Alex Eaton-Salners author page

I began this puzzle by locking in UPON, LONG, THERE, THEY, and EVER and the black squares required to support them. Then I selected across words one at a time, slowly building my characters, universe, and plot while adding more black squares and keeping the down entries as clean as possible. The crossword staple OBOE was the first story word I chose, and everything flowed from there.

As the grid became more and more constrained by the previous words, the story became increasingly difficult to write. The most challenging slot was the one eventually occupied by AIRLEAK.

During the editing process, I changed a single square. Can you guess which one? The editors requested that I replace EDDINGS with EDGINGS, which changed YODA to YOGA. Consequently, I turned the YODA t-shirt into a YOGA t-shirt, and the endearing YODA-speak mirroring of the original story became a groan-worthy pun on LYING.

Post-acceptance, the editors made a small change to the story. In my version, it wasn't Ava who IDLED, but rather some nearby cars. Of course, Ava was still gathering her courage, which I guess is pretty close to idling after all.

This is the last pre-pandemic daily puzzle I had left in the NYT queue. It's been a crazy couple of years since it was accepted. Lots of changes in the crossworld and in society at large.

My next several crosswords in the Times will probably be variety puzzles. Similarly, as Will Shortz mentioned in his introduction to my most recent Sunday grid, my first published puzzle book is a collection of diagramless crosswords. It comes out next month from Puzzlewright Press and includes an extensive how-to-solve guide for diagramless newbies. You can pre-order a copy here.

Diagramless puzzles are clued on the easier side, so even if you're only a mid-week solver, I'd encourage you to try the next one the Times runs (it might even be by me!). Or, if you'd prefer to check out the archives, look at February 6, 2022, June 27, 2021, or October 18, 2020.

I left several "seconds" on the cutting room floor while creating today's puzzle, including HELIUM, EXODUS, TAURUS, and FEBRUARY. Needless to say, I had a hard time finding a word that starts with UARY!

As sometimes happens, the starting point for this puzzle didn't end up in the final grid. While brainstorming on another puzzle idea involving the phrase UP OR OUT, I came up with the gimmick you see here. UP OR OUT describes career advancement in hierarchical partnership and tenure organizations, where workers either need to climb the ladder or leave. During the editorial process, UP OR OUT was replaced with IN OR OUT, erasing the link to the original inspiration. So, I guess that means the result was "OUT" rather than "UP" for UP OR OUT. ;-)

In some ways, this puzzle marks the end of an era for me. It was my last snail mail submission accepted by the editors (though not the last to be published as I still have a couple of earlier acceptances in the queue). Although the online portal is easier to use, I miss the ritual of printing, collating, and sending puzzles in by hand. And, unfortunately for me, I purchased a large supply of envelopes, stamps, labels, and paper clips just before the changeover.

This grid is a blast from the past for me. I constructed it about two-and-a-half years ago (minus the upper-right corner that the editing team rejiggered after acceptance). When I see one of my puzzles after so long, it's like I'm seeing it for the first time — a very strange sensation.

My initial idea was to use anti-kangaroo words with single-letter differences to spell out a message. I gathered all the examples I could find and listed out their letters. Other than a single E, everything was consonants. I decided that SECRET would be a fitting (and doable) revealer if I could find another example that used E. Since the second E word needed to be symmetrically opposite (T)HERE, I manually scoured through lists of five-letter words until I found the H(E)AVE combination.

Once the theme set was in place, the grid-making and cluing went pretty smoothly. Although the order of the themers is fixed (which increases construction difficulty), their relatively short length (except for (R)EVOLUTIONARY) provides an alternative type of flexibility. In particular, it allows placing (C)OVERT and F(E)ASTS in the middle of their rows (a non-standard place for themers).

It's too bad that this puzzle ran so soon after my March 25th grid, which also involved anti-kangaroo words. Today's puzzle was in the queue for 23 months and the one from March was in the queue for only 8 months, so it seems like they could have been spaced out a bit differently.

