Adam Vincent author page

The idea for this puzzle started with BANANA SPLIT, which got me thinking about two-word phrases that combined foods and synonyms for "leave." When brainstorming themes, I normally jot down anything tangentially relevant, knowing that I can try to tighten the theme later.

My first couple finds included CHICKEN RUN and SUGAR RUSH, but it wasn't until coming up with TOFU SCRAMBLE that I realized I should focus specifically on different foods/dishes. I also considered various DIPs (ONION DIP, TACO DIP, etc.), but I felt like these were more arbitrary and depended on slang that might be less immediately evident to solvers.

A thing I love about creating crosswords is how they present an opportunity to reflect and refract my own experiences. TOFU SCRAMBLE was a dish introduced to me by a vegan friend, and CINNAMON ROLL was suggested by my partner when I was talking through potential themesets with her. And the clue about [What the fish said when it swam into a concrete wall] was appropriately inspired by a joke my dad used to make. (My nine-year-old self's answer to this joke, after hearing Dad further talk about visiting "Hoover shh" during a trip to Nevada, was an earnest "shh it.")

This puzzle experienced a quick turnaround — I submitted the final version on November 8, 2023.

The genesis of this puzzle came from an early 2019 brainstorming session on the word "state," during which I noticed how many synonyms there are for the verb "say." After playing around with different approaches, I honed in on finding two-word phrases that I could clue punnily (also using two words) as types of speeches. Among these phrases were STREET ADDRESS and PIZZA DELIVERY, both of which were included in an early version of this puzzle, clued as [Block quote?] and [Cheesy dish?] respectively.

Although this earlier version was accepted by the Chronicle of Higher Education (my first professional acceptance!), it didn't have a chance to run before their crossword was discontinued. When I later submitted it to the Times, the team suggested restricting the theme answers to more persuasive speech types and cluing them as examples of what those speeches might say.

The final piece to fall was coming up with 27-Across—an entry that felt at first like a stretch but now is actually my favorite of the bunch. Something about the image of a salesperson hawking a niche single-use culinary item just feels right to me.

For those of you keeping track at home, this puzzle was accepted in its final form in mid-June 2020.

I'm so excited to make my debut in The New York Times! I started seriously constructing in August 2018 and racked up seventeen rejections before finally receiving the fabled "Crossword — yes!" email in March earlier this year.

56-Across was my seed entry for this puzzle. It probably won't surprise anyone to hear that my original clue referenced New York, nor that the editorial team changed it to Los Angeles. Brainstorming other themers turned out to be an exercise in realizing the limits of my perspective, which is a cool but also frustrating part of constructing. For example, a paper I grew up assuming was widely read turned out to be just a county newspaper (meaning ON THE RECORD wouldn't fly), and I learned that LOST IN THE POST, the title of a song I've listened to since middle school, isn't actually a British idiom. In the end, I could only make three entries work, which I was worried would be too sparse for a theme, but thankfully it wasn't a dealbreaker.

I'm grateful to the editorial team for helping polish this puzzle (and also all their thoughtful feedback on my 17 earlier submissions), but I'm glad a couple clues I wrote made the cut. Most notably, as someone who played a lot of Monopoly growing up, I couldn't pass up the intersecting references at 68-Across and 49-Down. I hope you enjoyed the puzzle!