Alex Vratsanos author page

I got the idea for this puzzle as I walked through Jim Horne's Grid Art gallery, where it struck me that quite a few of the grids were based around letters. Not seeing Z among them, I realized it was a prime candidate for several reasons: its symmetric shape that did not preclude full interconnectedness, its tendency to catch my eye when solving, and the possibility of the unchecked squares in its "inner pockets" not really being unchecked if filled with Z's. It was not long after that when I realized that double stacks above and below the big Z would not only let the grid breathe better, but also provide room for four "snaZZy" theme answers.

Having decided that those ten total Z's would be the only Z's in the grid so as to keep the theme tight, I struggled to find two pairs of 15's that worked well enough together. Even 15's whose Z's were not consecutive always seemed to result in at least one restrictive pattern that would also usually restrict its other crossing answers, and then filling around these pairs felt much harder than with the typical 72-worder. I was really not sure about ORANGELOS, MNEMONIZE, TRIPLE IPA, and a few others, but luckily Will Shortz didn't seem to mind them; I hope you as the solver don't either.

I dedicate this puzzle to 1-Across, his daughter Gianna, and their memory, as I played as him extensively and sometimes exclusively in my old NBA videogame... and of course, a hearty thanks to Will, his staff, and my fellow puzzlers for their feedback, in particular Judy Cole, who was one of several players kind enough to test-solve it between games of a Scrabble tournament in December 2019. Most of all, thank you for taking the time to try my puzzle, and I look forward to giving you more puzzles to solve.

I conceived of this puzzle five years ago this month, not long after the publication of two Tuesdays that would later factor into a decision that may have made the difference between rejection and acceptance (more on that to come.)

At first, I tried making the themers as long as possible to fill out a 21x, but I quickly abandoned that, as it became clear that the single-word themers wouldn't make for an entertaining Sunday solve. Shortly after, I asked my friend Jacob McDermott, whom I'd first contacted several months earlier about a themeless (and is getting married on Saturday!) if he could breathe new life into this concept.

We both ended up making two lists of themers, each of which had between 74 and 82 total letters, which felt like "no puzzle's land." That was too few for a Sunday even with the revealer but too many for a daily without many compromises in the fill. Moreover, there were 22 different themers among the four lists, but only six of them appeared in all four, and this fell into development hell.

Trying 15x14 and 15x16 grids about a year later did not revive it... not directly, that is. It was while I was playing with one such grid that I hit upon splitting FOURTEEN and POINTS, making a symmetrical 15x grid possible. The two-part revealer stayed in its current place from the very start, as I immediately noticed that BROWNIE would work nicely crossing it, and coming up with TIPPING was indeed a tipping point for the puzzle, as it allowed not only PRESSURE but also GRADE and STAND to form theme crossings. I am also glad that Will kept my reference to Gladwell, as he was one of my sister Maria's favorite authors at the time.

Still, by spring 2016, it had become clear that packing in all this theme would indeed force many compromises in the fill. I had not yet found a complete fill by April 20, when Tom McCoy's puzzle with the same revealer ran. Grudgingly, I shelved this even though it was a very different take on the phrase, and I suspected that it might not be fair game for the NYT when I was able to bring it back out. But remembering the two Tuesdays from early 2014 (January 14 and February 18), which both had over a dozen themers that nicely justified going over 78 words, I split up 2-Down and the then 39-Down. That made all the difference in the world when it came to filling the NW and SE, in both avoiding those nasty 3's and 4's and opening up a lot more and livelier possibilities for the two remaining 8's — which Will said he liked when he accepted it last September 13.

Thanks as always to Will and his team for polishing this, both with the clues (I got a real kick out of theirs for 35-Across) and fill, specifically removing the Roman numeral I'd had at 65-Across. Seeing GREECE as the new 48-Down made me remember my Pappou (Greek for grandfather), who died at 93 in 2013, and my Yiayia (grandmother), who turned 91 on May 10. She solved crosswords almost every day for many years, but since this may be my last chance to do so, I dedicate this puzzle to her. And thanks as always to my fellow constructors, especially Jacob (congratulations again on getting married!), and to you, the solver. Hope you enjoy this!

I came up with this idea in late 2015, being inspired by two prior Tuesdays: May 1, 2007, and November 16, 2010. It struck me that they both had a "pinwheel" pattern of long answers that did not have anything to do with theme, just to help set up the actual themers, and that they fit the simple "word that comes before/after" theme type. JOINT then struck me as both a description of the 90-degree turn and something with a more definite list of potential themers, and so I set to work on it.