This puzzle originally employed a much trickier gimmick. Rather than putting both halves of each pseudo-antonym pair in the grid, it clued one pseudo-antonym from each pair (identified with an asterisked clue) while putting its complement into the grid. One advantage of that presentation was that it accommodated twice as many pairings. The editors liked the basic idea of pseudo-antonyms but suggested putting both halves in the puzzle instead.

Embracing that restriction helped me tighten the theme. I pivoted to only including pseudo-antonyms with a positional aspect. And I was able to put everything in the correct place: OVER & HIGH on top, LEFT & RIGHT correctly ordered in the middle, and LOW & UNDER on the bottom. It's a subtle touch.

When I saw the pre-publication proof two weeks ago, I was surprised by a couple of things. First, that the puzzle would run on a Monday. During construction, the editing team requested clues at a Wednesday-ish level. Second, and more surprising, was the change to the last three theme clues. They were originally straight clues (per the editing team's recommendation). I would think converting them to cross-references ups the difficulty, which is counterintuitive for a Wednesday-ish puzzle running on a Monday.

Finally, based on last week's announcement, I believe this will be the last NYT crossword offered as a .puz file. Hopefully, this is an enjoyable final solve in that format!

Kangaroo words are words that contain a shorter synonym hidden inside. For example, the word STEALTHY contains S-L-Y. And if the shorter "joey" word is an antonym rather than a synonym (like today's theme entries), the container word is called an anti-kangaroo word. Interestingly, there are far fewer solid anti-kangaroo words than kangaroo words.

I was happy to see the clues [Color on the flag of every permanent U.N. Security Council member — RED] and [Distance between "some" and "where" in "Somewhere over the rainbow" — OCTAVE] made the cut. I enjoy writing evocative clues for common words. In particular, the latter paints a strong mental image of stretching my right pinky to hit the second C while playing the piano. On the other hand, I was saddened that the editors removed several women from my clues while adding men to clues that previously did not contain a reference to a person. I strive to be inclusive in my clue writing, especially when the grid entries aren't very diverse.

Finally, March 6th was the 500th anniversary of Ferdinand Magellan landing in Guam (my birthplace). To commemorate this anniversary and celebrate Mes CHamoru (Chamorro Heritage Month), Jim Peredo (whose family is Guamanian) and I are publishing four Guam-themed crosswords in the Pacific Daily News. You can check out the first three here: "Island Time" by Alex Eaton-Salners and Jim Peredo, "Travel Advisory" by Jim Peredo and Alex Eaton-Salners, and "Seal of Approval" by Jim Peredo and Alex Eaton-Salners. The fourth will drop this Sunday.

Looking at the puzzle through new eyes (it's been more than two years since I made it), I especially like the ELF-ELF from ELVES example as neither TWELVE nor STEPS appears in the grid. It feels more elegant than the others since EFFECT, TABLE, and NAMES are unchanged. That said, DIE-DIE from DICE is especially nice (!) as adding an internal consonant is an unusual plural construction. I also like that each of the plurals is formed differently (consonant change plus an extra vowel and consonant, consonant addition, single vowel change, and double vowel change).

I enjoy seeing how the editorial team massages the cluing. Some clues make it through unchanged, some are tweaked, and others are completely redone using a different sense of the word.

A few clues I miss:

• GORE: ["The Thing" thing] became [Feature of a creature feature, perhaps]

• DRAWER: [Chest chamber] became [Part of a cabinet]

• MOM: [Ewe to me, if I were a sheep] became [May day celebrant]

• IS IT ART?: [A question of framing?] became [Question one might ask when looking at a banana taped to the wall]

On the other hand, I really dig the playfulness of the revised version of IS IT ART?.

Notably, the theme clues also received a more straightforward treatment from the editors:

• COME[DIC E]FFECT was [Routine justification?]

• TW[ELVE S]TEPS was [Way to keep dry?]

• COF[FEE T]ABLE was [Remote location?]

Perhaps that's to ratchet down the difficulty?

