Carl Worth author page
1 puzzle by Carl Worth
with Constructor comments
See the 1 answer word debuted by Carl Worth.
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I've been constructing logic puzzles for a while (see gmpuzzles.com and recent US Puzzle Championships for examples), but crosswords are entirely new to me. Thanks for your patience while I'm learning, and I hope you enjoyed this puzzle as much as I did.
I started with ESCAPE ROOM---a fun entry that was still unpublished at the time, (but has appeared twice since my puzzle was accepted in August). As a computer programmer, it was natural for me to take the theme the direction I did. Once I struck on the KEY WEST revealer, I was sure this could work.
Little did I know how much effort there is between settling on theme entries and completing a puzzle. I could never have succeeded without the help of an expert mentor. Huge thanks to Craig Kasper for his patience with countless revisions. Craig also deserves credit for suggesting ENTER SANDMAN and teaching me a lot about grid design and evaluating fill.
My first revision of the puzzle was rejected for poor fill, but Will and Joel kindly encouraged me to try again. My second submission still had some unacceptable entries, but primarily concentrated in a single corner. Will had a colleague take a crack at fixing that corner and sent me the result. It was an improvement in every way, so thanks, unnamed colleague!
It's interesting to see the changes the editors made to my clues, (39 of 80 clues were changed). Many of the changes were minor, but every change improved one or more of clarity, specificity, smoothness, appropriate difficulty, or liveliness. Any clunkiness that remains is entirely mine.
One thing I will say about the clues is that if you find a turtle snapping at your finger, don't blame me!