I considered JOINT RESOLUTION in the center, but I wasn't sure how familiar it would be, nor could I think of any meaningful reason for RESOLUTION other than that it would make the revealer 15 letters long. It hit me immediately after trying the revealer in its current form that it would allow for two more themers. As I went along filling and cluing it, I was afraid that not all the joints being hinge joints, like their arrangement seemed to indicate, would be cause for rejection. There is always some such kind of risk that you take whenever you submit a puzzle, though, so I kept going and was thrilled when Will accepted it last May 18.

Thank you, solvers, for taking the time to try this. A puzzle is never truly happy until it is solved by you :-)

P.S. I must give a big shout-out to Tim Croce, who is a very good friend of mine... and, as of February 16, a dad!

I don't remember exactly when I came up with this grid, but the seed for it may have been planted all the way back in summer 2011, when Todd Gross showed me the grid of his puzzle that went on to be published on February 23, 2013. At some point in the year or two after that, I came up with the MAJORITY RULES / HOME THEATER / TEXAS-SIZE combination, and went with SISTER SOULJAH after many attempts with ZIP-A-DEE-DOO-DAH failed. I then continued going clockwise through the grid, getting particularly lucky with PACHINKO, and am very thankful for the feedback I received from my fellow constructors on both the fill and clues.

Had I come up with this grid today, I probably would not have pursued it, because it can be cut in two by turning the A of MAJORITY RULES and the corresponding E into blocks (this also violates one of the Chronicle of Higher Education's style guidelines). But it is always a pleasure to see the effects of Will's editing acumen, and this puzzle is no exception, some of my favorite new clues being those for 10A, 47A, 8D, 11D, 13D, and 46D.

I hope you enjoy solving this as much as I enjoyed making this!

ALEX: Our original version of this puzzle had a very different theme arrangement: it was not NAME CALLING but CALLING TIME, and the revealer was not PAIRS OF CARDS but HOUSE OF CARDS. Moreover, the revealer was not positioned well, as it was the second of the six themers. Eventually, I realized that the revealer basically had to be moved to the end, and I was a little daunted by that because of it being 12 letters. Still, I set my mind to it, and Sam seemed to like it a lot when I showed it to him.

After filling and cluing this new version and running it by some friends, we sent it to Will in June 2013. He replied just one month later, saying he liked the theme but HOUSE OF CARDS did not really explain it. Additionally, he asked us to rework some of the fill, and we tried to go above and beyond his instructions to make the puzzle better before sending him our revisions on August 21 of that year. Indeed, he said it "turned out pretty nicely" when he replied on August 29.

Thank you, Sam, for being such a great friend. We can't thank you enough, Will, for everything you've done for this and all our puzzles … and we hope you enjoy our puzzle!

SAM: I would not be writing NYT-caliber puzzles if it wasn't for Alex. This is more than just a compliment to him, his kindness, and his constructing abilities … it's the honest truth. Here I was, a naive 16-year-old, eager to get involved in my newfound passion of crossword construction. I had prowled the Cruciverb-L mailing list for months at this point, wondering what it would take for me to finally step up and take puzzling to the next level. Sure enough, Alex, whose name I recognized from his delightful June debut, posted a thread asking for construction help on an ambitious puzzle he was designing. I hastily wrote him an email, addressing him as "Mr. Vratsanos," feeling inferior … and he responded almost immediately, welcoming me into the so-called "Crossworld," and praising a few of my ideas. I was given a shot like never before, and it meant the world to me.

Although that particular construction effort rapidly failed, the rest is history. Alex introduced me to my future mentor, Vic Fleming, and between the both of them, I learned to stand on two legs, which was an unfamiliar feeling to me at my age. This is my eighth puzzle in the NYT, and I currently publish a new puzzle every week on my blog, The Grid Kid. This whole puzzling nature has become a regular thing for me, but what you've solved today is different than any other puzzle I've ever made. This was more than just a puzzle; this was an opportunity.

I don't remember when and how I found out that there were ten three-letter body parts, but once it came to my attention, I knew that it could be a theme for a New York Times crossword.