It's surprisingly difficult to assemble a usable set of well-known government agencies that don't repeat Agency, Commission, Department, Federal, National, Security, Service, or Trade. We discovered this over ice cream in fall 2018, which now feels like a lifetime ago. Since this puzzle was accepted, the ice cream store where we did our brainstorming closed, the president was impeached, and a pandemic has gripped the planet.

A queue time of more than two years seems long (especially for a debut!). Perhaps Will has an overabundance of Wednesdays and/or hidden-word themes. As of August 2019, Wednesday was Will's third-longest queue with 41 puzzles awaiting publication.

Our must-haves were NSA and AIRCRAFT CARRIER. Ed retired from a career as a U. S. Navy Cryptologic Officer in ceremonies aboard the frigate Constellation in Baltimore's Inner Harbor while stationed at the NSA. Prior to that, among other posts, he served aboard the aircraft carrier Constellation during the Vietnam War.

Our starting point was trying to incorporate NSA into a crossword theme. The idea of hiding government agencies in theme entries actually preceded the revealer GOVERNMENT BONDS. But once we found that, we were off to the races!

ALEX: I'm jealous of Ed's 100% acceptance rate at the NYT (he's one-for-one). It took me 16 rejections before I got my first acceptance!

ED: I'd like to claim some credit for Alex's love of puzzles. We played many word games on the way to school, and I was his math and English teacher for two years.

In an ideal world, all of the plus signs would be perfectly symmetric like those in the middle and upper-right. Unfortunately, ZERO, FOUR, FIVE, and NINE have an even number of letters, which means they can't be symmetrically distributed when crossing. Likewise, no usable odd-length numbers share a middle letter. Therefore, some slightly funky plus signs are the order of the day.

In fact, regardless of their shape, there aren't many equations that generate usable plus signs. There are two constraints at work:

First, the sum must be hidden in two theme answers that are unrelated to the number (ruling out things like THE SIXTH SENSE as a base phrase for THREE + THREE = SIX).

Second, because the shape of the crossed addends must (roughly) resemble a plus sign, they need to share an internal letter (i.e., zERo, oNe, tWo, tHREe, fOUr, fIVe, sIx, sEVEn, eIGHt, nINe, and tEn). We stop at TEN, because larger addends will create a sum that fails the first constraint. As you can see, a number like TWO can only be paired with another TWO since no other numbers have an internal W.

And from those valid equations, our choices are even more limited if we don't repeat sums. That means, for example, choosing only one of FIVE + FIVE = TEN, SEVEN + THREE = TEN, and NINE + ONE = TEN. Likewise, sticking to one ZERO addend as a final twist for the lower-right reduces the possible combinations even further.

Although today's gimmick is similar to my Sunday from last August entitled Bird Play, the idea here predates that puzzle by a couple years. It was originally conceived in 2016, though in a slightly different form.

Themer choices were pretty limiting. BANANA SPLIT had just a couple of alternatives: BANK OF GHANA and BANK OF GUYANA. CHOPPED LIVER was my choice for "chopped" in the original version of the puzzle, though it didn't have any good options at the lengths I needed in this re-imagining. I was really happy to find MASHED POTATO in FOOT PATROLS. It would have been easier to settle for a shorter anagram string, but I think uncovering a 6+ letter sequence makes for a more enjoyable solving experience.

Of course, when picking viable theme entries, I was also constrained by crossword symmetry. I'm super happy that I achieved ordering consistency between the upper and lower sets of themers. Doing so required cross-pairing the lengths. So, for example, the 12-letter BANK OF GUYANA pairs with MASHED POTATO while the 11-letter FOOT PATROLS pairs with BANANA SPLIT.

Favorite clues cut in the editorial process: [It might picture a pitcher] (BASEBALL CARD), [Possible side effect of drugs?] (R-RATING), [Do one thing after another?] (MIMIC), [Junk collector?] (PIRATE), and [Cat nap trap?] (LAP).

For the record, my favorite theme answers to eat, in order, are BANANA SPLIT, MASHED POTATO, CHOPPED SALAD, and STUFFED OLIVE.

