Anne Larsen author page

ANNE: The two main seeds for this puzzle were BEYONDMEAT and NETNEUTRALITY. Both of them seemed vaguely topical, but hopefully not so much as to be outdated by the time the puzzle would be published. (We did not realize ahead of time how important WiFi and meat substitutes would be in 2020...)

DANIEL: It's always a little bit strange to have non-symmetrical seeds, since you don't get the equality of constraints on both sides that you get used to in writing themed puzzles. Funnily enough, though, we actually struggled more with the SE than with the NW. In fact, Will requested that we try to refill the SE. It was a bit of a challenge, since Anne was home when we initially constructed the puzzle, but she was in college by the time we had to redo that corner. I'm sure remote construction is another thing that has seen an unexpected rise recently.

ANNE: I remember Daniel calling me to re-clue the puzzle one night, and when I got off the phone with him, my roommate gave me this strange look and said, "What on earth were you talking about, and since when have you been into K-pop?"(This was for our original clue for IDOL, although that has since been changed.) Trying to clue a puzzle can lead to a pretty weird-sounding conversation, I guess.

DANIEL: It was a bit funny for me to see HOMEPLANET show up again in one of my themelesses. I guess the point is that I've scored it high, and it has common letters. Anyway, last time I clued it "Corellia, to Han Solo", which I thought might be too specialized. I was gratified to see that they kept the clue, but this time, I probably pushed my luck too far when I tried "Dathomir, to Darth Maul". Understandably, the editorial team rejected that clue (even Obi-Wan thought it was Iridonia), and moved the Star Wars to the clue for 45-down.

DANIEL: For years, I have been trying to figure out how to construct acceptable themeless puzzles. After all, good, original themes are hard to come by. My first attempts were awful, but as my program and word list improved, so did my puzzles. Eventually, I got better at finding the delicate balance between including fresh words and minimizing bad fill.

This was the 4th puzzle I wrote with Anne, and it was the break-through. Our seeds were FRAPPUCCINO (UNICORN FRAPPUCCINO didn't fit) and YELLOW VESTS. At the time we wrote it, YELLOW VESTS was highly topical, and Will kindly expedited the publication so that it would still be relevant. I was doing a project about the Yellow Vest movement in school, and when I came home, I found out that this puzzle had been accepted. Perfect timing!

ANNE: I've been peripherally involved with Daniel's crossword activities for a while, but this is the first time one of our joint puzzles has been accepted. We wrote this when I was home from college over winter break, and I was looking forward to a French class about revolutions, which is what made me think of YELLOW VESTS. Despite the stereotype of the over-caffeinated college student, FRAPPUCCINO was not from personal experience.

Our basic model for constructing was that Daniel operated his program while I suggested words and provided "constructive" criticism. I'm just glad it worked!