Before starting to construct the puzzle, however, I noticed a Patrick Blindauer Wednesday from 2006 in which he hid all ten of them as diagonals, with a central revealer. Had that puzzle been more recent, I might have given up on the project, but then I realized that a different way to implement the concept would be to place the body parts symmetrically and circle them. I thus targeted this idea for a Monday, and received plenty of valuable input from George Barany and his team.

With only 30 squares absolutely locked in, I was able to keep the word count to 74 and include quite a few entries I liked, like SPOCK, ON KP, PEACE OUT, EZEKIEL, JA RULE, MOZART, MASHUP, ESPOSITO, BEIJING, and SPALKO. Only one letter in the fill ended up being changed, and that was the crossing of 5A and 8D, originally a P. Cluing to Monday difficulty proved harder for me, as I went through several iterations of them, but Will, by deciding to move this to Thursday by removing the circles, cut this Gordian Knot.

In terms of theme answers, I was very happy to have GUMP at 1-Across, as Forrest is my favorite fictional character, and Will's new clue for SACAJAWEA is just awesome. Among the many other new clues are those for 19A, 21A, 27A, 53A, 56A, 65A, 7D, 12D, 21D, 30D, 38D, and 56D. On the other hand, I am glad that Will kept my clues for 22A, 40A, 47A, 18D, 39D, and 42D. I lost my original clue for SEIZER, which played on it and "Caesar" sounding the same, but overall I hope that this "Three-Body Problem" is both stimulating and enjoyable to solvers.

Thank you, Will, for believing in me and mentoring my development as a constructor.

This is the result of collaboration between members of two parties long thought to be incapable of mutual agreement. Those parties are, of course, Red Sox Nation and Yankees Universe.

The meeting was by chance: we had puzzles published back-to-back (11/10/11 and 11/11/11), and we were thus able to see each other's email addresses. You must know that I (Tim) am very shy by nature, so the thought had never entered my mind to contact anyone to collaborate with. Despite that, we got in touch over nine months later... I (Alex) wrote to Tim on August 31, 2012, seeing as he was the constructor for the next day, the day of my mother's second wedding, at which I was best man.

In summer 2012, I (Alex) came up with the combination of TAPPAN ZEE BRIDGE and LIBATION BEARERS in rows 3 and 4 and CUTLETS and LIP BALM (the latter not yet having been used in the NYT back then) crossing them. At one point, Tim and I tried 4-5-4 across the top and bottom two rows, but sticking with 3-7-3 made it much easier to work with those 7's. We agreed on either SEMIGLOSS PAINTS or SEMISOFT CHEESES for the third span. The top left and middle fell into place because there were few other options for those sections; once we discovered that –SES presented more options than –NTS, CHEESES it was. There was some debate over the fill in the NE, but, once we found ORESTES, a tie-in to 20A, that was it.

The bottom was harder. The age-old debate arose: pangram or smoother fill? We tried a number of stacks: STREAK FREE SHINE / IT'S THE LATEST FAD, LEAVES A BAD TASTE / INCOME TAX RETURN, SPACE SATELLITES / AEROBIC EXERCISE — here we abandoned Scrabbly fill — FAST EDDIE FELSON / IMPERIAL MEASURE, then this one. There was some hang-up over SPANG, but we thought the fill in the bottom center to be much better with than without it. And I (Alex) feel fortunate to have still been able to use one Scrabbly letter in the bottom half, as I thought the Z in TAPPAN ZEE BRIDGE might feel lonely with no other Scrabbly letters in the grid.

As for cluing, we agreed to both write full sets and chat over Gmail, going clue by clue and deciding which one was better. We found that to be better than splitting the clues in half, because deciding between two clues for each entry would make a better product. Of particular note is the one for ELBE, not being able to decide between referring to the Vltava and the border between West and East Germany (which the Elbe formed part of) and thus putting both in our manuscript.

Thanks, Will, for the terrific job you've done editing this and all our puzzles. And thank you, reader, for enjoying our puzzle!

In my four semesters at the University of Delaware, crosswords were, all in all, my biggest distraction. They were also the biggest thing I had going for me there, as my second published one (11/11/11) made me arguably the most famous freshman on campus. And even though I have left Delaware and regained focus on my studies closer to my home in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley, crosswords remain my #1 hobby.

Today's puzzle is one that I have been very proud of, ever since I completed it, clued it, and submitted it in October 2012. (I put it in the mailbox exactly four days before my fourth NYT puzzle ran so that I would not have nothing left in the tank, so to speak, after that puzzle ran.) I would have liked it to be supersymmetric, with 7's going all the way around the perimeter of the grid and rows and columns 7 and 9 being spans, but the switch to a mix of 8's and 6's made it much easier for me to make the four longest entries be fresh and interesting.