I sometimes wonder if crossword editors deliberately foreshadow difficult or unusual words, definitions, or trivia. For example, before a hard word appears in an early-week puzzle or as part of a difficult crossing, do editors try to use that word in the preceding weeks to semantically prime solvers to succeed?

If so, could that also apply to grid art?

Earlier this month, ONION DOMES made its NYT debut with the verbose clue [*Colorful architectural features of Moscow's St. Basil Cathedral]. It seems an odd choice to foreshadow the grid art, theme, and marquee entry of a puzzle running a couple of weeks later unless the intention was to prime solvers for success. Though if the foreshadowing was deliberate, I wonder why the editors used the less-common "Basil" instead of "Basil's" in the clue. The other two times the cathedral has been referenced in the Shortz era (in 2013 and 2009), the more common "Basil's" was preferred. Since today's puzzle also uses "Basil's," were the editors trying to amp up the difficulty by tempting solvers to try the "Basil" variant, which doesn't fit since it's one letter too short?

Today's puzzle has been on file since January of 2018, so Will & crew had plenty of time to curate their publication schedule to achieve such a foreshadowing. Or perhaps it was the other way around — the editors were subconsciously influenced to publish today's puzzle after seeing ONION DOMES in the earlier grid. Perhaps we'll never know.

My jumping-off point was BACK TO THE FUTURE. It's my favorite movie, and I wanted to feature it in an NYT puzzle. It's been used three times before, once riffing on PAST/PRESENT/FUTURE and twice in puzzles where it's entered backward. But no puzzle had ever included it in a RIGHT/LEFT/FRONT/BACK sequence using phrases of the form direction/two-word preposition/the/final word, where each preposition is different. Aha! That's my hook!

To obey regular crossword symmetry (i.e., 180-degree rotational symmetry), the first and last theme entries must be the same length. So step one was finding a phrase of the form RIGHT XX THE XXXXX.

XWord Info has a great tool for finding such patterns. Entering the regular expression ^right..the.....$ on the Finder page — or just a normal search for right??the????? — returns three possibilities: RIGHT ON THE MONEY, RIGHT TO THE POINT, and RIGHT IN THE LURCH. The third one, however, is not a standard English phrase. It's crossed out in the search results because it's a nonsense thematic phrase from another puzzle (a play on LEFT IN THE LURCH). Of the two remaining expressions, RIGHT ON THE MONEY is the liveliest.

The LEFT and FRONT phrases also had to balance, and I found the best pairing at length 14 (the aforementioned LEFT IN THE LURCH plus FRONT OF THE LINE). From there, it was smooth sailing (with an emphasis on smooth since early-week puzzles need fill that's familiar to a wide range of solvers).

This puzzle has a few more open squares (72) than a typical 78-word grid, primarily due to the spacing of the four GRAY AREAS. Each of them abuts only a single diagonally adjacent black block. I felt that the gray coloring would stand out better if it were surrounded by as much white space as possible.

Since the theme isn't contained in the puzzle's longest answers, there's a lot more length 7+ bonus material than a typical Tuesday. I'm quite happy with all of it. There are a few clunkers in the 6 and under range, but I think they're reasonable trade-offs for all the fun stuff they enabled.

I hope solvers appreciate the progression of square INCH, square FOOT, square YARD, and square MILE. It's a pretty tight set.

Wow, I just realized that I was spelling GRAY as GREY in these notes [hastily goes back to fix the first paragraph]. Even though GRAY is the preferred American spelling, to me, GREY (the preferred British spelling) just looks better (and is my natural inclination). I blame reading too many books by English authors in my formative years. I recall having armour and colour corrected to armor and color in elementary school.

Finally, although some things in this world are GRAY (or GREY), others are not — like the inherent dignity and value of human life. Black lives matter.

