up with far more 99s than anything else, and so it turned into this. I think I had the idea for that puzzle after listening to the bows music, 99 Luftballons, over and over again each rehearsal for a play, Berlin, that I was doing lighting design for.

I initially imagined this as a Tuesday puzzle, but my clues are always harder than I think they are, so Wednesday is a good fit. I constructed this puzzle over two years ago, but it's been sitting in the queue for a while so that it could be published on a 9/9 with the appropriate difficulty.

I haven't been making many crosswords lately, as my team is writing the MIT Mystery Hunt this year, but hopefully, I'll get back on it once we've run our hunt in January.

What an interesting exercise, taking a large number, and seeing what crossworthy themers relate to it. I wasn't aware of WAYNE GRETZKY playing until he was 99 years old. Wow, that's amazing!

What? That was his uniform number?

I knew that. I was just poking fun at XWord Info's resident Canadian, Jim Horne ... who was once at a bar with The Great One himself! Apparently, he didn't look a day over 98.

A few months ago, a Muslim reader emailed me, strenuously objecting to the inclusion of ALLAH in crosswords. I knew that it was forbidden to display images of ALLAH, but I had no idea that having the name in print could be offensive. I wonder how NAMES OF ALLAH will go over today.

Hopefully, this themer doesn't offend — if any readers are experts in this area, please let me know, and I'll relay info to the editing team.

I remember the old 99 LOVEBALLOONS song fondly — LOVEBALLOONS sounded so lewd to my 14-year old boy imagination. It was a sad day when I found out it was simply LUFTBALLONS, the German word for "air balloons." It might also be a sad day for solvers who stumble at the LUFTBALLONS / KEFIR cross. I'd be in an uproar if I didn't drink and love KEFIR.

I had a fun time brainstorming; what other themers could relate to 99? There's AGENT 99 from "Get Smart," but if you used GET SMART in the grid, the clue would have to be [Show that had Agent 99], and that's not as direct a 99 reference as the others.

Jim Horne suggested BOTTLES OF BEER. Clever! Those Canadians and their Labatt's.

It's kind of a CRAZY IDEA to relate four disparate people/things to a single, large number, and I enjoyed it. I would have enjoyed it even more without some dabs of DEP, DFC (distinguished flying cross), LLCS, NEB (a bird's ... beak?), but those (mostly) get a pass on a Wednesday, especially when they enable entries like COUNT ME IN and FORT KNOX.

Not so much DEATHBED, given the pandemic. Yikes! It'd be great to avoid these types of entries for a while, yeah?