My favorite of the 12's is IDIOSYNCRASY, as even though it's the only single word among them, I find it fun to say! I also like CRANBERRY BOG a lot, as well as JOAN BAEZ (what a great 1A!), SCHERZO, DENARII, FINIAL, LAST EXIT, ISLAMIST, JILTED, ZONK OUT, KATMANDU, GO ROGUE, and CRONKITE. As for clues, Will kept almost exactly half of mine. Some of the new ones that struck me were those for 15A, 26A, 30A, 59A, 60A, 21D, 35D, 47D, and 55D.

Finally, I am truly amazed and honored to have set the bar for the cycle, now that I've had a puzzle published on every day of the week. Jim Horne noted that David Steinberg completed the cycle with his ninth NYT puzzle (3/9/13), and David Kwong matched the feat with the puzzle that Horne named his Puzzle of the Year for 2013 (10/31/13). Though I have now done it in only eight, Steinberg did it in less time than I did, and I now encourage anyone who wants to do it in only seven, the absolute minimum, to make an effort to achieve that goal.

I look forward to my next publication, but I will not lose focus on my studies. I hope you all enjoyed my puzzle!

This puzzle was inspired by Matt Gaffney's Orca-nominated "At the Present Time," which used the traditional 5th, 10th, 15th, etc. anniversary gifts in the clues numbered 5, 10, 15, etc. Thinking of that puzzle as I ate lunch at the University of Delaware in April 2013, it struck me that chemical elements and lining up their atomic numbers with the clue numbers might work just as well.

Before I left the dining hall, I had come up with the grid you see now. I received excellent feedback on it from George Barany and his team, and was thrilled when Will accepted it last June 30. If you've enjoyed it, you may also enjoy this unpublished puzzle by Charles Deber, which has a few of the same theme entries.

Will put a very nice spin on the revealer clue, my original one being "With 38-Down, property of the first part of the starred entries that matches that of the clue." As for the fill, my favorites are YOU LOSE (I like Will's new clue), I'M SAD (ditto), ONE WOOD, JEOPARDY, SQUIRES, and PHDS (another great clue). Thanks, Will!

I don't quite remember exactly when this theme came to me, but according to my files, my original draft dates back to March 2013. That original draft was not as good as what you now see; BLACK OPS / EIGHT BIT was there, but opposite it was NINE IRON / BLUE NILE, which is not very elegant because of the differing lengths of the colors and numbers as well as their positions in the entries. The other themers were even less elegant, as they were not directly on top of one another (I had been working with horizontal themers up to this point): TEN SPOT was at the right of row 5, and NO TURN ON RED was at the left of row 6. Yes, TEN was right on top of RED, but now BLACK OPS / EIGHT BIT was the only theme pair that was not "number by color" (the other pair was ONE SHOT DEAL / FAKE TAN).

A few months later, I tried it again, and it was a step forward, but it did take some more drafting after that to come up with this grid. Even after it was accepted on January 16, I continued to play around with it, but now that it is in the New York Times, I am very satisfied with my work and Will's. Will did a great job with the clues (I loved his clue for MARGIN), but his biggest contribution was making the themers vertical — much more appropriate considering the revealer. Wish I'd thought to do that, having liked Joe DiPietro's "Bywords" a few months before it all started for this puzzle.

I hope you all enjoy solving it as much as I did making it!

Jeff:

Alex came to me with the idea of a giant M and W made of black squares, and I thought it was clever. However, he had been working with a 15x grid which made for an extremely challenging layout. After playing with it for a while, I felt like it was going to result in too many three-letter words and too much compromise in the fill.

I suggested going to a 21x which would be somewhat more flexible plus it would give us a bigger palette with which to work. It proved to be slightly easier than a 15x but was still extremely challenging. The biggest difficulty was finding a way to place enough M-W theme answers without constraining the grid so much that the surrounding fill would be badly compromised. Luckily, we came upon the crossing pattern of MINUTE WALTZ, MIRACLE WORKER, MONEYS WORTH, and MINIMUM WAGE; a small miracle.

It ended up taking us several months of back and forth iterations before we settled upon the final grid. There were many places we had to work and rework in order to attain a reasonable fill we were both happy with. Quite a challenge!