Favorite clues rewritten by the editors (answers at the end):

• Release with track changes?
• Like a slide tackler's shorts, perhaps
• Called a strike (though the replacement [Worked from home, say] is quite timely)
• Prime mover?
• Fusion spot, say
• Use half a booth
• They periodically swarm

I'm happy to debut eight words/phrases today, including two that are five letters long (debuting short words/phrases is more unusual than long ones). They are CAR AD, DISCO ERA, MADE A CHOICE, MY FAULT, PLUOT, PUT ON HOLD, ROAD MARKER, and SLEEP LAB. Even though the three long ones are thematic, that's still more newness than I can typically cram into a themed 15x15 grid. Eight debuts is quite high for such puzzles. As of today, that's good enough to tie for second place in 2020.

If you're a logophile looking for a good quarantine read, I recommend Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper. It paints a vivid picture of the people responsible for crafting our most important reference book (sorry encyclopedia fans!). You'll get humorous anecdotes, interesting trivia, and probably more than eight new words!

One final note — I'm surprised there are non-thematic periods and hyphens in today's cluing. I avoided them in the clues I submitted; they seem inelegant. Perhaps the editors intended them to disguise the theme?

Answers: REMIX, STAINED, UMPIRED, AMAZON, CAR AD, EAT ALONE, and CICADAS.

ROMAN GOD makes its NYT crossword debut today. Interestingly, it almost debuted back in 2018 in this puzzle. There, my original submission had the dual revealer of ROMAN GOD and PLANET. Continuing to think about that connection probably contributed to arriving at today's theme (my jumping-off point was the Mercury/Mars pairing).

Having a central 11-letter theme entry (INNER PLANET) forces either vertical triple stacks of 7+-letter words in two corners or a bunch of 3-letter words (if those longer entries are broken up). I chose the former. Another decision point was how to orient the two Utah blocks breaking up the sides. I chose the configuration needing words matching ????G??T and I??S???? rather than ??B????I and T????A??. ??B????I is very limiting, which means fewer options for smooth and interesting fill.

Of course, combining those decisions with the 8-letter themers in rows 3 and 13 creates large swaths of open space in the NE and SW corners. With only a couple of 3-letter words interspersed between the 6s, 7s, and 8s, solvers may have a hard time getting a foothold there.

That layout, plus the low word count (72) and perhaps some hard vocabulary, is likely what bumped this puzzle to Thursday instead of Wednesday, where it was initially slotted. Hopefully, solvers aren't disappointed that the trickiness factor is less than a typical Thursday offering!

I'm excited to complete my cycle +2 (publishing at least one regular crossword on each day of the week plus two variety puzzle types). Next up is probably a double cycle +2, but it might be a cycle +3. We'll see. ;-)

My original submission used PANDA reparsed as a revealer for two-word phrases starting with P and A (PARTY ANIMAL, PENALTY AREA, and PUTTERS AROUND). Some of the other phrases left on the cutting room floor included PENNY ARCADE, POLICE ACADEMY, and PUBLIC AFFAIRS.

While Will & crew liked the gird art, they didn't like the theme and suggested a redo keeping just the PANDA revealer. After seeing the result, however, Will decided that that guidance went too far and requested a new grid that included some thematic material related to PANDAs.

My next grid was almost identical to the final one, featuring BLACK AND WHITE and WASHINGTON ZOO. The only difference was at the top of the grid, where I had HARISSA at 1-Across. Will didn't like HARISSA in that slot and suggested some alternate fill headed by VERISMO. That left the VERISMO/MUR crossing, which I find less elegant than HARISSA/SUR. But, I trust Will to know his audience!

Finally, I really, really hope this puzzle gets published with circles on the P and A of PANDA. They make perfect eyes to complete the grid art. The preview version I saw didn't have them, but hopefully that will change by the time it runs!

This puzzle had a long and winding path from submission to final acceptance.

My original theme set was ROBB STARK, LYFT DRIVER, STEEL CAGE, KNICK-KNACK, and SWIPE LEFT.

Theme entries proposed along the way included LUTE STRINGS, SAC FUNGUS, SEES STARS, MAN OF STEEL, and NEW YORK KNICK. In the end, KEYSTONE KOP was the keystone that tied the rest of the puzzle together. Since the options for LYFT in a terminal position (e.g., CALL A LYFT) weren't idiomatic enough to pass muster, I proposed the dual reveal (SWIPE LEFT/SWIPE RIGHT).

Unfortunately, even with a workable theme set, there was still trouble ahead. Between KNICK-KNACKS, and KEYSTONE KOP, I had to work six K's into the center of the grid. That proved to be unexpectedly difficult. I tried every conceivable configuration in a 15x grid, including adjusting the vertical spacing of the themers, swapping them left-to-right, and adjusting their horizontal positions.

The best option still required filling the slots WG--, IH--, and PT--. The first of those three proved to be fatal. Although WGBH is familiar to me as the producer of "Nova," "Frontline," and "Masterpiece" on PBS, to the editorial team it was a puzzle killer (even with an additional hint to solvers that it's an anagram of the 41^st president's initials).

Fortunately, Will allowed me to take the grid to16x. The resulting fill in the bottom-middle is still a bit rough (III, ITIS, SGTS), but I think it's fair.

We submitted this puzzle in December 2018, and it was accepted in April 2019. It's our second collaboration in the NYT.

Our working title for this puzzle was "Instrument Panel." But we informally thought of it as a story about a raunchy rendezvous involving a love triangle, champagne, stilettos, and a sex tape.

Since we knew that angle wouldn't fly in a mainstream venue, in our submitted manuscript we clued the theme entries as "Heel instruments?," "Rom-com plot instruments?," "Toasting instruments?," "Interviewers' instruments?," and "Procreation instruments?" Because those theme clues hint at the dual nature of the instruments in each themer, we thought an additional revealer was unnecessary.

We were a little disappointed to see that the theme clues were edited into more straightforward definitions and paired with a revision of the southeast corner to add the revealer MUSIC. That grid revision, unfortunately, resulted in some infelicitous words being added to the puzzle.

On the other hand, perhaps that change enhances the aha moment by delaying the solver's realization of the connection shared between the theme entries.

In choosing our group of themers, we prioritized examples where the instrument word was used in a completely different sense. For example, a COMPUTER KEYBOARD is very similar in form and function to a piano keyboard, so that was a no-go. We also avoided themers like SEA BASS where the two homographs have different pronunciations.

Conquering complex constraints compels careful crossword construction.

Here, the hardest thing to get right was the shape of the "7" created by the seven C's. Only a few well-known seas have a "C" in them. And, the location of the C's within those seas are fixed. Thus, it took many iterations to whip this puzzle into shape (hah!).

Of course, there's still always flexibility. I originally submitted a grid with CASPIAN and CHINA swapped and with BLACK one row lower. That version had some limiting fill constraints (e.g., _ _ LN in the upper-right from CORAL and CASPIAN), and I had to rework the puzzle to remove them.

That said, the current configuration is still pretty constrained. There are three downs (BEANIE, ROBOTIC, and RELEASE DATE) that intersect three themers and 10 more that intersect two themers. And in four of those 10, the two fixed letters are consecutive (which are typically harder).

I'm lucky that SEVEN SEAS and CARIBBEAN are the same length and that CARIBBEAN is a good candidate for the top-left point of the 7 glyph, which means SEVEN SEAS can be symmetrically placed as a revealer. If that hadn't worked out, I would have used a stacked SEVEN/SEAS revealer in the lower-right corner.

If you ever visit Horseshoe Falls, allow plenty of time to find parking. When we went, all the lots were full and it took quite some doing to find an open space. Unfortunately, we had a flight to catch that afternoon, so we could only run to the falls, take a quick peak, and then hustle back to the car. Next time, I'd like to meander over to the Canadian side, check out the "Cave of the Winds" viewing area behind Bridal Veil Falls, and ride the Maid of the Mist.

This tribute to "T" took tremendous toil. Thankfully, tallying the terms that T triggers/terminates transcends trifles. The textual tightness that "T" traces transfers terrifically too. Therefore, T's tailor-made to tie together this theme (tentatively titled "Tee Time").

Tossing the T's, (t)ROU(t)/(t)ROU transforms to twin trigrams. Traditionally taboo, today's thematic tenet terms this twosome tolerable. Torpedoing this tradition tends to trouble "team tetchy" (though this transcriber thinks that truculence tiresome).

Trigrams tend to triteness. Typically, tackling ten to twelve trigrams thoroughly taints the thrill. Truncating the thematic terms, today's trigramatic tetrad trounces that trend.

Tricky Thursday themes that thrill through tough-to-twig techniques take twice (to tenfold) the time to tack together. Though taxing, this task's terribly tempting to try (thirteen through today!). Translating twisty Thursday turns to text takes tenaciousness. Transporting thinkers to temporary titillation — that's the true test. The thornier the territory, the tastier to tackle.

This Thursday trade thrives through technology: tightening the theme, throwing together the template, tweaking the terms, tailoring the textual tips. Thunderous thanks to the trailblazing techies tendering terrific tools to transform this titanic task to tractability. Though these tools trim the tedium, turning them to trenchant Toledos takes tireless training.

Sometimes the stars align around publication dates. Even though it's been close to two years since this puzzle was accepted, the timing is spot on. I currently have STIEG Larsson's "Millennium" trilogy on loan from the library. I'll be starting on "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" as soon as I finish Robin Hobb's "The Golden Fool." I'm reading my way through her oeuvre, and I need a break since her next book, "Fool's Fate" isn't available through my local library (and it will take some time for an inter-library loan request to come through). I enjoy her "The Realm of the Elderlings" stories — they're in a similar vein as George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series and Brandon Sanderson's "Mistborn" series, both of which I highly recommend if you like epic fantasy.

That said, looking back on this puzzle now, the crossing of STIEG and EGON may be difficult for some solvers. Since both names are unusual, it could be difficult to infer the G if you aren't familiar with either one.

Likewise, another crossing that I'd rework if I were remaking the puzzle today is AREOLAR and EPOCHAL. Neither word is great on its own, and crossing two similarly awkward words makes each stand out all the more. That crossing, however, is much fairer to the solver since the base words are well known. The problem there lies more in elegance than potential Natick creation.

The inspiration for this puzzle was the Disneyland version of the Dapper Dans, a barbershop quartet who perform along Main Street, U.S.A. Along with the ragtime piano player at Refreshment Corner (shout-out to Patrick, who's the best of the bunch!), the Dapper Dans are my favorite atmospheric entertainment in the park.

The impetus for this puzzle was a bizarre desire to make something interesting out of the terrible crosswordese abbreviation AT NOS. My original submission used that phrase as the revealer, thereby giving a raison d'être for abbreviating the chemical elements. To enhance the theme, I created a sparse, super-symmetric grid-art layout evocative of the Rutherford-Bohr model of an atom.

Unusually, this theme relies on two-letter entries. They break the fundamental crossword convention that all words should be at least three letters long. For reference, only six other NYT grids in the Shortz era have contained two-letter words.

Unfortunately, since the original grid only had 25 black blocks, the fill was relatively weak. Generally speaking, the more white space you have, the harder it is to find clean fill. Furthermore, by using such a spartan grid configuration, I was at the mercy of the crossword gods as to which elements got featured. Luckily, despite these flaws, Will Shortz and crew were still interested in the idea. They offered that if I could create a cleaner grid featuring more familiar elements, they'd take a look.

The current arrangement uses 12 cheater squares. They make filling easier and provide flexibility to manipulate which elements get featured. By changing how many black squares there are and where they are deployed, the two-letter slots can correspond to different clue numbers. For example, if the cheater square in the upper-left corner were removed, the first element would be Beryllium (BE) instead of Lithium (LI).

Using these cheater squares, however, muddles the grid art and eliminates the supersymmetry. Ultimately, however, a clean, interesting solve rightfully takes priority. I hope this puzzle provides that.

My originally submitted grid used the revealer FRENCH OPENS and had ETE VACATION, AMI REQUEST, OUI VOTE, and EAU BALLOON as the theme entries. To tighten the theme (and make the puzzle more approachable for non-French speakers like myself), I limited it to three-letter French words that are common in crosswords. Pop quiz: Which one of these four French words (ETE, AMI, OUI, and EAU) has appeared the most frequently in NYT non-variety crosswords edited by Will Shortz? Hint: It's the one that I didn't know when I started constructing crosswords. Answer at the end of this note.

When I heard a couple of weeks ago that I'd have a Thursday NYT puzzle published today, I didn't expect it to be this one. I pitched this puzzle to tie in with the timing of the French Open, and so when Roland-Garros came and went earlier this year I figured it wouldn't see the light of day until 2020. Likewise, when this grid was accepted it was slated for a Wednesday. So I was quite surprised when it popped up on my constructor preview at XWord Info.

Perhaps the French word substitution gimmick played more difficult than excepted for Will's test solvers — thereby bumping the puzzle into Thursday territory. Or maybe running it so far from the French Open made the theme more difficult to grok. Either way, it means that (once again) I've restored balance to the universe by having as many published Thursday grids as I have non-Thursday weekday grids. ;-)

Answer to the pop quiz: As of yesterday, ETE has been used 282 times (vs. AMI at 241, EAU at 155, and OUI at 89). However, none of them can top the most-popular word of the Shortz era, which at 582 uses is ERA (ha!).

In the aggregate, I spent more time creating this puzzle than any other I have ever made — by a significant margin. Since I first started working on it in January of 2017, I estimate I spent well over 100 hours (and probably more than 200 hours) working and re-working this idea.

As originally submitted, the puzzle had SWISS ROLL at 1-Across and DESSERT CASES in the last row. It also had a much more aggressive grid pattern, with only three blocks in the lower right corner and only nine 3-letter words along the width of the outermost spiral (as opposed to 12 such words in the final version).

The major breakthroughs that finally enabled the fill to pass muster with Will were (1) scaling back the lower-right corner (turning that corner with 6 blocks is much easier than with only 3); (2) replacing DESSERT CASES with the shorter PATISSERIE (or PATISSERIES in some incarnations); and (3) moving the thematic content to places that were easier to work with than the top and bottom. I also spent a lot of time minutely adjusting the shape of the spiral in different ways. Even moving a single block by one space often greatly changed the fill possibilities. And due to the extremely high level of interlock, replacing even a few objectionable words typically required reworking the entire puzzle.

The caliber of fill cleanliness that the NYT requires for a Friday or Saturday puzzle is extremely high, and it was quite difficult to pull off this grid shape and mini-theme to that exacting standard. During the revision process, I would sometimes put the puzzle away in frustration for months at a time before crawling back to it again. I'm not sure why, but I really wanted to get this one over the finish line.

I'm a bit surprised to see this puzzle running on a Thursday, as it was initially clued and slated for Wednesday. I suppose the gimmick was harder for the test solvers than expected. That said, minor day-of-the-week publication queue changes are not unusual in my (admittedly limited) experience.

I enjoyed reviewing the editorial revisions to the theme answer cluing. Beyond minor adjustments like "less than a trade occupation" in place of the original "less than an occupation," there were a few more substantial modifications. For example, instead of "a jerk" cluing TWITCH, I had "a Nintendo console" cluing SWITCH. In general, the edits made the theme clues easier to decipher, which is consistent with the gimmick proving harder than anticipated for solvers.

Working with 55 theme squares spread over 11 short entries puts some strain on the grid. Every vertical word goes through at least one themer. Likewise, the puzzle doesn't contain any entries longer than nine letters and only has 15 words of length five or more, which makes for a choppy solve. If instead the 55 theme squares had been contained in entries of length 10, 10, 15, 10, 10, the grid could have been more balanced.

Another unusual feature is having across entries that are longer than any thematic material. Usually, that muddles a puzzle's theme. Here, however, with so many short themers, I had to include some longer, horizontal non-thematic material to keep the puzzle from exceeding the 78-word limit. For example, breaking GAS TANKS at the T would bring the word count up to 80. Fortunately, because the theme entries are apparent from the cluing, there's no danger of confusion.

I hope deciphering the 11 theme riddles is a fun change of pace and makes up for the puzzle's other shortcomings.